13 ms·

Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

518 points by nswanberg 14y ago

alid 14y ago
I love this! It's one of the best pieces of startup advice I've read in a long while; I've sent it to my startup friends. New fave quote: "Determination is really two separate things: resilience and drive. Resilience keeps you from being pushed backwards. Drive moves you forwards".
nanodeath 14y ago
A byline would be helpful, here...
- LiveTheDream 14y ago
  There's an "author" link: http://www.foundersatwork.com/author.html http://www.foundersatwork.com/author.html
tarr11 14y ago
Worth the read just for this: The pizza place was very confused by this, but they send the pizza guy without a pizza, Kyle answers the door, and the pizza guy says, "The site is down."
- 27182818284 14y ago
  Indeed. I plan on using this as an example of what a clever hack is from now on when it comes up in conversation. It is adorable, clever, and just...great.
biscarch 14y ago
Having started riding this roller coaster I particularly enjoyed a view of what pitfalls to be aware of in the future. Also, since I just survived a dual-founder breakup (company intact), it was encouraging to know that this was probably a bigger bullet to have dodged. (For those curious, post-breakup I reached out to an old friend with whom I've shared some tenuous situations and we have applied to YC for the next batch) Edit: I forgot about the pizza comment! When she asked how to contact someone in Lake Tahoe, I audibly said pizza (in my empty apartment). When the solution was pizza, I had a celebratory moment.
btilly 14y ago
The link assumes that you know who is speaking. But it doesn't give that critical piece of information. Founders at Work was written by Jessica Livingston, who is a cofounder of ycombinator. She's married to Paul Graham. But do not think that she's in there just because of the personal connection. Her book is truly excellent. And in previous articles I've seen Paul say that the #1 thing that they want in a founder is determination, and the person that they rely on to spot it during the interview is Jessica.
- 1123581321 14y ago
  She also contributed her financial and legal knowledge to YC. The others were "only" programmers.
  - wheels 14y ago
    The part about the "others" isn't really true. Paul and Robert had founded two companies together and Paul had been the CEO of a medium sized startup and taken it through the acquisition process. Also, at least in the earlier YC batches before there were more folks helping out, Jessica definitely felt like the operations person; like she was the one that actually made things happen.
    - 1123581321 14y ago
      We are talking about the same thing. I meant operations as part of legal/financial -- the business side of things. As Paul put it in an interview at Mixergy.com, she brought the knowledge required to actually put YCombinator together. I certainly meant no knock on the other partners' experience other than what they claimed to lack themselves.
ericdykstra 14y ago
Here's a link to the video version of Jessica Livingston's talk from Startup School: http://startupschool.org/2012/livingston/ http://startupschool.org/2012/livingston/ It really is great! I encourage everyone on HN to read or watch it if they have not already. As a not-yet founder, it has a lot of interesting advice that I don't think is documented anywhere as concisely and practically as it is here.
- johnx123-up 14y ago
  Any YouTube version available? (This player doesn't work good for me, keep resetting)
- blaines 14y ago
  As a founder (2x) she has some absolutely fantastic advice. Though I haven't seen every problem/monster, many of them apply to my experience. In addition, the examples she gives are fantastic.
mynegation 14y ago
Very interesting. Statistically speaking, women are better than men in reading non-verbal information. I wonder if this is a part of YC success.
- mynegation 14y ago
  Fat fingered. That was a reply to btilly's comment
- pg 14y ago
  I think so. Within YC Jessica's nickname is The Social Radar. One nickname at least; the other is Panic.
  - johnsang 14y ago
    PG, mind sharing some insight on the "Panic" nickname? I'm curious about how/if the two are related.
    - pg 14y ago
      We call her Panic because she's the office worrier. I never considered her two sides might be related. Interesting idea, but I don't think so.
      - cup 14y ago
        I wonder if her strength in picking up social cues also causes people to panic because shes the office warrior, detecting problems/issues and cutting through to their core.
        johnsang 14y ago
        My thoughts as well. Empathy has its costs. I was wondering if exposure to swings was one of them.
- vacri 14y ago
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- deleted 14y ago
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- mquander 14y ago
  It's true, verifiable, basically uninteresting, and unusually rude.
- majormajor 14y ago
  From the grandparent post: > Her book is truly excellent. And in previous articles I've seen Paul say that the #1 thing that they want in a founder is determination, and the person that they rely on to spot it during the interview is Jessica. So which part of that are you trying to contradict? The way I read it, your description of her book supports the grandparent's claim. If you are able to create a collection of wonderful interviews, what's the common denominator there?
- Geekette 14y ago
  "Let's be serious here - Founders at Work was a list of wonderful interviews with startup founders and its creation was tied directly to her personal relationship with pg. Sigh To all downvoters - indicate why this is a) demonstrably wrong or b) demonstrably unfair. It is both true and verifiable - don't just downvote me because this disagrees with your world view." It is ridiculously rude because it implies that she could not possibly be a YC cofounder based on her professional skills and that her book was not a product of any work/insight, just a side benefit of her personal relationship with PG.
  - deleted 14y ago
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  - diego 14y ago
    I don't think he implies that. Those two things are not contradictory. She could be an outstanding professional AND be there because of her connection. There is nothing wrong with that. It happens all the time, everywhere.
LiveTheDream 14y ago
Are people really having such trouble with the context of this article? The author's name is in the headline (maybe it was modded in later, to be fair), but also there's an "author" link[0] in plain sight. PG's essay's don't have a "who am I" introduction, and if you didn't know who he was then you'd simply click on the obvious "bio" link. [0] http://www.foundersatwork.com/author.html http://www.foundersatwork.com/author.html
- btilly 14y ago
  At the point where I replied, the name was NOT in the headline. It was definitely modded in later.
goronbjorn 14y ago
This is another great piece of writing by Jessica Livingston (I was at Startup School for the talk as well). Is she ever going to pursue writing a sequel to Founders at Work?
brianmcdonough 14y ago
Jessica's speech follows one of the themes she established in "Founders," - overcoming emotional responses being a key to success in startups (and life). Her skill in communicating complex ideas is subtle, but more impressive because it lacks the usual dose of ego and/or one-upmanship. The sole intent being to help people who can listen well enough to use the information to help themselves.
michaelnovati 14y ago
I saw this talk at Startup School. Honestly, as someone working in industry who tried doing a startup during school, there's a huge thing missing. CMD+F for "luck" = 0 results. Luck is a huge factor and sometimes you just need to move on to either something new, or working for a company to fill in the gaps, and trying again soon.
- AVTizzle 14y ago
  Talking about "luck" in a presentation like this is like talking about the life benefits of physical attractiveness. Precious little of it is in your control, so what's the point? Address what you can control, and hope for the best.
  - chrischen 14y ago
    Actually you control luck with determination. By increasing determination, you decrease the effect luck has on anything you do.
    - philwelch 14y ago
      And for that matter, you can control physical attractiveness. There's always something you could do if you really had to, right? Lose a little weight, gain a little weight, hide your flaws, accentuate your good points, dress a certain way. You know how sometimes on tabloid covers in the supermarket they have pictures of celebrities wearing sweats and no makeup? It's a petty thing to fixate on, but it illustrates a valuable point.
      - chrischen 14y ago
        The initial analogy with physical attractiveness is broken. Physical attractiveness is akin to the intelligence you're born with. You may not be able to boost your intelligence much, but you CAN minimize the factor luck plays in you realizing your potential afforded to you by your intelligence.
    - biscarch 14y ago
andrewhillman 14y ago
This is one of the best articles I have read in a while. Obviously you see a lot over 7 years/ 500 startups.
cs702 14y ago
This is excellent -- and very much in the spirit of Charlie Munger's often-repeated saying: "All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there."[1] -- [1] http://www.pbs.org/wsw/news/fortunearticle_20031026_03.html http://www.pbs.org/wsw/news/fortunearticle_20031026_03.html
- abbasmehdi 14y ago
  Death is inevitable, these mistakes aren't.
Rajiv_N 14y ago
I know this is a minor issue. But when I publish something I want people to inform me of problems. Please note that I don't mean to be disrespectful and just want to help. So here goes: 3rd sentence: "There's a talk I've always want to give at the beginning of each batch...". I think this should be either "I've always wanted to..." or "I always want to..." right?
- jl 14y ago
  Fixed - thanks!
  - Rajiv_N 14y ago
    Wow! Thanks for replying. I have already been down-voted once for what I posted and was beginning to think my comment was a huge mistake. As hackers we get trained to look at details. So I was hoping others on "Hacker News" would understand where I was coming from. It's not about right or wrong. It's not about ego. I just thought I could help.
001sky 14y ago
In order to make something people want, being brilliant and determined is not enough. You have to be able to talk to your users and adjust your idea accordingly. Ordinarily you have to change your idea quite a lot even if you start out with a reasonably good one. -- This is a great point. Even outside of startups.
pmarca 14y ago
This is extraordinarily accurate, based on my experience.
faramarz 14y ago
Awesome read! Jessica mentions the Codecademy team launched 2 days before Demo Day and managed to signup 200k users. If I remember correctly, they launched on HN through a Show HN thread.. and so on.. What I really want to know is, how many of those initial 200k users stuck around? I was one of them and I have only signed in maybe twice since their launch. So what does that mean? they leveraged the curious users to get VC interest? Did they really engage me, us, the 200k? is that a false positive? I guess if the net result is a positive one Today, none of this really matters.
- brc 14y ago
  Really I would think it doesn't matter. With that kind of interest (even if it just of the curiosity kind, rather than the stickiness kind), then it's a definite flag that you're onto something. So, even if the 200k users never came back, there was clearly something interesting about the concept to get that much attention. And with the right development, the next 200k people can be convinced to stay around. It's a lot easier to convince 200k people for a second look than it is to find 200k in the first place.
seacond 14y ago
"Investors tend to have a herd mentality."
bcooperbyte 14y ago
Loved it. Very informative. Being an entrepreneur is a tough road, but with preparation, belief, and determination things will eventually take its course.
mck- 14y ago
The Mixergy interview with PG (Feb 2010)[1] mentions Jessica working on a second edition of Founders at Work. PG: "You know, that is her deepest wish. If she is watching this, she’ll be laughing so much at this point because that’s what she would like the most too to be able to spend more time on the new version of Founders at Work. There’s a new, she’s working on a new edition, with a bunch of new interviews." Any updates on this? [1]: http://mixergy.com/y-combinator-paul-graham/ http://mixergy.com/y-combinator-paul-graham/
ww520 14y ago
Wow. Great advices. I especially like the resilience part. Those rejection stories really hit home, as I have gone through similar experience recently. When reading them, the line "when life deals you a lemon, make lemonade" kept flashing through my mind.
dools 14y ago
Arguing anything other than differences in levels of persistent hard work and skill in your particular field has a large mountain of evidence to overcome. The effects of those two are very large, the effects of everything else comparatively small per decades of startup and longitudinal entrepreneurial studies. Nonsense about hustle is exactly that: nonsense. The weight of evidence suggests that, if anything, hustling and creativity have a net negative effect on long term health of a startup. But there's money to be made keeping up the lie. Lastly, beware of pseudo-pop-science that opens with only a few people's stories. People manage to succeed as founders all over the world; these stories are not remarkable and tell us nothing. In general the whole "determination" thing has little to no value in any serious consideration of startup success: it's about on the same level of credibility as diet fads.
- xyzzy123 14y ago
  Success is always the result of hard work and skill, but failure is usually bad luck ;-) I think you have the right internal Locus of Control (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control) theory needed to succeed. But personally I believe the truth is a more nuanced (i.e, my Locus of Contol theory is a more external than yours :) Environment is important too; generally, when people of modest background and means rise to found successful businesses, this is invariably mentioned in their biography precisely because it's unusual. The influence of social environment, peers, connections, location, opportunities and just plain old timing do matter, in my view. Even Warren Buffett acknowledges that he won the "Ovarian Lottery". Yep, I even believe in "luck" too (unpredictable external factors outside one's control). You can found a perfectly viable business, work hard, be skilled - and then become sick at a critical time. These things happen. Likewise, making the right connection or deal at just the right time can make all the difference to one's success. Of course, as others have pointed out -your view is the most useful. You can only control what you can control. But do I advocate kindness to others, because persistent hard work and skill are no guarantee of success.
- pmarca 14y ago
  Keep telling yourself that :-).
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nadam 14y ago
Two of the problems can be easily avoided: 'cofounder disputes' and 'investors' are not problems in case of single-founder bootstrapped startups. :) One thing I would add to the topic of 'determination': Are we speaking about determination to make a startup successful or determination to try out as many ideas in our life as possible, learn as much as possible and try to make at least one startup successful in our life? I mean first we have to analyze what we optimize for: If we optimize for the success of a given startup then it is obvious that the optimal strategy is to never give up on the startup. If we optimize for the success of a person in his lifetime then it is different. In this case we have to examine all kinds of opportunity costs. Could it be a better strategy to very quickly abandon a startup when it seems that people do not want the product, so that we can start much more startups in our life, to increase the chance of at least one becoming successful?
- accountoftheday 14y ago
  In terms of outcomes I am convinced that co-founder disputes (been there done that) are still a lesser risk to success than the banal reality of simply losing motivation as a single founder. I am a rather determined person but would I have gone through all the way with my first startup while going experiencing the roller coaster? Almost certainly not. Another thing to consider: In a dispute you may actually be the wrong one, and even if you end up leaving when you would have been right, your remaining co-founders may lead the company to some success while you retain your vested shares and can recharge for/ start the next thing.
- jordo37 14y ago
  For me and my co-founder, especially during the dark days of 1) tech not working 2) clients stopping service with us or 3)someone yelling at us over Twitter, email or phone - it is Critical to have a team and more importantly to have a partner. I don't share all of my concerns with the whole team because that could shift the mood of the company and damage our internal resolve. But I need to be able to talk about the full reality of the situation with someone and depending on who is having an up day one of us can rally the other person around to being enthused again. Without that, I know there would be days I would be lost, and if that lingered at all I could see weeks of inactivity at exactly those points where we needed to move fast. I whole-heartedly agree with Jessica that having a co-founder that, above all, you can trust is huge (I'm lucky that I do), but I agree with the other reply here that a single founder, in almost all situations is more trouble than any sort of cofounder disputes.
loumf 14y ago
If you are interested in a take on this topic that is based on data, check out Noam Wasserman at BoS 2009 (his talk at BoS 2012 was very similar) http://businessofsoftware.org/2009/05/professor-noam-wasserman-at-business-of-software-2008-rich-or-king/ http://businessofsoftware.org/2009/05/professor-noam-wasserm... He has been collecting data on start-ups and then looking at survival lengths and outcomes. He wrote a book on the topic http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Dilemmas-Anticipating-Foundation-Entrepreneurship/dp/0691149135 http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Dilemmas-Anticipating-Foundat...
uhwuggawuh 14y ago
Are those Pokemon in the first figure? If so, I have severely underestimated the coolness of next-generation Pokemon.
- pg 14y ago
  Jessica got those monsters from Mino Monsters (http://minomonsters.com/ http://minomonsters.com/). (When you've funded 467 startups, you can find one to supply you with practically anything.)
swah 14y ago
I read this yesterday thinking it was from pg, strange feeling.

518 points by nswanberg 14y ago

alid 14y ago

I love this! It's one of the best pieces of startup advice I've read in a long while; I've sent it to my startup friends. New fave quote: "Determination is really two separate things: resilience and drive. Resilience keeps you from being pushed backwards. Drive moves you forwards".

nanodeath 14y ago

A byline would be helpful, here...

LiveTheDream 14y ago
There's an "author" link: http://www.foundersatwork.com/author.html http://www.foundersatwork.com/author.html

tarr11 14y ago

Worth the read just for this: The pizza place was very confused by this, but they send the pizza guy without a pizza, Kyle answers the door, and the pizza guy says, "The site is down."

27182818284 14y ago
Indeed. I plan on using this as an example of what a clever hack is from now on when it comes up in conversation. It is adorable, clever, and just...great.

biscarch 14y ago

Having started riding this roller coaster I particularly enjoyed a view of what pitfalls to be aware of in the future. Also, since I just survived a dual-founder breakup (company intact), it was encouraging to know that this was probably a bigger bullet to have dodged. (For those curious, post-breakup I reached out to an old friend with whom I've shared some tenuous situations and we have applied to YC for the next batch) Edit: I forgot about the pizza comment! When she asked how to contact someone in Lake Tahoe, I audibly said pizza (in my empty apartment). When the solution was pizza, I had a celebratory moment.

btilly 14y ago

The link assumes that you know who is speaking. But it doesn't give that critical piece of information. Founders at Work was written by Jessica Livingston, who is a cofounder of ycombinator. She's married to Paul Graham. But do not think that she's in there just because of the personal connection. Her book is truly excellent. And in previous articles I've seen Paul say that the #1 thing that they want in a founder is determination, and the person that they rely on to spot it during the interview is Jessica.

1123581321 14y ago
She also contributed her financial and legal knowledge to YC. The others were "only" programmers.
- wheels 14y ago
  The part about the "others" isn't really true. Paul and Robert had founded two companies together and Paul had been the CEO of a medium sized startup and taken it through the acquisition process. Also, at least in the earlier YC batches before there were more folks helping out, Jessica definitely felt like the operations person; like she was the one that actually made things happen.
  - 1123581321 14y ago
    We are talking about the same thing. I meant operations as part of legal/financial -- the business side of things. As Paul put it in an interview at Mixergy.com, she brought the knowledge required to actually put YCombinator together. I certainly meant no knock on the other partners' experience other than what they claimed to lack themselves.

ericdykstra 14y ago

Here's a link to the video version of Jessica Livingston's talk from Startup School: http://startupschool.org/2012/livingston/ http://startupschool.org/2012/livingston/ It really is great! I encourage everyone on HN to read or watch it if they have not already. As a not-yet founder, it has a lot of interesting advice that I don't think is documented anywhere as concisely and practically as it is here.

johnx123-up 14y ago
Any YouTube version available? (This player doesn't work good for me, keep resetting)
blaines 14y ago
As a founder (2x) she has some absolutely fantastic advice. Though I haven't seen every problem/monster, many of them apply to my experience. In addition, the examples she gives are fantastic.

mynegation 14y ago

Very interesting. Statistically speaking, women are better than men in reading non-verbal information. I wonder if this is a part of YC success.

mynegation 14y ago
Fat fingered. That was a reply to btilly's comment
pg 14y ago
I think so. Within YC Jessica's nickname is The Social Radar. One nickname at least; the other is Panic.
- johnsang 14y ago
  PG, mind sharing some insight on the "Panic" nickname? I'm curious about how/if the two are related.
  - pg 14y ago
    We call her Panic because she's the office worrier. I never considered her two sides might be related. Interesting idea, but I don't think so.
    - cup 14y ago
      I wonder if her strength in picking up social cues also causes people to panic because shes the office warrior, detecting problems/issues and cutting through to their core.
      - johnsang 14y ago
        My thoughts as well. Empathy has its costs. I was wondering if exposure to swings was one of them.
vacri 14y ago

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mquander 14y ago
It's true, verifiable, basically uninteresting, and unusually rude.
majormajor 14y ago
From the grandparent post: > Her book is truly excellent. And in previous articles I've seen Paul say that the #1 thing that they want in a founder is determination, and the person that they rely on to spot it during the interview is Jessica. So which part of that are you trying to contradict? The way I read it, your description of her book supports the grandparent's claim. If you are able to create a collection of wonderful interviews, what's the common denominator there?
Geekette 14y ago
"Let's be serious here - Founders at Work was a list of wonderful interviews with startup founders and its creation was tied directly to her personal relationship with pg. Sigh To all downvoters - indicate why this is a) demonstrably wrong or b) demonstrably unfair. It is both true and verifiable - don't just downvote me because this disagrees with your world view." It is ridiculously rude because it implies that she could not possibly be a YC cofounder based on her professional skills and that her book was not a product of any work/insight, just a side benefit of her personal relationship with PG.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- diego 14y ago
  I don't think he implies that. Those two things are not contradictory. She could be an outstanding professional AND be there because of her connection. There is nothing wrong with that. It happens all the time, everywhere.

LiveTheDream 14y ago

Are people really having such trouble with the context of this article? The author's name is in the headline (maybe it was modded in later, to be fair), but also there's an "author" link[0] in plain sight. PG's essay's don't have a "who am I" introduction, and if you didn't know who he was then you'd simply click on the obvious "bio" link. [0] http://www.foundersatwork.com/author.html http://www.foundersatwork.com/author.html

btilly 14y ago
At the point where I replied, the name was NOT in the headline. It was definitely modded in later.

goronbjorn 14y ago

This is another great piece of writing by Jessica Livingston (I was at Startup School for the talk as well). Is she ever going to pursue writing a sequel to Founders at Work?

brianmcdonough 14y ago

Jessica's speech follows one of the themes she established in "Founders," - overcoming emotional responses being a key to success in startups (and life). Her skill in communicating complex ideas is subtle, but more impressive because it lacks the usual dose of ego and/or one-upmanship. The sole intent being to help people who can listen well enough to use the information to help themselves.

michaelnovati 14y ago

I saw this talk at Startup School. Honestly, as someone working in industry who tried doing a startup during school, there's a huge thing missing. CMD+F for "luck" = 0 results. Luck is a huge factor and sometimes you just need to move on to either something new, or working for a company to fill in the gaps, and trying again soon.

AVTizzle 14y ago
Talking about "luck" in a presentation like this is like talking about the life benefits of physical attractiveness. Precious little of it is in your control, so what's the point? Address what you can control, and hope for the best.
- chrischen 14y ago
  Actually you control luck with determination. By increasing determination, you decrease the effect luck has on anything you do.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    And for that matter, you can control physical attractiveness. There's always something you could do if you really had to, right? Lose a little weight, gain a little weight, hide your flaws, accentuate your good points, dress a certain way. You know how sometimes on tabloid covers in the supermarket they have pictures of celebrities wearing sweats and no makeup? It's a petty thing to fixate on, but it illustrates a valuable point.
    - chrischen 14y ago
      The initial analogy with physical attractiveness is broken. Physical attractiveness is akin to the intelligence you're born with. You may not be able to boost your intelligence much, but you CAN minimize the factor luck plays in you realizing your potential afforded to you by your intelligence.
  - biscarch 14y ago

andrewhillman 14y ago

This is one of the best articles I have read in a while. Obviously you see a lot over 7 years/ 500 startups.

cs702 14y ago

This is excellent -- and very much in the spirit of Charlie Munger's often-repeated saying: "All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there."[1] -- [1] http://www.pbs.org/wsw/news/fortunearticle_20031026_03.html http://www.pbs.org/wsw/news/fortunearticle_20031026_03.html

abbasmehdi 14y ago
Death is inevitable, these mistakes aren't.

Rajiv_N 14y ago

I know this is a minor issue. But when I publish something I want people to inform me of problems. Please note that I don't mean to be disrespectful and just want to help. So here goes: 3rd sentence: "There's a talk I've always want to give at the beginning of each batch...". I think this should be either "I've always wanted to..." or "I always want to..." right?

jl 14y ago
Fixed - thanks!
- Rajiv_N 14y ago
  Wow! Thanks for replying. I have already been down-voted once for what I posted and was beginning to think my comment was a huge mistake. As hackers we get trained to look at details. So I was hoping others on "Hacker News" would understand where I was coming from. It's not about right or wrong. It's not about ego. I just thought I could help.

001sky 14y ago

In order to make something people want, being brilliant and determined is not enough. You have to be able to talk to your users and adjust your idea accordingly. Ordinarily you have to change your idea quite a lot even if you start out with a reasonably good one. -- This is a great point. Even outside of startups.

pmarca 14y ago

This is extraordinarily accurate, based on my experience.

faramarz 14y ago

Awesome read! Jessica mentions the Codecademy team launched 2 days before Demo Day and managed to signup 200k users. If I remember correctly, they launched on HN through a Show HN thread.. and so on.. What I really want to know is, how many of those initial 200k users stuck around? I was one of them and I have only signed in maybe twice since their launch. So what does that mean? they leveraged the curious users to get VC interest? Did they really engage me, us, the 200k? is that a false positive? I guess if the net result is a positive one Today, none of this really matters.

brc 14y ago
Really I would think it doesn't matter. With that kind of interest (even if it just of the curiosity kind, rather than the stickiness kind), then it's a definite flag that you're onto something. So, even if the 200k users never came back, there was clearly something interesting about the concept to get that much attention. And with the right development, the next 200k people can be convinced to stay around. It's a lot easier to convince 200k people for a second look than it is to find 200k in the first place.

seacond 14y ago

"Investors tend to have a herd mentality."

bcooperbyte 14y ago

Loved it. Very informative. Being an entrepreneur is a tough road, but with preparation, belief, and determination things will eventually take its course.

mck- 14y ago

The Mixergy interview with PG (Feb 2010)[1] mentions Jessica working on a second edition of Founders at Work. PG: "You know, that is her deepest wish. If she is watching this, she’ll be laughing so much at this point because that’s what she would like the most too to be able to spend more time on the new version of Founders at Work. There’s a new, she’s working on a new edition, with a bunch of new interviews." Any updates on this? [1]: http://mixergy.com/y-combinator-paul-graham/ http://mixergy.com/y-combinator-paul-graham/

ww520 14y ago

Wow. Great advices. I especially like the resilience part. Those rejection stories really hit home, as I have gone through similar experience recently. When reading them, the line "when life deals you a lemon, make lemonade" kept flashing through my mind.

dools 14y ago

Arguing anything other than differences in levels of persistent hard work and skill in your particular field has a large mountain of evidence to overcome. The effects of those two are very large, the effects of everything else comparatively small per decades of startup and longitudinal entrepreneurial studies. Nonsense about hustle is exactly that: nonsense. The weight of evidence suggests that, if anything, hustling and creativity have a net negative effect on long term health of a startup. But there's money to be made keeping up the lie. Lastly, beware of pseudo-pop-science that opens with only a few people's stories. People manage to succeed as founders all over the world; these stories are not remarkable and tell us nothing. In general the whole "determination" thing has little to no value in any serious consideration of startup success: it's about on the same level of credibility as diet fads.

xyzzy123 14y ago
Success is always the result of hard work and skill, but failure is usually bad luck ;-) I think you have the right internal Locus of Control (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control) theory needed to succeed. But personally I believe the truth is a more nuanced (i.e, my Locus of Contol theory is a more external than yours :) Environment is important too; generally, when people of modest background and means rise to found successful businesses, this is invariably mentioned in their biography precisely because it's unusual. The influence of social environment, peers, connections, location, opportunities and just plain old timing do matter, in my view. Even Warren Buffett acknowledges that he won the "Ovarian Lottery". Yep, I even believe in "luck" too (unpredictable external factors outside one's control). You can found a perfectly viable business, work hard, be skilled - and then become sick at a critical time. These things happen. Likewise, making the right connection or deal at just the right time can make all the difference to one's success. Of course, as others have pointed out -your view is the most useful. You can only control what you can control. But do I advocate kindness to others, because persistent hard work and skill are no guarantee of success.
pmarca 14y ago
Keep telling yourself that :-).
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nadam 14y ago

Two of the problems can be easily avoided: 'cofounder disputes' and 'investors' are not problems in case of single-founder bootstrapped startups. :) One thing I would add to the topic of 'determination': Are we speaking about determination to make a startup successful or determination to try out as many ideas in our life as possible, learn as much as possible and try to make at least one startup successful in our life? I mean first we have to analyze what we optimize for: If we optimize for the success of a given startup then it is obvious that the optimal strategy is to never give up on the startup. If we optimize for the success of a person in his lifetime then it is different. In this case we have to examine all kinds of opportunity costs. Could it be a better strategy to very quickly abandon a startup when it seems that people do not want the product, so that we can start much more startups in our life, to increase the chance of at least one becoming successful?

accountoftheday 14y ago
In terms of outcomes I am convinced that co-founder disputes (been there done that) are still a lesser risk to success than the banal reality of simply losing motivation as a single founder. I am a rather determined person but would I have gone through all the way with my first startup while going experiencing the roller coaster? Almost certainly not. Another thing to consider: In a dispute you may actually be the wrong one, and even if you end up leaving when you would have been right, your remaining co-founders may lead the company to some success while you retain your vested shares and can recharge for/ start the next thing.
jordo37 14y ago
For me and my co-founder, especially during the dark days of 1) tech not working 2) clients stopping service with us or 3)someone yelling at us over Twitter, email or phone - it is Critical to have a team and more importantly to have a partner. I don't share all of my concerns with the whole team because that could shift the mood of the company and damage our internal resolve. But I need to be able to talk about the full reality of the situation with someone and depending on who is having an up day one of us can rally the other person around to being enthused again. Without that, I know there would be days I would be lost, and if that lingered at all I could see weeks of inactivity at exactly those points where we needed to move fast. I whole-heartedly agree with Jessica that having a co-founder that, above all, you can trust is huge (I'm lucky that I do), but I agree with the other reply here that a single founder, in almost all situations is more trouble than any sort of cofounder disputes.

loumf 14y ago

If you are interested in a take on this topic that is based on data, check out Noam Wasserman at BoS 2009 (his talk at BoS 2012 was very similar) http://businessofsoftware.org/2009/05/professor-noam-wasserman-at-business-of-software-2008-rich-or-king/ http://businessofsoftware.org/2009/05/professor-noam-wasserm... He has been collecting data on start-ups and then looking at survival lengths and outcomes. He wrote a book on the topic http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Dilemmas-Anticipating-Foundation-Entrepreneurship/dp/0691149135 http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Dilemmas-Anticipating-Foundat...

uhwuggawuh 14y ago

Are those Pokemon in the first figure? If so, I have severely underestimated the coolness of next-generation Pokemon.

pg 14y ago
Jessica got those monsters from Mino Monsters (http://minomonsters.com/ http://minomonsters.com/). (When you've funded 467 startups, you can find one to supply you with practically anything.)

swah 14y ago

I read this yesterday thinking it was from pg, strange feeling.