4 ms·

"More than just the quality, I was amazed by the toughness of the founders. These guys (and gals) were not the young, sheepish, technical founders you’d expect.

by api 16y ago

"More than just the quality, I was amazed by the toughness of the founders. These guys (and gals) were not the young, sheepish, technical founders you’d expect. These guys are operators – savvy, confident, operators." Stereotype much? In general this sort of post is vapid bullshit. Success in business comes from: 1) Having a product or service that people want. 2) Having a way to let people know that you have it and persuade them to try it or purchase it. 3) Having a way to deliver that product or service that costs less than the amount you take in as payment. That's it. Everything else is bullshit, including whether or not the founders are "sheepish" or are "operators." Business is actually very superstitious. There are so many factors that go into success in business that it makes rational analysis from hard data or from first principles hard, so people fall back on superstition. A lot of this superstition revolves around this almost mystical notion of having "what it takes," which tends to reduce to some notion of alpha maleness combined with luck. I actually had an investor type tell me once that one of the things he looks for in potential founders is a "prominent jaw line." It was the funniest fucking thing. I am not making this up. Very very hard not to laugh out loud... It reminds me of the Superbowl winner who wears the same pair of socks that he won the Superbowl in for every final game he plays... without washing them of course. Correlation != causation. Superstition always causes people to make bad decisions. The big one I see in business is that amazing amounts of money gets thrown at superficial correlates of success and at empty cargo cultist alpha male types. Ever wonder how CueCat got funded? Why, it was going to <buzzword buzzword buzzword> and the founder I'm sure had a square alpha male jaw line and was very assertive.

pg 16y ago
It's ironic that you describe Rich's post as "vapid bullshit" because the problem I see in your comment is that you give such a uselessly facile answer. Yes, sure, all you have to do to make a successful company is make something people want and charge for it. In the same way that all you have to do to climb Everest is keep walking uphill till you can't anymore. The real issue here is that doing these things is in practice very hard, at least the way startups have to do them. Doing them at the level of a service business like, say, a sandwich shop, is easy. Doing them at the sort of scale required in a startup is so much harder that in practice few can bear it. We have a huge amount of data about this after funding over 200 startups. We think constantly about the problem of how to predict which startups will succeed. And nothing is so clear as that toughness is the deciding factor.
- api 16y ago
  Elaborate about "toughness" then. Maybe it could be a good essay topic. Toughness is such an opaque term... to continue with your analogy, I'm sure "strength" is a deciding factor in successful mountain climbers. But that's so coarse grained and opaque. I don't see much "meat" there. Do you mean some mixture of perseverance, ability to make decisions, and willingness to take a few lumps? Or do you mean narcissism and alpha male characteristics?
  - pg 16y ago
    http://paulgraham.com/relres.html http://paulgraham.com/relres.html
    - api 16y ago
      I've read that, and that's much, much better. I went back and re-read the blog post, and I can sort of see how I might have been misinterpreting it a little. But I still dislike "toughness," and I think using that term invites the sort of misinterpretation that we're seeing here. Here's why. I have met quite a few folks in business who seem to think... well... they would never use this term or say it like this, but they basically think that it takes a sociopath or someone with narcissistic personality disorder to start a successful business. I've seen several examples of this in action... of people who put up with or even fund downright abusive off-the-charts-narcissistic personalities because they were convinced that those are the sorts of people who will be successful. The thing is: this doesn't match what I've seen in terms of actual success. Granted, I don't have 300 examples. I have about five. But what I've seen is that success is determined by good market research, good analytics, iteration, perseverance, intelligence, and a bit of luck. There are lots of factors, but those seem to be the big ones. In the narcissistic world of startups, the term "toughness" is going to bring to mind narcissism and sociopathic behavior. There are just too many bad examples. Use another word, like "perseverance" or "resourcefulness" and your point will be better taken.
      - moonpolysoft 16y ago
        It sounds like you have confused "tough" with "asshole". Common mistake.
keeptrying 16y ago
Your list of requirements for success is about as useful as telling someone that you need to go to college to get a degree. Its actually pretty vapid. It overlooks the ability of overcoming adversity to achieve all those things. Your overlooking all the tremendously difficult and gutsy things you have to make a business sucessful: 1. Quit a well paying job which affords your family food,shelter and clothes. 2. Work 14 hours a day on a service that people may not buy even though they have given you letters of intent that they will. 3. Partner and work with people (devs, designers, customers) who you've known for less than the guy who works at your favourite pizza place. 4. Work on something which at the end of the day might be useless because the whole industry could change. (Launching a new mp3 player on the same day as the ipod) 5. Cold call hundreds of potential customers of which 90% will slam the phone on you. 6. Work with no health insurance (if you dont get funding) to save money for your startup. I dont think you could even think of attempting a "real" money making startup unless you have brass balls.

by api 16y ago

pg 16y ago

It's ironic that you describe Rich's post as "vapid bullshit" because the problem I see in your comment is that you give such a uselessly facile answer. Yes, sure, all you have to do to make a successful company is make something people want and charge for it. In the same way that all you have to do to climb Everest is keep walking uphill till you can't anymore. The real issue here is that doing these things is in practice very hard, at least the way startups have to do them. Doing them at the level of a service business like, say, a sandwich shop, is easy. Doing them at the sort of scale required in a startup is so much harder that in practice few can bear it. We have a huge amount of data about this after funding over 200 startups. We think constantly about the problem of how to predict which startups will succeed. And nothing is so clear as that toughness is the deciding factor.

api 16y ago
Elaborate about "toughness" then. Maybe it could be a good essay topic. Toughness is such an opaque term... to continue with your analogy, I'm sure "strength" is a deciding factor in successful mountain climbers. But that's so coarse grained and opaque. I don't see much "meat" there. Do you mean some mixture of perseverance, ability to make decisions, and willingness to take a few lumps? Or do you mean narcissism and alpha male characteristics?
- pg 16y ago
  http://paulgraham.com/relres.html http://paulgraham.com/relres.html
  - api 16y ago
    I've read that, and that's much, much better. I went back and re-read the blog post, and I can sort of see how I might have been misinterpreting it a little. But I still dislike "toughness," and I think using that term invites the sort of misinterpretation that we're seeing here. Here's why. I have met quite a few folks in business who seem to think... well... they would never use this term or say it like this, but they basically think that it takes a sociopath or someone with narcissistic personality disorder to start a successful business. I've seen several examples of this in action... of people who put up with or even fund downright abusive off-the-charts-narcissistic personalities because they were convinced that those are the sorts of people who will be successful. The thing is: this doesn't match what I've seen in terms of actual success. Granted, I don't have 300 examples. I have about five. But what I've seen is that success is determined by good market research, good analytics, iteration, perseverance, intelligence, and a bit of luck. There are lots of factors, but those seem to be the big ones. In the narcissistic world of startups, the term "toughness" is going to bring to mind narcissism and sociopathic behavior. There are just too many bad examples. Use another word, like "perseverance" or "resourcefulness" and your point will be better taken.
    - moonpolysoft 16y ago
      It sounds like you have confused "tough" with "asshole". Common mistake.

keeptrying 16y ago

Your list of requirements for success is about as useful as telling someone that you need to go to college to get a degree. Its actually pretty vapid. It overlooks the ability of overcoming adversity to achieve all those things. Your overlooking all the tremendously difficult and gutsy things you have to make a business sucessful: 1. Quit a well paying job which affords your family food,shelter and clothes. 2. Work 14 hours a day on a service that people may not buy even though they have given you letters of intent that they will. 3. Partner and work with people (devs, designers, customers) who you've known for less than the guy who works at your favourite pizza place. 4. Work on something which at the end of the day might be useless because the whole industry could change. (Launching a new mp3 player on the same day as the ipod) 5. Cold call hundreds of potential customers of which 90% will slam the phone on you. 6. Work with no health insurance (if you dont get funding) to save money for your startup. I dont think you could even think of attempting a "real" money making startup unless you have brass balls.