4 ms·

Cherry-picks winners: Uses only successful examples like Stripe or Airbnb while ignoring thousands of failed startups that tried identical manual tactics. Fals

by belter 1y ago

Cherry-picks winners: Uses only successful examples like Stripe or Airbnb while ignoring thousands of failed startups that tried identical manual tactics. False choices: Presents manual work vs. scalable strategy as either/or when most successful companies do both simultaneously. Has a One size fits all: Claims all startups must recruit manually, ignoring that enterprise products need fundamentally different approaches. Instead, do the following... - Interview failed founders, not successful ones: They will tell you why things actually break (co-founder fights, cash flow, timing) instead of survivorship bias fairy tales. - Optimize for "no," not "yes": Ruthlessly eliminate wrong customers instead of trying to delight everyone. False positives kill more startups than missed opportunities. - Plan your failure modes first: Map exactly how you could die (regulation, key person risk, moats) and build defenses. Most founders only plan for unicorn outcomes. - Copy boring businesses, because that is the secret of sucess. Dont copy sexy startups: Uber is just taxis with an app, Airbnb is hotels with no real estate, Netflix is just video rental with better logistics. The biggest "innovative" companies are doing boring businesses better, not inventing new categories.

mavilia 1y ago
I agree with your comment as an additional way to look at the problem but want to also mention something I heard on a podcast a few months ago. Paraphrasing "If you get good at seeing red flags it doesn't make you good at seeing green ones. When you optimize against failure you don't optimize for success. So on and so forth." A failed founder can tell you what broke but won't know what else could've gone wrong or rather what else they needed to go right.
- aswanson 1y ago
  This is true. Skepticism can keep you free from mlm scams, but that same trait will keep you from buying bitcoin when it's at .0001 cents.
lurk2 1y ago
This is AI.
neilv 1y ago
> - Interview failed founders, not successful ones: They'll tell you why things actually break (co-founder fights, cash flow, timing) instead of survivorship bias fairy tales. I like this idea a lot, if it can be done well. Is there already trove of failed tech startup stories that are genuine, and maybe analyzed like business case studies? Is it publicly-accessible, or could it be? I think the biggest challenge is getting truthful and complete information. (People will have made embarrassing mistakes, no matter how much brilliant heroism the team also pulled off. There will be things the failed founders don't want past customers/partners/investors to know. There will be things investors don't want known about their own behavior. For growth startups, there may be investment fraud at some level, for example. Or backstabbing. There will be differences of perspective on what really happened. There may be personality disorders. Etc.) A lot of people will tolerate a disposable "incredible journey" post to put a less-negative spin on failure, but AFAICT usually no one involved really wants all the truth to get out. Also, if you do it, ideally it would be for all startups. If you only do it for some, without all being humbled simultaneously, then current convention is to look down upon those with the transparency, while pretending the non-transparent ones are better. It's a pretty dim-witted and petty culture, and we have to structure with that in mind.
- belter 1y ago
  Read this and you will learn a lot more: "Failed Startups- +70 articles listing +400 failed startups, filtered by country, industry, customer, and cause of failure" - https://www.failory.com/failures https://www.failory.com/failures
  - neilv 1y ago
    Thanks. That site is advertising-heavy, but does have some info. One thing that could be done better is that the interviews I skimmed are softball to one person. So this is more the "incredible journey" answer for why it failed, but the actual dozen unflattering reasons.
    - belter 1y ago
      Agree a little bit. Here is another one: "483 startup failure post-mortems" - https://www.cbinsights.com/research/startup-failure-post-mortem/ https://www.cbinsights.com/research/startup-failure-post-mor...

by belter 1y ago

mavilia 1y ago

I agree with your comment as an additional way to look at the problem but want to also mention something I heard on a podcast a few months ago. Paraphrasing "If you get good at seeing red flags it doesn't make you good at seeing green ones. When you optimize against failure you don't optimize for success. So on and so forth." A failed founder can tell you what broke but won't know what else could've gone wrong or rather what else they needed to go right.

aswanson 1y ago
This is true. Skepticism can keep you free from mlm scams, but that same trait will keep you from buying bitcoin when it's at .0001 cents.

lurk2 1y ago

This is AI.

neilv 1y ago

> - Interview failed founders, not successful ones: They'll tell you why things actually break (co-founder fights, cash flow, timing) instead of survivorship bias fairy tales. I like this idea a lot, if it can be done well. Is there already trove of failed tech startup stories that are genuine, and maybe analyzed like business case studies? Is it publicly-accessible, or could it be? I think the biggest challenge is getting truthful and complete information. (People will have made embarrassing mistakes, no matter how much brilliant heroism the team also pulled off. There will be things the failed founders don't want past customers/partners/investors to know. There will be things investors don't want known about their own behavior. For growth startups, there may be investment fraud at some level, for example. Or backstabbing. There will be differences of perspective on what really happened. There may be personality disorders. Etc.) A lot of people will tolerate a disposable "incredible journey" post to put a less-negative spin on failure, but AFAICT usually no one involved really wants all the truth to get out. Also, if you do it, ideally it would be for all startups. If you only do it for some, without all being humbled simultaneously, then current convention is to look down upon those with the transparency, while pretending the non-transparent ones are better. It's a pretty dim-witted and petty culture, and we have to structure with that in mind.

belter 1y ago
Read this and you will learn a lot more: "Failed Startups- +70 articles listing +400 failed startups, filtered by country, industry, customer, and cause of failure" - https://www.failory.com/failures https://www.failory.com/failures
- neilv 1y ago
  Thanks. That site is advertising-heavy, but does have some info. One thing that could be done better is that the interviews I skimmed are softball to one person. So this is more the "incredible journey" answer for why it failed, but the actual dozen unflattering reasons.
  - belter 1y ago
    Agree a little bit. Here is another one: "483 startup failure post-mortems" - https://www.cbinsights.com/research/startup-failure-post-mortem/ https://www.cbinsights.com/research/startup-failure-post-mor...