6 ms·

Founder's Hell: Competitive Horror

138 points by mittermayr 15y ago

faisalkhalid 15y ago
Nice article, though I'm a bit confused by what your startup does. You may want to make the benefits/problem you're trying to solve a bit more obvious on the main page.
- mittermayr 15y ago
  yeah, most common feedback, that's why I decided to trim it down and we'll release a new, much clearer product that uses this beast as a backend, and has a clear message up front. just not ready yet. man i wish i knew this would pop up so much here on HN. THANKS!!!
irrlichthn 15y ago
Looking at your "twenty people" website, greeting me with a big "Warning: You are using Opera. This browser is not supported" text on the top, maybe explains a bit that this thing is failing. There are about 30 - 40 million opera users out there. If the main website of your project starts with that attitute, I'm wondering if it goes on like that.
- Tomis 15y ago
  As an Opera user I find it a bit annoying as well but I think it's just a silly warning that doesn't impact functionality.
  - mittermayr 15y ago
    it did for a while when we used the canvas I believe, we had some major issues - but there was one charting thing that just needed it and we couldn't get it to work on IE/Opera... so we tried to fix it, but got stuck.
    - Tomis 15y ago
      I'm not a web developer but if you're willing to throw a few minutes at the problem I have a few suggestions. 1. Open your app in Opera (if there's a hard link to a page containing the offending issue then it's even better) and go to the main menu button - help - report a site problem, and you should fill all the relevant details. Hopefully you will get someone from Opera to assist you since they have an entire team dedicated to this sort of thing. 2. You can check the answers to this post (Opera IamA on reddit, 1 year ago) http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dtbcz/hey_reddit_join_the_opera_browser_team_for_an/c12qw0r http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dtbcz/hey_reddit_join_... and you can try sending the Opera employees PM-s with your problem. I'm sure it will be sorted out in the end. Cheers.
- mittermayr 15y ago
  thanks for telling me, we actually are just about to release a new product in the coming days that allows all browsers, is much clearer in the message and hopefully will clear a lot of these issues! really appreciate it!
combray 15y ago
What we've learned from this post is that when the author was at Microsoft talking and interviewing startups and people in new, innovative spaces, they had absolutely no clue what so ever of what startup founders go through. Yes starting a company it is of course one of the most difficult things you can do -- especially if you waste time trying to raise money rather than say staying focusing on making money.
- mittermayr 15y ago
  well i've always been sort of self-employed before, projects here, projects there, wrote a book, just had jobs on and off - but it was never a thing i did as 100% like now - which is a hell lot scarier
  - combray 15y ago
    Right. What I said. :) But I will say that it's hard to imagine that a startup will be successful unless you are emotionally all in, and that quote failure is not an option unquote. Doing stuff on the side never really made sense to me, other than as a bootstrapping strategy. The anxiety and stress, if you are able to channel them productively, are amazing sources of energy and focus. Good luck!
davedx 15y ago
I tried to upload my CV by downloading it from Google Docs as 'Word format' and uploading it to your site but it said it wasn't a supported file format. I'd check that as lots of people use Docs these days :)
- mittermayr 15y ago
  thanks man! we just changed to a different parser, will look into this right away! really appreciated!
AznHisoka 15y ago
Your idea doesn't seem like one where first-move takes all (whether it's customers, hype, media press, etc). I recommend just going all in with the enterprise market, and marketing it as a tool for employers to keep track of the skills their employees have. Sort of like a poor man's SuccessFactors.
- mittermayr 15y ago
  you nailed my second iteration right there. when i realized that the consumer market is just filled with services, i figured, the hell with it, i'll create an enterprise only product, full with virtual hosting environments and everything - never made enough progress to push it out yet, but it's at 80% done or so and does 100% what you said right there... appreciated!
  - jconley 15y ago
    Following this train of thought, it might be worth exploring if this would work best as an SAP or Jive add-on or some such. . . Getting a sales channel would be helpful in the Enterprise world.
currywurst 15y ago
I think this feeling is a staple of all involved in "longer-term" creative efforts that have to compete for the same mindshare. I'm sure PhD/grad students have the same horror when one of their Google alerts pops up with a conference paper abstract that reads just like what they've been slaving on for three months :o !!
- mittermayr 15y ago
  didn't think of that, but i think you nailed the point right there. the internet made it a lot harder to just not be aware of duplicate efforts...
- pnathan 15y ago
  Try three years, three months is just getting warmed up.
- disgruntledphd2 15y ago
  They (we) do. Fortunately, no one appears to have scooped me yet. Its actually much worse in academia though, as someone could be winding their way through publication for a year while you're still collecting data, and by the time you're done, its too late. Contrast with startups where they tend to be promoted from day one, and it makes for a much scarier experience.
davidhansen 15y ago
One minor thing I'd pick out of this rant is your exasperation at the fact that VCs did not respond favorably to being cold-pitched. One thing you need to understand is that VC is a networking game, not a capital allocation game. You will get nowhere without access to a couple of trusted connections. Your idea, team, market, traction, revenue, and earnings mean absolutely nothing without "knowing a guy who knows a guy".
- mittermayr 15y ago
  thing was, i had a prototype and all that, my own money and I figured i can skip the first part of funding and go straight to VC, which sounded like a plan back then, but now makes absolutely no sense anymore. much more interested in business angels and people who can help refine... learned a lot right there... thanks for the comment!
mittermayr 15y ago
By the way, I'm interested in chatting with anyone willing to join me on this ride. If you want to create stuff along the lines of skills, semantic skill graphs, recruiting, I'm doing anything I can to let you go wild with what I already have. I track over 2000 unique skills, more than 20.000 skills associated and start getting great data. if this sounds cool, i'd really love to chat! find me on twitter @mittermayr or anywhere else, my address is all over the place. thanks HN, i really, really, really love how you make some people's days, like mine, today.
mittermayr 15y ago
just wanted to say thanks again to everyone trying to sign-up for the service, i wasn't expecting this that much, we pushed an update last night and it seems nobody was able to sign up. ha, what better day, right? - it's fixed now. thanks again and sorry.
- msellout 15y ago
  Could you allow us to view results without making an account? I was going through the process until you asked me to make an account and/or link to social network. I need to see proof of usefulness before taking that step. At least a view of what results might look like. If there was one, I didn't see it in my sign-up process.
  - mittermayr 15y ago
    done just a few minutes ago, added it to the blog post. use: 20demo@binkmail.com / twentypeople
alanwells 15y ago
I think I'm going to send this one to my (also very sane) girlfriend so she understands better why I crawl into bed and then 30 minutes later get up again and go back to the computer. Thanks for putting words to that feeling that feeling that many of us know so well - if nothing else, it's nice to know that other people experience the same thing.
- mittermayr 15y ago
  thanks man, love reading comments like that.
- billpatrianakos 15y ago
  I'm there with you guys. To me this was my top story today. I couldn't have expressed it better myself. Does your same girlfriend get it though? I couldn't live without mine because she helps me escape the extreme stress but at the same time she often gives me hell about working all the time and never "having time for her" or "putting work first". It's like, hey, do you wanna eat or would you rather cuddle together in some back alley and starve to death because I couldn't make enough for us to survive? Yeah, a little extreme but I do think along those limes sometimes. Keeps me motivated.
grannyg00se 15y ago
Why so many mentions about TechCrunch? There was never any indication as to why it is such a focus aside from finding articles about people doing something similar. For example: "There’s a plethora of successful businesses, ideas, projects and products, all happening outside of TechCrunch" Yes this is obvious, but again why would you mention TechCrunch in this context as though there are millions of people who feel it is the central business information repository online?
- mittermayr 15y ago
  not sure about how many startup events or conferences you attended. but if someone gets 'featured' on techcrunch, they would make sure to go party on it. especially in europe. i found this to be almost sad, to see, how this single entity is controlling so much of the success/failure of many. or, maybe from a different angle: it has become the point of success for many startups, featured there, you'll make it anywhere... (i know that's not true, but you'll hopefully see what i mean).
- billpatrianakos 15y ago
  as though there are millions of people who feel it is the central business information repository online? I think because there really are millions who feel that way. Getting featured on TC has become one of the must-accomplish tasks for startups and so many feel, maybe even rightly, that TechCrunch can make or break you. They've kind of become the decider of what's cool and what's crap and you'd be surprised how many people don't question it and take their word as truth. There's this whole group of us living outside the major startup capitals, looking in from the outside, and wondering how they can rocket to the center of the universe too. That group often feels frustrated when we see all these me-too startups while they're working on a labor of love for all the right reasons. Then when someone with their same idea gets into TC they fear being considered a me-too company as well despite having worked on whatever project for so long. It's not a jealousy thing, I think it's different. All in all they just feel like they're very deserving of some help from the players in Startupland but can't get it because they're an outsider.
  - jacques_chester 15y ago
alain94040 15y ago
Very realistic experience of what starting your own startup feels like. Read that first before you quit your job. Then quit if you're still up for it.
cousin_it 15y ago
Today I learned that I can use AdBlock to kill that annoying fixed-scrolling header. Just right click it and select "Block this ad".
jacobquick 15y ago
The blog post is long-winded but the site is dumb: "I'm not going to tell you what my site does but please upload me your CV." How about you make a fake result set so I can see what you're up to instead of being another useless "social tool" begging for my personal info?
- billpatrianakos 15y ago
  What are you talking about? Did you even follow the link to the site or read the whole post? Long doesn't mean long-winded. He's talking about stuff that really speaks to what a lot of us are going through. You may not have that in common with him but that doesn't mean it's dumb. What if I said "your comment is dumb. You made a short sarcastic quip and left no constructive criticism". It's cool not to like it but give a decent reason that isn't so unnecessarily condescending. Guy poured his heart out, give him a break. Also, you can sign up right now and he even gives you access to a demo account. Plus the site itself explains what he's doing. I'm not trying to be a dick or anything but I really liked what he was talking about and I feel like I just can't let unfair criticism go unrefuted.
  - mittermayr 15y ago
    Bill, you make the internet a nicer place. Thanks for that. Really appreciated.
billpatrianakos 15y ago
I want to meet this guy. It's like I've got a clone of myself somewhere out in the world thinking, feeling, and saying exactly as I do. It wasn't explicitly said but I got hints of the authors frustration with hype, the idea that successful startups only work in trendy SV, they all have the sexy cool factor, and the only investors worth getting funded by are the ones you read about on techcrunch. To the author I'd say I feel your pain. There's a whole heap of us out here in the Midwest, the South, and just outside the major metro areas that seem to get all the press. We've had the same ideas as others and we see them surpassing us daily knowing that if we just had that extra something we could be them and deserve to be. We quit our day job, work alone in our living rooms, can't find skilled people where we live and even if we could don't have the cash to hire them. But it's okay because TechCrunch isn't real life and these investors and founders aren't real people. They're like characters from a movie. You want to be them and they seem so realistic that you sometimes believe you can. That's a mistake. It's like trying to become Hercules or some other mythical character. It's covered because its a rarity and the myth is sexier than the truth. Some of us will make it but we just have to keep jumping ponds. Become the biggest fish in your current pond before moving on to a pond with even larger fish. Even though I generalized all the well known founders and investors and called them not real, I know they are. My point was to dissuade people from comparing themselves to people like that because it's often futile and results in more frustration than progress.
- mittermayr 15y ago
  just wanted to say thanks for your comment, seems like we do share some things, couldn't have expressed it better. great comment. really appreciated. thanks for reading the post.
omouse 15y ago
This was a pretty good post. I would add that if you can't figure out how to beat out the competition and if you can't get much traction but already have a code base, you should make it free software. Release it under the AGPL or GPL. Might as well help everyone out ;)
salimmadjd 15y ago
If the writer had only interviewed a few startup founders while he was doing his benchmarking, he wouldn't be so surprised. A good idea is the last thing you need to be a successful entrepreneur. Grit, resilience, scrappiness, nimbleness are few things that you need to have before a good idea.
gscott 15y ago
The best time to kick the ass of a venture based start up is when they flame out because the money ran out, the founders get bought away, or their system gets bought & subsequently shut down. So let your system stay up naturally while things shake out and you might end up on top just because of longevity.
herval 15y ago
At first I thought I was reading my own story or something. Guess there are many, many of us (as some other comments also indicate)...

138 points by mittermayr 15y ago

Nice article, though I'm a bit confused by what your startup does. You may want to make the benefits/problem you're trying to solve a bit more obvious on the main page.

mittermayr 15y ago
yeah, most common feedback, that's why I decided to trim it down and we'll release a new, much clearer product that uses this beast as a backend, and has a clear message up front. just not ready yet. man i wish i knew this would pop up so much here on HN. THANKS!!!

irrlichthn 15y ago

Looking at your "twenty people" website, greeting me with a big "Warning: You are using Opera. This browser is not supported" text on the top, maybe explains a bit that this thing is failing. There are about 30 - 40 million opera users out there. If the main website of your project starts with that attitute, I'm wondering if it goes on like that.

Tomis 15y ago
As an Opera user I find it a bit annoying as well but I think it's just a silly warning that doesn't impact functionality.
- mittermayr 15y ago
  it did for a while when we used the canvas I believe, we had some major issues - but there was one charting thing that just needed it and we couldn't get it to work on IE/Opera... so we tried to fix it, but got stuck.
  - Tomis 15y ago
    I'm not a web developer but if you're willing to throw a few minutes at the problem I have a few suggestions. 1. Open your app in Opera (if there's a hard link to a page containing the offending issue then it's even better) and go to the main menu button - help - report a site problem, and you should fill all the relevant details. Hopefully you will get someone from Opera to assist you since they have an entire team dedicated to this sort of thing. 2. You can check the answers to this post (Opera IamA on reddit, 1 year ago) http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dtbcz/hey_reddit_join_the_opera_browser_team_for_an/c12qw0r http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dtbcz/hey_reddit_join_... and you can try sending the Opera employees PM-s with your problem. I'm sure it will be sorted out in the end. Cheers.
mittermayr 15y ago
thanks for telling me, we actually are just about to release a new product in the coming days that allows all browsers, is much clearer in the message and hopefully will clear a lot of these issues! really appreciate it!

combray 15y ago

What we've learned from this post is that when the author was at Microsoft talking and interviewing startups and people in new, innovative spaces, they had absolutely no clue what so ever of what startup founders go through. Yes starting a company it is of course one of the most difficult things you can do -- especially if you waste time trying to raise money rather than say staying focusing on making money.

mittermayr 15y ago
well i've always been sort of self-employed before, projects here, projects there, wrote a book, just had jobs on and off - but it was never a thing i did as 100% like now - which is a hell lot scarier
- combray 15y ago
  Right. What I said. :) But I will say that it's hard to imagine that a startup will be successful unless you are emotionally all in, and that quote failure is not an option unquote. Doing stuff on the side never really made sense to me, other than as a bootstrapping strategy. The anxiety and stress, if you are able to channel them productively, are amazing sources of energy and focus. Good luck!

davedx 15y ago

I tried to upload my CV by downloading it from Google Docs as 'Word format' and uploading it to your site but it said it wasn't a supported file format. I'd check that as lots of people use Docs these days :)

mittermayr 15y ago
thanks man! we just changed to a different parser, will look into this right away! really appreciated!

AznHisoka 15y ago

Your idea doesn't seem like one where first-move takes all (whether it's customers, hype, media press, etc). I recommend just going all in with the enterprise market, and marketing it as a tool for employers to keep track of the skills their employees have. Sort of like a poor man's SuccessFactors.

mittermayr 15y ago
you nailed my second iteration right there. when i realized that the consumer market is just filled with services, i figured, the hell with it, i'll create an enterprise only product, full with virtual hosting environments and everything - never made enough progress to push it out yet, but it's at 80% done or so and does 100% what you said right there... appreciated!
- jconley 15y ago
  Following this train of thought, it might be worth exploring if this would work best as an SAP or Jive add-on or some such. . . Getting a sales channel would be helpful in the Enterprise world.

currywurst 15y ago

I think this feeling is a staple of all involved in "longer-term" creative efforts that have to compete for the same mindshare. I'm sure PhD/grad students have the same horror when one of their Google alerts pops up with a conference paper abstract that reads just like what they've been slaving on for three months :o !!

mittermayr 15y ago
didn't think of that, but i think you nailed the point right there. the internet made it a lot harder to just not be aware of duplicate efforts...
pnathan 15y ago
Try three years, three months is just getting warmed up.
disgruntledphd2 15y ago
They (we) do. Fortunately, no one appears to have scooped me yet. Its actually much worse in academia though, as someone could be winding their way through publication for a year while you're still collecting data, and by the time you're done, its too late. Contrast with startups where they tend to be promoted from day one, and it makes for a much scarier experience.

davidhansen 15y ago

One minor thing I'd pick out of this rant is your exasperation at the fact that VCs did not respond favorably to being cold-pitched. One thing you need to understand is that VC is a networking game, not a capital allocation game. You will get nowhere without access to a couple of trusted connections. Your idea, team, market, traction, revenue, and earnings mean absolutely nothing without "knowing a guy who knows a guy".

mittermayr 15y ago
thing was, i had a prototype and all that, my own money and I figured i can skip the first part of funding and go straight to VC, which sounded like a plan back then, but now makes absolutely no sense anymore. much more interested in business angels and people who can help refine... learned a lot right there... thanks for the comment!

mittermayr 15y ago

By the way, I'm interested in chatting with anyone willing to join me on this ride. If you want to create stuff along the lines of skills, semantic skill graphs, recruiting, I'm doing anything I can to let you go wild with what I already have. I track over 2000 unique skills, more than 20.000 skills associated and start getting great data. if this sounds cool, i'd really love to chat! find me on twitter @mittermayr or anywhere else, my address is all over the place. thanks HN, i really, really, really love how you make some people's days, like mine, today.

mittermayr 15y ago

just wanted to say thanks again to everyone trying to sign-up for the service, i wasn't expecting this that much, we pushed an update last night and it seems nobody was able to sign up. ha, what better day, right? - it's fixed now. thanks again and sorry.

msellout 15y ago
Could you allow us to view results without making an account? I was going through the process until you asked me to make an account and/or link to social network. I need to see proof of usefulness before taking that step. At least a view of what results might look like. If there was one, I didn't see it in my sign-up process.
- mittermayr 15y ago
  done just a few minutes ago, added it to the blog post. use: 20demo@binkmail.com / twentypeople

alanwells 15y ago

I think I'm going to send this one to my (also very sane) girlfriend so she understands better why I crawl into bed and then 30 minutes later get up again and go back to the computer. Thanks for putting words to that feeling that feeling that many of us know so well - if nothing else, it's nice to know that other people experience the same thing.

mittermayr 15y ago
thanks man, love reading comments like that.
billpatrianakos 15y ago
I'm there with you guys. To me this was my top story today. I couldn't have expressed it better myself. Does your same girlfriend get it though? I couldn't live without mine because she helps me escape the extreme stress but at the same time she often gives me hell about working all the time and never "having time for her" or "putting work first". It's like, hey, do you wanna eat or would you rather cuddle together in some back alley and starve to death because I couldn't make enough for us to survive? Yeah, a little extreme but I do think along those limes sometimes. Keeps me motivated.

grannyg00se 15y ago

Why so many mentions about TechCrunch? There was never any indication as to why it is such a focus aside from finding articles about people doing something similar. For example: "There’s a plethora of successful businesses, ideas, projects and products, all happening outside of TechCrunch" Yes this is obvious, but again why would you mention TechCrunch in this context as though there are millions of people who feel it is the central business information repository online?

mittermayr 15y ago
not sure about how many startup events or conferences you attended. but if someone gets 'featured' on techcrunch, they would make sure to go party on it. especially in europe. i found this to be almost sad, to see, how this single entity is controlling so much of the success/failure of many. or, maybe from a different angle: it has become the point of success for many startups, featured there, you'll make it anywhere... (i know that's not true, but you'll hopefully see what i mean).
billpatrianakos 15y ago
as though there are millions of people who feel it is the central business information repository online? I think because there really are millions who feel that way. Getting featured on TC has become one of the must-accomplish tasks for startups and so many feel, maybe even rightly, that TechCrunch can make or break you. They've kind of become the decider of what's cool and what's crap and you'd be surprised how many people don't question it and take their word as truth. There's this whole group of us living outside the major startup capitals, looking in from the outside, and wondering how they can rocket to the center of the universe too. That group often feels frustrated when we see all these me-too startups while they're working on a labor of love for all the right reasons. Then when someone with their same idea gets into TC they fear being considered a me-too company as well despite having worked on whatever project for so long. It's not a jealousy thing, I think it's different. All in all they just feel like they're very deserving of some help from the players in Startupland but can't get it because they're an outsider.
- jacques_chester 15y ago

alain94040 15y ago

Very realistic experience of what starting your own startup feels like. Read that first before you quit your job. Then quit if you're still up for it.

cousin_it 15y ago

Today I learned that I can use AdBlock to kill that annoying fixed-scrolling header. Just right click it and select "Block this ad".

jacobquick 15y ago

The blog post is long-winded but the site is dumb: "I'm not going to tell you what my site does but please upload me your CV." How about you make a fake result set so I can see what you're up to instead of being another useless "social tool" begging for my personal info?

billpatrianakos 15y ago
What are you talking about? Did you even follow the link to the site or read the whole post? Long doesn't mean long-winded. He's talking about stuff that really speaks to what a lot of us are going through. You may not have that in common with him but that doesn't mean it's dumb. What if I said "your comment is dumb. You made a short sarcastic quip and left no constructive criticism". It's cool not to like it but give a decent reason that isn't so unnecessarily condescending. Guy poured his heart out, give him a break. Also, you can sign up right now and he even gives you access to a demo account. Plus the site itself explains what he's doing. I'm not trying to be a dick or anything but I really liked what he was talking about and I feel like I just can't let unfair criticism go unrefuted.
- mittermayr 15y ago
  Bill, you make the internet a nicer place. Thanks for that. Really appreciated.

billpatrianakos 15y ago

I want to meet this guy. It's like I've got a clone of myself somewhere out in the world thinking, feeling, and saying exactly as I do. It wasn't explicitly said but I got hints of the authors frustration with hype, the idea that successful startups only work in trendy SV, they all have the sexy cool factor, and the only investors worth getting funded by are the ones you read about on techcrunch. To the author I'd say I feel your pain. There's a whole heap of us out here in the Midwest, the South, and just outside the major metro areas that seem to get all the press. We've had the same ideas as others and we see them surpassing us daily knowing that if we just had that extra something we could be them and deserve to be. We quit our day job, work alone in our living rooms, can't find skilled people where we live and even if we could don't have the cash to hire them. But it's okay because TechCrunch isn't real life and these investors and founders aren't real people. They're like characters from a movie. You want to be them and they seem so realistic that you sometimes believe you can. That's a mistake. It's like trying to become Hercules or some other mythical character. It's covered because its a rarity and the myth is sexier than the truth. Some of us will make it but we just have to keep jumping ponds. Become the biggest fish in your current pond before moving on to a pond with even larger fish. Even though I generalized all the well known founders and investors and called them not real, I know they are. My point was to dissuade people from comparing themselves to people like that because it's often futile and results in more frustration than progress.

mittermayr 15y ago
just wanted to say thanks for your comment, seems like we do share some things, couldn't have expressed it better. great comment. really appreciated. thanks for reading the post.

omouse 15y ago

This was a pretty good post. I would add that if you can't figure out how to beat out the competition and if you can't get much traction but already have a code base, you should make it free software. Release it under the AGPL or GPL. Might as well help everyone out ;)

salimmadjd 15y ago

If the writer had only interviewed a few startup founders while he was doing his benchmarking, he wouldn't be so surprised. A good idea is the last thing you need to be a successful entrepreneur. Grit, resilience, scrappiness, nimbleness are few things that you need to have before a good idea.

gscott 15y ago

The best time to kick the ass of a venture based start up is when they flame out because the money ran out, the founders get bought away, or their system gets bought & subsequently shut down. So let your system stay up naturally while things shake out and you might end up on top just because of longevity.

herval 15y ago

At first I thought I was reading my own story or something. Guess there are many, many of us (as some other comments also indicate)...