98 ms·

YC is a known strategy. If someone is suggesting an alternative approach, details would be useful. "You can do it too!" works better when they aren't telling

by portLAN 19y ago

YC is a known strategy. If someone is suggesting an alternative approach, details would be useful. "You can do it too!" works better when they aren't telling you to pursue a different strategy than they did with no specifics.

SwellJoe 19y ago
'"You can do it too!" works better when they aren't telling you to pursue a different strategy than they did with no specifics.' I didn't think I needed to do so, since I assumed everybody here has read all of pg's essays, seen Guy Kawasaki's Art of the Start, and read a few other useful books about startups. While everybody who's built a business (I'm on my second) has at least a few things to teach others in the same boat...I didn't want to clutter up the post with a bunch of random rants. I respond to posts here with specific advice whenever there's a question I feel qualified to answer.
- portLAN 19y ago
  > I respond to posts here with specific advice whenever there's a question I feel qualified to answer. You haven't explained how your start-up succeeded without YC. > seen Guy Kawasaki's Art of the Start I hope you're kidding about that.
  - SwellJoe 19y ago
    "You haven't explained how your start-up succeeded without YC." Nobody asked. I'll take your response as somebody asking. In both cases, I made myself a recognized expert on an Open Source project that I liked a lot and that I liked the people involved (Squid in the first case, Webmin in the latter...though the first also included a huge amount of Webmin-related work and inspired the second). And then I founded companies built on making some Open Source project easier to use, more powerful, better documented, and more popular. The first never really made it out of the "consulting business" stage, though I constantly tried to convert it to a product business...had I been in the valley, I would have been able to make it work the way I wanted it to. It was a hardware based business, and for that you need volume, which I didn't have the capital to deal with--closing a big sale in the server appliance industry can cost tens of thousands of dollars before seeing any cashflow from it. So, stay out of hardware if you don't have the capital to see it through. Even then, you probably ought to stay out of hardware. So, the first one did not succeed without YC, by my standards, but did buy me a 350Z and keep me in food and houses for 7 years. The primary thing worth learning from the first business (which I built without not only YC but without any outside investment for involvement) was that you can't do it alone. Get a partner, get to the valley (I don't even bother saying get to a "startup hub" because nobody is doing deals in Boston), get to work. As for the second, here's what I know so far: 1. Start or join, very early, an Open Source project. 2. Work on it for several years. Get millions of downloads and millions of users. 3. ... 4. Profit! "> seen Guy Kawasaki's Art of the Start I hope you're kidding about that. " Of course not. Guy's a great motivator. Can't start a business worth crap (see Truemors), but he has a lot of good stuff to say about marketing, salesmanship, morale-building, and lots more. Some accidental experts really do have good advice.
    - portLAN 19y ago
      > Nobody asked. Actually that's how this whole debate got started -- I asked: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52613 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52613 > because nobody is doing deals in Boston So in your opinion would YC be better off doing both batches in Silicon Valley? My impression is people would be better served living there and flying to Boston for Demo Day 2 than vice-versa. > but he has a lot of good stuff to say about marketing, salesmanship, morale-building, and lots more http://valleywag.com/tech/silicon-valley-tool/guy-kawasaki-231106.php http://valleywag.com/tech/silicon-valley-tool/guy-kawasaki-2... http://www.nowpublic.com/don_t_be_a_dude_yamaha_a_gripping_story_of_life_and_death_in_silicon_valley http://www.nowpublic.com/don_t_be_a_dude_yamaha_a_gripping_s... http://techdumpster.com/2007/08/03/toolbox-profile-1-guy-kawasaki/ http://techdumpster.com/2007/08/03/toolbox-profile-1-guy-kaw... > Guy's a great motivator. In a "scared straight" kind of way, sure.
      - SwellJoe 19y ago
        "> Nobody asked. Actually that's how this whole debate got started -- I asked: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52613 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52613" Yeah, I took that as smart ass sniping. If it was a sincere question, I'm glad I've now answered it. "So in your opinion would YC be better off doing both batches in Silicon Valley? My impression is people would be better served living there and flying to Boston for Demo Day 2 than vice-versa." Yes, and I've told pg as much (he asked everyone in YC their opinion on the issue a few months ago). But, I don't know as much about the startup business as pg, and I'm given to understand that pg likes living in Cambridge...he brings the money, he makes the rules. "yada yada yada, Guy Kawasaki sucks, blah blah blah" Who cares? Have you actually read his books, or watched him speak? If you're too stupid to know a good writer and an amazingly good speaker when you see one, I'm not going to waste time trying to convince you. At the very least perhaps you can learn how to speak to people in public without pissing them off.
  - jamiequint 19y ago
    you're trolling, and its annoying. You asked a question that was impossible to answer (at least succinctly since there are entire books written about the topic). Getting into YC isn't even an answer in itself, other people here are just trying to tell you it is possible to do without YC. You know, people did start companies before YC.
    - portLAN 19y ago
      > you're trolling, and its annoying. No. Objecting to platitudes isn't trolling. The statements most commonly described as "platitudes" are short proverbs and aphorisms which are intended to motivate or encourage another person, but which are in reality overly-simplistic or cliche; for example, "You will succeed if you try hard enough" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platitude http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platitude > You asked a question that was impossible to answer Wrong again -- funny, because he answered it above, describing what he actually did for years before YC. It's disappointing how much knee-jerk reactionism there is when people perceive something as raining on their fantasy parade. Critical investigation will help people succeed. As a result of my not accepting the original platitude, the poster supplied much more informative answers.
      - pg 19y ago
        The problem is not what you say but how you say it. E.g. "raining on their fantasy parade."
        portLAN 19y ago
        Saying things the right way in dealing with people is an art. I'm mostly around computers... kind of like a lawyer who comes home and then deals with his family by continuing the cross-examinations! Thanks for pointing it out; I was thinking about it the other day -- multiple ways to phrase the same thing -- and it took me several iterations to get from "likely offensive" to "non-offensive and helpful". I don't have enough experience with humans to say things the right way right off the bat, so I may need to essentially run unit tests on everything beforehand until I develop my intuitive sense to a much greater degree. With computers you tell them "here's exactly what's wrong with you." With humans you can actually rely on them to fill in the gaps and just state things a lot more diplomatically (not to mention, it's not about making people "wrong" anyway!). Something phrased very gently and ambiguously can get results, and is probably the only way to deal with people effectively in most circumstances. I appreciate the reminder!
nostrademons 19y ago
A few alternate strategies, some taken from books I've read, others from people I know: Build a prototype - of anything, really, as long as it's impressive. Show it to industry contacts. Have them tell you "this is interesting, but it's not really what we need right now. However, if you could solve this problem for us, we'd pay you money for it." Get them to pay up-front to fund development. Build the product with their money. Sell product to other customers. Reinvest the profits. (my day job, also Sun Microsystems and Franz Inc.) Find a group of passionate enthusiasts. Write software for them, and charge money for it. Partner with a business that benefits from what you're doing. Always look for underserved markets, and then opportunistically go after them with cheap products. Iterate quickly. Take over the world. (Microsoft) Build website. Convince friends to join. Serendipitously discover that friends tell all their friends about it. Overload servers. Charge money for premium features to keep servers running. Make modest profit off of it. (LiveJournal, Flickr). Same as above, but provide ways for people to make money off your product (selling services to each other, for example). Take a cut of their revenues. (EBay, PayPal, Second Life, Microsoft). Get people laid. Profit. (HotOrNot, PlentyOfFish)
- portLAN 19y ago
  > Show it to industry contacts. You need industry contacts first. Suggestions? > Take over the world. (Microsoft) "Left as an exercise for the reader."
  - nostrademons 19y ago
    "You need industry contacts first. Suggestions?" Work. Go to trade shows. Hang out on Internet forums with people in your target market. Make friends with folks. It doesn't work so well for me, because I'm 2 years out of college and not in a particularly client-facing job. However, the OP is 36 and in a big company. You ought to have some sort of professional contacts by then, right?
    - portLAN 19y ago
      I appreciate that you mean well; it seems that you're advising people on how to do something you haven't done, however, which is the same situation as at the top of the thread. My impression is that the best way to meet investors is to live in Silicon Valley. That sounds like it's leaving out a lot of steps...

by portLAN 19y ago

SwellJoe 19y ago

'"You can do it too!" works better when they aren't telling you to pursue a different strategy than they did with no specifics.' I didn't think I needed to do so, since I assumed everybody here has read all of pg's essays, seen Guy Kawasaki's Art of the Start, and read a few other useful books about startups. While everybody who's built a business (I'm on my second) has at least a few things to teach others in the same boat...I didn't want to clutter up the post with a bunch of random rants. I respond to posts here with specific advice whenever there's a question I feel qualified to answer.

portLAN 19y ago
> I respond to posts here with specific advice whenever there's a question I feel qualified to answer. You haven't explained how your start-up succeeded without YC. > seen Guy Kawasaki's Art of the Start I hope you're kidding about that.
- SwellJoe 19y ago
  "You haven't explained how your start-up succeeded without YC." Nobody asked. I'll take your response as somebody asking. In both cases, I made myself a recognized expert on an Open Source project that I liked a lot and that I liked the people involved (Squid in the first case, Webmin in the latter...though the first also included a huge amount of Webmin-related work and inspired the second). And then I founded companies built on making some Open Source project easier to use, more powerful, better documented, and more popular. The first never really made it out of the "consulting business" stage, though I constantly tried to convert it to a product business...had I been in the valley, I would have been able to make it work the way I wanted it to. It was a hardware based business, and for that you need volume, which I didn't have the capital to deal with--closing a big sale in the server appliance industry can cost tens of thousands of dollars before seeing any cashflow from it. So, stay out of hardware if you don't have the capital to see it through. Even then, you probably ought to stay out of hardware. So, the first one did not succeed without YC, by my standards, but did buy me a 350Z and keep me in food and houses for 7 years. The primary thing worth learning from the first business (which I built without not only YC but without any outside investment for involvement) was that you can't do it alone. Get a partner, get to the valley (I don't even bother saying get to a "startup hub" because nobody is doing deals in Boston), get to work. As for the second, here's what I know so far: 1. Start or join, very early, an Open Source project. 2. Work on it for several years. Get millions of downloads and millions of users. 3. ... 4. Profit! "> seen Guy Kawasaki's Art of the Start I hope you're kidding about that. " Of course not. Guy's a great motivator. Can't start a business worth crap (see Truemors), but he has a lot of good stuff to say about marketing, salesmanship, morale-building, and lots more. Some accidental experts really do have good advice.
  - portLAN 19y ago
    > Nobody asked. Actually that's how this whole debate got started -- I asked: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52613 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52613 > because nobody is doing deals in Boston So in your opinion would YC be better off doing both batches in Silicon Valley? My impression is people would be better served living there and flying to Boston for Demo Day 2 than vice-versa. > but he has a lot of good stuff to say about marketing, salesmanship, morale-building, and lots more http://valleywag.com/tech/silicon-valley-tool/guy-kawasaki-231106.php http://valleywag.com/tech/silicon-valley-tool/guy-kawasaki-2... http://www.nowpublic.com/don_t_be_a_dude_yamaha_a_gripping_story_of_life_and_death_in_silicon_valley http://www.nowpublic.com/don_t_be_a_dude_yamaha_a_gripping_s... http://techdumpster.com/2007/08/03/toolbox-profile-1-guy-kawasaki/ http://techdumpster.com/2007/08/03/toolbox-profile-1-guy-kaw... > Guy's a great motivator. In a "scared straight" kind of way, sure.
    - SwellJoe 19y ago
      "> Nobody asked. Actually that's how this whole debate got started -- I asked: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52613 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52613" Yeah, I took that as smart ass sniping. If it was a sincere question, I'm glad I've now answered it. "So in your opinion would YC be better off doing both batches in Silicon Valley? My impression is people would be better served living there and flying to Boston for Demo Day 2 than vice-versa." Yes, and I've told pg as much (he asked everyone in YC their opinion on the issue a few months ago). But, I don't know as much about the startup business as pg, and I'm given to understand that pg likes living in Cambridge...he brings the money, he makes the rules. "yada yada yada, Guy Kawasaki sucks, blah blah blah" Who cares? Have you actually read his books, or watched him speak? If you're too stupid to know a good writer and an amazingly good speaker when you see one, I'm not going to waste time trying to convince you. At the very least perhaps you can learn how to speak to people in public without pissing them off.
- jamiequint 19y ago
  you're trolling, and its annoying. You asked a question that was impossible to answer (at least succinctly since there are entire books written about the topic). Getting into YC isn't even an answer in itself, other people here are just trying to tell you it is possible to do without YC. You know, people did start companies before YC.
  - portLAN 19y ago
    > you're trolling, and its annoying. No. Objecting to platitudes isn't trolling. The statements most commonly described as "platitudes" are short proverbs and aphorisms which are intended to motivate or encourage another person, but which are in reality overly-simplistic or cliche; for example, "You will succeed if you try hard enough" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platitude http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platitude > You asked a question that was impossible to answer Wrong again -- funny, because he answered it above, describing what he actually did for years before YC. It's disappointing how much knee-jerk reactionism there is when people perceive something as raining on their fantasy parade. Critical investigation will help people succeed. As a result of my not accepting the original platitude, the poster supplied much more informative answers.
    - pg 19y ago
      The problem is not what you say but how you say it. E.g. "raining on their fantasy parade."
      - portLAN 19y ago
        Saying things the right way in dealing with people is an art. I'm mostly around computers... kind of like a lawyer who comes home and then deals with his family by continuing the cross-examinations! Thanks for pointing it out; I was thinking about it the other day -- multiple ways to phrase the same thing -- and it took me several iterations to get from "likely offensive" to "non-offensive and helpful". I don't have enough experience with humans to say things the right way right off the bat, so I may need to essentially run unit tests on everything beforehand until I develop my intuitive sense to a much greater degree. With computers you tell them "here's exactly what's wrong with you." With humans you can actually rely on them to fill in the gaps and just state things a lot more diplomatically (not to mention, it's not about making people "wrong" anyway!). Something phrased very gently and ambiguously can get results, and is probably the only way to deal with people effectively in most circumstances. I appreciate the reminder!

nostrademons 19y ago

A few alternate strategies, some taken from books I've read, others from people I know: Build a prototype - of anything, really, as long as it's impressive. Show it to industry contacts. Have them tell you "this is interesting, but it's not really what we need right now. However, if you could solve this problem for us, we'd pay you money for it." Get them to pay up-front to fund development. Build the product with their money. Sell product to other customers. Reinvest the profits. (my day job, also Sun Microsystems and Franz Inc.) Find a group of passionate enthusiasts. Write software for them, and charge money for it. Partner with a business that benefits from what you're doing. Always look for underserved markets, and then opportunistically go after them with cheap products. Iterate quickly. Take over the world. (Microsoft) Build website. Convince friends to join. Serendipitously discover that friends tell all their friends about it. Overload servers. Charge money for premium features to keep servers running. Make modest profit off of it. (LiveJournal, Flickr). Same as above, but provide ways for people to make money off your product (selling services to each other, for example). Take a cut of their revenues. (EBay, PayPal, Second Life, Microsoft). Get people laid. Profit. (HotOrNot, PlentyOfFish)

portLAN 19y ago
> Show it to industry contacts. You need industry contacts first. Suggestions? > Take over the world. (Microsoft) "Left as an exercise for the reader."
- nostrademons 19y ago
  "You need industry contacts first. Suggestions?" Work. Go to trade shows. Hang out on Internet forums with people in your target market. Make friends with folks. It doesn't work so well for me, because I'm 2 years out of college and not in a particularly client-facing job. However, the OP is 36 and in a big company. You ought to have some sort of professional contacts by then, right?
  - portLAN 19y ago
    I appreciate that you mean well; it seems that you're advising people on how to do something you haven't done, however, which is the same situation as at the top of the thread. My impression is that the best way to meet investors is to live in Silicon Valley. That sounds like it's leaving out a lot of steps...