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What would you do differently? How do you know now that you were wasting your time? These moments make you more powerful than ever to be able to articulate why

What would you do differently? How do you know now that you were wasting your time? These moments make you more powerful than ever to be able to articulate why those precious (auto corrected but worked) times were not the myths you heard.

ineedasername 4y ago
I think a lot more people persevere past the point of salvation than persevere against long odds and succeed. There's no clear cut answer to determining 100% of the time, in the moment, if failure is a foregone conclusion, but that doesn't mean you should stick it out until the bitter end. Since most startups fail anyway, if you're already near failure mode then the bias should be in needing an extremely compelling reason-- beyond blind perserverence-- to keep going. Otherwise just salvage anything that might be salvaged and try something else with the new benefit of experience. "What would you do differently" is easily answered with "anything but the thing that just failed."
- SiempreViernes 4y ago
  > I think a lot more people persevere past the point of salvation than persevere against long odds and succeed One would hope so, that's the definition of long odds!
  - ineedasername 4y ago
    Yes, I realized that semantic issue when I wrote it :). But I figured the meaning was clear enough anyway and I would have tried to hold my ground rhetorically against a counter argument purely on that basis, though I do enjoy arguing from positions where I can't possibly wrong.
jacobr1 4y ago
Guess: when you validation of the problem, validation that there is money to fix the problem, but don't yet have validation that your particular solution or business mode has product-market fit. Though I've worked at a few startups, I don't have enough experience to know to know the above generally applies. But if there isn't a market for your product, no amount of effort is going to fix it. I don't mean existing market, sometimes good products make their own category ... but you need to have evidence that is true.
0x20cowboy 4y ago
> How do you know now that you were wasting your time? For me, this is very hard advice to give, and I usually equate it to running. When you run, it often hurts after a while. There is a kind of hurt that you just need to push through, and then there is the kind of hurt that will cause bad or long term damage. It’s sometime hard to know the difference. You can sometimes quit when you shouldn’t have, and you’ll probably cause an injury or two figuring out the other kind. Over time you learn what “fake pain” and “real pain” are - in my experience - only after the fact and learning from the past. This is bad advise so don’t follow it, but I’ve found quitting first, and then feeling horrible about yourself when you find out you shouldn’t have allows you to collect more data than pushing on something that will never work for X years.
- Swizec 4y ago
  Persevere when winning is worth the cost and quit when it isn’t. Joint pain 20 miles into a 26 mile race? Keep going. Joint pain 10 miles into a 15 mile training run? Quit. Feeling like you’re blowing out your ACL during a race that isn’t at the olympics? Quit. Muscle pain during any type of run? Keep going, that’s growth. Depending on the startup or project you’re evaluating, there are models you can run to decide if what you’re doing is ever going to be worth the pain. SaaS for example has a growth ceiling you can calculate based on a few key metrics. Would be a shame to keep pushing on something that even theoretically doesn’t have the potential to achieve the goal you’re after.
  - danielbln 4y ago
    Just to add, you should never have joint pain, even if you run a marathon. Adjust your running form. At the end of a tough race your muscles should scream at you and some tendons might hurt, but if your joints hurt, you're doing something wrong.
    - jazzyjackson 4y ago
      In my case joint-pain (petellar tracking) wasn't my running form, it was that running was the only exercise I was doing, so one of my quads was stronger than the others. I balance it out with yoga and swimming now and can run without injury (knock on wood)

ineedasername 4y ago

I think a lot more people persevere past the point of salvation than persevere against long odds and succeed. There's no clear cut answer to determining 100% of the time, in the moment, if failure is a foregone conclusion, but that doesn't mean you should stick it out until the bitter end. Since most startups fail anyway, if you're already near failure mode then the bias should be in needing an extremely compelling reason-- beyond blind perserverence-- to keep going. Otherwise just salvage anything that might be salvaged and try something else with the new benefit of experience. "What would you do differently" is easily answered with "anything but the thing that just failed."

SiempreViernes 4y ago
> I think a lot more people persevere past the point of salvation than persevere against long odds and succeed One would hope so, that's the definition of long odds!
- ineedasername 4y ago
  Yes, I realized that semantic issue when I wrote it :). But I figured the meaning was clear enough anyway and I would have tried to hold my ground rhetorically against a counter argument purely on that basis, though I do enjoy arguing from positions where I can't possibly wrong.

jacobr1 4y ago

Guess: when you validation of the problem, validation that there is money to fix the problem, but don't yet have validation that your particular solution or business mode has product-market fit. Though I've worked at a few startups, I don't have enough experience to know to know the above generally applies. But if there isn't a market for your product, no amount of effort is going to fix it. I don't mean existing market, sometimes good products make their own category ... but you need to have evidence that is true.

0x20cowboy 4y ago

> How do you know now that you were wasting your time? For me, this is very hard advice to give, and I usually equate it to running. When you run, it often hurts after a while. There is a kind of hurt that you just need to push through, and then there is the kind of hurt that will cause bad or long term damage. It’s sometime hard to know the difference. You can sometimes quit when you shouldn’t have, and you’ll probably cause an injury or two figuring out the other kind. Over time you learn what “fake pain” and “real pain” are - in my experience - only after the fact and learning from the past. This is bad advise so don’t follow it, but I’ve found quitting first, and then feeling horrible about yourself when you find out you shouldn’t have allows you to collect more data than pushing on something that will never work for X years.

Swizec 4y ago
Persevere when winning is worth the cost and quit when it isn’t. Joint pain 20 miles into a 26 mile race? Keep going. Joint pain 10 miles into a 15 mile training run? Quit. Feeling like you’re blowing out your ACL during a race that isn’t at the olympics? Quit. Muscle pain during any type of run? Keep going, that’s growth. Depending on the startup or project you’re evaluating, there are models you can run to decide if what you’re doing is ever going to be worth the pain. SaaS for example has a growth ceiling you can calculate based on a few key metrics. Would be a shame to keep pushing on something that even theoretically doesn’t have the potential to achieve the goal you’re after.
- danielbln 4y ago
  Just to add, you should never have joint pain, even if you run a marathon. Adjust your running form. At the end of a tough race your muscles should scream at you and some tendons might hurt, but if your joints hurt, you're doing something wrong.
  - jazzyjackson 4y ago
    In my case joint-pain (petellar tracking) wasn't my running form, it was that running was the only exercise I was doing, so one of my quads was stronger than the others. I balance it out with yoga and swimming now and can run without injury (knock on wood)