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But what is the point of operating your own company if not to accomplish your goals of what the company should be? I mean, I get it, you have to make customers

by mlthoughts2018 8y ago

But what is the point of operating your own company if not to accomplish your goals of what the company should be? I mean, I get it, you have to make customers happy in order to have a business. But this seems like something different. It seems like saying your goal should be to make money a priori and that defining vision based on feedback is a good way to do that. But what if that’s not your goal? What if your goal is to create a company that embodies a specific mission, like say related to environmentalism or furthering cryonics or actually paying all the taxes you should pay as a civic virtue instead of offshoring to skirt your duty to help others that form the foundation of society that enables your business to exist in the first place. Doing things like this often requires telling customers “no” or declining business all together, in order to impose the vision because you believe the vision is more valuable than short term pivots to satisfy short term client feedback. Another thread of this that I don’t like is that client feedback is often wildly inconsistent and incoherent, not based on realistic understanding of what’s possible. It sounds glib to say listen to feedback, but what does that mean? Which feedback is good? When is it actually going to payoff according to your true goal?

danenania 8y ago
I think this is something that’s ridiculously hard in the beginning when your sample size is low, but as you get more users giving feedback, you will probably start to see some clear patterns emerge in what they like, what frustrates them, what features they ask for, etc. While individual pieces of feedback are often all over the place, with more data points, the solution that they all hover around starts to emerge. It can even start to feel ‘obvious’ what your product needs, even though it’s mostly stuff you never could have thought of in isolation. As far as making money vs. mission, I think the issue is just that truly solving an important problem for lots of people is so absurdly hard that very very few entrepreneurs can manage to achieve it without devoting close to 100% of their focus to this challenge. People might love that your company is financially transparent and socially responsible, but that won’t get them to use your product. So thinking much about these things before you start seeing product-market fit feels like putting the cart before the horse.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  > “I think the issue is just that truly solving an important problem for lots of people is so absurdly hard that very very few entrepreneurs can manage to achieve it“ But many businesses don’t try to make products for lots of people, just for very small, focused sets of customers. > “People might love that your company is financially transparent and socially responsible, but that won’t get them to use your product. So thinking much about these things before you start seeing product-market fit feels like putting the cart before the horse.” But what if your goal is not to find product-market fit unless it also satisfies other constraints like sustainability or financially ethical behavior? What if, in the absence of those, your preference is to go out of business and shut down?
  - danenania 8y ago
    > "But many businesses don’t try to make products for lots of people, just for very small, focused sets of customers." I don't think this is proportionally less difficult. The advice that YC partners and other experienced founders will give you if you tell them you want to conquer the world is to start with a small, focused set of customers. It's a lot harder to get from 0 to this point than it is to go from a small enthusiastic user-base to a much larger user-base. So even if you're content with a smaller market or a smaller share of a market than the typical VC-backed startup, it's still crazy hard to get any significant traction at all, and it still requires just about all your creativity and focus to get there. > "But what if your goal is not to find product-market fit unless it also satisfies other constraints like sustainability or financially ethical behavior? What if, in the absence of those, your preference is to go out of business and shut down?" The vast majority of founders do impose their own versions of those constraints on themselves. Everyone's ethics are different (as is everyone's definition of sustainability), but just about everyone has lines they won't cross and deals they won't make. I think the point isn't that you should pursue profit above all else and forget higher values, just that regardless of the type of company you want to build, your first and most important challenge is building something a significant number of people want enough that they'll pay you money for it. Since this is so hard, all the early-stage advice is relentlessly focused on how to do it. And what's the best proxy for how well you're doing it? Revenue. Thus the outsize focus on getting it and growing it quickly early on.
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
what is the point of operating your own company if not to accomplish your goals of what the company should be? Yes that's exactly why I've become jaded about business in general. It was excessively clear that, except in extremely rare cases and almost only with Apple, being successful means that you're letting other people ("customers") dictate your product to you. From what I can tell it absolutely is the correct path to financial/commercial success. If "do whatever people want" is what it takes to be successful then that's the exact opposite of what I got into this for. What if your goal is to create a company that embodies a specific mission From what I can tell, then you're a non-profit or a B-Corp or something else. A for profit company C-Corp that looks like a "startup" has generating profit for the business as it's core mission. Not just revenue, profit. And ideally super high-margin profit. Maybe that looks like an acquisition, or maybe it looks like a dividend or liquid stock eventually. In one form or another, your core mission is to turn money and work into more money. Anything else is a side project or goal.

danenania 8y ago

I think this is something that’s ridiculously hard in the beginning when your sample size is low, but as you get more users giving feedback, you will probably start to see some clear patterns emerge in what they like, what frustrates them, what features they ask for, etc. While individual pieces of feedback are often all over the place, with more data points, the solution that they all hover around starts to emerge. It can even start to feel ‘obvious’ what your product needs, even though it’s mostly stuff you never could have thought of in isolation. As far as making money vs. mission, I think the issue is just that truly solving an important problem for lots of people is so absurdly hard that very very few entrepreneurs can manage to achieve it without devoting close to 100% of their focus to this challenge. People might love that your company is financially transparent and socially responsible, but that won’t get them to use your product. So thinking much about these things before you start seeing product-market fit feels like putting the cart before the horse.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
> “I think the issue is just that truly solving an important problem for lots of people is so absurdly hard that very very few entrepreneurs can manage to achieve it“ But many businesses don’t try to make products for lots of people, just for very small, focused sets of customers. > “People might love that your company is financially transparent and socially responsible, but that won’t get them to use your product. So thinking much about these things before you start seeing product-market fit feels like putting the cart before the horse.” But what if your goal is not to find product-market fit unless it also satisfies other constraints like sustainability or financially ethical behavior? What if, in the absence of those, your preference is to go out of business and shut down?
- danenania 8y ago
  > "But many businesses don’t try to make products for lots of people, just for very small, focused sets of customers." I don't think this is proportionally less difficult. The advice that YC partners and other experienced founders will give you if you tell them you want to conquer the world is to start with a small, focused set of customers. It's a lot harder to get from 0 to this point than it is to go from a small enthusiastic user-base to a much larger user-base. So even if you're content with a smaller market or a smaller share of a market than the typical VC-backed startup, it's still crazy hard to get any significant traction at all, and it still requires just about all your creativity and focus to get there. > "But what if your goal is not to find product-market fit unless it also satisfies other constraints like sustainability or financially ethical behavior? What if, in the absence of those, your preference is to go out of business and shut down?" The vast majority of founders do impose their own versions of those constraints on themselves. Everyone's ethics are different (as is everyone's definition of sustainability), but just about everyone has lines they won't cross and deals they won't make. I think the point isn't that you should pursue profit above all else and forget higher values, just that regardless of the type of company you want to build, your first and most important challenge is building something a significant number of people want enough that they'll pay you money for it. Since this is so hard, all the early-stage advice is relentlessly focused on how to do it. And what's the best proxy for how well you're doing it? Revenue. Thus the outsize focus on getting it and growing it quickly early on.

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

what is the point of operating your own company if not to accomplish your goals of what the company should be? Yes that's exactly why I've become jaded about business in general. It was excessively clear that, except in extremely rare cases and almost only with Apple, being successful means that you're letting other people ("customers") dictate your product to you. From what I can tell it absolutely is the correct path to financial/commercial success. If "do whatever people want" is what it takes to be successful then that's the exact opposite of what I got into this for. What if your goal is to create a company that embodies a specific mission From what I can tell, then you're a non-profit or a B-Corp or something else. A for profit company C-Corp that looks like a "startup" has generating profit for the business as it's core mission. Not just revenue, profit. And ideally super high-margin profit. Maybe that looks like an acquisition, or maybe it looks like a dividend or liquid stock eventually. In one form or another, your core mission is to turn money and work into more money. Anything else is a side project or goal.