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Startup Anti-Patterns

193 points by rzk 17d ago

linuxEconomy 17d ago
[dead]
exabrial 17d ago
"Pretending you are Google" Needs to be on there. Scalability is not a problem: you have, you will have, you should plan for, you should build for, nor allow anyone to utter the S word. Simplicity is the correct word to use.
- exabrial 17d ago
  This falls into a broader category of disillusionment: "Pretend problems are the funnnest ones to solve", meaning, when the problem doesn't actually exist, any solution can be leveraged as the "right" one because there is no real world backpressure to test if it's effective. Software Devs love solving pretend problems, and the state of modern web development reflects this.
  - wredcoll 17d ago
    > Software Devs love solving pretend problems, and the state of modern web development reflects this. Are you kidding, have you seen the C programming language?!
  - CM30 17d ago
    I suspect part of this (at least where software devs are concerned) is resume driven development. It's a lot easier to get hired at a top company if you've worked on similarly difficult problems before, while working with 'boring', simple technology makes your CV look uninteresting to a potential recruiter. It also gives you a lot more free time if you can persuade your employer to let you use cutting edge technology rather than needing to save it for your side projects after hours. Plus, given how many startups fail, you do kinda need a backup plan... So, I suspect a lot of companies are... encouraged to aim for scale and encouraged to tackle problems in the most overcomplicated way possible so that the people working there can take their experience to Alphabet/Meta/Apple/whatever if things go south.
  - csallen 17d ago
    I don't think that people are attracted to pretend problems for the sake of pretending. I think it's more that people are attracted to tractable problems. We like to follow certain paths that are well-worn, where the next step is visible and easy to see. And whether those paths lead to a pretend/pointless destination is, surprisingly, irrelevant. They're easier to follow than whacking our way through the brush.
- Gibbon1 17d ago
  Up the Organization by Robert Townsend had this gem, not the exact quote but: big companies didn't get big by acting like big companies.
- anthonj 17d ago
  The ridiculous things I was asked to do, and observed other people doing, all because "one day we will gave thousands of clients" while at the same time struggling to push out just a few units.
sergq 17d ago
[flagged]
threethirtytwo 17d ago
Python is an anti pattern. Nodejs + typescript is superior across almost every dimension other than data science and familiarity. People think it’s apples and oranges but it’s not. Also don’t forget golang too. If your app is Python in the beginning then you’re pretty much locked in. It’s doable, but you’re going to be dealing with a lot of Python specific warts.
- nojs 17d ago
  No, caring too much about the language and not the problem is the anti pattern
  - threethirtytwo 17d ago
    Thinking that the stack/language is not intrinsically tied to the problem and smart ass quotations define reality is the bigger problem. Go use Python for your triple A next gen game rendering engine.
    - magarnicle 17d ago
      Go use Nodejs + typescript for it. Why pick on just Python?
      - threethirtytwo 16d ago
        It’s just an example on how the language matters. And of course in that case nodejs would also be the wrong choice. All in all we’re mostly talking about the web stack.
- barapa 17d ago
  A startup is not the code
- awithrow 17d ago
  Python is a perfectly fine choice for a tech stack. Just because you don't like something doesn't make it an anti-pattern. NodeJs + TypeScript have tons of warts of their own that you have to deal with as well. Every language does.
saimiam 17d ago
Such anti patterns are like Nostradamus’s prophecies - you see a company flopping then curve fit a narrative to justify the antipatterns. How do I, as a founder, know that I am falling into an anti pattern? I don’t believe it is possible to know. You can only “know” in hindsight and that makes these anti patterns useless.
- Joel_Mckay 17d ago
  It takes understanding your own impulses and cognitive biases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases Most people start a small business for tax reasons, and the few lucky loud clowns claiming hyper-scaling BS is sustainable simply disappear within 5 years. Best advice, answer the simple question "will random people buy this when no one is looking?"... if you have to explain/sell a product/service more than 5 seconds, than that business model likely isn't sustainable. I also see a lot of smart folks that think they will get paid for excuses... only lawyers, PR, and politicians are in that business. =3
  - lelanthran 17d ago
    > Best advice, answer the simple question "will random people buy this when no one is looking?"... if you have to explain/sell a product/service more than 5 seconds, than that business model likely isn't sustainable. For B2c, maybe. B2B is very different - they aren't going to make up their mind in 5 seconds and you aren't going to have a product that can be explained in 5s.
    - Joel_Mckay 17d ago
      >B2B is very different - they aren't going to make up their mind in 5 seconds If not, than one is explaining/selling again, and you will only ever have 2.7%*(time/sales_pitch_time) customers. Letting client/customers dictate the terms of a product/service often will just turn your business into a staffing agency. B2B is actually more risk, as any deal exceeding 12% of revenue sets a timer on how long your business will likely survive. Some unlucky folks also end up acting as a product warehouse for clients, contract labor, or a scapegoat for client internal strategic mistakes. If people can't summarize what they do in 1 sentence, than they likely have a fuzzy definition for a business project goal. For example, people that use more than 4 conditional statements (if/but/when etc.) to describe something, than I have observed they often last less than 3 years regardless of cash burn rates. =3
CM30 17d ago
Seems like a useful list of things to avoid when running a startup, plus situations where it may not always be a bad thing. Still, got a few thoughts here: > if you build it, they will come This feels like the cause for so many news/media bundling services, akin to Blendle. Loads of people seem to have the thought process "no-one pays for journalism, that's because it's too inconvenient to subscribe seperately, let's bundle it all", but far fewer people actually seem to want such a service. > Chasing Blue Oceans This feels like the explanation for the Wii U, despite Nintendo obviously not being a startup of any kind. The Wii was a blue ocean product, and the company clearly thought the same logic could apply to its successor too. Find an idea that didn't have much competition (using a portable screen to control what's going on elsewhere), and use that to attract a new market. Unfortunately, while the concept worked on a handheld device, it didn't really feel good to use on a larger scale, and the ideas designed for it (usually some sort of asymmetric gameplay experience) just didn't have the appeal that more traditional ones did. > Boiling the Ocean This seems really common with crowdfunded products, since if their scope isn't unrealistic as hell beforehand (and if it wants the public's attention and money, it usually is), it certainly is once the stretch goals start being added and the creators start promising everything and the kitchen sink. Also with video games, as shown by Duke Nukem Forever, Beyond Good & Evil 2, etc.
- pdpi 17d ago
  > This feels like the explanation for the Wii U, despite Nintendo obviously not being a startup of any kind. This is a particularly interesting example, because they followed up with the Switch, which is, in some ways, the diametric opposite of the Wii U. Arguably, what happened was that they had the right idea that the hybrid TV/handheld format was the right blue ocean play, but the Wii U failed by being TV first and handheld second, instead of handheld first and TV second. You could probably build a whole business strategy course on just this discussion.
  - CM30 17d ago
    That's very true, the Switch feels like an improvement on the Wii U concept in many ways. Though I feel the other big difference is that the Wii U Gamepad was highly limited in its capabilities. You could play games on it while other people watched TV or used that TV for something else, but you couldn't go beyond that. You still had to be close to the TV for it to function, and that usually meant being in the same room. The Switch being a hybrid console meant you could take the whole thing outside of the room if others needed the space, or bring it with you to events or places outside of the home. So, it solved all the same problems the Wii U did (playing while others used the TV), but also a ton of more pressing ones (taking the game with you while traveling/leaving the house, playing in other rooms/areas, etc).
e10jc 17d ago
Is there an N=1 anti-pattern on the list? I built an enterprise platform on a low 6 figure annual contract for my first customer. It’s looking like there are no other customers who desire the same type of platform.
- Ozzie-D 17d ago
  [flagged]
- pdpi 17d ago
  Seems to be anti-pattern #4: If you build it, they will come. His description matches yours almost word for word. > The founders automatically assumed that if they had the vision and one customer wanted it, many others would https://www.itamarnovick.com/startup-anti-pattern-4-if-you-build-it-they-will-come/ https://www.itamarnovick.com/startup-anti-pattern-4-if-you-b...
  - enraged_camel 17d ago
    FWIW I think it is miscategorized. "Build it and they will come" is a different type of problem: it commonly refers to building something thinking that its value and usefulness are self-evident that it will sell itself, and therefore one needs no sales or marketing.
    - ButlerianJihad 17d ago
      Look, this quote originated in a 1989 movie about ghosts and baseball. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_of_Dreams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_of_Dreams The quote is from a ghostly, disembodied voice which encourages the protagonist to rip out their farm's corn crops and build a useless, pointless baseball field, in the middle of nowhere, so that the ghosts of dead players can come back to entertain people. The farm and the family are in financial trouble, and the bank wants to foreclose on the land, and so what has he got to lose? The film has a happy ending, of course: the guy builds the field, and all the ghosts come, and the human fans come as well, and his new baseball field is a rousing financial success. Our protagonist has honored his father, a lifelong baseball fan, and he's provided for his family, in the most unlikely of business ventures, counseled by voices of the undead. It seems weirdly missing the point to apply this to any real-world situations. You are essentially invoking a weird ghost story of baseball and utterly implausible fiction. This is not business advice, this is superstition. Field of Dreams protagonist in real life would've been hauled before a psychiatrist and medicated, and promptly served divorce papers along with the foreclosure.
Wren_ops 17d ago
Obsessing over microservices before product market fit is a common, expensive trap. Just use a monolith, please.
brinepot 17d ago
Yep, seen too many startups jump straight to Kubernetes and microservices before they even have a validated product. Ouch.
- tikhonj 17d ago
  I worked at a startup that did this and it was... totally fine? Like, we hired a guy who knew how to set Kubernetes up, he spent like a week or two setting it up, and then it was totally solid and the development experience was great. I was building some of the core product-specific logic and it only made my life easier. Which really just goes to show that the "legible" aspects matter far less than the illegible aspects. It's easy to say "hey, this startup is using boring technology and deploying a monolith, great!" or "Kubernetes and a bunch of services, over-complicated!". It's hard to say "hey, this startup's codebase is awful and it's an unforced error slowing them down" vs "hey, these guys are taking some shortcuts but it makes sense in context". But a mess built on "boring", simple tech is going to derail you far more than a needlessly complex but well-executed setup.
  - taberiand 17d ago
    I remember reading an article years ago about how a company was running rings around its competition because they were releasing features faster and more effectively, due to their choice to use Lisp as their language. Of course a competitor who tried to pivot to Lisp was unlikely to have the same results - the specific language choice was not nearly as important as the fact that the founders were already experts in Lisp. The point being, Kubernetes is easily the right choice for a start-up if you have a Kubernetes expert on the team (and the rest of the team is willing to put the time in learning the system and not just cargo-culting around it)
  - cpursley 16d ago
    Let me guess, VC funded start with plenty of cash to splash around and play with tech, beef up those resumes?
- vjvjvjvjghv 17d ago
  Kubernetes is pretty ok if you keep things simple. The project I worked on had kubernetes set up years ago and from there on it just worked.
bhouston 17d ago
The issue with many critiques like this is that “it depends” and that many of these strategies actually work while often they do not - but given that most startups fail even generally successful strategies will have a high rate of failure. And the people that study these types of lists to apply it to their own case are then engaging in “analysis paralysis” because the list is so long you are bound to be caught up by it. So while I think it is useful to critique your idea and business the best thing to do is to try and sell it and make money and keep adjusting and trying new things to maximize your income. There is no magic bullet.
1saadcodes 17d ago
Some seem to treat microservices as a sign of good engineering when it's often just premature complexity. You can always split a monolith later, but you're stuck maintaining that complexity from day one
- strken 17d ago
  Big companies mostly seem to use the microservice(s) per team model. If your whole company is two founders, one account manager, and an engineer, you only have one team. It can make sense to have more than one service for purely technical reasons. I once worked on a friend's startup where we built a separate ingress microservice so we could scale it independently from our monolith. There's no organisational benefit to doing so, however. The technical founder and the one engineer are hardly going to block each other.
  - vjvjvjvjghv 17d ago
    "Big companies mostly seem to use the microservice(s) per team model. " I am good with that. What we often see is 10 microservices per team of 3 devs. And ideally using the same database.
    - masonhensley 17d ago
      I've seen a startup with 10 devs + 60+ microservices and growing. The team was stuck in a mindset that they just hadn't split things up enough to arrive at nirvana.
      - jamesfinlayson 17d ago
        Been there before - I worked at a company where some geniuses thought that microservices would solve all of our scaling issues. We ended up with four microservices just to send an email (one to template, one to send, one to persist to database and one other which I can't remember now).
        16d ago
elendilm 17d ago
Validation is shorthand for saying "I don't have deterministic skills or knowledge hence I will rely on user behaviour to drive the product". Works out for many people and usually ideal for beginners. But post a couple of years, if validation is still your primary model, your model tells you how clueless you are in your domain. Make logical derivations. Build. Determinism is a luxury only affordable for the ones who put in the effort. Others are doomed to chase validation for eternity.
sebmellen 17d ago
Wow, this is a very good site. I hope the see the other articles filled in at some point.
bigcat12345678 17d ago
I have done the startup thing as a failed founder and I myself call these startup patterns or antipatten mostly useless. One who enjoyed them (myself included) are destined to fail and then would concluded the same. The so-called pattern and antipatten are useless for startup, is just like parenting guides are useless for new parents. The complexity and novel problems are so large in volume that only basic instinct function. And if you are the successful one, you would guide by whatever success brings you, if you are the failed one, well, you can fail and learned that these patterns are useless and rant here like myself. In the end, don't destroy your health.
- mojuba 17d ago
  Sorry but I don't think you read any of the linked articles. Just one example of an anti-pattern that is very common and is undeniably harmful: Bad Revenue. It comes down to deceiving or annoying your customers. E.g. making cancellation difficult or confusing, tricking the users into buying yearly subscription by showing them the monthly price of the yearly subscription (explicitly prohibited by Apple in mobile apps btw) and many others which can boost your revenue short-term but do a lot more harm in the long term, or eventually even kill your company. These sales anti-patterns can work for bigger companies that are long past their growth stage and are now looking for ways to squeeze pennies out of every customer. Early stage or growth stage startups should not copy these practices: growth is a very fragile thing that can be destroyed by negative word of mouth easily.
- alpineman 16d ago
  That and luck plays a much bigger role than most would like to admit
igkougkousis 17d ago
[flagged]
antonvs 16d ago
> Designing for investors That entry isn’t published yet, but… this can be a viable tactic as part of a larger strategy. I’ve seen people raise significant money by designing for investors, and it got them to where they wanted to be.
sreekanth850 16d ago
Platform risk is real. long back we decided to build a review management platform with Google as main. After building and getting early customers, we changed our office location that triggered to re apply for google business reviews account that ultimately blocked access to the API. They just sent an email saying we are not eligible for accessing Google Business profile API access.
jpgvm 16d ago
Hiring middle-management from large companies has to be the biggest startup killer. Doubly so if they are mediocre to start with and triple so if they bring with them their legion of yes-men.
- deleted 16d ago
  [deleted]
- darksaints 16d ago
  With hiring from management consulting companies coming in a close second place.
gps372 16d ago
Useful list. Going through this list, I felt it would difficult to not fall for many of them. For example, you want to build enough to go to market early and gain customer validation and confidence but at the same time not build too much!! Having a good experienced team generally helps in mitigating some of them, especially in tough situations.
a_c 16d ago
Hiring for specific skills
misalliance 16d ago
Very useful list. "If you build it, they will come" is one anti-pattern I try to avoid as a tech founder.

193 points by rzk 17d ago

[dead]

"Pretending you are Google" Needs to be on there. Scalability is not a problem: you have, you will have, you should plan for, you should build for, nor allow anyone to utter the S word. Simplicity is the correct word to use.

exabrial 17d ago
This falls into a broader category of disillusionment: "Pretend problems are the funnnest ones to solve", meaning, when the problem doesn't actually exist, any solution can be leveraged as the "right" one because there is no real world backpressure to test if it's effective. Software Devs love solving pretend problems, and the state of modern web development reflects this.
- wredcoll 17d ago
  > Software Devs love solving pretend problems, and the state of modern web development reflects this. Are you kidding, have you seen the C programming language?!
- CM30 17d ago
  I suspect part of this (at least where software devs are concerned) is resume driven development. It's a lot easier to get hired at a top company if you've worked on similarly difficult problems before, while working with 'boring', simple technology makes your CV look uninteresting to a potential recruiter. It also gives you a lot more free time if you can persuade your employer to let you use cutting edge technology rather than needing to save it for your side projects after hours. Plus, given how many startups fail, you do kinda need a backup plan... So, I suspect a lot of companies are... encouraged to aim for scale and encouraged to tackle problems in the most overcomplicated way possible so that the people working there can take their experience to Alphabet/Meta/Apple/whatever if things go south.
- csallen 17d ago
  I don't think that people are attracted to pretend problems for the sake of pretending. I think it's more that people are attracted to tractable problems. We like to follow certain paths that are well-worn, where the next step is visible and easy to see. And whether those paths lead to a pretend/pointless destination is, surprisingly, irrelevant. They're easier to follow than whacking our way through the brush.
Gibbon1 17d ago
Up the Organization by Robert Townsend had this gem, not the exact quote but: big companies didn't get big by acting like big companies.
anthonj 17d ago
The ridiculous things I was asked to do, and observed other people doing, all because "one day we will gave thousands of clients" while at the same time struggling to push out just a few units.

sergq 17d ago

[flagged]

threethirtytwo 17d ago

Python is an anti pattern. Nodejs + typescript is superior across almost every dimension other than data science and familiarity. People think it’s apples and oranges but it’s not. Also don’t forget golang too. If your app is Python in the beginning then you’re pretty much locked in. It’s doable, but you’re going to be dealing with a lot of Python specific warts.

nojs 17d ago
No, caring too much about the language and not the problem is the anti pattern
- threethirtytwo 17d ago
  Thinking that the stack/language is not intrinsically tied to the problem and smart ass quotations define reality is the bigger problem. Go use Python for your triple A next gen game rendering engine.
  - magarnicle 17d ago
    Go use Nodejs + typescript for it. Why pick on just Python?
    - threethirtytwo 16d ago
      It’s just an example on how the language matters. And of course in that case nodejs would also be the wrong choice. All in all we’re mostly talking about the web stack.
barapa 17d ago
A startup is not the code
awithrow 17d ago
Python is a perfectly fine choice for a tech stack. Just because you don't like something doesn't make it an anti-pattern. NodeJs + TypeScript have tons of warts of their own that you have to deal with as well. Every language does.

saimiam 17d ago

Such anti patterns are like Nostradamus’s prophecies - you see a company flopping then curve fit a narrative to justify the antipatterns. How do I, as a founder, know that I am falling into an anti pattern? I don’t believe it is possible to know. You can only “know” in hindsight and that makes these anti patterns useless.

Joel_Mckay 17d ago
It takes understanding your own impulses and cognitive biases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases Most people start a small business for tax reasons, and the few lucky loud clowns claiming hyper-scaling BS is sustainable simply disappear within 5 years. Best advice, answer the simple question "will random people buy this when no one is looking?"... if you have to explain/sell a product/service more than 5 seconds, than that business model likely isn't sustainable. I also see a lot of smart folks that think they will get paid for excuses... only lawyers, PR, and politicians are in that business. =3
- lelanthran 17d ago
  > Best advice, answer the simple question "will random people buy this when no one is looking?"... if you have to explain/sell a product/service more than 5 seconds, than that business model likely isn't sustainable. For B2c, maybe. B2B is very different - they aren't going to make up their mind in 5 seconds and you aren't going to have a product that can be explained in 5s.
  - Joel_Mckay 17d ago
    >B2B is very different - they aren't going to make up their mind in 5 seconds If not, than one is explaining/selling again, and you will only ever have 2.7%*(time/sales_pitch_time) customers. Letting client/customers dictate the terms of a product/service often will just turn your business into a staffing agency. B2B is actually more risk, as any deal exceeding 12% of revenue sets a timer on how long your business will likely survive. Some unlucky folks also end up acting as a product warehouse for clients, contract labor, or a scapegoat for client internal strategic mistakes. If people can't summarize what they do in 1 sentence, than they likely have a fuzzy definition for a business project goal. For example, people that use more than 4 conditional statements (if/but/when etc.) to describe something, than I have observed they often last less than 3 years regardless of cash burn rates. =3

CM30 17d ago

Seems like a useful list of things to avoid when running a startup, plus situations where it may not always be a bad thing. Still, got a few thoughts here: > if you build it, they will come This feels like the cause for so many news/media bundling services, akin to Blendle. Loads of people seem to have the thought process "no-one pays for journalism, that's because it's too inconvenient to subscribe seperately, let's bundle it all", but far fewer people actually seem to want such a service. > Chasing Blue Oceans This feels like the explanation for the Wii U, despite Nintendo obviously not being a startup of any kind. The Wii was a blue ocean product, and the company clearly thought the same logic could apply to its successor too. Find an idea that didn't have much competition (using a portable screen to control what's going on elsewhere), and use that to attract a new market. Unfortunately, while the concept worked on a handheld device, it didn't really feel good to use on a larger scale, and the ideas designed for it (usually some sort of asymmetric gameplay experience) just didn't have the appeal that more traditional ones did. > Boiling the Ocean This seems really common with crowdfunded products, since if their scope isn't unrealistic as hell beforehand (and if it wants the public's attention and money, it usually is), it certainly is once the stretch goals start being added and the creators start promising everything and the kitchen sink. Also with video games, as shown by Duke Nukem Forever, Beyond Good & Evil 2, etc.

pdpi 17d ago
> This feels like the explanation for the Wii U, despite Nintendo obviously not being a startup of any kind. This is a particularly interesting example, because they followed up with the Switch, which is, in some ways, the diametric opposite of the Wii U. Arguably, what happened was that they had the right idea that the hybrid TV/handheld format was the right blue ocean play, but the Wii U failed by being TV first and handheld second, instead of handheld first and TV second. You could probably build a whole business strategy course on just this discussion.
- CM30 17d ago
  That's very true, the Switch feels like an improvement on the Wii U concept in many ways. Though I feel the other big difference is that the Wii U Gamepad was highly limited in its capabilities. You could play games on it while other people watched TV or used that TV for something else, but you couldn't go beyond that. You still had to be close to the TV for it to function, and that usually meant being in the same room. The Switch being a hybrid console meant you could take the whole thing outside of the room if others needed the space, or bring it with you to events or places outside of the home. So, it solved all the same problems the Wii U did (playing while others used the TV), but also a ton of more pressing ones (taking the game with you while traveling/leaving the house, playing in other rooms/areas, etc).

e10jc 17d ago

Is there an N=1 anti-pattern on the list? I built an enterprise platform on a low 6 figure annual contract for my first customer. It’s looking like there are no other customers who desire the same type of platform.

Ozzie-D 17d ago
[flagged]
pdpi 17d ago
Seems to be anti-pattern #4: If you build it, they will come. His description matches yours almost word for word. > The founders automatically assumed that if they had the vision and one customer wanted it, many others would https://www.itamarnovick.com/startup-anti-pattern-4-if-you-build-it-they-will-come/ https://www.itamarnovick.com/startup-anti-pattern-4-if-you-b...
- enraged_camel 17d ago
  FWIW I think it is miscategorized. "Build it and they will come" is a different type of problem: it commonly refers to building something thinking that its value and usefulness are self-evident that it will sell itself, and therefore one needs no sales or marketing.
  - ButlerianJihad 17d ago
    Look, this quote originated in a 1989 movie about ghosts and baseball. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_of_Dreams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_of_Dreams The quote is from a ghostly, disembodied voice which encourages the protagonist to rip out their farm's corn crops and build a useless, pointless baseball field, in the middle of nowhere, so that the ghosts of dead players can come back to entertain people. The farm and the family are in financial trouble, and the bank wants to foreclose on the land, and so what has he got to lose? The film has a happy ending, of course: the guy builds the field, and all the ghosts come, and the human fans come as well, and his new baseball field is a rousing financial success. Our protagonist has honored his father, a lifelong baseball fan, and he's provided for his family, in the most unlikely of business ventures, counseled by voices of the undead. It seems weirdly missing the point to apply this to any real-world situations. You are essentially invoking a weird ghost story of baseball and utterly implausible fiction. This is not business advice, this is superstition. Field of Dreams protagonist in real life would've been hauled before a psychiatrist and medicated, and promptly served divorce papers along with the foreclosure.

Wren_ops 17d ago

Obsessing over microservices before product market fit is a common, expensive trap. Just use a monolith, please.

brinepot 17d ago

Yep, seen too many startups jump straight to Kubernetes and microservices before they even have a validated product. Ouch.

tikhonj 17d ago
I worked at a startup that did this and it was... totally fine? Like, we hired a guy who knew how to set Kubernetes up, he spent like a week or two setting it up, and then it was totally solid and the development experience was great. I was building some of the core product-specific logic and it only made my life easier. Which really just goes to show that the "legible" aspects matter far less than the illegible aspects. It's easy to say "hey, this startup is using boring technology and deploying a monolith, great!" or "Kubernetes and a bunch of services, over-complicated!". It's hard to say "hey, this startup's codebase is awful and it's an unforced error slowing them down" vs "hey, these guys are taking some shortcuts but it makes sense in context". But a mess built on "boring", simple tech is going to derail you far more than a needlessly complex but well-executed setup.
- taberiand 17d ago
  I remember reading an article years ago about how a company was running rings around its competition because they were releasing features faster and more effectively, due to their choice to use Lisp as their language. Of course a competitor who tried to pivot to Lisp was unlikely to have the same results - the specific language choice was not nearly as important as the fact that the founders were already experts in Lisp. The point being, Kubernetes is easily the right choice for a start-up if you have a Kubernetes expert on the team (and the rest of the team is willing to put the time in learning the system and not just cargo-culting around it)
- cpursley 16d ago
  Let me guess, VC funded start with plenty of cash to splash around and play with tech, beef up those resumes?
vjvjvjvjghv 17d ago
Kubernetes is pretty ok if you keep things simple. The project I worked on had kubernetes set up years ago and from there on it just worked.

bhouston 17d ago

The issue with many critiques like this is that “it depends” and that many of these strategies actually work while often they do not - but given that most startups fail even generally successful strategies will have a high rate of failure. And the people that study these types of lists to apply it to their own case are then engaging in “analysis paralysis” because the list is so long you are bound to be caught up by it. So while I think it is useful to critique your idea and business the best thing to do is to try and sell it and make money and keep adjusting and trying new things to maximize your income. There is no magic bullet.

1saadcodes 17d ago

Some seem to treat microservices as a sign of good engineering when it's often just premature complexity. You can always split a monolith later, but you're stuck maintaining that complexity from day one

strken 17d ago
Big companies mostly seem to use the microservice(s) per team model. If your whole company is two founders, one account manager, and an engineer, you only have one team. It can make sense to have more than one service for purely technical reasons. I once worked on a friend's startup where we built a separate ingress microservice so we could scale it independently from our monolith. There's no organisational benefit to doing so, however. The technical founder and the one engineer are hardly going to block each other.
- vjvjvjvjghv 17d ago
  "Big companies mostly seem to use the microservice(s) per team model. " I am good with that. What we often see is 10 microservices per team of 3 devs. And ideally using the same database.
  - masonhensley 17d ago
    I've seen a startup with 10 devs + 60+ microservices and growing. The team was stuck in a mindset that they just hadn't split things up enough to arrive at nirvana.
    - jamesfinlayson 17d ago
      Been there before - I worked at a company where some geniuses thought that microservices would solve all of our scaling issues. We ended up with four microservices just to send an email (one to template, one to send, one to persist to database and one other which I can't remember now).
      - 16d ago

elendilm 17d ago

Validation is shorthand for saying "I don't have deterministic skills or knowledge hence I will rely on user behaviour to drive the product". Works out for many people and usually ideal for beginners. But post a couple of years, if validation is still your primary model, your model tells you how clueless you are in your domain. Make logical derivations. Build. Determinism is a luxury only affordable for the ones who put in the effort. Others are doomed to chase validation for eternity.

sebmellen 17d ago

Wow, this is a very good site. I hope the see the other articles filled in at some point.

bigcat12345678 17d ago

I have done the startup thing as a failed founder and I myself call these startup patterns or antipatten mostly useless. One who enjoyed them (myself included) are destined to fail and then would concluded the same. The so-called pattern and antipatten are useless for startup, is just like parenting guides are useless for new parents. The complexity and novel problems are so large in volume that only basic instinct function. And if you are the successful one, you would guide by whatever success brings you, if you are the failed one, well, you can fail and learned that these patterns are useless and rant here like myself. In the end, don't destroy your health.

mojuba 17d ago
Sorry but I don't think you read any of the linked articles. Just one example of an anti-pattern that is very common and is undeniably harmful: Bad Revenue. It comes down to deceiving or annoying your customers. E.g. making cancellation difficult or confusing, tricking the users into buying yearly subscription by showing them the monthly price of the yearly subscription (explicitly prohibited by Apple in mobile apps btw) and many others which can boost your revenue short-term but do a lot more harm in the long term, or eventually even kill your company. These sales anti-patterns can work for bigger companies that are long past their growth stage and are now looking for ways to squeeze pennies out of every customer. Early stage or growth stage startups should not copy these practices: growth is a very fragile thing that can be destroyed by negative word of mouth easily.
alpineman 16d ago
That and luck plays a much bigger role than most would like to admit

igkougkousis 17d ago

[flagged]

antonvs 16d ago

> Designing for investors That entry isn’t published yet, but… this can be a viable tactic as part of a larger strategy. I’ve seen people raise significant money by designing for investors, and it got them to where they wanted to be.

sreekanth850 16d ago

Platform risk is real. long back we decided to build a review management platform with Google as main. After building and getting early customers, we changed our office location that triggered to re apply for google business reviews account that ultimately blocked access to the API. They just sent an email saying we are not eligible for accessing Google Business profile API access.

jpgvm 16d ago

Hiring middle-management from large companies has to be the biggest startup killer. Doubly so if they are mediocre to start with and triple so if they bring with them their legion of yes-men.

deleted 16d ago
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darksaints 16d ago
With hiring from management consulting companies coming in a close second place.

gps372 16d ago

Useful list. Going through this list, I felt it would difficult to not fall for many of them. For example, you want to build enough to go to market early and gain customer validation and confidence but at the same time not build too much!! Having a good experienced team generally helps in mitigating some of them, especially in tough situations.

a_c 16d ago

Hiring for specific skills

misalliance 16d ago

Very useful list. "If you build it, they will come" is one anti-pattern I try to avoid as a tech founder.