(1) The startup world is full of creeps and psychos. There are a lot of sociopaths, vapid fast-talking wheeler-dealers, and people who are just flat out bat nuts crazy. There's also been a huge influx of douchebags since tech became (supposedly) a way to get rich quick. I've been burned by this a couple times and have gotten better at judging character as a result, but be warned-- here be dragons.
(2) Credentialism is a lot stronger in startups than most people believe. Stanford degrees seem to count more than traction. In the end I just broke down and added "did not attend Stanford or work for Google" to my AngelList profile. If you care, you're not going to like me anyway.
(3) Everything follows an extreme power law distribution, and it always implies a catch-22. If you don't live in the Bay Area, it's exponentially harder to get funding. If you do live in the Bay Area, you need a substantial exit event to afford a down payment on a modest post-WWII starter house. This also applies to incubators, startups you might join, employees you might recruit, etc.
(4) Trendy not-invented-last-week syndrome abounds on the technology side: http://www.jwz.org/blog/2003/02/the-cadt-model/
(5) Given the quantities of money involved, I'd expect investors to be more rational than they really are. "Raise on no numbers or good numbers" -- that doesn't exactly strike me as rational. No numbers is better than some growth? That's not by any means the worst example either. I once had an investor type tell me with a straight face that he looks for founders with a "prominent jaw line, an alpha male look."
(6) Founding or building something is lonely, thankless, isolating, and a lot longer of a death march than you probably realize... unless of course you are "juiced" in which case you can walk into a VC firm and walk out with millions for a product that doesn't exist. Then you can hire people to build it while you wheel and deal and pimp your ego. The existence of this kind of "juice" can be enormously discouraging to mere mortals. It's enough to make you wonder if this game isn't as rigged as Wall Street. (I don't think it's quite as rigged as Wall Street, but there's definitely a privilege network.)
(7) With all the talk of innovation you hear from people like Peter Thiel, the reality is that the most profitable stuff is usually some kind of equity play on the rapid growth of some trendy thing that isn't technically that interesting. Examples include Facebook, Snapchat, etc. If you want to extend the human life span, develop AI, or otherwise advance the human condition, sign up for a vow of poverty. The only hack around this seems to be to do something a bit more "boring" to make enough money to then do something more visionary. The poster boy for this is Elon Musk. There are also exceptions -- things that can be both profitable and interesting -- but those also tend to be the hardest death marches of all. While you're struggling to create real value, someone else is making millions flipping some kind of social media app of the week.
(8) Mobile is the future this week. Last week it was the web. Next week it'll be the Internet of Things and nobody will ever fund another mobile startup. Desktop is dead even though everyone builds absolutely everything on a desktop. See #4.
(9) Don't let anyone fool you -- tech is sexist as hell and geek culture is misogynistic with a faint whiff of creepy pedophilia and other chthonic horrors. If you don't have a penis, be prepared for subtile hazing and grunt work and possibly drool on your seat cushion. Racism exists too, but it's less stark and omnipresent than the misogyny.
(10) Age-ism is big too, and it contributes a lot to #8 and #4. A big reason for this is that all the incubator and accelerator programs are geared toward unmarried childless recent college grads who can move on a whim, room with six other people, and special enzymes that can derive a full spectrum of nutrients from ramen and energy drinks.
I could keep going.
Yet I keep coming back for more. Thank you master may I have another?
Apart from my above sentence, which could be a number 11 in your post, this was a solid answer.
So let's swap it around now...
The real Valley founder checklist:
- White - Male - Alpha - 23-25 - Talk the talk - Know more (important) people than "how to code" - Master human-SEO (throwing keywords to investors) - Go to Stanford - Use your connections to "work at Google" - SoLoMo (Silicon Valley show) - Misogynist
I think I got them all.
Other industries have it worse though, or have different issues all their own. Finance is a real shitshow.
I love finance! The only industry where you are allowed to compete with your clients in the same markets directly (and screw them over).
When working on sales, I think engineers underestimate how truly difficult it is for someone to sign-up, or take their wallet out to pay for a service. The assumption of creating a great product isn't enough for success.
Having build a great SAS that is far superior than anything out there, trying to convince people to use it and keep on using it is extremely hard ! Making people pay for something is much harder than any piece of code that i wrote.
Unfortunately a great product isnt enough, that is why mediocre products with a great sales team success.