9 ms·

I got stuck starting a company with my friend and wasted months coding everything to absolute perfection with the latest bleeding edge tech when we could have c

by EC1 11y ago

I got stuck starting a company with my friend and wasted months coding everything to absolute perfection with the latest bleeding edge tech when we could have coded it in a week, then we missed out chance because a huge competitor swept in with lots of VC money and ate the market. So it goes.

dev1n 11y ago
Software is a very competitive business, prone to natural monopolies. A company that gets software written faster and better will, all other things being equal, put its competitors out of business. And when you're starting a startup, you feel this very keenly. Startups tend to be an all or nothing proposition. You either get rich, or you get nothing. In a startup, if you bet on the wrong technology, your competitors will crush you. You didn't read PG's essays [1] did you? [1]: http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html
- EC1 11y ago
  Yeah we thought we were going quick. "Takes years for people to launch and we built a perfect system in a few months!" was kind of our approach. We literally just should have bought a theme, connected our backend, and launched, then iterated the moment we saw cash. Reading all the things in the world won't matter until you start or have some frame of reference for the things you read. Now our frame of reference is our past failure.
  - tim333 11y ago
    I dare say even if you'd done the quick solution you may well still have been crushed by the competitor with VC funding. It's a tricky business. I guess one of the advantages of going through YC is the companies then generally have access to funding more easily than their competitors.
mikekchar 11y ago
I have no idea what you did, but the situation is so common, I'll wade in anyway :-) It may or may not apply to your situation. When you start a new venture, you need to be very clear on what your exit strategy is: a viable business or a "disruptive technology" that you can sell. I will discuss the second one first because it is easier. If you are building a "disruptive technology", the goal is eyeballs. You are trying to get someone to see what you are doing and make them think, "OMG, if we let these people go they are going to put us out of business". In reality, you are building a demo. It doesn't matter whether or not you get the details right. You can get many, many things wrong and it won't make a difference. Your goal is to be impressive and to have the potential to get it all right before anyone else can. If you are trying to build a viable business, then ideally you want revenue. It is very important that you get the details exactly right, but at the same time you need to get revenue as soon as humanly possible. The way to achieve these seemingly opposing ends is to keep your scope as stupidly small as possible. Write something tiny and details oriented that will get revenue as soon as possible. Grow in very, very tiny increments, making sure to get the details right as much as you can. Make sure your revenue grows proportionately. The common mistake is that startups often don't think about their endgame and their strategy realistically. So they say, "We'll build a business and disrupt the industry". This is highly unlikely to be successful because the disruption requires high risk manoeuvres where if you pay attention to detail you will be forever at your keyboard and never deliver. But building a business requires low risk iteration with attention to detail, so if you throw in "and nobody has ever done this before" then you will never get your first iteration out the door (or it will be so sloppy that you'll never get any revenue). The reason that people don't realise this dichotomy is that the "unicorns" are companies that have often struck it rich, like the '49ers of old, by being lucky enough to be able to pick up gold off the ground. They break all the rules but are successful anyway. Do not attempt to replicate their success or you will become the toothless alcoholic sitting at the side of the road mumbling, "I coulda been a '49er".

by EC1 11y ago

dev1n 11y ago

Software is a very competitive business, prone to natural monopolies. A company that gets software written faster and better will, all other things being equal, put its competitors out of business. And when you're starting a startup, you feel this very keenly. Startups tend to be an all or nothing proposition. You either get rich, or you get nothing. In a startup, if you bet on the wrong technology, your competitors will crush you. You didn't read PG's essays [1] did you? [1]: http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html

EC1 11y ago
Yeah we thought we were going quick. "Takes years for people to launch and we built a perfect system in a few months!" was kind of our approach. We literally just should have bought a theme, connected our backend, and launched, then iterated the moment we saw cash. Reading all the things in the world won't matter until you start or have some frame of reference for the things you read. Now our frame of reference is our past failure.
- tim333 11y ago
  I dare say even if you'd done the quick solution you may well still have been crushed by the competitor with VC funding. It's a tricky business. I guess one of the advantages of going through YC is the companies then generally have access to funding more easily than their competitors.

mikekchar 11y ago

I have no idea what you did, but the situation is so common, I'll wade in anyway :-) It may or may not apply to your situation. When you start a new venture, you need to be very clear on what your exit strategy is: a viable business or a "disruptive technology" that you can sell. I will discuss the second one first because it is easier. If you are building a "disruptive technology", the goal is eyeballs. You are trying to get someone to see what you are doing and make them think, "OMG, if we let these people go they are going to put us out of business". In reality, you are building a demo. It doesn't matter whether or not you get the details right. You can get many, many things wrong and it won't make a difference. Your goal is to be impressive and to have the potential to get it all right before anyone else can. If you are trying to build a viable business, then ideally you want revenue. It is very important that you get the details exactly right, but at the same time you need to get revenue as soon as humanly possible. The way to achieve these seemingly opposing ends is to keep your scope as stupidly small as possible. Write something tiny and details oriented that will get revenue as soon as possible. Grow in very, very tiny increments, making sure to get the details right as much as you can. Make sure your revenue grows proportionately. The common mistake is that startups often don't think about their endgame and their strategy realistically. So they say, "We'll build a business and disrupt the industry". This is highly unlikely to be successful because the disruption requires high risk manoeuvres where if you pay attention to detail you will be forever at your keyboard and never deliver. But building a business requires low risk iteration with attention to detail, so if you throw in "and nobody has ever done this before" then you will never get your first iteration out the door (or it will be so sloppy that you'll never get any revenue). The reason that people don't realise this dichotomy is that the "unicorns" are companies that have often struck it rich, like the '49ers of old, by being lucky enough to be able to pick up gold off the ground. They break all the rules but are successful anyway. Do not attempt to replicate their success or you will become the toothless alcoholic sitting at the side of the road mumbling, "I coulda been a '49er".