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More advice from a failed YC company (an acquhire is not a success). I understand the desire to salvage something from the experience, but I only take advise f
by codex 13y ago
More advice from a failed YC company (an acquhire is not a success). I understand the desire to salvage something from the experience, but I only take advise from those more successful than I am. There are so many of those.
- pg 13y agoActually Amir's company is still operating. But even if it weren't, you'd be mistaken. People who fail have some of the most valuable insights. I learned YC's motto "Make something people want" from failing to do it myself.
- codex 13y agoI agree. However, people who fail also have terrible insights; for some, that contributed to their failure. And there's no reason to believe the specific reasons for their failure will be applicable to you. In the NFL, teams which lose tend to keep losing even though they have plenty of opportunity to learn. Teams are salary capped, so there is no intrinsic advantage. All successful companies are alike. Each failure fails in its own way.
- teleclimber 13y agoI really disagree. I think people learn more from failures. In many cases it seems the successful ones don't really truly know why they were successful. Of course they did a lot of things right and it's worthwhile to listen to how they accomplished that, but if you were to duplicate exactly what they did you wouldn't necessarily be successful. So clearly there is something more to it. In any case, there will be bad advice coming from both successes and failures. To eliminate all the "failures" as having "terrible insights" is short-sighted. PS: I'm NOT a YC alum. And my bootstrapped company is running with revenues.
- nostrademons 13y agoI think people learn more from success than from failure, but they learn more from failure than from doing nothing. Since typically your choice is between trying and not trying and not between succeeding and failing, your dominant strategy should be to try and let the cards fall where they may. Aside from that, most of the people reading are in the "doing nothing" category (I'm largely in this category myself when it comes to startups, though I have tried and failed before), and so it behooves them to listen to the failures. :-)
- joshdance 13y agoEvery person knows something you don't. Even if they are not "more successful" than you.
- wellboy 13y agoIt seems like you haven't talked to many "successful" people yet, because if they become successful too early/easily, they forget all the lessons and think they became successful because they are so smart. If you really want to get in-depth wisdom, you need to talk to a founder who has previously failed trying to do something awesome that no one has ever managed to do before. The secret lessons can only be found at rock-bottom. They are just lying around there, because no one can be bothered going there and picking them up. So, go there.
- aelaguiz 13y agoWe have a non-YC exit. It was not an acquihire based on size of transaction. Our YC company is still very much alive.