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I can't help but have a very negative reaction to this, not necessarily at the author, but at the startup ecosystem as a whole. These are posted as "lessons" as

by briholt 12y ago

I can't help but have a very negative reaction to this, not necessarily at the author, but at the startup ecosystem as a whole. These are posted as "lessons" as if they were difficult to learn, when this really should be labeled "things no responsible person would ever not know before even considering raising money." Of course you should be self-critical of your product, of course you should test with real customers, of course you need a technical co-founder, of course you should pick a market with a bigger niche than tech-saavy-foodie-cooks-in-major-cities. Every mistake was classic marketing grad trying to do startup things in a bubble environment. These are the types of "lessons from my failed startup" that have been written a thousand times before. I fear over-exuberant and irresponsible entrepreneurs will repeat these mistakes for as long as startups exist.

maxbrown 12y ago
I can't help but have a negative reaction to your comment. Yes, similar "lessons learned" are proliferated throughout the startup world, primarily because these are some of the hardest things about building a successful business even if you already know that they're the hardest things. This is clearly just a self-reflective piece, entitled "lessons I learned" not "lessons you should learn". If the rest of us want the story, or the reminders, great. If not, no sweat. The ad hominem is a little rough.
- personZ 12y ago
  Their observation isn't remotely an ad hominem: They are specifically criticizing the message, not the speaker. And their point is valid: There is a wide "startup" belief that you needn't know the market or domain, the customers, etc. You just need to find a domain name and make a web page and customers will come and somehow a business will fall together. Only the overwhelming odds are that it will face likely failure. Another trait of many of these types of posts is what idlewords points out: The tendency for people to generalize lessons. This is the risk of the dirty sushi restaurant with poor service that inevitably fails, but then writes a broad treatise about how the area won't support sushi restaurants. We see this constantly among such "lessons learned", where macro inputs are often substituted for micro failures.
  - maxbrown 12y ago
    Many of the start-up lessons here are those preached by Eric Reis, Steve Blank, and others. I don't think this is a broad treatise on how food start-ups won't work. Also: ..."things no responsible person would ever not know before even considering raising money." ... ...classic marketing grad trying to do startup things... ...over-exuberant and irresponsible entrepreneurs... not sure how you don't see this as ad hominem critical.
    - NhanH 12y ago
      Ad hominem is an attack that discredit the argument by trying to discredit the person writing the message (ie. "You didn't success why should I listen to you"), mostly by attacking the credentials of the person. An attack on BOTH the writer and the argument, as unnecessary critical or negative as it could be, is not an ad hominem attack, and by no mean make the criticism an invalid one. Especially if the criticism of the writer comes because of the writing (ie. "from what you've done, it seems like you're too inexperienced and naive etc...") (I'm sorry that this is really off topic ...)
    - lazzlazzlazz 12y ago
      This is pretty much the opposite of an `ad hominem` attack.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Wait, what? I thought I was cynical about startups, but I've never noticed this wide belief that you can get a startup off the ground simply by standing up a web page.
    - mbesto 12y ago
      Some good examples of that: Using mailchimp and wufoo- https://medium.com/who-what-why/from-a-mailchimp-email-and-wufoo-form-to-25k-in-3-months-c744d79a6e76 https://medium.com/who-what-why/from-a-mailchimp-email-and-w... Built a Facebook page- http://wpcurve.com/y-combinator/ http://wpcurve.com/y-combinator/
  - 12y ago
- idlewords 12y ago
  Don't call things ad hominem that aren't, you dumb jerk.
  - chandraonline 12y ago
    I see what you did there! Genius.
    - TerryL22 12y ago
      hahaha! so did I
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
danielweber 12y ago
The fact that people lie to you when doing market research isn't incredibly obvious to a lot of people. That seems to be his biggest problem: he thought there was a market because people said they liked the idea. I loved this post (gets one of my rare upvotes) because the guy does a great job taking apart everything he did wrong. Maybe these lessons should be obvious, but empirically they aren't: people keep making these mistakes, over and over.
- Scoundreller 12y ago
  > The fact that people lie to you when doing market research isn't incredibly obvious to a lot of people. Thank you for saying this. It's something that's only cemented in me over the past few years to connect the similarity between "anonymous" survey data and what gets posted on another anonymous posting place, 4chan.
- thisjepisje 12y ago
  I was told a story about a focus group of women who had to judge a bunch of shawls. Almost every one of them said they preferred the colourful shawls with bold patterns. After they were done each of them got to pick a shawl to take home as a thank you, and they all picked the plain-coloured ones.
blader 12y ago
I agree with you that there are a lot of "startup lessons" out there, and that most of them sound super basic and obvious. I've learned the hard way that it's exactly the lessons that are "obvious" are the ones that I should be paying attention to. If a lesson was both obvious and easy to implement, you probably wouldn't hear the lesson repeated so many times over so many different people. So whenever I read yet another startup lesson that seems obvious and is frequently repeated, that's a signal for me that that lesson is actually very difficult to implement on the ground, in the moment.
nashadelic 12y ago
To be fair, all post mortems sound obvious in the end. You can analyse any failure write the reasons down and it'll seem obvious. Why did Microsoft fail on it's pre-iPad TabletPC? Because the Office teams were too politically strong and didn't care about touch. That sounds like a simple management problem. What's wrong with Microsoft? When you're in the startup you most often miss the forest for the trees. You're too involved sort of like a peson in an abusive relationship. It sometime takes a neutral third part to make you realise "wow you really have it bad". I've never read a story about any failure that didn't sound obvious in a after-the-fact analysis. Read up on why Nokia failed against Apple or how the banking system collapsed. When reading any of thee you will always think "huh, what a bunch of dumbasses", we highly over value our own behaviour and pretend that can never be us but it frequently is.
girvo 12y ago
Yes, they will. And so will many other people in many other industries. I know numerous people who've had the "lets start a bar/music venue/restaurant" idea, and failed dismally (because they're difficult industries to break into and become successful in), never mind stacks of other business owners who pick a niche and struggle in it. Basically, I don't see it as an inherently bad thing. Until we've got Culture terminals and a Hub to chat with to convince us why something is a bad idea, I believe it'll always be this way. The other thing is that sometimes it works, so being an entrepreneur can have the same allure as a lotto ticket, only with even more illusion of control. I thought this was a great post by OP, and I thank him for it.
davemel37 12y ago
The most important lessons are ones we already know...but we need constant reminders to make sure we don't ignore them. This idea that there is some magic advice that this article is lacking and that only a seasoned (technical) founder can share with you is a fallacy. You are chasing a unicorn if you cannot accept common sense advice on its face. Here's a piece of advice and lesson that you might not know (although I hope you do.) There is something to learn from everyone, and the if you aren't willing to learn from EVERYONE, the problem is you that you aren't willing to learn, not that they don't have something to share with you.
jroseattle 12y ago
I used to believe this as well. Experience is the toughest teacher because of the method -- you're given the test before the lesson. When you're young, you are bulletproof and ten feet tall and can run through walls and you have no concept of your own limitations. What seems obvious to those of us who have gone through the cycle of a startup is the greenfield learning experience for starry-eyed newbies. Paul Buchheit has talked about the "danger of experience" (http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-technology.html http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-technology.html). It's tough, but it's compulsory on us to apply our experience while simultaneously challenging conventional thinking.

by briholt 12y ago

maxbrown 12y ago

I can't help but have a negative reaction to your comment. Yes, similar "lessons learned" are proliferated throughout the startup world, primarily because these are some of the hardest things about building a successful business even if you already know that they're the hardest things. This is clearly just a self-reflective piece, entitled "lessons I learned" not "lessons you should learn". If the rest of us want the story, or the reminders, great. If not, no sweat. The ad hominem is a little rough.

personZ 12y ago
Their observation isn't remotely an ad hominem: They are specifically criticizing the message, not the speaker. And their point is valid: There is a wide "startup" belief that you needn't know the market or domain, the customers, etc. You just need to find a domain name and make a web page and customers will come and somehow a business will fall together. Only the overwhelming odds are that it will face likely failure. Another trait of many of these types of posts is what idlewords points out: The tendency for people to generalize lessons. This is the risk of the dirty sushi restaurant with poor service that inevitably fails, but then writes a broad treatise about how the area won't support sushi restaurants. We see this constantly among such "lessons learned", where macro inputs are often substituted for micro failures.
- maxbrown 12y ago
  Many of the start-up lessons here are those preached by Eric Reis, Steve Blank, and others. I don't think this is a broad treatise on how food start-ups won't work. Also: ..."things no responsible person would ever not know before even considering raising money." ... ...classic marketing grad trying to do startup things... ...over-exuberant and irresponsible entrepreneurs... not sure how you don't see this as ad hominem critical.
  - NhanH 12y ago
    Ad hominem is an attack that discredit the argument by trying to discredit the person writing the message (ie. "You didn't success why should I listen to you"), mostly by attacking the credentials of the person. An attack on BOTH the writer and the argument, as unnecessary critical or negative as it could be, is not an ad hominem attack, and by no mean make the criticism an invalid one. Especially if the criticism of the writer comes because of the writing (ie. "from what you've done, it seems like you're too inexperienced and naive etc...") (I'm sorry that this is really off topic ...)
  - lazzlazzlazz 12y ago
    This is pretty much the opposite of an `ad hominem` attack.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Wait, what? I thought I was cynical about startups, but I've never noticed this wide belief that you can get a startup off the ground simply by standing up a web page.
  - mbesto 12y ago
    Some good examples of that: Using mailchimp and wufoo- https://medium.com/who-what-why/from-a-mailchimp-email-and-wufoo-form-to-25k-in-3-months-c744d79a6e76 https://medium.com/who-what-why/from-a-mailchimp-email-and-w... Built a Facebook page- http://wpcurve.com/y-combinator/ http://wpcurve.com/y-combinator/
- 12y ago
idlewords 12y ago
Don't call things ad hominem that aren't, you dumb jerk.
- chandraonline 12y ago
  I see what you did there! Genius.
  - TerryL22 12y ago
    hahaha! so did I
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

danielweber 12y ago

The fact that people lie to you when doing market research isn't incredibly obvious to a lot of people. That seems to be his biggest problem: he thought there was a market because people said they liked the idea. I loved this post (gets one of my rare upvotes) because the guy does a great job taking apart everything he did wrong. Maybe these lessons should be obvious, but empirically they aren't: people keep making these mistakes, over and over.

Scoundreller 12y ago
> The fact that people lie to you when doing market research isn't incredibly obvious to a lot of people. Thank you for saying this. It's something that's only cemented in me over the past few years to connect the similarity between "anonymous" survey data and what gets posted on another anonymous posting place, 4chan.
thisjepisje 12y ago
I was told a story about a focus group of women who had to judge a bunch of shawls. Almost every one of them said they preferred the colourful shawls with bold patterns. After they were done each of them got to pick a shawl to take home as a thank you, and they all picked the plain-coloured ones.

blader 12y ago

I agree with you that there are a lot of "startup lessons" out there, and that most of them sound super basic and obvious. I've learned the hard way that it's exactly the lessons that are "obvious" are the ones that I should be paying attention to. If a lesson was both obvious and easy to implement, you probably wouldn't hear the lesson repeated so many times over so many different people. So whenever I read yet another startup lesson that seems obvious and is frequently repeated, that's a signal for me that that lesson is actually very difficult to implement on the ground, in the moment.

nashadelic 12y ago

To be fair, all post mortems sound obvious in the end. You can analyse any failure write the reasons down and it'll seem obvious. Why did Microsoft fail on it's pre-iPad TabletPC? Because the Office teams were too politically strong and didn't care about touch. That sounds like a simple management problem. What's wrong with Microsoft? When you're in the startup you most often miss the forest for the trees. You're too involved sort of like a peson in an abusive relationship. It sometime takes a neutral third part to make you realise "wow you really have it bad". I've never read a story about any failure that didn't sound obvious in a after-the-fact analysis. Read up on why Nokia failed against Apple or how the banking system collapsed. When reading any of thee you will always think "huh, what a bunch of dumbasses", we highly over value our own behaviour and pretend that can never be us but it frequently is.

girvo 12y ago

Yes, they will. And so will many other people in many other industries. I know numerous people who've had the "lets start a bar/music venue/restaurant" idea, and failed dismally (because they're difficult industries to break into and become successful in), never mind stacks of other business owners who pick a niche and struggle in it. Basically, I don't see it as an inherently bad thing. Until we've got Culture terminals and a Hub to chat with to convince us why something is a bad idea, I believe it'll always be this way. The other thing is that sometimes it works, so being an entrepreneur can have the same allure as a lotto ticket, only with even more illusion of control. I thought this was a great post by OP, and I thank him for it.

davemel37 12y ago

The most important lessons are ones we already know...but we need constant reminders to make sure we don't ignore them. This idea that there is some magic advice that this article is lacking and that only a seasoned (technical) founder can share with you is a fallacy. You are chasing a unicorn if you cannot accept common sense advice on its face. Here's a piece of advice and lesson that you might not know (although I hope you do.) There is something to learn from everyone, and the if you aren't willing to learn from EVERYONE, the problem is you that you aren't willing to learn, not that they don't have something to share with you.

jroseattle 12y ago

I used to believe this as well. Experience is the toughest teacher because of the method -- you're given the test before the lesson. When you're young, you are bulletproof and ten feet tall and can run through walls and you have no concept of your own limitations. What seems obvious to those of us who have gone through the cycle of a startup is the greenfield learning experience for starry-eyed newbies. Paul Buchheit has talked about the "danger of experience" (http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-technology.html http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-technology.html). It's tough, but it's compulsory on us to apply our experience while simultaneously challenging conventional thinking.