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Reflections of a YC Dropout

155 points by orianmarx 18y ago

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
jasonlbaptiste 18y ago
There's never really just one point of failure. There is maybe a so called turning point, one mistake that is then daisy chained with other mistakes. Soon enough the compounded mistakes lead to an overall failure. You have passion, dedication, and more. The founders there weren't right, and now you've learned something pretty damn valuable. Time to move on and start something new, don't let one failure ever stop you.
tptacek 18y ago
You're not worried that this reads a bit like you trashing your co-founders? I assume you mean well, but: * "Lack of conviction" reads like a moral judgement on the rational business decision to leave a startup that isn't working. * "Fear" is an emotional word that (to me) implies irrationality; "concern" or "wariness" might be more appropriate, especially because you don't give much context. What are they "afraid" of? A company with no revenue and a 3 month runway? * In a three-person startup, the "half developer half CEO" probably shouldn't be picking out the ex Goldman developer as good-but-not-excellent for not turning out a feed reader fast enough; why didn't you get it done then? And especially... * ... when the CEO of that pre-revenue pre-product decides to have the company pay to fly him to SXSW during that dev crisis. I mean, look, you can do everything right and fail, and everything wrong and still win; startups are a huge risk, keep trying, etc etc --- but you wrote this to get feedback from people, and mine is: * I wouldn't want you as a cofounder (hey --- my cofounders probably don't want me --- I work my ass off to mitigate that!) * You seem more engaged with the "lifestyle" of a startup --- lawyers, "networking", advisors, incorporation, "voting" --- than with the reality, which is a mindbending daily grind of work and fear and effort hopefully aimed at getting to cash flow neutral as soon as possible, but most likely aimed right off a cliff. You're obviously going to do this again; all knocks aside, you read like this stuff is in your blood. Better luck next time. [edit: toned down very slightly].
- SwellJoe 18y ago
  My first thought was, "Hmmm...so this guy had several co-founders, and all of them left in disgust. What's the common variable?" Sounds like OP has some personality issues that need to be worked out. And, I got a distinct "mad with power" vibe, as well. Early stage company founders do not need a boss. If they do, they're already doomed to failure. It sounds like this fellow just likes the idea of being chief of something, and isn't all that good at it. Many nerds have started companies without management chops or a good personality, but they made up for it by producing code that solved a problem. I'm getting the distinct impression the OP (who may or may not be strong on the code front) is definitely weak on the management and personality front, but wanted to spend all of this time managing and "networking". I don't claim to be an expert on this stuff, but I am a nerd, and I do produce (when it's my place to do so, though in my current startup, I produce far less code than my co-founder), and I think I would have ditched this startup, too. Nerds, in general, aren't good at being bossed around, and the kind that start companies definitely aren't good at being bossed around. But, I agree with you. The guy probably does actually have a good company in him (because dedication and a healthy appetite for risk are the primary requirements...everything else pales in comparison). He just needs to keep assessing how he can do things better next time, particularly when it comes to interacting with co-founders.
  - webwright 18y ago
    Second the "mad with power" vibe. Wow-- I think the OP failed to learn a few lessons. The biggie is the seeming lack of empathy for his partners and his apparent belief that he's in charge. At this level, it's a partnership. As a CEO, it's not your job to lead and have your partners follow. It isn't your job to make unilateral decisions on how you spend your time (networking versus coding). With a small team, you can be a cheerleader, a tiebreaker, and a buck-stops-hear guy... But for the most part-- it's a damn partnership. And it's pretty clear to me that the poster didn't treat it like one, which is a shame. I think he's very right about the team needing to have the same level of commitment... His deeper commitment is probably why he felt entitled to "lead", even when PG suggested that that might be the problem.
  - orianmarx 18y ago
fallentimes 18y ago
So that's what happened to Orian. I actually really liked their idea, but execution is usually the only thing that matters.
- orianmarx 18y ago
  Yup. How was the summer?
wheels 18y ago
There's a lot of good stuff in here, but I wonder how much of it you can really be seen without looking at things from inside a startup. A lot of is based on what Paul's written and while I've read most of his essays, I didn't really get some of the points until they were up close. It's kind of like earlier today I was struggling through a paper written on a topic of advanced mathematics that I'd never worked on before. I asked a friend with a PhD in math if he could explain it to me. He used the same terms that I didn't understand from the paper in his explanation. So, I stared at the paper for another two hours. I doodled on my whiteboard. I could visualize the solution to the problem, but I couldn't work out the mechanics. Eventually it dawned on me, and it was really simple ... in retrospect. I think a lot of things are like that. Parents try to warn their kids about their mistakes and it rarely works. I think the real lesson, perhaps, is to not be afraid to fail. Bite off more than you can chew and be willing to fail and learn from it. You'll definitely make mistakes, and your startup may fail, but you can at least be certain that you'll learn an enormous amount in the process and that you'll be able to carry that knowledge with you the next time you take a swing.
- Alex3917 18y ago
  Similarly, I've noticed that proverbs and aphorisms only become useful after you've been burned by violating them a bunch of times. It's weird because you can be told them and understand what they mean immediately, but just because you understand what they mean doesn't make them meaningful. Or something. It's almost like you aren't able to fully grok the proverb until you have a certain outlook on life or the right schemas or perspectives, but it's impossible to gain those just by hearing the original saying. (This is really hard to describe for some reason, I feel like I'm missing a word or a concept or something. Perhaps something to do with constructivism.)
  - cperciva 18y ago
    (This is really hard to describe for some reason, I feel like I'm missing a word or a concept or something.) I think what you're looking for is two words, not one: "Experience matters".
jmtame 18y ago
Wow, this is a great read. Let me just jump in on a topic that I've seen a few times, and one that I think throws programmers for a loop. It's the whole "premature scalaculation" thing. Did you know the 3 guys who built YouTube initially didn't start it out as a video site? It was a dating site! Even more, did you know they didn't even use a version control system? The philosophy was "push once a day, make some type of change that the user can see." They also were focused on building out features, not worrying too much about scalability at first. The guy who started PayPal said that one of the most painful parts were the times where he had to delete massive amounts of his own code. He said one of the biggest flaws of engineers is to write "the perfect code." And yet, 90% of it gets destroyed shortly after it's written. I'm not an advocate of crap code. In fact, at our startup, we write very good code and follow the API models of companies like Google and Flickr so as to have a scalable product and architecture with clean, readable, commented code. But when you're a startup, you have different priorities. I'd say maybe the first 6 months (an arbitrary number) don't worry about scalability. You don't even have a user ;) Why not worry about how you'll get your first 100 users, or better yet, how you'll get your first 100 users happy, as Paul Buchheit puts it? On a final note, I read someone else mention about the CEO thing. In my opinion, you don't need a CEO until you at least have user growth down. Yes, you want investors, but try to offset most of that work to PG or whoever else is investing. It's in their interest that you succeed too. You should be working day and night with your engineers, building the product. It will make the future fundraising and meetings much easier, just think about Google and Andy Bechtolsheim. I really enjoyed reading this, and I think you're going to go far in the future. Sometimes we get dealt some bad cards, and the only thing you can do is to fold 'em and wait for the next hand. Stay persistent, stay focused, and kick ass.
- nostrademons 18y ago
  > Did you know the 3 guys who built YouTube initially didn't start it out as a video site? It was a dating site! Really? Source? I knew that the they'd created the "I was at a party and realized there was no good way to share videos" story for the press. But I thought the actual story was that they'd done market research about trends that were changing the technology landscape, and came up with the rise of cellphone video and broadband access. From there, it was a short leap to "let's put video online".
nostrademons 18y ago
Man, this sounds familiar. Some comments, based on my own experience with a failed startup (http://diffle-history.blogspot.com/ http://diffle-history.blogspot.com/): > Get the Team Right > Be Wary of Founding With Friends I think I remember Marc Andreesen writing that the best way to start a startup is when a pre-gelled team meets a new opportunity. Can't find the blog entry in question, but he suggested that any other founding scenario has drastically lower odds of success. I thought I had a fairly strong team, with 4 other guys that I'd known (and been fairly close to) in college. Over the year we worked, they all dropped away, one by one. They just had better opportunities come up, and when it comes to the actual daily grind, startups...kinda suck. I'm lucky; I escaped with all the relationships intact, probably stronger than they were before, and one of them just sent me a job offer last month to come work with him (hmm, I wonder if that still stands, in light of the recent financial crisis ;-)). A lot of that came from deliberately taking the short end of the stick on many occasions, eg. I put in the lions share of work and did not take a leadership position. Many others aren't so lucky, and lose their friends in addition to their startup. I'd also add that it's really important to have worked with people on a project, not just in social settings, and for them all to be on the same page regarding what they want with their life. A lot of people really want to be an employee: they can't deal with the uncertainty and random bad luck that comes with being in a startup. It's a losing strategy to try and force them into a startup; it's not good either for them or for your startup. > Connect With People to Thrive I was a little skeptical of this: when I wrote up my postmortem, one of my lessons was "If you're doing anything other than building your product or getting users, you're wasting your time." But there's always the possibility that I'm the one who's wrong: after all, we both killed our startups. ;-) I think, in hindsight, that I'd look at it this way: Don't expect to get anything out of networking if you don't have a kickass product. However, don't expect to get anything out of networking anyway. If you do it without any expectations whatsoever, just taking an interest in the people around you, you might build some useful connections. The other thing that struck me: it seems like your startup dissolved before it got to the daily grind of actually trying to build something people want. And that's the part that's really depressing. I never thought that emotional stability would be the limiting factor in startups, but ultimately, that's what killed mine. I remember talking to a coworker who'd previously done a few startups, before starting one, and he told me "Make sure you come out with your sanity intact." I quit because I felt like that was slipping away, and I was becoming someone I didn't really want to be.
mroman 18y ago
I personally can't fathom why someone would feel the need to start networking before a working product exists. CEO? Why would you need a CEO when there isn't a company to run either on paper or in actuality?
- konsl 18y ago
  Founders should always be networking.
  - mroman 18y ago
    Personally, that strikes me as a bit too generic for a tech startup. The value of the startup stems from the value of the technology it produces, not the value of the network of contacts one of the founders has built. While networking can be valuable, allocating resources to networking BEFORE there is a working product is a huge mistake.
    - incomethax 18y ago
      I can agree from personal experience. Premature networking can kill a startup. Edit: What I mean by this is networking at the expense of product/technology building.
    - orianmarx 18y ago
      Well, that really depends on what you define as value. There are plenty of tech companies out there that created tons of "valuable" code but were not successful because somebody else got the attention or was able to strike one critical deal. As for allocating resources to networking before there is a working product, check out www.path101.com. I met these guys when they did an open brainstorming session with nothing but a preliminary pitch deck and not a line of code. Being open from very early on enabled them to find angel investors and their first employees, and when it came time to doing an alpha launch they had tons of people that had been eager to try the thing out for months.
      - mroman 18y ago
breck 18y ago
First, thanks for sharing. It's really hard to talk about past failures and yet so valuable. I learned more from your story than reading 20 "How to Succeed" articles. Second, I just want to share one thing I've learned. There's a lot of pyschology mumbo jumbo in your analysis but all that really matters is the numbers. How many pageviews/users/sales/conversions did you have? Etc. One thing I've learned about Internet startups is that you absolutely cannot force them. The market dictates your success plain and simple. It sounds like you guys weren't listening to the market; you were not paying enough attention to the numbers. That's really the only thing you should pay attention to. A month into my startup last year, one of the co-founders said to me and the other partner: Him: "Guys, I've discovered a pattern in our traffic." Me: "Well, what is it?" Him: "Every week it decreases." Me: (Proceed to ignore the importance of this simple statement and pursue the idea for 5 more months, believing that because we had a good team and we thought the idea was good we could succeed, which was too bad because from month 1 the market was giving us PRICELESS advice--we should have been working on a different idea) Every other mistake was irrelevant because the only thing that matters is the numbers.
- jfarmer 18y ago
  Correct! I call this the "cult of the product." If we just build the most awesomest widget possible, everyone will love it and give us money! Or, "build it and they will come." Wrong. You need to have market hypotheses and you need to build the smallest test cases possible to try and falsify these hypotheses. That means instrumentation, a data-driven mindset, and the ability to iterate quickly. You'll know very quickly if you're sucking. And you probably are.
  - breck 18y ago
    Agreed. Adonomics eh? That's awesome, I was a huge fan. Are you in the Bay Area?
    - jfarmer 18y ago
      Yeah, I live in Palo Alto now and was in SF for the last two years. Drop me a line at jesse@20bits.com
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
rokhayakebe 18y ago
You sound inexperienced, which is ok by the way. There is nothing wrong with your cofounders. They are who they are and that's that. You spend the entire time looking for reasons to blame others, but my friend you should look into a mirror tonight because that is where you will face the problem. You should try to develop your ability to pick partners, but even with a great partner you sound like someone who is way too emotional. I thought I would never say this to anyone, but you are not ready to be a CEO. If the guys you thought would help you change the world, were not ready to confirm with your strategy and you stood there trying to fight it instead of explaining it, then you need more time and experience. Sincerely.
- nostrademons 18y ago
  > I thought I would never say this to anyone, but you are not ready to be a CEO. That's never a productive thing to say to someone. Either it's true - in which case one of the symptoms of their unreadiness is that they won't hear you - or it's false, in which case you're just wrong. There've been many times when I've thought it about someone, but the only thing you can do there is avoid working for/with them.
- orianmarx 18y ago
  I am inexperienced, and I probably wasn't ready to be the CEO for this venture. It seems that a lot of people here took my posts to be me just blaming my partners, but that must be a light reading because I definitely talk about my own shortcomings, and I take responsibility for what ultimately happened. I've been looking in the mirror constantly for the last three months, and posting here is part of that process of reflection too.
  - motoko 18y ago
    Too emotional, talk too much. Try addressing those, update us in a year.
    - orianmarx 18y ago
      Will do :-)
apsurd 18y ago
I'm not saying this piece was bad, but this is like ... 1% of what you would get if you just read this: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ God if I wasn't a heterosexual, I would marry David Hansson See his presentation at "startup school 08" . You won't be disappointed. ( ouch instantly downmodded for recommending other beneficial resources.... 0.o )
- jraines 18y ago
  Nah, just sources that have been beaten to death around these parts.
  - apsurd 18y ago
    At least now more true than ever though. David recommends taking a more tangible approach. We might not get away with pie-in-the-sky stuff in this economy anymore. Maybe I just wasn't clear. What I got from this article was the very simple "Get Real" concept. No need to focus on intangibles until you have the only tangible that matters: your product. I agree this concept is so "basic" but if this article is making top page, perhaps we still have some more beating to do?
- jamiequint 18y ago
  Instead I would recommend "Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Gary Blank http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/0976470705/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223859647&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/09... I think this book would have helped with some of the prioritization issues the author of this blog post describes.
  - motoko 18y ago
    Do you mean Blank's emphatic appeal to unconditionally fire or everybody in "bizdev" in distressed startups? Or his emphatic appeal to iteratively build a market for your evolving product rather than over-invest in engineering, miss your sales estimate, and fail to service negative cash flow in a "Noh play" of blame and catastrophe?
JesseAldridge 18y ago
Out of curiosity, what was it you were trying to build?
- orianmarx 18y ago
  A collaborative, relevance-aware feed reader. I'll save more detail for the future :-)
brandnewlow 18y ago
I suppose it's good for the greater community to be able to read this. But really, what good are you accomplishing here for yourself? I read this and think, "Well, I should probably steer clear of that guy." My startup has its ups and downs. Lately it's had several downs. C'est la vie. People are always telling me I should be blogging about this stuff. I don't see how it would do me much good until I'm at the point where my product is doing what it needs to do. Otherwise I think I'd just be telegraphing to people to steer clear.
- orianmarx 18y ago
  Well, if it's doing some good for the greater community then I must be doing some good for myself. There are going to be a lot of people that disagree with what I'm saying in my posts and probably would want to steer clear of me. Then again hopefully there will be a few interesting people that I get to connect with through this that I wouldn't have otherwise, and that is worth it to me. I think you should be blogging :)
fallentimes 18y ago
Here's the thing. If your company isn't over let's say 10 or 20 people, you aren't a CEO. You just sound like a presumptuous amateur. I could tell where the article was heading just from the number of "CEO" instances. And the title of course.
wastedbrains 18y ago
Excellent post, interesting to here the issues another startup has gone through... I get the complaints other have, but still thought this was an interesting read.
mkull 18y ago
Maybe I missed it, but what was the startup?
maxklein 18y ago
Absolutely your fault. You just can't see it. You wasted money, wasted time and wasted people when given everything in the world. You need to personally change by becoming humble. if I suggest this to you, what would your reaction be: - Call up all the old team members and apologise honestly, blaming everything on yourself If you instantly thought it is something you would never do, then you've not learned.
abl 18y ago
Based what I've read about this startup, and on the facts presented, it is difficult to tell whether Orian or his co-founders were in the right. It would require to place all of their efforts under a microscope - we don't know how much time Orian sacrificed to go out of his way to find venture funding, etc.. versus the other partners who may have been slaving away over the code. My guess on the whole venture falling through is this - the other partners felt like they were doing more work and putting in more into it than Orian was, probably because they felt that networking is a lightweight activity. Or because networking sounded to them like a more glamorous activity, rather than coding. Or, maybe because they felt they wanted an equal share in the leadership. Whatever the case may be, we don't know how much coding and networking took place. Orian's case brings up a good question that I've dealt with in the past, and I am sure is on the minds of many startup founders here - how important is it that the co-founders are all technical, and are all coders? Is it, "product first, marketing second?" Or is it equally just as important to have a strong "networking" guy on the team? If so, what are his roles, just networking, or coding as well? What about a guy who is doing the coding but feels he could do networking just as well, is it unfair to him? Going back to Orian... judging based on other factors, there seems to have been some trust impediments in my opinion - having two votes when all other things being equal is not a fair distribution, even for the sake of maintaining decision-making. Trust between partners is more important than decision making, otherwise the whole thing falls apart. Rather than take apart Orian's flaws, I am trying to understand if this startup could have been saved. What if Orian went to his parners, and said, "Guys, how about we all participate in the networking?" (Assuming he did his equal share of the coding by working on the demo.) Maybe this would have generated some further excitement and instilled trust in them? AND, it would become self-evident whether or NOT the networking efforts equaled the coding efforts. I know that some may argue this is not a good solution, because concentrating on networking would have further removed them from realizing a product, but at least it could have played a role in bringing the team back, which it sounds was their first priority. Another thing, higher visibility and transparency. If all the partners were stuck in the same office all day long, maybe this lack of trust would diminish? Maybe a regular status meeting to keep tabs on everyone's progress? What does everyone (including Orian) think, what would be possible solution in their case?
- orianmarx 18y ago
abl 18y ago
Orian, Are you going to continue with this same concept, or going to start on something new? What are you going to do differently now to make sure that the startup succeeds? Or this this Part IV of your blog? :)
- orianmarx 18y ago
  Heh, I haven't quite settled that yet. It will be on the blog eventually :)
jfarmer 18y ago
Dude. If I'm your co-founder are you going to go blab to everyone in the high hills about our relationship if it goes sour? Not cool.
axod 18y ago
You keep referring to the other co-founders as "my guys". I don't think having a 'manager' in a team of 4 is a great idea.
bisi 18y ago
This is why I don't have any PARTNER/s . I make decisions faster and I dont have anyone to blame but me !
- bluelu 18y ago
  so true. as a friend told me once, when you add a second person to your team and it's the wrong person, your overall performance will fall under 100% of what you could be doing alone. This is what I sometimes feel that I'm unfortunately experiencing myself (we are two).
mcu 18y ago
He needs a hug.
lvecsey 18y ago
Much of this has probably already been said but here are some of my observations. First, the lessons page was so long that I wonder whether they have really been learned. Had they been learned it would have been stated in a sentence or two. Rather, what you ended up with is a web page that you _wish_ you could have had weeks ago, to express much of your thinking at the time during the crisis. The main thing that stuck out was how you seemed to be a programmer as an after thought. Particularly with the voting scheme; did you not have a genuine belief about the right way to pursue certain tasks? Whether from the beauty of a design, or the long standing approach it might have, or from a quick tweak to an existing infrastructure. I also don't think its enough to 'marvel' at two or more viewpoints. Just the fact that they can exist isn't enough, as you do a disservice to both/all parties unless you go with a decision, hopefully one that jives in some way with an internal model of how you see or have come to see things, and thus consistent. Finally, I got the sense that you were 'hosting a party but constantly worrying about whether people are having a good time'. These aren't meant to be brutal comments its just I think your series deserves an honest response!
- orianmarx 18y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. I quoted you a bunch in a follow-up post.
zaidf 18y ago
I think the core problem is YOU lost belief in your product. It is very common for successful companies to have key founders quit before payday and during shitty times. The company lives through the tough times. What has served me well is to have an attitude that I am going to go along on this ride(my startup) regardless of my cofounders. Until you can sustain that belief, your start-up will live on(hopefully with your co-founders--but not necessarily).
orianmarx 18y ago
Thanks to everyone for their feedback. I'm a bit overwhelmed by the response. I've done a follow-up post to more concretely respond to some of the main threads here. http://www.orianmarx.com/2008/10/16/reflections-of-a-y-combinator-dropout-feedback/ http://www.orianmarx.com/2008/10/16/reflections-of-a-y-combi...

155 points by orianmarx 18y ago

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

There's never really just one point of failure. There is maybe a so called turning point, one mistake that is then daisy chained with other mistakes. Soon enough the compounded mistakes lead to an overall failure. You have passion, dedication, and more. The founders there weren't right, and now you've learned something pretty damn valuable. Time to move on and start something new, don't let one failure ever stop you.

tptacek 18y ago

You're not worried that this reads a bit like you trashing your co-founders? I assume you mean well, but: * "Lack of conviction" reads like a moral judgement on the rational business decision to leave a startup that isn't working. * "Fear" is an emotional word that (to me) implies irrationality; "concern" or "wariness" might be more appropriate, especially because you don't give much context. What are they "afraid" of? A company with no revenue and a 3 month runway? * In a three-person startup, the "half developer half CEO" probably shouldn't be picking out the ex Goldman developer as good-but-not-excellent for not turning out a feed reader fast enough; why didn't you get it done then? And especially... * ... when the CEO of that pre-revenue pre-product decides to have the company pay to fly him to SXSW during that dev crisis. I mean, look, you can do everything right and fail, and everything wrong and still win; startups are a huge risk, keep trying, etc etc --- but you wrote this to get feedback from people, and mine is: * I wouldn't want you as a cofounder (hey --- my cofounders probably don't want me --- I work my ass off to mitigate that!) * You seem more engaged with the "lifestyle" of a startup --- lawyers, "networking", advisors, incorporation, "voting" --- than with the reality, which is a mindbending daily grind of work and fear and effort hopefully aimed at getting to cash flow neutral as soon as possible, but most likely aimed right off a cliff. You're obviously going to do this again; all knocks aside, you read like this stuff is in your blood. Better luck next time. [edit: toned down very slightly].

SwellJoe 18y ago
My first thought was, "Hmmm...so this guy had several co-founders, and all of them left in disgust. What's the common variable?" Sounds like OP has some personality issues that need to be worked out. And, I got a distinct "mad with power" vibe, as well. Early stage company founders do not need a boss. If they do, they're already doomed to failure. It sounds like this fellow just likes the idea of being chief of something, and isn't all that good at it. Many nerds have started companies without management chops or a good personality, but they made up for it by producing code that solved a problem. I'm getting the distinct impression the OP (who may or may not be strong on the code front) is definitely weak on the management and personality front, but wanted to spend all of this time managing and "networking". I don't claim to be an expert on this stuff, but I am a nerd, and I do produce (when it's my place to do so, though in my current startup, I produce far less code than my co-founder), and I think I would have ditched this startup, too. Nerds, in general, aren't good at being bossed around, and the kind that start companies definitely aren't good at being bossed around. But, I agree with you. The guy probably does actually have a good company in him (because dedication and a healthy appetite for risk are the primary requirements...everything else pales in comparison). He just needs to keep assessing how he can do things better next time, particularly when it comes to interacting with co-founders.
- webwright 18y ago
  Second the "mad with power" vibe. Wow-- I think the OP failed to learn a few lessons. The biggie is the seeming lack of empathy for his partners and his apparent belief that he's in charge. At this level, it's a partnership. As a CEO, it's not your job to lead and have your partners follow. It isn't your job to make unilateral decisions on how you spend your time (networking versus coding). With a small team, you can be a cheerleader, a tiebreaker, and a buck-stops-hear guy... But for the most part-- it's a damn partnership. And it's pretty clear to me that the poster didn't treat it like one, which is a shame. I think he's very right about the team needing to have the same level of commitment... His deeper commitment is probably why he felt entitled to "lead", even when PG suggested that that might be the problem.
- orianmarx 18y ago

fallentimes 18y ago

So that's what happened to Orian. I actually really liked their idea, but execution is usually the only thing that matters.

orianmarx 18y ago
Yup. How was the summer?

wheels 18y ago

There's a lot of good stuff in here, but I wonder how much of it you can really be seen without looking at things from inside a startup. A lot of is based on what Paul's written and while I've read most of his essays, I didn't really get some of the points until they were up close. It's kind of like earlier today I was struggling through a paper written on a topic of advanced mathematics that I'd never worked on before. I asked a friend with a PhD in math if he could explain it to me. He used the same terms that I didn't understand from the paper in his explanation. So, I stared at the paper for another two hours. I doodled on my whiteboard. I could visualize the solution to the problem, but I couldn't work out the mechanics. Eventually it dawned on me, and it was really simple ... in retrospect. I think a lot of things are like that. Parents try to warn their kids about their mistakes and it rarely works. I think the real lesson, perhaps, is to not be afraid to fail. Bite off more than you can chew and be willing to fail and learn from it. You'll definitely make mistakes, and your startup may fail, but you can at least be certain that you'll learn an enormous amount in the process and that you'll be able to carry that knowledge with you the next time you take a swing.

Alex3917 18y ago
Similarly, I've noticed that proverbs and aphorisms only become useful after you've been burned by violating them a bunch of times. It's weird because you can be told them and understand what they mean immediately, but just because you understand what they mean doesn't make them meaningful. Or something. It's almost like you aren't able to fully grok the proverb until you have a certain outlook on life or the right schemas or perspectives, but it's impossible to gain those just by hearing the original saying. (This is really hard to describe for some reason, I feel like I'm missing a word or a concept or something. Perhaps something to do with constructivism.)
- cperciva 18y ago
  (This is really hard to describe for some reason, I feel like I'm missing a word or a concept or something.) I think what you're looking for is two words, not one: "Experience matters".

jmtame 18y ago

Wow, this is a great read. Let me just jump in on a topic that I've seen a few times, and one that I think throws programmers for a loop. It's the whole "premature scalaculation" thing. Did you know the 3 guys who built YouTube initially didn't start it out as a video site? It was a dating site! Even more, did you know they didn't even use a version control system? The philosophy was "push once a day, make some type of change that the user can see." They also were focused on building out features, not worrying too much about scalability at first. The guy who started PayPal said that one of the most painful parts were the times where he had to delete massive amounts of his own code. He said one of the biggest flaws of engineers is to write "the perfect code." And yet, 90% of it gets destroyed shortly after it's written. I'm not an advocate of crap code. In fact, at our startup, we write very good code and follow the API models of companies like Google and Flickr so as to have a scalable product and architecture with clean, readable, commented code. But when you're a startup, you have different priorities. I'd say maybe the first 6 months (an arbitrary number) don't worry about scalability. You don't even have a user ;) Why not worry about how you'll get your first 100 users, or better yet, how you'll get your first 100 users happy, as Paul Buchheit puts it? On a final note, I read someone else mention about the CEO thing. In my opinion, you don't need a CEO until you at least have user growth down. Yes, you want investors, but try to offset most of that work to PG or whoever else is investing. It's in their interest that you succeed too. You should be working day and night with your engineers, building the product. It will make the future fundraising and meetings much easier, just think about Google and Andy Bechtolsheim. I really enjoyed reading this, and I think you're going to go far in the future. Sometimes we get dealt some bad cards, and the only thing you can do is to fold 'em and wait for the next hand. Stay persistent, stay focused, and kick ass.

nostrademons 18y ago
> Did you know the 3 guys who built YouTube initially didn't start it out as a video site? It was a dating site! Really? Source? I knew that the they'd created the "I was at a party and realized there was no good way to share videos" story for the press. But I thought the actual story was that they'd done market research about trends that were changing the technology landscape, and came up with the rise of cellphone video and broadband access. From there, it was a short leap to "let's put video online".

nostrademons 18y ago

Man, this sounds familiar. Some comments, based on my own experience with a failed startup (http://diffle-history.blogspot.com/ http://diffle-history.blogspot.com/): > Get the Team Right > Be Wary of Founding With Friends I think I remember Marc Andreesen writing that the best way to start a startup is when a pre-gelled team meets a new opportunity. Can't find the blog entry in question, but he suggested that any other founding scenario has drastically lower odds of success. I thought I had a fairly strong team, with 4 other guys that I'd known (and been fairly close to) in college. Over the year we worked, they all dropped away, one by one. They just had better opportunities come up, and when it comes to the actual daily grind, startups...kinda suck. I'm lucky; I escaped with all the relationships intact, probably stronger than they were before, and one of them just sent me a job offer last month to come work with him (hmm, I wonder if that still stands, in light of the recent financial crisis ;-)). A lot of that came from deliberately taking the short end of the stick on many occasions, eg. I put in the lions share of work and did not take a leadership position. Many others aren't so lucky, and lose their friends in addition to their startup. I'd also add that it's really important to have worked with people on a project, not just in social settings, and for them all to be on the same page regarding what they want with their life. A lot of people really want to be an employee: they can't deal with the uncertainty and random bad luck that comes with being in a startup. It's a losing strategy to try and force them into a startup; it's not good either for them or for your startup. > Connect With People to Thrive I was a little skeptical of this: when I wrote up my postmortem, one of my lessons was "If you're doing anything other than building your product or getting users, you're wasting your time." But there's always the possibility that I'm the one who's wrong: after all, we both killed our startups. ;-) I think, in hindsight, that I'd look at it this way: Don't expect to get anything out of networking if you don't have a kickass product. However, don't expect to get anything out of networking anyway. If you do it without any expectations whatsoever, just taking an interest in the people around you, you might build some useful connections. The other thing that struck me: it seems like your startup dissolved before it got to the daily grind of actually trying to build something people want. And that's the part that's really depressing. I never thought that emotional stability would be the limiting factor in startups, but ultimately, that's what killed mine. I remember talking to a coworker who'd previously done a few startups, before starting one, and he told me "Make sure you come out with your sanity intact." I quit because I felt like that was slipping away, and I was becoming someone I didn't really want to be.

mroman 18y ago

I personally can't fathom why someone would feel the need to start networking before a working product exists. CEO? Why would you need a CEO when there isn't a company to run either on paper or in actuality?

konsl 18y ago
Founders should always be networking.
- mroman 18y ago
  Personally, that strikes me as a bit too generic for a tech startup. The value of the startup stems from the value of the technology it produces, not the value of the network of contacts one of the founders has built. While networking can be valuable, allocating resources to networking BEFORE there is a working product is a huge mistake.
  - incomethax 18y ago
    I can agree from personal experience. Premature networking can kill a startup. Edit: What I mean by this is networking at the expense of product/technology building.
  - orianmarx 18y ago
    Well, that really depends on what you define as value. There are plenty of tech companies out there that created tons of "valuable" code but were not successful because somebody else got the attention or was able to strike one critical deal. As for allocating resources to networking before there is a working product, check out www.path101.com. I met these guys when they did an open brainstorming session with nothing but a preliminary pitch deck and not a line of code. Being open from very early on enabled them to find angel investors and their first employees, and when it came time to doing an alpha launch they had tons of people that had been eager to try the thing out for months.
    - mroman 18y ago

breck 18y ago

First, thanks for sharing. It's really hard to talk about past failures and yet so valuable. I learned more from your story than reading 20 "How to Succeed" articles. Second, I just want to share one thing I've learned. There's a lot of pyschology mumbo jumbo in your analysis but all that really matters is the numbers. How many pageviews/users/sales/conversions did you have? Etc. One thing I've learned about Internet startups is that you absolutely cannot force them. The market dictates your success plain and simple. It sounds like you guys weren't listening to the market; you were not paying enough attention to the numbers. That's really the only thing you should pay attention to. A month into my startup last year, one of the co-founders said to me and the other partner: Him: "Guys, I've discovered a pattern in our traffic." Me: "Well, what is it?" Him: "Every week it decreases." Me: (Proceed to ignore the importance of this simple statement and pursue the idea for 5 more months, believing that because we had a good team and we thought the idea was good we could succeed, which was too bad because from month 1 the market was giving us PRICELESS advice--we should have been working on a different idea) Every other mistake was irrelevant because the only thing that matters is the numbers.

jfarmer 18y ago
Correct! I call this the "cult of the product." If we just build the most awesomest widget possible, everyone will love it and give us money! Or, "build it and they will come." Wrong. You need to have market hypotheses and you need to build the smallest test cases possible to try and falsify these hypotheses. That means instrumentation, a data-driven mindset, and the ability to iterate quickly. You'll know very quickly if you're sucking. And you probably are.
- breck 18y ago
  Agreed. Adonomics eh? That's awesome, I was a huge fan. Are you in the Bay Area?
  - jfarmer 18y ago
    Yeah, I live in Palo Alto now and was in SF for the last two years. Drop me a line at jesse@20bits.com

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

rokhayakebe 18y ago

You sound inexperienced, which is ok by the way. There is nothing wrong with your cofounders. They are who they are and that's that. You spend the entire time looking for reasons to blame others, but my friend you should look into a mirror tonight because that is where you will face the problem. You should try to develop your ability to pick partners, but even with a great partner you sound like someone who is way too emotional. I thought I would never say this to anyone, but you are not ready to be a CEO. If the guys you thought would help you change the world, were not ready to confirm with your strategy and you stood there trying to fight it instead of explaining it, then you need more time and experience. Sincerely.

nostrademons 18y ago
> I thought I would never say this to anyone, but you are not ready to be a CEO. That's never a productive thing to say to someone. Either it's true - in which case one of the symptoms of their unreadiness is that they won't hear you - or it's false, in which case you're just wrong. There've been many times when I've thought it about someone, but the only thing you can do there is avoid working for/with them.
orianmarx 18y ago
I am inexperienced, and I probably wasn't ready to be the CEO for this venture. It seems that a lot of people here took my posts to be me just blaming my partners, but that must be a light reading because I definitely talk about my own shortcomings, and I take responsibility for what ultimately happened. I've been looking in the mirror constantly for the last three months, and posting here is part of that process of reflection too.
- motoko 18y ago
  Too emotional, talk too much. Try addressing those, update us in a year.
  - orianmarx 18y ago
    Will do :-)

apsurd 18y ago

I'm not saying this piece was bad, but this is like ... 1% of what you would get if you just read this: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ God if I wasn't a heterosexual, I would marry David Hansson See his presentation at "startup school 08" . You won't be disappointed. ( ouch instantly downmodded for recommending other beneficial resources.... 0.o )

jraines 18y ago
Nah, just sources that have been beaten to death around these parts.
- apsurd 18y ago
  At least now more true than ever though. David recommends taking a more tangible approach. We might not get away with pie-in-the-sky stuff in this economy anymore. Maybe I just wasn't clear. What I got from this article was the very simple "Get Real" concept. No need to focus on intangibles until you have the only tangible that matters: your product. I agree this concept is so "basic" but if this article is making top page, perhaps we still have some more beating to do?
jamiequint 18y ago
Instead I would recommend "Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Gary Blank http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/0976470705/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223859647&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/09... I think this book would have helped with some of the prioritization issues the author of this blog post describes.
- motoko 18y ago
  Do you mean Blank's emphatic appeal to unconditionally fire or everybody in "bizdev" in distressed startups? Or his emphatic appeal to iteratively build a market for your evolving product rather than over-invest in engineering, miss your sales estimate, and fail to service negative cash flow in a "Noh play" of blame and catastrophe?

JesseAldridge 18y ago

Out of curiosity, what was it you were trying to build?

orianmarx 18y ago
A collaborative, relevance-aware feed reader. I'll save more detail for the future :-)

brandnewlow 18y ago

I suppose it's good for the greater community to be able to read this. But really, what good are you accomplishing here for yourself? I read this and think, "Well, I should probably steer clear of that guy." My startup has its ups and downs. Lately it's had several downs. C'est la vie. People are always telling me I should be blogging about this stuff. I don't see how it would do me much good until I'm at the point where my product is doing what it needs to do. Otherwise I think I'd just be telegraphing to people to steer clear.

orianmarx 18y ago
Well, if it's doing some good for the greater community then I must be doing some good for myself. There are going to be a lot of people that disagree with what I'm saying in my posts and probably would want to steer clear of me. Then again hopefully there will be a few interesting people that I get to connect with through this that I wouldn't have otherwise, and that is worth it to me. I think you should be blogging :)

fallentimes 18y ago

Here's the thing. If your company isn't over let's say 10 or 20 people, you aren't a CEO. You just sound like a presumptuous amateur. I could tell where the article was heading just from the number of "CEO" instances. And the title of course.

wastedbrains 18y ago

Excellent post, interesting to here the issues another startup has gone through... I get the complaints other have, but still thought this was an interesting read.

mkull 18y ago

Maybe I missed it, but what was the startup?

maxklein 18y ago

Absolutely your fault. You just can't see it. You wasted money, wasted time and wasted people when given everything in the world. You need to personally change by becoming humble. if I suggest this to you, what would your reaction be: - Call up all the old team members and apologise honestly, blaming everything on yourself If you instantly thought it is something you would never do, then you've not learned.

abl 18y ago

Based what I've read about this startup, and on the facts presented, it is difficult to tell whether Orian or his co-founders were in the right. It would require to place all of their efforts under a microscope - we don't know how much time Orian sacrificed to go out of his way to find venture funding, etc.. versus the other partners who may have been slaving away over the code. My guess on the whole venture falling through is this - the other partners felt like they were doing more work and putting in more into it than Orian was, probably because they felt that networking is a lightweight activity. Or because networking sounded to them like a more glamorous activity, rather than coding. Or, maybe because they felt they wanted an equal share in the leadership. Whatever the case may be, we don't know how much coding and networking took place. Orian's case brings up a good question that I've dealt with in the past, and I am sure is on the minds of many startup founders here - how important is it that the co-founders are all technical, and are all coders? Is it, "product first, marketing second?" Or is it equally just as important to have a strong "networking" guy on the team? If so, what are his roles, just networking, or coding as well? What about a guy who is doing the coding but feels he could do networking just as well, is it unfair to him? Going back to Orian... judging based on other factors, there seems to have been some trust impediments in my opinion - having two votes when all other things being equal is not a fair distribution, even for the sake of maintaining decision-making. Trust between partners is more important than decision making, otherwise the whole thing falls apart. Rather than take apart Orian's flaws, I am trying to understand if this startup could have been saved. What if Orian went to his parners, and said, "Guys, how about we all participate in the networking?" (Assuming he did his equal share of the coding by working on the demo.) Maybe this would have generated some further excitement and instilled trust in them? AND, it would become self-evident whether or NOT the networking efforts equaled the coding efforts. I know that some may argue this is not a good solution, because concentrating on networking would have further removed them from realizing a product, but at least it could have played a role in bringing the team back, which it sounds was their first priority. Another thing, higher visibility and transparency. If all the partners were stuck in the same office all day long, maybe this lack of trust would diminish? Maybe a regular status meeting to keep tabs on everyone's progress? What does everyone (including Orian) think, what would be possible solution in their case?

orianmarx 18y ago

abl 18y ago

Orian, Are you going to continue with this same concept, or going to start on something new? What are you going to do differently now to make sure that the startup succeeds? Or this this Part IV of your blog? :)

orianmarx 18y ago
Heh, I haven't quite settled that yet. It will be on the blog eventually :)

jfarmer 18y ago

Dude. If I'm your co-founder are you going to go blab to everyone in the high hills about our relationship if it goes sour? Not cool.

axod 18y ago

You keep referring to the other co-founders as "my guys". I don't think having a 'manager' in a team of 4 is a great idea.

bisi 18y ago

This is why I don't have any PARTNER/s . I make decisions faster and I dont have anyone to blame but me !

bluelu 18y ago
so true. as a friend told me once, when you add a second person to your team and it's the wrong person, your overall performance will fall under 100% of what you could be doing alone. This is what I sometimes feel that I'm unfortunately experiencing myself (we are two).

mcu 18y ago

He needs a hug.

lvecsey 18y ago

Much of this has probably already been said but here are some of my observations. First, the lessons page was so long that I wonder whether they have really been learned. Had they been learned it would have been stated in a sentence or two. Rather, what you ended up with is a web page that you _wish_ you could have had weeks ago, to express much of your thinking at the time during the crisis. The main thing that stuck out was how you seemed to be a programmer as an after thought. Particularly with the voting scheme; did you not have a genuine belief about the right way to pursue certain tasks? Whether from the beauty of a design, or the long standing approach it might have, or from a quick tweak to an existing infrastructure. I also don't think its enough to 'marvel' at two or more viewpoints. Just the fact that they can exist isn't enough, as you do a disservice to both/all parties unless you go with a decision, hopefully one that jives in some way with an internal model of how you see or have come to see things, and thus consistent. Finally, I got the sense that you were 'hosting a party but constantly worrying about whether people are having a good time'. These aren't meant to be brutal comments its just I think your series deserves an honest response!

orianmarx 18y ago
Thanks for the feedback. I quoted you a bunch in a follow-up post.

zaidf 18y ago

I think the core problem is YOU lost belief in your product. It is very common for successful companies to have key founders quit before payday and during shitty times. The company lives through the tough times. What has served me well is to have an attitude that I am going to go along on this ride(my startup) regardless of my cofounders. Until you can sustain that belief, your start-up will live on(hopefully with your co-founders--but not necessarily).

orianmarx 18y ago

Thanks to everyone for their feedback. I'm a bit overwhelmed by the response. I've done a follow-up post to more concretely respond to some of the main threads here. http://www.orianmarx.com/2008/10/16/reflections-of-a-y-combinator-dropout-feedback/ http://www.orianmarx.com/2008/10/16/reflections-of-a-y-combi...