6 ms·

Interesting points, but a lot of it is contradictory to the advice you hear from successful startups, so I'd take this with a grain of salt. "I believe that my

by RyanZAG 13y ago

Interesting points, but a lot of it is contradictory to the advice you hear from successful startups, so I'd take this with a grain of salt. "I believe that my previous two ventures failed mainly because of the founding team (which I’m included in). How do I know? Because companies with almost identical products and value propositions succeeded afterwards." I'm not sure if you're drawing the correct lesson there. Sounds more like implementation issues. I'd recommend you spend some effort improving your ability to implement / find people who can implement and then try again.

dennybritz 13y ago
You're right, correlation doesn't equal causation. However, in my specific case the implementation issues were came from issues in the team. In the end, implementation comes down to team. (Hindsight is always 20/20, but everything we did wrong had to do with marketing and building and audience)
- josh2600 13y ago
  Not to be pedantic, but, doesn't it always? I think it's easy to blame other people for problems, but the path to self-improvement is internalization. Someone on your team missed a deadline which fubarr'd your project? Your fault for not checking in with them to make sure they delivering what you wanted. Someone forget to put the trash out. Your fault for trusting them. This is a bit dishonest, but empowering for the following reason: You cannot control other people. If you internalize the failure as your own, you can often make more strides to prevent the failure next time than by simply assigning blame. Of course this theory must be tempered by the old Steven Winterburn quote: "Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes."
  - arkades 13y ago
    The source article explicitly stated "I'm not exempt, I was also guilty of this," and during some particular sections more specifically pled guilty and apologized. So, "I think it's easy to blame other people for problems, but the path to self-improvement is internalization" doesn't sound pedantic. It sounds worse.
    - josh2600 13y ago
      Sorry, I wasn't trying to be offensive or indict the author. I also wasn't disagreeing with him. I was only trying to add my lens of commentary. It wasn't to say that the author wasn't already taking this under advisement, but only to add my additional perspective. Sorry if my diction led you to believe otherwise :(.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
greghinch 13y ago
Agreed, the lesson from a product failing because the team didn't work together seems much less likely to be, "trying to start a product with a team doesn't work" and more likely to be, "this team didn't work".
regal 13y ago
I'll chime in here and say that reading this article sounded exactly like reading about my own 3 previous (failed) partnerships. My sole successful venture has been solo all along (not including employees), and has outlasted the rises and falls of the other businesses (during the amateur entrepreneur "too many fingers in too many pies" phase). I don't think I'd do a partnership again. But maybe I just don't play well with others? Anyway, can't speak for the OP, but when intelligent, ambitious friends around you see that you work your tail off and already have succeeded at building a profitable business from scratch, they suddenly get really excited about starting new businesses with you that often sound great. At least in my experience though, many of these people turn out to see themselves as "the visionary" who kinda sorta checks in from time to time and you as "the worker," which, if that isn't the role you're interested in, causes things to unravel rather fast.
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  I suspect this is a key insight. There is a colloquialism for a company of people all trying to be 'the boss' called "Too many Chiefs, not enough Indians" (in reference to the tribal organization of Native American tribes, where in fact there was exactly one Chief who was the final arbiter) but another spin on this is "Too many Medicine men, not enough Indians." The "fantasy" life of a startup founder is that they see things others don't (vision) and lead people who make those visions real (workers). Except you can't really lead someone with a vision if you don't know yourself how to make that vision real. The challenges of startups are that you have to be able to "do it all" in order to know what "doing it" actually entails, then you can bring people in who can do a part of it (that you were previously doing) and know if they are doing it well or not. Folks who are visionary in their thinking but can't break that down into actionable steps toward that vision, and then break those steps into problem assignments, aren't really going to be an asset for your startup until you already have a product and a revenue stream. Even then, there is nothing more irritating to folks than a clueless visionary. Someone who says something like "The underlying problem is energy dependence, so our goal should be to provide an unlimited energy source to break that dependence, let's get some smart people working on that!" Accurate vision, but ultimately clueless, they just slow people down who have to explain the 2nd law of thermodynamics to them (if they are patient enough).
mathattack 13y ago
Adding to what Ryan said, when the time is right for an idea, there are usually multiple competitors out there. 2 is a small sample size to generalize off of. But... There may be other reasons.
jakejake 13y ago
I find everything that the article says to be practical advice, but it would have a much more positive spin if the article was titled "pitfalls to avoid when building your team." Instead the author seems to have written off the chance that he will find compatible partners.
- klochner 13y ago
  Not to mention that the author admitted he was guilty of the same faults, so it should really be "pitfalls to avoid when starting a company".
barce 13y ago
If two comapanies look like they are doing the same thing and one fails and one succeeds, I'd have to conclude that there wasn't enough measurement (lean startup measurement) to make apparent the difference.

by RyanZAG 13y ago

dennybritz 13y ago

You're right, correlation doesn't equal causation. However, in my specific case the implementation issues were came from issues in the team. In the end, implementation comes down to team. (Hindsight is always 20/20, but everything we did wrong had to do with marketing and building and audience)

josh2600 13y ago
Not to be pedantic, but, doesn't it always? I think it's easy to blame other people for problems, but the path to self-improvement is internalization. Someone on your team missed a deadline which fubarr'd your project? Your fault for not checking in with them to make sure they delivering what you wanted. Someone forget to put the trash out. Your fault for trusting them. This is a bit dishonest, but empowering for the following reason: You cannot control other people. If you internalize the failure as your own, you can often make more strides to prevent the failure next time than by simply assigning blame. Of course this theory must be tempered by the old Steven Winterburn quote: "Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes."
- arkades 13y ago
  The source article explicitly stated "I'm not exempt, I was also guilty of this," and during some particular sections more specifically pled guilty and apologized. So, "I think it's easy to blame other people for problems, but the path to self-improvement is internalization" doesn't sound pedantic. It sounds worse.
  - josh2600 13y ago
    Sorry, I wasn't trying to be offensive or indict the author. I also wasn't disagreeing with him. I was only trying to add my lens of commentary. It wasn't to say that the author wasn't already taking this under advisement, but only to add my additional perspective. Sorry if my diction led you to believe otherwise :(.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

greghinch 13y ago

Agreed, the lesson from a product failing because the team didn't work together seems much less likely to be, "trying to start a product with a team doesn't work" and more likely to be, "this team didn't work".

regal 13y ago

I'll chime in here and say that reading this article sounded exactly like reading about my own 3 previous (failed) partnerships. My sole successful venture has been solo all along (not including employees), and has outlasted the rises and falls of the other businesses (during the amateur entrepreneur "too many fingers in too many pies" phase). I don't think I'd do a partnership again. But maybe I just don't play well with others? Anyway, can't speak for the OP, but when intelligent, ambitious friends around you see that you work your tail off and already have succeeded at building a profitable business from scratch, they suddenly get really excited about starting new businesses with you that often sound great. At least in my experience though, many of these people turn out to see themselves as "the visionary" who kinda sorta checks in from time to time and you as "the worker," which, if that isn't the role you're interested in, causes things to unravel rather fast.

ChuckMcM 13y ago
I suspect this is a key insight. There is a colloquialism for a company of people all trying to be 'the boss' called "Too many Chiefs, not enough Indians" (in reference to the tribal organization of Native American tribes, where in fact there was exactly one Chief who was the final arbiter) but another spin on this is "Too many Medicine men, not enough Indians." The "fantasy" life of a startup founder is that they see things others don't (vision) and lead people who make those visions real (workers). Except you can't really lead someone with a vision if you don't know yourself how to make that vision real. The challenges of startups are that you have to be able to "do it all" in order to know what "doing it" actually entails, then you can bring people in who can do a part of it (that you were previously doing) and know if they are doing it well or not. Folks who are visionary in their thinking but can't break that down into actionable steps toward that vision, and then break those steps into problem assignments, aren't really going to be an asset for your startup until you already have a product and a revenue stream. Even then, there is nothing more irritating to folks than a clueless visionary. Someone who says something like "The underlying problem is energy dependence, so our goal should be to provide an unlimited energy source to break that dependence, let's get some smart people working on that!" Accurate vision, but ultimately clueless, they just slow people down who have to explain the 2nd law of thermodynamics to them (if they are patient enough).

mathattack 13y ago

Adding to what Ryan said, when the time is right for an idea, there are usually multiple competitors out there. 2 is a small sample size to generalize off of. But... There may be other reasons.

jakejake 13y ago

I find everything that the article says to be practical advice, but it would have a much more positive spin if the article was titled "pitfalls to avoid when building your team." Instead the author seems to have written off the chance that he will find compatible partners.

klochner 13y ago
Not to mention that the author admitted he was guilty of the same faults, so it should really be "pitfalls to avoid when starting a company".

barce 13y ago

If two comapanies look like they are doing the same thing and one fails and one succeeds, I'd have to conclude that there wasn't enough measurement (lean startup measurement) to make apparent the difference.