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It's a "dead dove do not eat" feeling, but I kind of hoped I'd open the HN comments on this one and _not_ see a bunch of engineering solutions. They all miss t
by trynewideas 8y ago
It's a "dead dove do not eat" feeling, but I kind of hoped I'd open the HN comments on this one and _not_ see a bunch of engineering solutions.
They all miss the point of the story, which is crushingly relevant to startups:
If you build a company with people you like and love, and circumstances outside of your control force it to scale in a hurry, those people you like and love are going to get hurt in the process.
That's not an engineering problem to fix. Stanich's didn't need an algorithmic order filling solution, it needed to lose the people that made it Stanich's. It was doomed no matter what. It was unscalable; it's unscalability is what imbued it with what Alexander liked about it.
The story begins and ends with Stanich's parents and the reason why they started the business in the first place for a _massive_ reason, one that seems to have gone over the heads of most HN commenters (and I'll bet also most people reading it via HN), and that's at least as depressing as the story itself.
- navinsylvester 8y agoBang on. Right chord. I think this article is a great advise to people running startups. The review is akin to raising outside money.
- btown 8y agoCouldn’t agree more. It’s a weird world where we want founders to be artisans and inventors, but the money can only think “scale now or die.” There are other ways to build a sustainable large-scale business, methodically over time with profitability and a reputation of care for one’s customers. But venture capital isn’t aligned with this type of approach.
- chrisweekly 8y agoYeah. No citation handy, but I came across an essay describing startups as essentially performing cheap R&D for VCs.
- chrisweekly 8y agocord (rope) -> chord (musical reference, as in "to strike a chord", ie to resonate) Not nit-picking, just hoping to clarify for non-native English speakers.
- navinsylvester 8y agoMeant chord. Didn't realize. Thanks for pointing it out. Will make the correction.
- swrobel 8y agoExcept startups solicit the money. It isn't foisted on them like this review.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- icelancer 8y agoYup. I have a startup that was full of people who expected it to stay the way it always was before it grew to millions of annual revenue, and that ended up hurting them when it turned out that I was running a business. It bothered me some, but I always knew this was potentially in my future. They didn't. This will happen to everyone who runs a startup that has family or close friends involved, especially if they are your customers. Such is life.
- em-bee 8y agoi heared this phrase: "make friends in business, don't make business with friends" that seems to apply here. in the face it sounds like dry advice, but it hints that the changes in business can hurt friendships. it's a sad reality for those that face it unprepared. greetings, eMBee.