10 ms·

What Startups Are Really Like

382 points by apu 17y ago

steveplace 17y ago
Running a startup is not like having a job or being a student, because it never stops. I was fraternity president for a while. I distinctly remember being surprised by this "feature" of my job. Especially when I am awoken at 3AM with news that a (fully sober) member had driven his truck into the lake across the street. This job was the best experience I had prior to running a startup, and I'd never do it again.
marcofloriano 17y ago
#13 My advice is generally pessimistic. Assume you won't get money, and if someone does offer you any, assume you'll never get any more. I´m a business wannabe from Brazil and i just laugh when i read that one. Here we dont have ANY chances of getting money from VCs so when we start something new, specially with technology, we never expect to get money. Ramen profit system is not an option at poor countries, it´s the law.
- c00p3r 17y ago
  That's it. Think about self-developing as a startup. This should be one's first startup - build your own self (yes, go toward unknown, launch fast, evolve, iterate, grow).
- lloydarmbrust 17y ago
  I've been unconsciously practicing number #13 since the beginning of our start-up. Every time I close a deal I'm thinking, "it's not over until we start getting paid from these guys." That attitude has served me well, I mean, I've had groups back out on us after they signed an agreement. What are we going to do? Lawyers cost to much and who wants to work with someone who doesn't want to work with us? Our customers are our partners and we love them--but if the feeling's not mutual I'd rather cut it off. It's funny, I'm so optimistic about our success--I'm an entrepreneur after all--but I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop when closing a new customer. BTW: I should mention that our customers are newspapers, who are notorious for taking a long time to make bad decisions . . . so when we close someone, it's time to break out the scotch.
  - yason 17y ago
    That just shows you appreciate your own worth and time. Some partners and customers carry negative worth. It's important to get rid of them, or not start anything with them in the first place. You seem to recognize that you always have a position of your own: you don't merely have to take just about anything that happens to come in as you know you have better things to do as long as there isn't anything in it for you.
  - Andys 17y ago
    Absolutely: I don't tell family about, or celebrate, a new deal until the money is actually in the bank.
  - JoeAltmaier 17y ago
    We counted the times our Founder announced "We're funded!" - total of 21 in 2 years. We never got ANY money.
coffeemug 17y ago
One theme in this essay is that Paul keeps drilling these concepts into founders, and almost every time the founders don't believe him. Paul then reaches the conclusion that it's probably because the founders are too optimistic. I think this bit is wrong. It's not that we're too optimistic, it's that the process is so subtle that the English language is too coarse to describe it. For example, what exactly does it mean when someone says 95% of the VCs are incompetent? How exactly are they incompetent? To what degree and in what ways? What exactly do they do that makes them appear incompetent? If you've never talked to VCs before, reading that they're "incompetent" probably won't give you a good idea of what an average interaction with them is like. It's sort of like describing what making love is like for the first time. Very eloquent people have written volumes on this, but it's far too subtle for a written or spoken language. Until you actually do it, you'll only have a very poor approximation in your mind of what it might be like, no matter how much you read. Startups are like that.
gcv 17y ago
I'd like to (slightly) challenge #8: it seems to me that Dropbox is a counterexample. The Dropbox guys took quite a long time and their first release was quite polished. Not perfect, certainly, but way, way ahead of just minimally functional.
- netsp 17y ago
  I think this is just semantics, the definition of 'launch' for this purpose can be pretty flexible.
- snprbob86 17y ago
  They were also their own target users. I'm sure they ate their own dog food quite a bit.
- breck 17y ago
  instead of "counterexample", use "exception to the rule".
- JoeAltmaier 17y ago
  I'll disagree. DropBox is somewhat slick, but has embarrassing flaws. They have some way to go. So I guess they did it right!
- pmjordan 17y ago
  I think that's in no small part due to the problem Dropbox solves. Don't forget this problem has been "solved" about a gazillion times before, but the lack of polish made those "solutions" unusable in practice.
gbookman 17y ago
All the scares induced by seeing a new competitor pop up are forgotten weeks later. It always comes down to your own product and approach to the market. This quote and the other comments about overestimating your competition really stood out to me. It's true that as a Founder, your own ability to execute and find what customers want is what matters.
- JoeAltmaier 17y ago
  Remember its a survivor that said that. The ones that got squashed dead by competition aren't in the conversation.
lloydarmbrust 17y ago
Very timely post for me as I started up earlier this year--amazing how many of these things I've already learned the hard way. #1 is aptly chosen. I've always heard that picking the wrong business partner is worse than picking the wrong spouse and I have to agree. Some days I spend more time talking with my co-founder than I do my wife, and right now he is currently six states away. But I wanted to add that #5 also plays a role here. I vividly remember the first time my co-founder and I had a disagreement: we were both pissed and thought the other was pretty stupid. Some things were said and I got offended but we were both able to take a step back and remove our emotion. I told myself, "this is how start-ups die." Once we both removed our emotion from the situation we were able to address the problem and ultimately make the product better. We needed to be persistent not only in our work, but also in our relationship. Ever since that time we've decided that while we may at times offend each other (it is a natural reaction), we just need to get over it, and quickly. Now we can say things like, "you're doing this wrong" or "that looks ugly" or "we need to completely rethink this" and no one wants to take their toys and go home. By removing emotion we can more direct, more efficient. And our product is better and we have more clients because of it.
tptacek 17y ago
"If your first version is so impressive that trolls don't make fun of it, you waited too long to launch."
- ksvs 17y ago
  They should print this at the top of the comments on each TechCrunch article.
allenbrunson 17y ago
There are a bunch of passages surrounded by asterisks. Shouldn't that be italics?
- pg 17y ago
  Fixed, thanks.
  - pclark 17y ago
    off topic, but I'd really like to see block quotes in hacker news comments.
    - rms 17y ago
      The pattern of block quotes tends to degrade comment quality
    - RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
      What do you mean by "block quotes"? You can already use "Code Mode" to quote exactly, get things in a different font, and formatted exactly as you wish. It's a fixed width font, though.
      - adw 17y ago
        Presumably <blockquote>?
      - deleted 17y ago
        [deleted]
  - dunstad 17y ago
    At the beginning of section 6. Think Long Term, you say "shear stress", but I think the word you intended to use is "sheer".
    - swolchok 17y ago
      It's correct as written. See sense 9 at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/shear http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/shear -- shearing stress is the stress between two blocks pressed together along a plane and moving in opposite directions parallel to that plane. It's a very nice analogy: the startup is moving fast in one direction and the VC or whatever is moving slowly in another one.
pclark 17y ago
I'd like to see pg write more about #12: Getting Users.
- jmtame 17y ago
  i think there are patterns for this as well. AFAIC, kevin rose has given one of the best summaries of patterns to follow for growth: http://carsonified.com/blog/web-apps/9-ways-to-take-your-site-from-one-to-one-million-users/ http://carsonified.com/blog/web-apps/9-ways-to-take-your-sit... the zappos talk given yesterday at startup school seems like a much longer-term solution to growth and repeat customers.
- incomethax 17y ago
  Getting users is such a topic that it is radically different from one startup to the next. Even two start-ups in the same area are likely to have very different plans for attracting and retaining users.
  - pclark 17y ago
    I don't believe thats true. your messaging to users [why do you want this?] and so on are good rules that can be learnt and iterated upon other peoples experiences.
- tylerhwillis 17y ago
  Agreed -- this is the point that seems underdeveloped in the YC methodology. Would love help fleshing this out but in my mind, the framework consists of Messages, Channels, and Users. Your job is to test different combinations of those in order to most effectively communicate product/market fit. When crafting a message, it's important to remember that there's only one question the customer cares about: "How does this help me reach my goals in the quickest and safest possible way?" The more of the thinking you do around this for them, the better your sales will be. You will find better combinations of message/channel/target over time by developing relationships with your customer; listen to them and watch what they do, you will get important data that you can use to refine your product and to refine your pitch.
saikat 17y ago
One of the big problems I have with PG's essays is that, though I like the content, I have a very hard time believing everything he says without evidence. When you are in an emotional low, it's very difficult to think, "I should just persist because PG says it usually works." So it was great to see his points actually backed up by other founders' experiences. As a side note, does anyone have a transcript of Jason Fried's talk? His was another favorite of mine from yesterday.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
  - snprbob86 17y ago
    I believe saikat was trying to say that this essay is refreshingly substantiated.
- cperciva 17y ago
  When you are in an emotional low, it's very difficult to think, "I should just persist because PG says it usually works." I usually take the opposite approach: I should persist because PG says that single-founder startups don't work, and I'm going to prove him wrong, damnit.
  - c00p3r 17y ago
    There are a lot of explanations why one is not enough. Think about practicing a foreign language - how it's much better when you have someone to talk to. That's also correct for almost any kind of evolving processes. Even a reading (which is a classical example of a lonely activity) could do better if you will develop the habit of reading aloud, like Tibetan and many other cultures have.
    - gcheong 17y ago
      I wonder though, with the comments about how the character and commitment of your co-founders matters so much more than ability or output that, in the case you can't get someone you know well to join you, that you would do better not having a co-founder rather than spending time looking for one.
qeorge 17y ago
#15, "You May Have to Play Games", resonated the most with me. I think even though we all know this its still a bitter pill to swallow because hackers generally don't have time/patience for smoke & mirrors. I think this is why customer development seems so wrong at first blush. One nitpicky little thing: "If you are persistent, even problems that seem out of your control (i.e. immigration) seem to work themselves out." Should be e.g., not i.e. I know its a quote and pg shouldn't fix it, but it drives me nuts when people get this wrong. i.e. is roughly equivalent to "in other words", and e.g. means "for example."
- jlees 17y ago
  Could be a specific reference to a particularly big problem the quoter had, in which case i.e. is just about o.k.
ardit33 17y ago
18. You Get No Respect There was one surprise founders mentioned that I'd forgotten about: that outside the startup world, startup founders get no respect. In social settings, I found that I got a lot more respect when I said, "I worked on Microsoft Office" instead of "I work at a small startup you've never heard of called x." Partly this is because the rest of the world just doesn't get startups, and partly it's yet another consequence of the fact that most good startup ideas seem bad: If you pitch your idea to a random person, 95% of the time you'll find the person instinctively thinks the idea will be a flop and you're wasting your time (although they probably won't say this directly). Unfortunately this extends even to dating: It surprised me that being a startup founder does not get you more admiration from women. I did know about that, but I'd forgotten. -- I totally agree with that. My previous job was in a startup, and when I told them "i worked on real-time location based mobile communication", and tried to explain what it was, it will usually go over the head. Now I tell I write the software of Kindle, and girls just dig it. I also heard apple people that work on iphone/ipod get a lot of attention in parties. My dating life has improved a lot. I was thinking why is this, but it might have to do with "everyone has a dream". As children we dream to be rich/famous artist/rockstar/soccer players, etc., but actually few people achieve this status. And girls, the good looking ones, during their lifes will get bombarded with "guys with dreams", and will see them more often to just fail, than go anywhere. So the dream/vision is just that, but normally doesn't pay the bills. Plus, the "dream of a startup", it is a very selfish one. While saying I "work for big corp/famous product", it makes you competent in their eyes, and as you achieved something tangible, and not just dreaming. Maybe I am overanalyizing it, but girls just like a provider, than somebody with a 'dream', but nothing to show for it yet, unless your startup made it, and you have something famous to show.
- pclark 17y ago
  those horizontal scroll bars are infuriating. when i tell people i work for my own company they're really impressed fwiw (in the uk) - I think tons of people can correlate with how terrible boring jobs are.
- thesethings 17y ago
  I'll respond to this from both sides, both as "the girl" and as "the person who gets no respect working for a startup." I am the opposite of your last sentence. A guy I like _has_ to have a dream/extreme passion. In fact, I prefer a-dream-and-broke, to no-dream-and-sweet-day-job. Either way I just like people who are focused and excited about stuff. That comes way before their job. (you hear that dudes in bands who sling coffee coz it lets you tour? i keed, i keed...) On the other side of the equation, when i talk about my own entrepreneurial stuff, reaction is all over the place. I think the main thing is that most people, guys and girls, have "a type" (i don't just mean looks, i mean style, subculture, humor, etc) And when when you approach people "cold," without knowing them through some other context (where you volunteer/go to school/hang out and drink coffee/see shows at), talking about your job is kind of this thing you're hoping will get them to change their type, or recontextualize you or something. But the thing is, before we utter the first words about our jobs, the chances that we'd click with that person are mostly determined by other stuff. So while it's very true that talking about our startups doesn't impress most people, it's really the low success rate of the "cold call" to blame :D
bensummers 17y ago
Well, it's nice to know that the last two or three years of my life are pretty usual in this game.
anateus 17y ago
One of the reasons startups aren't for everyone is that most people strongly prefer a steady moderate income over a risky and sporadic one no matter how great (though they still buy lottery tickets). This helps explain #18 as well as #4 :)
- codexon 17y ago
  So are you saying that running a startup is like playing the lottery?
  - tpyo 17y ago
    P(winning the lottery) * winnings - (cost to play) < 0 I think this is false with startups, but the chances of succeeding are still low.
    - JoeAltmaier 17y ago
      Actually the lottery can do better than that. The expected value of a lottery ticket can exceed the cost to play ($1) when its in its third or fourth round without a winner.
mattmaroon 17y ago
#18 REALLY depends on where you live. If you're in the Valley, definitely. Everyone who is not in a startup there works at somewhere like Adobe and has 10 coworkers who previously founded a Web 2.0 social search engine for pet clothing which promptly flopped. People used to ask me "what do you have to do to become a professional poker player?" and my reply was always "quit your job." It's a lot like that with startups, and everyone within 100 miles of San Jose knows it. If you live in Ohio, however, "I own a software company" goes a lot further. If only I were single...
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  I guess it depends on how you describe it, eh? "I own a software company" does sound like it'd be more successful than "I run an internet startup."
  - tptacek 17y ago
    I say "I own a company", exactly because "I have an internet startup" seems like an eye-roller. I agree with the previous comment: the fact that we're out-of-the-ordinary in Chicago is one of the things I like best about Chicago.
    - mattmaroon 17y ago
      It's basic salesmanship. Phrase things in the way that sounds best (within the bounds of honesty of course). "I have an internet startup" sounds a lot like "I fell for a get rich quick scheme. Would you like to buy some vitamins?"
      - deleted 17y ago
        [deleted]
bootload 17y ago
If wrote a new essay with the same outline as this that wasn't summarizing the founders' responses, everyone would say I'd run out of ideas and was just repeating myself. The Super-Pattern, 2nd para needs "If 'I' wrote a new essay".
- pg 17y ago
  Fixed; thanks.
hop 17y ago
Off topic - why the Yahoo favicon?
- jmtame 17y ago
  probably has something to do with pg's sale of viaweb to yahoo
  - pg 17y ago
    In a sense. It's because my site is made with Yahoo Store, and there is no obvious way to change the favicon.
    - hop 17y ago
      Add this to your in the head tag and it should work -- <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico"> I just emailed you a vanity favicon :)
      - pg 17y ago
        Unfortunately Store doesn't give you access to the head. Is there something I could stick in the body that would work?
        johnrob 17y ago
        Here's how to get access to the head (took some googling and tinkering): 1) Put editor in advanced mode by clicking on red arrow on top right (you have to be in advanced mode to override a variable) 2) Click 'Variables' link (now it is possible to 'override' the missing Head-tags variable). 3) Override the 'Head-tags' variable by clicking the "Define New Variable" button (even though we want to override) 4) Now you can paste in a tag like this: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://enter-url-here-to-your-store/favicon.ico http://enter-url-here-to-your-store/favicon.ico type="image/x-icon" /> I love yahoo store, but it has some serious usability issues right now ;)
babyshake 17y ago
The line about how "it's like we're married, but we're not fucking" makes me curious about the correlations between a founder's relationship with co-founders and their relationship with romantic partners. You might get some good insight by observing a potential co-founder's behavior toward their romantic partner, or toward potential romantic partners if they're single.
- maukdaddy 17y ago
  I'm going to get blasted for this, but here goes anyway. I'm willing to bet that the majority of founders are single males who do not understand what marriage is all about. I have not had the experience of being part of a start-up, but I do have 6 years of marriage under my belt. I cannot imagine any circumstance where being someone's co-fonder is in any way like being married to them.
  - caffeine 17y ago
    However, the wannabe founders reading it are also probably single males who don't understand marriage. We do, however, probably all share a very similar caricature of marriage - and thus the analogy is useful in communicating the bizarre mix of love, hate, co-dependence, shared depression and elation, occasional jealousy and careful maintenance that characterizes the relationship between two guys in a foxhole with laptops.
    - jlees 17y ago
      it's particularly interesting when your co-founder is female. (or, you're a female co-founder teaming up with a guy.)
      - caffeine 17y ago
        That is interesting - have you done this? How did it go?
        jlees 17y ago
netsp 17y ago
My Favourite soundbite" "Over-engineering is poison. It's not like doing extra work for extra credit. It's more like telling a lie that you then have to remember so you don't contradict it."
patio11 17y ago
I sometimes wonder if the Valley culture doesn't socially construct some of the startup pathologies. For example, startups taking over your life: why does this happen? Is this because startups take over your life and nothing can be done about this? I am skeptical of this: I run a small business, the time demands are rather modest, and I live a life outside of work. I'm surely not uniquely in a position to do this. Now, step back: who here wants to say any variant of "That isn't the same thing!", "That isn't possible!", or "You are insufficiently dedicated and will never be truly successful!" You see, that is why startups take over your life: because you expect them to take over your life, everyone you know and talk to and model your behavior on expects them to take over your life, and if they're not taking over your life you are told you are doing something wrong.
- rythie 17y ago
  Surely it is until you prove it succeeds it's quite likely it will fail - if you have not launched or have launced but have no users or are not profitable it's seems likely you will fail without a lot more work. I suspect from your description that your business is already successful and is a low risk of failure.
- vlad 17y ago
  I've sold shareware for 3 years, similar to what you and many other lone developers I know personally and online are doing (seems like mac, iPhone, and casual games.). The thing is, when a group of developers decide to band together to try to develop something bigger, they all have to hurry to keep the momentum going, as there are more people who might quit due to running out of money, going to grad school, getting married, etc. At the same time, the vision of the company should be bigger than that of a lone shareware author, such that it more than compensates for going-for-it-alone. Many are happy to have a lifestyle business in addition to their full-time job, and feeling respected by posting on Joel on Software and these discussions. Others have opportunities, either because they are young and have college friends, or are older with money saved up and a list of industry contacts, to jump in on a new idea together. This dilutes ownership but allows one to iterate faster, and avoid being the only one outside of their customers who actually know and care about their product.
TalentOnCampus 17y ago
If there was one more relevant but vital surprise to add it would be > underestimated the role of marketing A lot of startup founders think its about building a superb product , its not . Its about how you market it and get users on board
shawndrost 17y ago
Paul says asking what is surprising is equivalent to asking what he got wrong, but it may be that some things are impossible to communicate in essay format. Things like "persistence is key" are accurate textual representations of the underlying lesson, but the important part of that lesson is the unassailable gut knowledge of its truth, which is hard to get from an essay.
peripitea 17y ago
I would love to hear how other founders have worked their immigration issues out. That's probably the biggest thing from stopping me right now -- all of my potential co-founders are American but I'm Canadian without a green card.
b3eck 17y ago
The reason not to put your all your eggs in one basket is not the usual one, which applies even when you know which basket is best. The last paragraph of 7 has an extra 'your' (but otherwise you're not repeating yourself ;-)
10ren 17y ago
> [Over-engineering is] more like telling a lie that you then have to remember so you don't contradict it. Meaning that you have to keep justifying that extra bit of complexity, by thinking in terms of it - and therefore making it "true", even if it's not appropriate? Like a theory you have committed to ahead of the facts? Reminds me of YAGNI and "do the simplest thing that could possibly work" - except applied to solving a real-world problem, instead of a pre-specified technical problem. I would like to add that doing this also increases iteration speed - that is, the speed of learning and adaptation. http://c2.com/xp/YouArentGonnaNeedIt.html http://c2.com/xp/YouArentGonnaNeedIt.html - http://c2.com/xp/DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork.html http://c2.com/xp/DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork.htm...
known 17y ago
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw
JLaramie 17y ago
Such a great presentation from Paul. I particularly like the piece on competitors, not worrying about them, and believing in your approach to the market and product. Go get em!
mmt 17y ago
#14 strikes me as the most startling. It's not that I hadn't guessed VC cluelessness, despite never having talked to them myself. Rather, it's that so much pretense has been acceptable for so long. If technology knowledge isn't necessary to make successful technology investments, why do the asset managers put up with the charade? Is it all just an effect of VC rewards being too loosely coupled with results? (#15 seems to me to follow as a matter of course, and is, arguably, the other side to the same coin)
- dualogy 17y ago
  If it so happens that their primary concern is financial developments, "market trends" etc., is that really news to anyone? I mean I'm a developer myself but I acknowledge that if they don't have as much of a clue as we would like them to have, maybe it's because the market(s) reward their other qualities and it Just Doesn't Matter (or make such a big difference to their returns). (The fact is that not everything that matters to us personally matters on other scales just as much.)
conskeptical 17y ago
Mostly, I like this article. But... : "This is the same phenomenon you see with defense contractors or fashion brands. The dumber the customers, the more effort you expend on the process of selling things to them rather than making the things you sell." At first I thought this was funny and smart... but now I think it's rather glib. "Fashion brands" is almost by definition entirely a marketing exercise... tautology is a pretty boring type of argument. Now... the industry in wearable items is huge and not entirely oriented around marketing at the expense of value... Defence contracting... I think it's a lot more complicated than dumb customers. For one, there are only a few customers... typically governments. So in a market with a low ratio of buyers to sellers, clearly you have to invest a lot in getting attention. And given the nature of contracts, once you have their attention (and their contract), the profit motive is then to satisfy the contract as close to the line as possible... that is... to skimp and make your product as crap as you can get away with. Witty insights should really have some grounding in reality, and point the way to other interesting thoughts. This just seems to be a collective geek snigger at the aggressive and the fashionable.

382 points by apu 17y ago

Running a startup is not like having a job or being a student, because it never stops. I was fraternity president for a while. I distinctly remember being surprised by this "feature" of my job. Especially when I am awoken at 3AM with news that a (fully sober) member had driven his truck into the lake across the street. This job was the best experience I had prior to running a startup, and I'd never do it again.

marcofloriano 17y ago

#13 My advice is generally pessimistic. Assume you won't get money, and if someone does offer you any, assume you'll never get any more. I´m a business wannabe from Brazil and i just laugh when i read that one. Here we dont have ANY chances of getting money from VCs so when we start something new, specially with technology, we never expect to get money. Ramen profit system is not an option at poor countries, it´s the law.

c00p3r 17y ago
That's it. Think about self-developing as a startup. This should be one's first startup - build your own self (yes, go toward unknown, launch fast, evolve, iterate, grow).
lloydarmbrust 17y ago
I've been unconsciously practicing number #13 since the beginning of our start-up. Every time I close a deal I'm thinking, "it's not over until we start getting paid from these guys." That attitude has served me well, I mean, I've had groups back out on us after they signed an agreement. What are we going to do? Lawyers cost to much and who wants to work with someone who doesn't want to work with us? Our customers are our partners and we love them--but if the feeling's not mutual I'd rather cut it off. It's funny, I'm so optimistic about our success--I'm an entrepreneur after all--but I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop when closing a new customer. BTW: I should mention that our customers are newspapers, who are notorious for taking a long time to make bad decisions . . . so when we close someone, it's time to break out the scotch.
- yason 17y ago
  That just shows you appreciate your own worth and time. Some partners and customers carry negative worth. It's important to get rid of them, or not start anything with them in the first place. You seem to recognize that you always have a position of your own: you don't merely have to take just about anything that happens to come in as you know you have better things to do as long as there isn't anything in it for you.
- Andys 17y ago
  Absolutely: I don't tell family about, or celebrate, a new deal until the money is actually in the bank.
- JoeAltmaier 17y ago
  We counted the times our Founder announced "We're funded!" - total of 21 in 2 years. We never got ANY money.

coffeemug 17y ago

One theme in this essay is that Paul keeps drilling these concepts into founders, and almost every time the founders don't believe him. Paul then reaches the conclusion that it's probably because the founders are too optimistic. I think this bit is wrong. It's not that we're too optimistic, it's that the process is so subtle that the English language is too coarse to describe it. For example, what exactly does it mean when someone says 95% of the VCs are incompetent? How exactly are they incompetent? To what degree and in what ways? What exactly do they do that makes them appear incompetent? If you've never talked to VCs before, reading that they're "incompetent" probably won't give you a good idea of what an average interaction with them is like. It's sort of like describing what making love is like for the first time. Very eloquent people have written volumes on this, but it's far too subtle for a written or spoken language. Until you actually do it, you'll only have a very poor approximation in your mind of what it might be like, no matter how much you read. Startups are like that.

gcv 17y ago

I'd like to (slightly) challenge #8: it seems to me that Dropbox is a counterexample. The Dropbox guys took quite a long time and their first release was quite polished. Not perfect, certainly, but way, way ahead of just minimally functional.

netsp 17y ago
I think this is just semantics, the definition of 'launch' for this purpose can be pretty flexible.
snprbob86 17y ago
They were also their own target users. I'm sure they ate their own dog food quite a bit.
breck 17y ago
instead of "counterexample", use "exception to the rule".
JoeAltmaier 17y ago
I'll disagree. DropBox is somewhat slick, but has embarrassing flaws. They have some way to go. So I guess they did it right!
pmjordan 17y ago
I think that's in no small part due to the problem Dropbox solves. Don't forget this problem has been "solved" about a gazillion times before, but the lack of polish made those "solutions" unusable in practice.

gbookman 17y ago

All the scares induced by seeing a new competitor pop up are forgotten weeks later. It always comes down to your own product and approach to the market. This quote and the other comments about overestimating your competition really stood out to me. It's true that as a Founder, your own ability to execute and find what customers want is what matters.

JoeAltmaier 17y ago
Remember its a survivor that said that. The ones that got squashed dead by competition aren't in the conversation.

lloydarmbrust 17y ago

Very timely post for me as I started up earlier this year--amazing how many of these things I've already learned the hard way. #1 is aptly chosen. I've always heard that picking the wrong business partner is worse than picking the wrong spouse and I have to agree. Some days I spend more time talking with my co-founder than I do my wife, and right now he is currently six states away. But I wanted to add that #5 also plays a role here. I vividly remember the first time my co-founder and I had a disagreement: we were both pissed and thought the other was pretty stupid. Some things were said and I got offended but we were both able to take a step back and remove our emotion. I told myself, "this is how start-ups die." Once we both removed our emotion from the situation we were able to address the problem and ultimately make the product better. We needed to be persistent not only in our work, but also in our relationship. Ever since that time we've decided that while we may at times offend each other (it is a natural reaction), we just need to get over it, and quickly. Now we can say things like, "you're doing this wrong" or "that looks ugly" or "we need to completely rethink this" and no one wants to take their toys and go home. By removing emotion we can more direct, more efficient. And our product is better and we have more clients because of it.

tptacek 17y ago

"If your first version is so impressive that trolls don't make fun of it, you waited too long to launch."

ksvs 17y ago
They should print this at the top of the comments on each TechCrunch article.

allenbrunson 17y ago

There are a bunch of passages surrounded by asterisks. Shouldn't that be italics?

pg 17y ago
Fixed, thanks.
- pclark 17y ago
  off topic, but I'd really like to see block quotes in hacker news comments.
  - rms 17y ago
    The pattern of block quotes tends to degrade comment quality
  - RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
    What do you mean by "block quotes"? You can already use "Code Mode" to quote exactly, get things in a different font, and formatted exactly as you wish. It's a fixed width font, though.
    - adw 17y ago
      Presumably <blockquote>?
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
- dunstad 17y ago
  At the beginning of section 6. Think Long Term, you say "shear stress", but I think the word you intended to use is "sheer".
  - swolchok 17y ago
    It's correct as written. See sense 9 at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/shear http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/shear -- shearing stress is the stress between two blocks pressed together along a plane and moving in opposite directions parallel to that plane. It's a very nice analogy: the startup is moving fast in one direction and the VC or whatever is moving slowly in another one.

pclark 17y ago

I'd like to see pg write more about #12: Getting Users.

jmtame 17y ago
i think there are patterns for this as well. AFAIC, kevin rose has given one of the best summaries of patterns to follow for growth: http://carsonified.com/blog/web-apps/9-ways-to-take-your-site-from-one-to-one-million-users/ http://carsonified.com/blog/web-apps/9-ways-to-take-your-sit... the zappos talk given yesterday at startup school seems like a much longer-term solution to growth and repeat customers.
incomethax 17y ago
Getting users is such a topic that it is radically different from one startup to the next. Even two start-ups in the same area are likely to have very different plans for attracting and retaining users.
- pclark 17y ago
  I don't believe thats true. your messaging to users [why do you want this?] and so on are good rules that can be learnt and iterated upon other peoples experiences.
tylerhwillis 17y ago
Agreed -- this is the point that seems underdeveloped in the YC methodology. Would love help fleshing this out but in my mind, the framework consists of Messages, Channels, and Users. Your job is to test different combinations of those in order to most effectively communicate product/market fit. When crafting a message, it's important to remember that there's only one question the customer cares about: "How does this help me reach my goals in the quickest and safest possible way?" The more of the thinking you do around this for them, the better your sales will be. You will find better combinations of message/channel/target over time by developing relationships with your customer; listen to them and watch what they do, you will get important data that you can use to refine your product and to refine your pitch.

saikat 17y ago

One of the big problems I have with PG's essays is that, though I like the content, I have a very hard time believing everything he says without evidence. When you are in an emotional low, it's very difficult to think, "I should just persist because PG says it usually works." So it was great to see his points actually backed up by other founders' experiences. As a side note, does anyone have a transcript of Jason Fried's talk? His was another favorite of mine from yesterday.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
- snprbob86 17y ago
  I believe saikat was trying to say that this essay is refreshingly substantiated.
cperciva 17y ago
When you are in an emotional low, it's very difficult to think, "I should just persist because PG says it usually works." I usually take the opposite approach: I should persist because PG says that single-founder startups don't work, and I'm going to prove him wrong, damnit.
- c00p3r 17y ago
  There are a lot of explanations why one is not enough. Think about practicing a foreign language - how it's much better when you have someone to talk to. That's also correct for almost any kind of evolving processes. Even a reading (which is a classical example of a lonely activity) could do better if you will develop the habit of reading aloud, like Tibetan and many other cultures have.
  - gcheong 17y ago
    I wonder though, with the comments about how the character and commitment of your co-founders matters so much more than ability or output that, in the case you can't get someone you know well to join you, that you would do better not having a co-founder rather than spending time looking for one.

qeorge 17y ago

#15, "You May Have to Play Games", resonated the most with me. I think even though we all know this its still a bitter pill to swallow because hackers generally don't have time/patience for smoke & mirrors. I think this is why customer development seems so wrong at first blush. One nitpicky little thing: "If you are persistent, even problems that seem out of your control (i.e. immigration) seem to work themselves out." Should be e.g., not i.e. I know its a quote and pg shouldn't fix it, but it drives me nuts when people get this wrong. i.e. is roughly equivalent to "in other words", and e.g. means "for example."

jlees 17y ago
Could be a specific reference to a particularly big problem the quoter had, in which case i.e. is just about o.k.

ardit33 17y ago

18. You Get No Respect There was one surprise founders mentioned that I'd forgotten about: that outside the startup world, startup founders get no respect. In social settings, I found that I got a lot more respect when I said, "I worked on Microsoft Office" instead of "I work at a small startup you've never heard of called x." Partly this is because the rest of the world just doesn't get startups, and partly it's yet another consequence of the fact that most good startup ideas seem bad: If you pitch your idea to a random person, 95% of the time you'll find the person instinctively thinks the idea will be a flop and you're wasting your time (although they probably won't say this directly). Unfortunately this extends even to dating: It surprised me that being a startup founder does not get you more admiration from women. I did know about that, but I'd forgotten. -- I totally agree with that. My previous job was in a startup, and when I told them "i worked on real-time location based mobile communication", and tried to explain what it was, it will usually go over the head. Now I tell I write the software of Kindle, and girls just dig it. I also heard apple people that work on iphone/ipod get a lot of attention in parties. My dating life has improved a lot. I was thinking why is this, but it might have to do with "everyone has a dream". As children we dream to be rich/famous artist/rockstar/soccer players, etc., but actually few people achieve this status. And girls, the good looking ones, during their lifes will get bombarded with "guys with dreams", and will see them more often to just fail, than go anywhere. So the dream/vision is just that, but normally doesn't pay the bills. Plus, the "dream of a startup", it is a very selfish one. While saying I "work for big corp/famous product", it makes you competent in their eyes, and as you achieved something tangible, and not just dreaming. Maybe I am overanalyizing it, but girls just like a provider, than somebody with a 'dream', but nothing to show for it yet, unless your startup made it, and you have something famous to show.

pclark 17y ago
those horizontal scroll bars are infuriating. when i tell people i work for my own company they're really impressed fwiw (in the uk) - I think tons of people can correlate with how terrible boring jobs are.
thesethings 17y ago
I'll respond to this from both sides, both as "the girl" and as "the person who gets no respect working for a startup." I am the opposite of your last sentence. A guy I like _has_ to have a dream/extreme passion. In fact, I prefer a-dream-and-broke, to no-dream-and-sweet-day-job. Either way I just like people who are focused and excited about stuff. That comes way before their job. (you hear that dudes in bands who sling coffee coz it lets you tour? i keed, i keed...) On the other side of the equation, when i talk about my own entrepreneurial stuff, reaction is all over the place. I think the main thing is that most people, guys and girls, have "a type" (i don't just mean looks, i mean style, subculture, humor, etc) And when when you approach people "cold," without knowing them through some other context (where you volunteer/go to school/hang out and drink coffee/see shows at), talking about your job is kind of this thing you're hoping will get them to change their type, or recontextualize you or something. But the thing is, before we utter the first words about our jobs, the chances that we'd click with that person are mostly determined by other stuff. So while it's very true that talking about our startups doesn't impress most people, it's really the low success rate of the "cold call" to blame :D

bensummers 17y ago

Well, it's nice to know that the last two or three years of my life are pretty usual in this game.

anateus 17y ago

One of the reasons startups aren't for everyone is that most people strongly prefer a steady moderate income over a risky and sporadic one no matter how great (though they still buy lottery tickets). This helps explain #18 as well as #4 :)

codexon 17y ago
So are you saying that running a startup is like playing the lottery?
- tpyo 17y ago
  P(winning the lottery) * winnings - (cost to play) < 0 I think this is false with startups, but the chances of succeeding are still low.
  - JoeAltmaier 17y ago
    Actually the lottery can do better than that. The expected value of a lottery ticket can exceed the cost to play ($1) when its in its third or fourth round without a winner.

mattmaroon 17y ago

#18 REALLY depends on where you live. If you're in the Valley, definitely. Everyone who is not in a startup there works at somewhere like Adobe and has 10 coworkers who previously founded a Web 2.0 social search engine for pet clothing which promptly flopped. People used to ask me "what do you have to do to become a professional poker player?" and my reply was always "quit your job." It's a lot like that with startups, and everyone within 100 miles of San Jose knows it. If you live in Ohio, however, "I own a software company" goes a lot further. If only I were single...

brandnewlow 17y ago
I guess it depends on how you describe it, eh? "I own a software company" does sound like it'd be more successful than "I run an internet startup."
- tptacek 17y ago
  I say "I own a company", exactly because "I have an internet startup" seems like an eye-roller. I agree with the previous comment: the fact that we're out-of-the-ordinary in Chicago is one of the things I like best about Chicago.
  - mattmaroon 17y ago
    It's basic salesmanship. Phrase things in the way that sounds best (within the bounds of honesty of course). "I have an internet startup" sounds a lot like "I fell for a get rich quick scheme. Would you like to buy some vitamins?"
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]

bootload 17y ago

If wrote a new essay with the same outline as this that wasn't summarizing the founders' responses, everyone would say I'd run out of ideas and was just repeating myself. The Super-Pattern, 2nd para needs "If 'I' wrote a new essay".

pg 17y ago
Fixed; thanks.

hop 17y ago

Off topic - why the Yahoo favicon?

jmtame 17y ago
probably has something to do with pg's sale of viaweb to yahoo
- pg 17y ago
  In a sense. It's because my site is made with Yahoo Store, and there is no obvious way to change the favicon.
  - hop 17y ago
    Add this to your in the head tag and it should work -- <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico"> I just emailed you a vanity favicon :)
    - pg 17y ago
      Unfortunately Store doesn't give you access to the head. Is there something I could stick in the body that would work?
      - johnrob 17y ago
        Here's how to get access to the head (took some googling and tinkering): 1) Put editor in advanced mode by clicking on red arrow on top right (you have to be in advanced mode to override a variable) 2) Click 'Variables' link (now it is possible to 'override' the missing Head-tags variable). 3) Override the 'Head-tags' variable by clicking the "Define New Variable" button (even though we want to override) 4) Now you can paste in a tag like this: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://enter-url-here-to-your-store/favicon.ico http://enter-url-here-to-your-store/favicon.ico type="image/x-icon" /> I love yahoo store, but it has some serious usability issues right now ;)

babyshake 17y ago

The line about how "it's like we're married, but we're not fucking" makes me curious about the correlations between a founder's relationship with co-founders and their relationship with romantic partners. You might get some good insight by observing a potential co-founder's behavior toward their romantic partner, or toward potential romantic partners if they're single.

maukdaddy 17y ago
I'm going to get blasted for this, but here goes anyway. I'm willing to bet that the majority of founders are single males who do not understand what marriage is all about. I have not had the experience of being part of a start-up, but I do have 6 years of marriage under my belt. I cannot imagine any circumstance where being someone's co-fonder is in any way like being married to them.
- caffeine 17y ago
  However, the wannabe founders reading it are also probably single males who don't understand marriage. We do, however, probably all share a very similar caricature of marriage - and thus the analogy is useful in communicating the bizarre mix of love, hate, co-dependence, shared depression and elation, occasional jealousy and careful maintenance that characterizes the relationship between two guys in a foxhole with laptops.
  - jlees 17y ago
    it's particularly interesting when your co-founder is female. (or, you're a female co-founder teaming up with a guy.)
    - caffeine 17y ago
      That is interesting - have you done this? How did it go?
      - jlees 17y ago

netsp 17y ago

My Favourite soundbite" "Over-engineering is poison. It's not like doing extra work for extra credit. It's more like telling a lie that you then have to remember so you don't contradict it."

patio11 17y ago

I sometimes wonder if the Valley culture doesn't socially construct some of the startup pathologies. For example, startups taking over your life: why does this happen? Is this because startups take over your life and nothing can be done about this? I am skeptical of this: I run a small business, the time demands are rather modest, and I live a life outside of work. I'm surely not uniquely in a position to do this. Now, step back: who here wants to say any variant of "That isn't the same thing!", "That isn't possible!", or "You are insufficiently dedicated and will never be truly successful!" You see, that is why startups take over your life: because you expect them to take over your life, everyone you know and talk to and model your behavior on expects them to take over your life, and if they're not taking over your life you are told you are doing something wrong.

rythie 17y ago
Surely it is until you prove it succeeds it's quite likely it will fail - if you have not launched or have launced but have no users or are not profitable it's seems likely you will fail without a lot more work. I suspect from your description that your business is already successful and is a low risk of failure.
vlad 17y ago
I've sold shareware for 3 years, similar to what you and many other lone developers I know personally and online are doing (seems like mac, iPhone, and casual games.). The thing is, when a group of developers decide to band together to try to develop something bigger, they all have to hurry to keep the momentum going, as there are more people who might quit due to running out of money, going to grad school, getting married, etc. At the same time, the vision of the company should be bigger than that of a lone shareware author, such that it more than compensates for going-for-it-alone. Many are happy to have a lifestyle business in addition to their full-time job, and feeling respected by posting on Joel on Software and these discussions. Others have opportunities, either because they are young and have college friends, or are older with money saved up and a list of industry contacts, to jump in on a new idea together. This dilutes ownership but allows one to iterate faster, and avoid being the only one outside of their customers who actually know and care about their product.

TalentOnCampus 17y ago

If there was one more relevant but vital surprise to add it would be > underestimated the role of marketing A lot of startup founders think its about building a superb product , its not . Its about how you market it and get users on board

shawndrost 17y ago

Paul says asking what is surprising is equivalent to asking what he got wrong, but it may be that some things are impossible to communicate in essay format. Things like "persistence is key" are accurate textual representations of the underlying lesson, but the important part of that lesson is the unassailable gut knowledge of its truth, which is hard to get from an essay.

peripitea 17y ago

I would love to hear how other founders have worked their immigration issues out. That's probably the biggest thing from stopping me right now -- all of my potential co-founders are American but I'm Canadian without a green card.

b3eck 17y ago

The reason not to put your all your eggs in one basket is not the usual one, which applies even when you know which basket is best. The last paragraph of 7 has an extra 'your' (but otherwise you're not repeating yourself ;-)

10ren 17y ago

> [Over-engineering is] more like telling a lie that you then have to remember so you don't contradict it. Meaning that you have to keep justifying that extra bit of complexity, by thinking in terms of it - and therefore making it "true", even if it's not appropriate? Like a theory you have committed to ahead of the facts? Reminds me of YAGNI and "do the simplest thing that could possibly work" - except applied to solving a real-world problem, instead of a pre-specified technical problem. I would like to add that doing this also increases iteration speed - that is, the speed of learning and adaptation. http://c2.com/xp/YouArentGonnaNeedIt.html http://c2.com/xp/YouArentGonnaNeedIt.html - http://c2.com/xp/DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork.html http://c2.com/xp/DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork.htm...

known 17y ago

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw

JLaramie 17y ago

Such a great presentation from Paul. I particularly like the piece on competitors, not worrying about them, and believing in your approach to the market and product. Go get em!

mmt 17y ago

#14 strikes me as the most startling. It's not that I hadn't guessed VC cluelessness, despite never having talked to them myself. Rather, it's that so much pretense has been acceptable for so long. If technology knowledge isn't necessary to make successful technology investments, why do the asset managers put up with the charade? Is it all just an effect of VC rewards being too loosely coupled with results? (#15 seems to me to follow as a matter of course, and is, arguably, the other side to the same coin)

dualogy 17y ago
If it so happens that their primary concern is financial developments, "market trends" etc., is that really news to anyone? I mean I'm a developer myself but I acknowledge that if they don't have as much of a clue as we would like them to have, maybe it's because the market(s) reward their other qualities and it Just Doesn't Matter (or make such a big difference to their returns). (The fact is that not everything that matters to us personally matters on other scales just as much.)

conskeptical 17y ago

Mostly, I like this article. But... : "This is the same phenomenon you see with defense contractors or fashion brands. The dumber the customers, the more effort you expend on the process of selling things to them rather than making the things you sell." At first I thought this was funny and smart... but now I think it's rather glib. "Fashion brands" is almost by definition entirely a marketing exercise... tautology is a pretty boring type of argument. Now... the industry in wearable items is huge and not entirely oriented around marketing at the expense of value... Defence contracting... I think it's a lot more complicated than dumb customers. For one, there are only a few customers... typically governments. So in a market with a low ratio of buyers to sellers, clearly you have to invest a lot in getting attention. And given the nature of contracts, once you have their attention (and their contract), the profit motive is then to satisfy the contract as close to the line as possible... that is... to skimp and make your product as crap as you can get away with. Witty insights should really have some grounding in reality, and point the way to other interesting thoughts. This just seems to be a collective geek snigger at the aggressive and the fashionable.