I see a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs wanting to build something, and get obsessed about finding a new idea that's never done before, and failing at it.
As if there was only one of everything in the world. There cannot be another restaurant in this city because there's already one. No one can make money selling phones, shoes, browsers, utility software, because they already exist. Nonsense. Either you have a new idea and invent a monopoly, or you have an old idea but you make it better. And you probably don't want to build a monopoly just yet, that's a whole other game.
The bonus of being a startup is that you can afford to try out new approaches to old problems. You don't need a crazy new idea, just to make a marginally better product than the competition. Effort > originality.
Anyone bootstrapping should make sure to copy an existing successful product or service. Copy it, copy its sales funnel, copy its ads, everything you can get away with.
Moonshots is for funded startups. Bootstrappers biggest risk, which will happen almost 100% if they have a technical background, is building stuff based on a logical "good idea", rather than mimicking what's proven to work as closely as humanly possible.
There's plenty of time for innovating later once the wheels are rolling and you're getting real time feedback.
I don't know anything about founding nor am I interested about it, but at least it was funny. On some other topic, I've found this kind of post to be refreshing and relieving, even if your inner voice says "yes, but...". It is kind of popping a couple of the nested bubbles you're in when you are deep in a project.
This line about innovation reminds me what one of the (founding) member of a band says in a masterclass session [1]: the music you make doesn't have to be entirely new all the time. They show an example with one of their own song and compare it to another famous one: "That's the same thing".
If you're above solving small problems that users say hell yes too, it's very difficult to build anything big with that kind of ego.
All big problems are very regularly a lot of small problems very well understood on their own and in between each other.
Innovation can actually be faster, better, and cheaper, and still charge more.
In the cases where people want to hide in academic style R&D with no real connection to operationalizing or commercializing .. the pursuit of innovation for recognition of some kind can oddly correlate with seeking significance/self-worth.. from others.
- The disease and illusion of externally reinforced innovation can be very challenging.
- It's one thing to have this disease, and another to be able to deliver on it. Very few can, let alone do. Even fewer sit with problems for the time needed to let the understanding form.
- Being the first is not usually best, or the best. Usually early an the worst. Learning market timing and meeting the market is so important.
- Being unique is not great either most of the time, there are so many challenges created in needing to create your own market, and educate them.... the very first time you're being an entrepreneur lol. YC has some good videos on this.
- Adding or creating value isn't just invention, innovation, or even commercialization. Adding value to making the lives of people is beneath someone, they might not be a founder, and more of a finder of one's self-worth.
Go all the way back to the first guy who made the first screw. A foundational innovation. The critics of the day might have said, “that’s not an innovation, he just wrapped an incline plane around a cylinder. What a joke.” Prior to that when the incline plane was described the critics may have said, “wow, what an amazing and ‘innovative’ scientist, he thinks he invented hills. Ha.”
There is no hard line that separates evolution from revolution at the design stage. It’s really up to the market. Seemingly small changes, like pre-sliced bread, can change everything. While things people think will be revolutionary fall flat… remember when the Segway (Ginger) hype, it was going to change the design of cities. It didn’t.
Oh, I emphatically agree with both the post's content and the post's tone. I think it is a lot about building something you like well.
It doesn't have to be unique, it doesn't have to cost you a burn out and your health, it just has to be something well made and with some passion.
Looking back 500 years or so, you can put your finger on some innovations that have changed the world positively - Enlightenment, printing press, steam/coal/etc power, assembly line etc. These have all had some unseen societal cost associated with them, where change propagates and feeds back leading to unknowable outcomes. We’ve gotten through it (well most of us). Looking back just 50 years, computing, internet, globalization of trade, mass communication and media, social media/peer to peer, decentralization, and now AI; social mores have gone 180 degrees, social groups/religions that have persisted for centuries are falling away, hobbyists from across the globe can converge and share their interests with the rest of the world, and so can anarchists and bad actors. And if AGI happens, given we’ve trained it on 50 years of digitized “two feet on the accelerator pedal” innovating, I am not sure our civilization can take it. Or if anyone cares (besides a few anti accelerationists who are widely derided).
Some people want to start a company as a get rich or get influential scheme. It can work if you're cut out for it and you're lucky. This thread is arguing you're better off not being innovative. Perhaps, fair enough.
Some people need to start a company in order to improve something. It might be society in general, the way we use computers, or how we interact with one another. This is what motivates them and what makes them put up with the long odds and herculean requirements.
No startup course or ebook even touch upon these problems, and it is exponentially harder than simply being a "regular" entrepreneur.
Many just want to be their own boss, and don't need to ever go down this route.
No doubt if you found Facebook and you swear blood about it he fine detail of SEO optimisation, there's no competition. But what about in average, where a realistic best case scenario is a fairly successful startup with a few 100m exit and a lot of dilution.
I don't know the answer but often wonder. Running a startup sounds fun, but also the whole VC treadmill sounds very stressful.
It’s been weird watching the term morph into what it is today over the past 25 years. So much for hacking on a startup in your garage with friends after collecting enough money from friends and family to bootstrap yourself. Once you are taking millions of dollars from investors while being valued in the billions you are simply a boring old corporate enterprise to me. And that doesn’t even get into the absurdity of 10 year old “startups” with hundreds of employees.
I think the term loses all meaning when you are talking about established companies with HR departments.
Half arsed marketing - can sell any half decent product. This is good enough for 99% of businesses
Excellent marketing - you can sell even the most blatant scam at this tier
Paul Graham et al. are spewing out these godawful, borderline fucking idiotic ideas and he giggles as all the emptyheaded fucking idiots copy it, try to interpret it and gospel it like some fucking world changing mantra. Wake the fuck up naive plus stupid mudabitches, those who have the brains often feed shit to you, so you won't succeed.
Really, people are like pigeons. Walking around and picking up all kinds of debris, thinking that it will change their business or it has some groundbreaking idea enclosed within. Why? Because people are STUPID, utterly stupid, brainless monkeys.
He said that the sky is not blue, but green. He is an established person with high net wealth, he must be right. So let's say the sky is green. Fake it till you make it, suuuuuure.
Read books so you could hone your bullshit filter.
Most of things in the initial hate list are not useless. They just are not worth obsessing over. You don't need tons of SEO, market research, or analytics. A small but nonzero amount is still useful. That guy, for instance, used the overdose of profanities as a marketing tool to successfully get his product and his personality on the HN front page.
Mocking onboarding though is a more serious mistake. Most of your users won't "figure it out" unless you care about it well beforehand.
"Have you done market research to figure out your pricing?" is a very, very reasonable question. But likely the research for your (tiny) upcoming product should take under one hour. Looking at your competition's offers and at people's reactions along the way could give you an idea or two how to (slightly) improve your own product.
And "this whole notion that you have to build something innovative and magical" mixes up two unrelated things. Actually "innovative" is rare. But absolutely go for "magical" if you can! I see "magical" as "friction-free". Say, Docker was not very innovative but "docker run" was magical. Dropbox was famously lambasted on HN for not being innovative; still it was magical enough to be a big success. Google Wave was genuinely innovative, but it sorely lacked magic,
"You’re a startup. You’re a founder. Fucking act like it." Nope, nope. A startup is a "go big or go home" kind of deal. A founder's job is to convince VCs that the thing may go big, and do an honest effort to make it happen. But with this attitude, you're not a startup. You just have got a side project, or two. It's a completely fine thing to do. "My cushion is my consulting gig. Even if all my products tank, I’ll be fine." Good for you, sir. But this is a Wendy's.
In the comments he goes on to say he’s based in India and people there can’t use intercom for some reason, so that’s why „he’s building“ some knockoffs.
Way different reality from what the first half of the original post makes it seem.
I guess this is some kind of meta commentary about not trusting startup influencers. While the post has some good parts, there’s also some godawful advice sprinkled in there.
In line with other commenters, I think the biggest value of the post resides in remembering folks to think critically and not going full cargo cult.
Personally connecting to your early customers is one thing a startup can do that none of its established competitors can afford to. It is only possible when you don't have many users, but people love that shit so make the best of it and use it to kickstart your user base.
I enjoyed this much more
If you can’t make a burger joint work, you can’t make a fancy restaurant work. Don’t fool yourself by thinking the problem was the menu and atmosphere.
I experienced a startup where a bunch of mechatronics grads built a product line of simple robots for research use. Simple hamburgers of robotics. Only after years of that did they dive into far more complicated markets. From my rank and file vantage, this felt simple and genius.
Many employees and especially consultants are OK to waste time and effort as long as they get paid. This is one place where being a lazy bastard that doesn't want to do work unless it is really necessary becomes a valued feature. Work smart not hard.
To summarize in a sentence; Basically build something that people want, make it accessible and don't burn out on useless cargo-culting
The guy's reddit profile consists of self-plugging his own products in comments (that are mostly deleted by now)
If you are not going to take VC money, then I think this attitude should absolutely be the default approach unless you've got a proven reason not to. There is a large world to be tapped outside of VC funded category leaders where there is enormous, life changing amounts of money to be made by intelligent, pragmatic founders just trying to build real businesses.
And the reality of these businesses is that you don't need to be the best out of everyone -- you just need to be the right kind of good enough: better than the alternatives.
Not that I care much, modern marketing, SEO, social media, and all that non-sense, employees so many people who could be better utilized in other more honest lines of business.
Perhaps the attitude is just moving up the management stack? :-)
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I agree. The path is not easy but I'm not worried. As I said in other comments all Neeto products are "by products" of my consulting company. Even if I have zero customers today we are profitable as a whole company.
To prove my sincerity I have not yet built a way to charge money. Sign up for NeetoCal and there is no way for you to pay me money today.
Unlike Silicon valley fucking notion that you need to go "all in". I'm not all in. All in means I will cross the river or I'll drown. Fuck that shit. That's too risky. If Neeto doesn't work out nothing will change for me. That's why I can afford to compete on fucking price.
> Airbnb's free cash flow margin is now among the best in Silicon Valley.
> free cash flow margin
In the end, Paul Graham only cares about how you run your company insofar as it's VC funded, and aimed towards making him and his tech-bro buddies as much money as possible (any other externalities be damned).
-written by some dude probably working a b2b saas product somewhere
