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These retrospective analyses, while intriguing to read, should be taken as more descriptive than prescriptive. When you talk to someone who actually succeeded
by pontus 6y ago
These retrospective analyses, while intriguing to read, should be taken as more descriptive than prescriptive.
When you talk to someone who actually succeeded at something, they'll talk about platitudes like working hard, product market fit, iterating, listening to customers, raising a lot of money or not raising too much money, and so on. Many people go so far as to try to emulate the behaviors of their "hero" (Jobs, Gates, Page/Brin, Zuck, ...), but that's a fools errand.
In a similar way, these types of postmortems should not be taken as prescriptive. They too are full of platitudes.
- svachalek 6y agoI have worked for some companies that were total failures and some that were global successes. Having been through the failures first, I was excited to see how the magic worked at a massively successful company, but to be honest the differences are more subtle than anyone would believe. The big successes were happy to do things that had been disastrous at other companies in my experience, and did not pay much attention to the things that the popular press considered the secrets of their success. As disappointing as it is to think this way, it’s much like explaining the weather or the stock market. I think people need a story, but both inside and outside the company we are just guessing why a company fails or succeeds.
- heymijo 6y agoAndy Rachleff, known for his articulation of product/market fit, says a company with a lock on product/market fit can do almost everything else wrong and still succeed. Google firing all of its managers early on in its existence is a great example of this.
- physicles 6y agoIt’s like Scott G says, better to be a mediocre company in a great market, than a superbly-managed company in a bad market.
- opportune 6y agoThere is both a lot of survivorship bias and probably misattribution of what leads to failures and successes. I imagine a lot of it too is really indescribable, in the sense that a professional basketball player may write a blog post about how to play top-tier basketball, but reading won’t actually make me any better at basketball, nor will it give me the character/physical traits I need to be talented.