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We Rewrote Everything in $Hotlang, and Our Startup Still Failed (2020)

10 points by cercatrova 4y ago

cercatrova 4y ago
Not my article, but this satirizes well the various things that can go wrong during a startup, such as - not once thinking about the customer but only the technology (technology is a means to the end of generating revenue, not the end itself) - wasting time rewriting if it's not critical to the customer (sure, it will be 1.2x faster each time but that doesn't matter if no one uses your product) - overengineering in the beginning with microservices etc and only talking to developers, again, not customers - focusing too much on hiring and not enough on what they were actually hiring for - spending 10 hour days with no weekends - thinking launching is only a one-time thing while even YC says to consider launching again and again [0] - thinking marketing consists solely of launching whereas marketing encompasses a much wider range, with cold calls, cold emails, SEO, content marketing, etc being critical parts of getting customers - writing a big v2 that no one uses, again - shutting down the startup with an Our Incredible Journey post [1] - and of course, not learning the lessons of failure. This comment by SwellJoe on HN is truly one of the best I've read on here regarding this [2] It is truly astounding to look at the ratio of things wrong to word count this article satirizes, it seems straight out of a Mike Judge / Silicon Valley show playbook. Given the current VC funding and economic climate however, I doubt many future startups will continue to operate this way, but I will probably be proven wrong nearly immediately after making this comment. [0] https://www.ycombinator.com/library/6i-how-to-launch-again-and-again https://www.ycombinator.com/library/6i-how-to-launch-again-a... [1] https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2222522#2222678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2222522#2222678
SevenNation 4y ago
The one thing this startup never did was find a customer. Kind of makes you wonder.
deleted 4y ago
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prdid 4y ago
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10 points by cercatrova 4y ago

Not my article, but this satirizes well the various things that can go wrong during a startup, such as - not once thinking about the customer but only the technology (technology is a means to the end of generating revenue, not the end itself) - wasting time rewriting if it's not critical to the customer (sure, it will be 1.2x faster each time but that doesn't matter if no one uses your product) - overengineering in the beginning with microservices etc and only talking to developers, again, not customers - focusing too much on hiring and not enough on what they were actually hiring for - spending 10 hour days with no weekends - thinking launching is only a one-time thing while even YC says to consider launching again and again [0] - thinking marketing consists solely of launching whereas marketing encompasses a much wider range, with cold calls, cold emails, SEO, content marketing, etc being critical parts of getting customers - writing a big v2 that no one uses, again - shutting down the startup with an Our Incredible Journey post [1] - and of course, not learning the lessons of failure. This comment by SwellJoe on HN is truly one of the best I've read on here regarding this [2] It is truly astounding to look at the ratio of things wrong to word count this article satirizes, it seems straight out of a Mike Judge / Silicon Valley show playbook. Given the current VC funding and economic climate however, I doubt many future startups will continue to operate this way, but I will probably be proven wrong nearly immediately after making this comment. [0] https://www.ycombinator.com/library/6i-how-to-launch-again-and-again https://www.ycombinator.com/library/6i-how-to-launch-again-a... [1] https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2222522#2222678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2222522#2222678

SevenNation 4y ago

The one thing this startup never did was find a customer. Kind of makes you wonder.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

prdid 4y ago