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Comment by exelius | Hacker News Reader

Aah, so it sounds like one of the big reasons you sold was because of imposter syndrome? I don't mean that negatively -- I feel one of the things that comes with experience is you realize that nobody knows what they are doing. This dispels the impostor syndrome pretty quickly.

Once you think you know how a business or industry works, you develop patterns to solve it. This can sometimes work against you because it can blind you from the change happening as other people figure out different and possibly better ways to do things.

But I assume you already know all of this, and that's what's coming in part 2 :)

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Hahaha. That is true. One of my favorite ways of getting used to this is thinking of my biggest competitors as friends (or trying to).

I would say "keep your enemies closer" but I really don't think of them as enemies. On the advice of my business coach I usually call my competitors to chat every once in a while and I think we mutually realize that we're just trying our best not to go obsolete. We also need each other's help from time to time. And we usually don't have quite the same business interests, so this naturally makes our businesses each appeal to a slightly different type of client.

When a new competitor shows up, they are usually inexperienced and either won't last long or will end up joining our club of friends. That's just how it works.

(Small business owner)

Yeah, most small businesses are impacted far more by overall market forces than they are by local competition. Even at large corporations in big industries though, individuals talk across companies. A lot. I've heard of major product launches from major companies in a fiercely competitive market because one CEO had lunch with another CEO and they shared their plans with each other. It's usually in the context of "This is what we're doing and we think we can beat you."

At the end of the day, even CEOs of large companies are only hired guns. They may be in a position later on down the road where they need a senior executive to run a charitable foundation, be a board member on a company they invest in, or to take the reins of their company when they retire. Always remember that there is the person and the role. The role gives them power, but the person is more valuable.

> When a new competitor shows up, they are usually inexperienced and either won't last long or will end up joining our club of friends. That's just how it works.

Not that I am a lawyer, but depending on your jurisdiction, you will need to be careful about what topics you can and cannot discuss.

Antitrust and consumer protection laws can bite you if you stray into the wrong subject.

Yes, I've been aware of this since reading the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook in 1996. The number and type of things you cannot discuss (at least where I live) is very limited, and tend to be contingent upon (or take fruit in) specific market conditions that simply don't apply most of the time in my field.

Some people DO know what they're doing, but they're way to the right of that particular distribution. One acqu. I was in (not a founder here, just an humble hireling) - the first one - was part of one of the acquirers' five year plans and it went just like they planned.

I kinda doubt impostor syndrome per se. Perhaps I missed something, but sounds like selling was the perfect move here. In any acquisition, there is significant performance anxiety - just plain old stage fright. Not necessarily paralyzing, but just the ... cognitive shear from being backstage to being under the lights. "It just got real" to mangle a cliche. Your ...calibration gyros are whirring a lot.

There are also people that don't know but get lucky.

This is a large multinational with an outstanding track record of acquisitions. The plan was pretty good.

So true. I've switched industries a few times and by now you'd think I'd get it. It still takes me some time to get up to speed with the 'dynamics' of the space/industry I'm working in and the realization everytime is that it is truly a con-fidence game. There is no consensus on the one 'right way' to do things and anyone who spouts with religious fervor that their way is the only way is being disingenuous or worse really believes the horse-shit they spew

Yeah, though often you have to publicly over-advocate your solution as being the only "right way" ("Why my novel carrier pigeon-based NoSQL database is eating the world") just to get any visibility around your product. Of course your solution isn't right for everyone, but the people who it's not right for probably know that already, and the people who it might be right for have a higher chance of seeing it.

Or they have the best way.

Someone has to have the best way.

> I feel one of the things that comes with experience is you realize that nobody knows what they are doing. This dispels the impostor syndrome pretty quickly.

True, not many actually know what they're doing, but it's done nothing to dispel my concerns of being an imposter. Most people don't know what they're doing, but they seem to be much better at improvising than I am, so I feel like an imposter all over again.

Every time I made a decision in my startup based on fear or insecurity, I always regretted it. When you have something awesome, you need to believe in yourself more than anyone else. I constantly try to remind myself of that, but it's especially hard when it's your first real startup and you have nothing to measure it up to!

I think that the idea that you can succeed without "knowing what you're doing" may be more common to Silicon Valley. From what I've seen, the startup environment in most other places is not so forgiving.

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