10 ms·
Fuck founder mode. Work in "Fuck off mode"
- dclowd9901 2y agoMost of the time I'm impressed when a business acts humane. If your business does that, consider yourself novel.
- sph 2y ago"Do things that don't scale." - Paul Graham Personally connecting to your early customers is one thing a startup can do that none of its established competitors can afford to. It is only possible when you don't have many users, but people love that shit so make the best of it and use it to kickstart your user base.
- roncesvalles 2y ago"Scale" in that quote is just a euphemism for "delegate" or "automate". Do the things that you can't just pay someone a wage or write a program to do.
- sph 2y agoHN won't probably like the tone of this one. But one thing I want to emphasise from the post: you don't need to be innovative I see a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs wanting to build something, and get obsessed about finding a new idea that's never done before, and failing at it. As if there was only one of everything in the world. There cannot be another restaurant in this city because there's already one. No one can make money selling phones, shoes, browsers, utility software, because they already exist. Nonsense. Either you have a new idea and invent a monopoly, or you have an old idea but you make it better. And you probably don't want to build a monopoly just yet, that's a whole other game. The bonus of being a startup is that you can afford to try out new approaches to old problems. You don't need a crazy new idea, just to make a marginally better product than the competition. Effort > originality.
- ath3nd 2y ago> HN won't probably like the tone of this one. Oh, I emphatically agree with both the post's content and the post's tone. I think it is a lot about building something you like well. It doesn't have to be unique, it doesn't have to cost you a burn out and your health, it just has to be something well made and with some passion.
- wouldbecouldbe 2y agoI mean you can even have a shittier product as long as you nail your acquisition channel (seo, social media, mailing etc)
- sph 2y agoNo marketing - can sell only if it's a really good product Half arsed marketing - can sell any half decent product. This is good enough for 99% of businesses Excellent marketing - you can sell even the most blatant scam at this tier
- astrobe_ 2y ago> HN won't probably like the tone of this one. But one thing I want to emphasize from the post: you don't need to be innovative I don't know anything about founding nor am I interested about it, but at least it was funny. On some other topic, I've found this kind of post to be refreshing and relieving, even if your inner voice says "yes, but...". It is kind of popping a couple of the nested bubbles you're in when you are deep in a project. This line about innovation reminds me what one of the (founding) member of a band says in a masterclass session [1]: the music you make doesn't have to be entirely new all the time. They show an example with one of their own song and compare it to another famous one: "That's the same thing". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwpXTeKhWYs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwpXTeKhWYs
- disqard 2y agoThank you for introducing me to Lake Street Dive!
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- zem 2y agoI am not even remotely an entrepreneur, but if I were then this is totally the sort I would want to be! 8<----------- I agree. The path is not easy but I'm not worried. As I said in other comments all Neeto products are "by products" of my consulting company. Even if I have zero customers today we are profitable as a whole company. To prove my sincerity I have not yet built a way to charge money. Sign up for NeetoCal and there is no way for you to pay me money today. Unlike Silicon valley fucking notion that you need to go "all in". I'm not all in. All in means I will cross the river or I'll drown. Fuck that shit. That's too risky. If Neeto doesn't work out nothing will change for me. That's why I can afford to compete on fucking price.
- lofaszvanitt 2y agoAbsolutely golden. Paul Graham et al. are spewing out these godawful, borderline fucking idiotic ideas and he giggles as all the emptyheaded fucking idiots copy it, try to interpret it and gospel it like some fucking world changing mantra. Wake the fuck up naive plus stupid mudabitches, those who have the brains often feed shit to you, so you won't succeed. Really, people are like pigeons. Walking around and picking up all kinds of debris, thinking that it will change their business or it has some groundbreaking idea enclosed within. Why? Because people are STUPID, utterly stupid, brainless monkeys. He said that the sky is not blue, but green. He is an established person with high net wealth, he must be right. So let's say the sky is green. Fake it till you make it, suuuuuure. Read books so you could hone your bullshit filter.
- wg0 2y agoAnd those"Lean Startup - million copies sold" pivot gurus.
- passion__desire 2y agoWhat about "Lean In"?
- neerajdotname2 2y agoFucking golden. I had forgotten about all this fucked up shit.
- wg0 2y agoNow what is that? Didn't know about that.
- jwr 2y agoI wonder how many people understand your username (I my case, having a Hungarian friend helped).
- lofaszvanitt 2y ago
- throwaway984393 2y ago[dead]
- waihtis 2y ago"yippee look how edgy i am in saying the word fuck alot" -written by some dude probably working a b2b saas product somewhere
- archerx 2y agoThis is some creative (and cringe) marketing for a calendar app. To summarize in a sentence; Basically build something that people want, make it accessible and don't burn out on useless cargo-culting
- jitbit 2y agoThis. The guy's reddit profile consists of self-plugging his own products in comments (that are mostly deleted by now)
- entropyneur 2y agoYou are not the smartest person in the world. You are lucky if you get one thing better than everyone else, but you never know everything better than everyone else. So sorry, but fuck hubris and I'm going to follow the best practices whenever I don't know a specific reason why I can do better.
- hn72774 2y agoGood reminder to say "no" more often.
- sph 2y agoMy previous boss told me they really appreciated my services (as a consultant) because I was not afraid to say no and push back requests that were not reasonable, or that would require a lot of effort for little benefit. Many employees and especially consultants are OK to waste time and effort as long as they get paid. This is one place where being a lazy bastard that doesn't want to do work unless it is really necessary becomes a valued feature. Work smart not hard.
- al_borland 2y agoSounds like a good boss. Acknowledging the push back, adjusting, and viewing it as a good thing is not always common.
- theletterf 2y agoThis reads as if The Dude Lebowski was a software engineer. And that's immensely refreshing, almost as entertaining as Mataroa's blog posts (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40725329 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40725329). In line with other commenters, I think the biggest value of the post resides in remembering folks to think critically and not going full cargo cult.
- neerajdotname2 2y agoI had missed Mataroa's post. This is fucking hilarious.
- mckn1ght 2y agoReally sounds more like Walter to me, but they’d probably make a pretty good founding team! I’d like to see them do a pitch.
- remoquete 2y ago"Say what you will about the tenets of Perl, but at least it's an ethos."
- jumpingscript 2y agoMataroa is the platform he posts on. The author is Ludicity though!
- jimnotgym 2y agoFounder mode is a really terrible essay. It plain makes up a reality to make his theory sensible. I enjoyed this much more
- tim333 2y agoFounder Mode the essay is kind of about the problems companies like AirBnb have scaling beyond fifty or so people and seems fine for that but not really relevant for a one or two guy business like this one.
- jimnotgym 2y ago... yes and the essay doesn't even consider that the failing lies with an inexperienced manager who doesn't know how to manage a large team.
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- polotics 2y agoThis would be a a great article if instead of "fuck off" it used the phrase "focus", all the points are valid, and the anger against low mental effort conventional herd mentality is also justifiable. Maybe to a a certaian extent, the strong wordage exposes a contradiction: why did you write this, if what you're thinking is only "F* off"...
- arbaaz 2y agogood one
- spacebacon 2y agoFuck manipulation … oops there went the whole internet.
- mrweasel 2y agoThe whole thing was a good read, but you have a point. I think we should say "fuck off" to the most of the things the author lists, but if we do, oh so many people will lose their jobs. Not that I care much, modern marketing, SEO, social media, and all that non-sense, employees so many people who could be better utilized in other more honest lines of business.
- yowlingcat 2y agoGreat read. If you are not going to take VC money, then I think this attitude should absolutely be the default approach unless you've got a proven reason not to. There is a large world to be tapped outside of VC funded category leaders where there is enormous, life changing amounts of money to be made by intelligent, pragmatic founders just trying to build real businesses. And the reality of these businesses is that you don't need to be the best out of everyone -- you just need to be the right kind of good enough: better than the alternatives.
- neerajdotname2 2y agoAbsofuckinglutely. That's the point. Build a good enough business that puts some money in your fucking pocket.
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- left-struck 2y agoHow about f- Saas? I started self hosting everything and I love it. If you have the know how, I recommend it.
- renewiltord 2y agoOne thing I do enjoy is low cost clones of mainstream software. So more power to this guy. A reason I use Zoho is that it’s a complete suite I can use at low cost to run a company. There’s lots of non venture scale businesses where you don’t raise and costs matter. And software like this helps. If he can offer it at low cost that’s great!
- mixmastamyk 2y agoIs that software like odoo? I like that one as it’s open source.
- neerajdotname2 2y agoYes Zoho is like odoo. Neeto is trying to be like zoho.
- mixmastamyk 2y agoAt least they're all named appropriately!
- jaybrendansmith 2y agoFor bootstrappers, the philosophy here is sound. Don't make a fancy restaurant, just build a better burger joint. There are endless burger places. Why? Because people love burgers. Innovation is great once you have money to burn. Until then, be the corner roast beef place that everybody loves and is an institution. The business model is sound, no great innovation is necessary, just hard work, persistence, cleverness yes but not genius. Startup this way is still challenging but not impossible, and initially no major pivots are needed. Customer acquisition is still the most difficult part, and that takes time no matter how well you are funded.
- Waterluvian 2y agoTo add to this analogy: you also spend that time learning how to run a burger joint. That’s not wasted time. Walk then run and all that. If you can’t make a burger joint work, you can’t make a fancy restaurant work. Don’t fool yourself by thinking the problem was the menu and atmosphere. I experienced a startup where a bunch of mechatronics grads built a product line of simple robots for research use. Simple hamburgers of robotics. Only after years of that did they dive into far more complicated markets. From my rank and file vantage, this felt simple and genius.
- neerajdotname2 2y agoGreat point. Spend time learning things that will put some fucking money in your pocket. Once you have financial independence then you can think about changing the fucking world.
- otoburb 2y agoThis post reminds me of the John Goodman "The Position of F*ck You" scene in the 2014 movie "The Gambler", not only the tone but also the the attitude of self-sufficiency.
- anon123123q 2y agoMeanwhile in non startup land here…, title of upcoming talk: “dealing with toxic perfectionism, and other problematic mind sets”
- anotherevan 2y agoReminiscent of https://programming-motherfucker.com/ https://programming-motherfucker.com/ Perhaps the attitude is just moving up the management stack? :-)
- neuralkoi 2y agoIf you look closer, you can see what "Founder mode" is really about, and it's right there plain as daylight in the original post: > Airbnb's free cash flow margin is now among the best in Silicon Valley. > free cash flow margin In the end, Paul Graham only cares about how you run your company insofar as it's VC funded, and aimed towards making him and his tech-bro buddies as much money as possible (any other externalities be damned).