10 ms·

Wannabe entrepreneur symptoms and cures

158 points by jasonlbaptiste 16y ago

Alex3917 16y ago
"Symptom: you've written more than a 5pg business plan." The design brief for our website was seven pages if I remember correctly. First we described who our customers were, along with their psychology and values. Then we described the vibe we were going for and why it would resonate with them. Then we described 10 or so design elements that sent signals consistent with what we were going for, and listed five or so examples of each element being used on various sites across the web. Now I realize that this is different than a business plan, but if you haven't done more than five pages worth of thinking then you probably don't understand what your assumptions are or how to test them.
- notahacker 16y ago
  I agree, but I think Gabriel's main point is in the parenthesis - "Symptom: you've written more than a 5pg business plan (intended for others)" You're more likely to find someone to invest in or collaborate with you based on a prototype than a detailed rationalisation of the thought behind the prototype you're thinking of building. Putting your thoughts on paper is one thing. Putting your thoughts on paper as a substitute for trying to put them into practice is another.
keeptrying 16y ago
I think you have to be a wannabe entrepreneur for at least a little bit. It helps in a bunch of ways: 1. Gives you an idea of what your friends will think about you after you become a real entrepreneur. 2. Gives you hope that you can and will change your circumstance. 3. It consumes you till you make the jump. 4. Plus you get to practice a very important skill - how not to worry about what people think of you :). 5. Gives you chance to evaluate whether you really want to be a founder. 6. It makes you go to real entrepreneur events so you can meet and mingle with them and get to know what its really like. This is a great article to break out of wannabe mode but I dont think being a wannabe is necessarily a bad thing. Hey - fake it till you make it :).
- jacquesm 16y ago
  (4) contradicts (1). Being an entrepreneur is not something you 'fake' any more than you could fake playing the violin (well, you could but it would not get you any closer to playing one), you either do it or you don't. You could do it badly though, and most entrepreneurs do that for a while until they've racked up enough experience to make a go of something. That's called practice. Wannabe entrepreneurs usually stay that way, entrepreneurs get up and do stuff, they don't 'want to be something'.
  - keeptrying 16y ago
    Being an entrepreneur is very different from picking up an instrument essentially because of 1 thing - you need a strong network. Putting your intention out there and building that network even before you start will always help. Infact that act of creating that network might be the one thing that would force you to make the jump into being a real entrepreneur.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      It is perfectly possible to be an entrepreneur without a network of other entrepreneurs, you're better off concentrating on your customers initially anyway. I see a disturbing trend in my environment where people will spend more and more time 'networking' and less on developing their product and / or their business in general. They're all backslapping each other what great entrepreneurs they are, they organize events and so on. Meanwhile the real entrepreneurs run off with the contracts. Networking has its uses, but don't overestimate it.
    - detst 16y ago
      Oops. Accidentally down-voted you. Votes really need to be reversible for at least some short time. EDIT: Wow. Some people are really pathetic with down votes. It was a mistake and should be correctable.
micaelwidell 16y ago
I think it is fairly normal to go through the wannabe-phase. We all do it until the moment that we realize we aren't getting nearer any goals, and decide to become a doer instead of a talker/planner.
mixmax 16y ago
Symptom: you now just need a programmer to code up your site. The last startup I did failed miserably. When I looked back to see what went wrong it was obvious that if I could have coded it myself I would have been a lot better off, and it might have worked out. So I started learning how to program so that I would be better prepared next time around. Best decision I ever made. I can now get an idea, and straight away do something about it instead of first having to convince someone to do it for me. As an extra bonus it's now trivial for me to see things that weren't at all obvious before such as why one feature is much more demanding to code than another, why seemingly simple things take so much time, and much more. I'm by no means a good programmer: I can't do a high scalability clustered scheme app, but I know enough to actually do things. And really that's all that matters. If you're into startups and can't code follow Gabriel's advice and learn how to do so. Right now. It's the best decision you'll ever make.
- christonog 16y ago
  Agree. If anything, you'll exercise your mind, learn a new skill, and can add it to your resume. Learning how to program gives you a better sense of what it takes to build something. I personally believe that if you're in startups, you should at least be somewhat knowledgeable in the technologies used.
10ren 16y ago
> you don't understand your startup's assumptions. The cure reminds me of what Fred Brooks said in The Mythical Man-Month after 20 years, at p.258-9 (MM-M, 2nd ed.) about defining the user set (ie. who the users are), as a population assessed along several attributes, with a frequency distribution over each (my eg. how much RAM they have; their largest file - but the most interesting ones are app-specific). He says you should GUESS the set of attributes and distributions: 1. you will think about it carefully; 2. they will be debated by the team, revealing differences in how each member sees the user set; 3. it "helps everyone recognize which decisions depend upon which user set properties. Even this sort of informal sensitivity analysis is valuable. When it develops that very important decisions are hinging on some particular guess, then it is worth the cost to establish better estimates for that value." He summarizes: "It is far better to be explicit and wrong than to be vague"
lukev 16y ago
> [...] or learn how to code yourself. It's not that hard, and if you think of startups as a career, it's a great skill to have even if you just manage tech people. I disagree strongly. Coding is a great skill and just about everyone should be familiar with it, but telling starry-eyed entrepreneurs they can learn to code well enough to launch a successful tech startup on their own in a short timeframe is extremely misleading. Coding and design are the core competencies of any tech/web startup, and you can't hope to succeed if you're essentially an amateur at your core competency. Because the fact is, coding may not be hard, but coding well and being responsible for the software infrastructure of a successful project is hard and isn't something you can pick up overnight. By all means, learn to code. It will help you in innumerable ways, and maybe after a few years of practice you can start to think about launching a cool project on your own. But don't be deluded into thinking you can pick up "Ruby for Dummies" and have a hot new web startup 6 months later without some real technical expertise.
- silvestrov 16y ago
  I disagree. Coding is required for understanding the underpinnings of web-based business. You don't need to be great at coding, amateur skills provide a huge insigt about how to manage programmers. If you have no coding ability whatsoever, you have no understanding of a major part of your business, and you will not have much a clue when hiring programmers about how skilled they are. So you'll end up hiring people that sound good, not are good.
  - lukev 16y ago
    Oh, don't get me wrong. I think all founders should know how to code. But I think the notion that an amateur coder without real experience can launch a successful tech startup on their own is naive. You really need someone, either a co-founder or employee, with real technical knowledge and experience.
    - netcan 16y ago
      I think the assumption that coding will be a core competency & the company's success hinges on its quality is not necessarily true. Think of betterworldbooks.com. I'm sure that code is very important to them. They probably have great programmers working there. But, going to campuses, exciting students and organising fund-raising book collections is probably more their core competency. Zappos needed great software, but it wasn't necessarily technical prowess that made them successful, their customer service seems to the the credit. There are many web startups which are e-commerce companies at core. AirBnB, from what I read, is an impressive startup, but the problems they solved to get it going where not primarily technical. They are taking advantage of opportunities that technological advancements have created and have big, important technological components to them (compared to restaurants, shops, dental practices..), but they are not pure technology companies. Being an amateur level programmer (can code an e-commerce site) could let someone have a go at a lot of potential ideas. You probably can't be Google or Paypal but you might be a Woot! or something.
vaksel 16y ago
there is only one cure. Just do it already. Entrepreneurship is something, where you'll always have to learn on the job.
ccarpenterg 16y ago
I've had all these symptoms excluding calling myself a CEO and writing a business plan. Luckily all symptoms are cured except the 10-25k investment. Now I'm looking for a job to save 30k for the first investment (living costs, services, travel, servers, etc.) However I think most of these 'cures' are 'easily' achievable, but having enough time to cure these symptoms and looking for a co-founder are the hardest parts of becoming an entrepreneur. In my case I took advantage of having been laid off in 2009. So I've decided not to look for a job until I've got some stuff done.
erikstarck 16y ago
Wow. It almost hurts reading that, it's so spot on. It least we did our own coding.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

158 points by jasonlbaptiste 16y ago

"Symptom: you've written more than a 5pg business plan." The design brief for our website was seven pages if I remember correctly. First we described who our customers were, along with their psychology and values. Then we described the vibe we were going for and why it would resonate with them. Then we described 10 or so design elements that sent signals consistent with what we were going for, and listed five or so examples of each element being used on various sites across the web. Now I realize that this is different than a business plan, but if you haven't done more than five pages worth of thinking then you probably don't understand what your assumptions are or how to test them.

notahacker 16y ago
I agree, but I think Gabriel's main point is in the parenthesis - "Symptom: you've written more than a 5pg business plan (intended for others)" You're more likely to find someone to invest in or collaborate with you based on a prototype than a detailed rationalisation of the thought behind the prototype you're thinking of building. Putting your thoughts on paper is one thing. Putting your thoughts on paper as a substitute for trying to put them into practice is another.

keeptrying 16y ago

I think you have to be a wannabe entrepreneur for at least a little bit. It helps in a bunch of ways: 1. Gives you an idea of what your friends will think about you after you become a real entrepreneur. 2. Gives you hope that you can and will change your circumstance. 3. It consumes you till you make the jump. 4. Plus you get to practice a very important skill - how not to worry about what people think of you :). 5. Gives you chance to evaluate whether you really want to be a founder. 6. It makes you go to real entrepreneur events so you can meet and mingle with them and get to know what its really like. This is a great article to break out of wannabe mode but I dont think being a wannabe is necessarily a bad thing. Hey - fake it till you make it :).

jacquesm 16y ago
(4) contradicts (1). Being an entrepreneur is not something you 'fake' any more than you could fake playing the violin (well, you could but it would not get you any closer to playing one), you either do it or you don't. You could do it badly though, and most entrepreneurs do that for a while until they've racked up enough experience to make a go of something. That's called practice. Wannabe entrepreneurs usually stay that way, entrepreneurs get up and do stuff, they don't 'want to be something'.
- keeptrying 16y ago
  Being an entrepreneur is very different from picking up an instrument essentially because of 1 thing - you need a strong network. Putting your intention out there and building that network even before you start will always help. Infact that act of creating that network might be the one thing that would force you to make the jump into being a real entrepreneur.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    It is perfectly possible to be an entrepreneur without a network of other entrepreneurs, you're better off concentrating on your customers initially anyway. I see a disturbing trend in my environment where people will spend more and more time 'networking' and less on developing their product and / or their business in general. They're all backslapping each other what great entrepreneurs they are, they organize events and so on. Meanwhile the real entrepreneurs run off with the contracts. Networking has its uses, but don't overestimate it.
  - detst 16y ago
    Oops. Accidentally down-voted you. Votes really need to be reversible for at least some short time. EDIT: Wow. Some people are really pathetic with down votes. It was a mistake and should be correctable.

micaelwidell 16y ago

I think it is fairly normal to go through the wannabe-phase. We all do it until the moment that we realize we aren't getting nearer any goals, and decide to become a doer instead of a talker/planner.

mixmax 16y ago

Symptom: you now just need a programmer to code up your site. The last startup I did failed miserably. When I looked back to see what went wrong it was obvious that if I could have coded it myself I would have been a lot better off, and it might have worked out. So I started learning how to program so that I would be better prepared next time around. Best decision I ever made. I can now get an idea, and straight away do something about it instead of first having to convince someone to do it for me. As an extra bonus it's now trivial for me to see things that weren't at all obvious before such as why one feature is much more demanding to code than another, why seemingly simple things take so much time, and much more. I'm by no means a good programmer: I can't do a high scalability clustered scheme app, but I know enough to actually do things. And really that's all that matters. If you're into startups and can't code follow Gabriel's advice and learn how to do so. Right now. It's the best decision you'll ever make.

christonog 16y ago
Agree. If anything, you'll exercise your mind, learn a new skill, and can add it to your resume. Learning how to program gives you a better sense of what it takes to build something. I personally believe that if you're in startups, you should at least be somewhat knowledgeable in the technologies used.

10ren 16y ago

> you don't understand your startup's assumptions. The cure reminds me of what Fred Brooks said in The Mythical Man-Month after 20 years, at p.258-9 (MM-M, 2nd ed.) about defining the user set (ie. who the users are), as a population assessed along several attributes, with a frequency distribution over each (my eg. how much RAM they have; their largest file - but the most interesting ones are app-specific). He says you should GUESS the set of attributes and distributions: 1. you will think about it carefully; 2. they will be debated by the team, revealing differences in how each member sees the user set; 3. it "helps everyone recognize which decisions depend upon which user set properties. Even this sort of informal sensitivity analysis is valuable. When it develops that very important decisions are hinging on some particular guess, then it is worth the cost to establish better estimates for that value." He summarizes: "It is far better to be explicit and wrong than to be vague"

lukev 16y ago

> [...] or learn how to code yourself. It's not that hard, and if you think of startups as a career, it's a great skill to have even if you just manage tech people. I disagree strongly. Coding is a great skill and just about everyone should be familiar with it, but telling starry-eyed entrepreneurs they can learn to code well enough to launch a successful tech startup on their own in a short timeframe is extremely misleading. Coding and design are the core competencies of any tech/web startup, and you can't hope to succeed if you're essentially an amateur at your core competency. Because the fact is, coding may not be hard, but coding well and being responsible for the software infrastructure of a successful project is hard and isn't something you can pick up overnight. By all means, learn to code. It will help you in innumerable ways, and maybe after a few years of practice you can start to think about launching a cool project on your own. But don't be deluded into thinking you can pick up "Ruby for Dummies" and have a hot new web startup 6 months later without some real technical expertise.

silvestrov 16y ago
I disagree. Coding is required for understanding the underpinnings of web-based business. You don't need to be great at coding, amateur skills provide a huge insigt about how to manage programmers. If you have no coding ability whatsoever, you have no understanding of a major part of your business, and you will not have much a clue when hiring programmers about how skilled they are. So you'll end up hiring people that sound good, not are good.
- lukev 16y ago
  Oh, don't get me wrong. I think all founders should know how to code. But I think the notion that an amateur coder without real experience can launch a successful tech startup on their own is naive. You really need someone, either a co-founder or employee, with real technical knowledge and experience.
  - netcan 16y ago
    I think the assumption that coding will be a core competency & the company's success hinges on its quality is not necessarily true. Think of betterworldbooks.com. I'm sure that code is very important to them. They probably have great programmers working there. But, going to campuses, exciting students and organising fund-raising book collections is probably more their core competency. Zappos needed great software, but it wasn't necessarily technical prowess that made them successful, their customer service seems to the the credit. There are many web startups which are e-commerce companies at core. AirBnB, from what I read, is an impressive startup, but the problems they solved to get it going where not primarily technical. They are taking advantage of opportunities that technological advancements have created and have big, important technological components to them (compared to restaurants, shops, dental practices..), but they are not pure technology companies. Being an amateur level programmer (can code an e-commerce site) could let someone have a go at a lot of potential ideas. You probably can't be Google or Paypal but you might be a Woot! or something.

vaksel 16y ago

there is only one cure. Just do it already. Entrepreneurship is something, where you'll always have to learn on the job.

ccarpenterg 16y ago

I've had all these symptoms excluding calling myself a CEO and writing a business plan. Luckily all symptoms are cured except the 10-25k investment. Now I'm looking for a job to save 30k for the first investment (living costs, services, travel, servers, etc.) However I think most of these 'cures' are 'easily' achievable, but having enough time to cure these symptoms and looking for a co-founder are the hardest parts of becoming an entrepreneur. In my case I took advantage of having been laid off in 2009. So I've decided not to look for a job until I've got some stuff done.

erikstarck 16y ago

Wow. It almost hurts reading that, it's so spot on. It least we did our own coding.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]