[HN Gopher] Please don't ask founders existential questions
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Please don't ask founders existential questions
Author : arunsivadasan
Score : 48 points
Date : 2022-03-15 20:14 UTC (2 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (david.ae)
| hungryhobo wrote:
| As a founder, if you don't even have the mental maturity to deal
| with criticism then start up is probably not for you
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The message I get is that if you are a founder's friend, it's
| not your job to do the heavy criticism. He will get criticism
| all around the entire day anyway, you don't want to add into
| it.
|
| But I bet there are reasonable exceptions everywhere. It's way
| too complex an issue to have such a simple answer.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if you are a founder 's friend, it's not your job to do
| the heavy criticism_
|
| What will your product do that Google doesn't and why can't
| (aren't) they do(ing) it isn't heavy criticism. It's reality
| checking.
|
| The article posits questions asked in bad faith. ("You, for
| some reason, do not really believe in his idea. You, with
| some self-righteous zeal, also want to save your friend from
| some tragic failure.") The questions aren't the problem. The
| motivations of the person asking them are.
|
| The takeaway isn't "don't ask founders existential
| questions." It's don't surround yourself with "friends" who
| don't believe in you, won't tell you that to your face and
| whose conversation consists of backhanded criticism.
| raviparikh wrote:
| I disagree with this post (personally). As a founder, being asked
| by a friend, "why do you believe you can do better than Google"
| if I'm working on a search engine is _exactly_ what I want to be
| asked. If I 'm founding a search engine startup, that's probably
| the single question I have the best answer to, and it tees me up
| really well to give a strong pitch of my core differentiation.
|
| At my previous startup (Heap) I loved answering "how are you
| different than Mixpanel?" and at my current startup
| (Airplane.dev) I love answering "how are you different than
| Retool / Rundeck?"
|
| By contrast, the proposed alternative questions, e.g. "How will
| you get your first x users?" are much more annoying. I'm happy to
| answer that kind of question for a VC or a prospective hire, but
| if a friend asked me this casually I'd find it somewhat tedious
| to go through our growth strategy.
|
| Just my 2 cents-I'm sure every founder is a bit different in
| terms of what they like/dislike being asked in a social setting.
| Traster wrote:
| >Let's say your friend is obsessed with building a new search-
| engine. When you ask them why do they believe they can do better
| than Google, you are literally telling them that they shouldn't
| be doing this since if it was 'correct' or possible or
| profitable, then Google would have already done that. This is
| bad.
|
| I don't think the author is really thinking about what that
| question means. If you say you're building a search engine and I
| ask you why you can do better than Google it's because I want to
| _know_ why you 're going to do better than Google. Clearly if
| you're building a search engine then you have some idea of what
| you're going to do better than google. And if not.... well,
| that's pretty ballsy. Fine, maybe you just think it's an
| underserved market (it is!), but founders should have an idea of
| why they will beat the competition, and asking the question isn't
| dismissive, it's inquisitive.
| salawat wrote:
| Sorry. Existential questions will be asked until they get
| answered. Because is an okay answer, but it doesn't say anything
| flattering about you.
|
| Also, if someone is so lost that they think the question needs
| asking... You may already have gone too deep down the path of
| burning investor dollars on what may ultimately end up as churn.
| [deleted]
| vannevar wrote:
| The questions described don't sound so much like existential
| questions as rhetorical ones. They are not asked to get an answer
| but to make a point, that point being that the questioner
| believes their friend's startup idea is a poor one. So yes, it's
| generally better to engage with someone you want to persuade by
| asking actual questions, rather than talking at them with
| rhetorical ones.
| code_runner wrote:
| I don't think we should have to play w/ kid gloves around
| founders. They aren't different from the rest of us.
|
| I imagine there is a correlation between failed founders and
| "number of question categories deemed askable" that the founder
| has dreamed up.
| blurri wrote:
| I see people saying "you're gonna need to answer those
| questions", "brush it off", "you should be able to accept
| critique". If you're soliciting feedback or making a a pitch, all
| valid.
|
| If it's just rando's? Nah, those founders should not just accept
| a high level of noise out there. A lot of people are happy to
| share their pessimism. That's tiring.
| bspear wrote:
| Actually think founders need to look existential questions in the
| eye, and figure out reasonable answers to them. Yes the questions
| are better framed in an open-ended non-demeaning way, but asking
| them will save you from locking yourself up for years building
| something nobody wants.
|
| Also, building a better version of X is usually less promising
| than building the first version of Y. Especially when X is pretty
| well-executed.
|
| Most top startups I see are carving out their own niche:
| https://topstartups.io/
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Well, as someone who has literally built a search engine and paid
| for it out of pocket, I'll argue the profit question is deeply
| relevant, it's _the_ question you should have an answer for
| before even considering investing actual money into this field.
| Most search engines just aren 't profitable.
|
| Me, I've chosen to simply reduce burn rate so much it isn't much
| of a problem. I can do this non-profit because I think the world
| needs it. But if that isn't you, if you actually want to live off
| your work, you need an answer to this.
|
| Google makes it work through being a major player in
| advertisement. If you had Google's search service, but not their
| advertisement-ability, you would struggle to make ends meet.
| Maybe you could do like Kagi intends and offer a subscription
| service. Maybe that will work. Who knows.
|
| How you will compete with Google is a far less tricky question.
| There are several niches they rather visibly flounder in. I'd
| estimate their biggest problem is they are trying to do too much
| at once, making their service not quite great at any given thing.
| It's reasonably easy to build something that's superior at just
| one thing.
| the_common_man wrote:
| If people are not paying you and you cannot self sustain why
| would you think world needs it? In fact, the world is clearly
| giving you a signal it doesn't need it.
|
| (I am being rhetorical here. It's very easy to break down
| things this way imo and I think it's the point of the article.
| talk with your founder friends with compassion and trust)
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Well even this I have an answer to: Because _I_ find it
| useful. That 's the entire reason I built my search engine.
| I'm sharing it with others as a service for others to use if
| they want. If they do not want to use it, that's also fine.
| It is a niche service for a niche audience.
| timoth3y wrote:
| I don't agree with this article. Being supportive is not being
| nice. Being supportive can be cruel.
|
| I do a lot of mentoring for startup founders. I usually get asked
| to help with pricing and positioning strategy because it's hard
| to find mentors with that expertise.
|
| In particular, there are two SDG-focused programs I mentor at
| every year. The founders are very early stage. Some have products
| and customers, but most just have MVPs and customer interviews.
|
| It's kind of heartbreaking. These new founders have had so much
| validation. The program and other mentors have told them how they
| should be admired for following their dreams and how they are the
| future and will be saving the planet.
|
| Aad I come along and say "OK. How do you know people will buy
| this? No, sadly, people don't buy things because it's the right
| thing to do. OK people have said this is 'fun', but how much are
| they willing to pay?"
|
| My evaluations at the end of these programs tend to be an extreme
| split between founders who write things like "This was the best
| 45 minutes of the entire program." and those who write tings like
| "This mentor just didn't care about me or my startup."
|
| _Sigh_
|
| You are not doing your friends any favors by simply smiling and
| and telling them how clever they are. You might be making their
| lives worse.
| CPLX wrote:
| It's possible to hold your view and the view in the article
| simultaneously. Your role was to critique them. A friend's role
| is to be friendly. It's possible that sometimes someone will
| want detailed advice and course correction and sometimes
| emotional support.
|
| For example you might have a different opinion of the phrase
| "run faster stop being lazy" coming from your spouse rather
| than your personal trainer.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Yeah this doesn't sound like a friendship type relationship
| though. I'd expect my friends to be supportive and mostly not
| clued in on all the details.
|
| In productivity oriented organizations and relationships there
| are many roles which are more about what you describe - sober,
| sceptic, detailed, harsh, realistic etc.
| waylandsmithers wrote:
| I think you are describing is what the radical candor crowd
| would call "ruinous empathy", ie lying to avoid hurting their
| feelings.
|
| There is a difference though between a conversation among
| friends and a founder seeking advice from a mentor. Telling a
| friend that their startup is dumb won't stop them from seeing
| the idea through anyway, so I think the article is questioning
| what one hopes to accomplish by being generally negative.
| the_common_man wrote:
| You sound like a mentor here and not like a friend. Friends are
| required to be supportive, mentors give advise and direction.
| Very different relationship
| palijer wrote:
| Robin Williams had a quote that was along the lines of
|
| "whenever people ask me for advice on how to become a successful
| comedian, I tell them they won't make it and they should give up.
| Anyone who listens to me and gives up wouldn't have made it
| anyways, and that saves them hardship down the road. Anyone who
| has the determination to make it along the hard path wouldn't
| listen to me anyways"
| ALittleLight wrote:
| In highschool I was friends with a Mormon kid. After graduation I
| was headed for college and he was headed out on his two year
| mission trip to Brazil.
|
| Personally, I thought it was a very foolish decision to spend two
| years going door to door in Brazil. I also thought it was a net
| negative as I don't believe in Mormonism and don't think it's a
| good thing to recruit more people to believe in it.
|
| I was conflicted about what to do. Should I try to convince my
| friend he was wrong to go? Just stay quiet, like this article
| recommends or ask some politely phrased question?
|
| I wound up splitting the difference and tried gently making the
| case to him that he wasting his time. I didn't come at the
| argument as hard or often as I might have and I didn't leave it
| entirely alone. We had one awkward conversation about it, that I
| could tell he found off-putting or offensive, and that was that.
| He went off to Brazil and I never saw nor spoke to him again.
|
| I still don't know what the right thing to do then was and I have
| the same conflict about the advice in this article. If I
| genuinely think my friend is making a mistake I shouldn't
| directly confront them about it? I don't think I buy that, even
| if it makes things less awkward.
|
| I see the polite rephrase advice as being generally good
| probably. I'd just say that it's probably different by person.
| Some people prefer direct challenges. "You'll never do it without
| a great UI!"
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I find that as a general rule, it's best to assume that people
| know what they're doing and what's best _for them_. So in this
| case I 'd ask why he was doing it, what his motivations were,
| etc.
|
| Aside: I'd assume that as his friend, you'd already know that
| it is common for Mormons to do this!
|
| In any event, if it's a life choice like this (or marriage, or
| a new career), then telling him that he's doing the wrong thing
| is not likely to result in anything positive, other than you
| feeling better (?) about yourself.
| rocqua wrote:
| If you doubt your friend's plans. Don't go at it trying to
| convince him he's wrong. Go at it trying to understand why he
| thinks it's a good plan. If you want to be direct 'I don't
| believe this will work without a great UI, am I missing
| something? ' is much better than 'you'll never do it without a
| great UI'.
|
| Both are direct and confronting. The first is aggressive, the
| second is dialogue.
| Remnant44 wrote:
| This.
|
| Turn the situation around. How often do you enjoy hearing
| someone's opinion on something where they haven't even tried
| to understand your goals, motivations, and values? And
| instead just spouted off what they think?
| krisoft wrote:
| > If you want to be direct 'I don't believe this will work
| without a great UI, am I missing something? ' is much better
| than 'you'll never do it without a great UI'.
|
| If someone is unable to turn one into the other in their head
| probably they shouldn't be doing a startup really. I
| understand that one shouldn't be a jerk, but we also don't
| have to go around like other people are made of eggshells.
| "You will never do it without a great UI" is a perfectly fine
| thing to say if you believe that. A healthy, well adjusted
| human being can say to that "you are right and this is how we
| will get a great UI" or tell you "you might think that, but
| actually" or they might shrug and ignore you or any other
| variation. If their world collapses from a tinny bit of
| adversity, and they fold like a wet napkin they should do
| something less stressfull.
| throwra620 wrote:
| nudpiedo wrote:
| I disagree with the article. Also existential questions are
| something different than what the article author believes to be.
|
| And somehow agree with not being mean, but if a person is going
| to be discourage by such _very common and non evil meanly
| formulated_ comments, how are they going to survive in the wild?
|
| Still constructive critique is more useful.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| "Why should I read your article?"
| davehcker wrote:
| Author of the post here. Trying to respond to some of the
| comments. Firstly, apologies- I didn't intend to make anything
| click-baity. As a matter of fact, I didn't even post it here. I
| realized that I could have titled my post like "How to ask
| founders good questions".
|
| But, and in all honesty, as a founder, it did/does feel such
| questions are existential. I used _search-engine_ as a mask, I'm
| actually building a deep-tech (I've commented/posted on HN
| before).
|
| When you put everything on the line to build a startup for a
| mission you believe in to the extent that you can't even separate
| your existence from your startups 90% of the awake hours, then
| when such questions come from (this is important) "a specific set
| of stakeholders", it does become existential. I love being asked
| all these things from a random person or at a random pitch event.
| But when you're my colleague, co-founder, or my hero, or a
| potential investor who I've been in the loop with for weeks, then
| when you ask such questions, it does get hard.
|
| Someone below suggested that such people probably shouldn't start
| a startup, but on the contrary, I wrote it not to whine about
| myself, but only with the sincere hope that if there's someone
| who is less tougher than I am, he/she would be more cared for (in
| the odd chance that someone reads it).
|
| The true origin of this post was in my experience with building
| my indoor farming startup that will grow the best quality
| produce, cheaper, and way more resource efficiently than
| traditional agriculture. Ofc I've done my homework and I am
| actually taking a risk and doing the very uncomfortable by
| deciding to work on it. Imagine jumping back and forth between
| research-papers, circuit diagrams, dying-plants, finance, etc.
| etc., and then someone very relevant asks/tells you "you can't
| beat the oldest industry known to humankind", or "why can Infarm
| (a unicorn in the vertical) not do this?", "maybe just work on
| indoor grow lights (since it fits more into the standard lean
| startup model". In that moment, it seems existential. Maybe I
| interpret it wrong, but I interpret it as if you're telling me
| that my startup shouldn't (can't exist) and yes I'm so obsessed
| with my startup that I take it personally (again, only when it
| comes from specific stakeholders). I can give them the numbers,
| but if they say it can't be done or if it could have been done,
| it would have been done, then that's same as saying that I should
| shut up.
| bombcar wrote:
| "It needed a week's answer, or none."
|
| It's hard because some of the "easy questions" require a long
| answer - and sometimes you really _ARE_ in a startup that
| shouldn 't exist (or can't exist yet) - and your friends might
| be the people who need to pull you out.
|
| But often, if it's someone who is "involved" or interested or
| even a co-founder, they _really do have_ the question and want
| to know the answer - or at least be reassured that you 've
| thought about it.
|
| A startup is always in the strange place of trying to do
| something easy enough that a startup can do it, and hard enough
| that nobody has done it yet.
| MrJohz wrote:
| > But when your my colleague, co-founder, or my hero, or a
| potential investor who I've been in the loop with got weeks,
| then when you ask such questions, it does get hard.
|
| I'm not a founder of anything, so I understand if this is just
| part of an experience that I've not had, but those are exactly
| the sorts of people who I would absolutely want to ask these
| sorts of questions. At least in my life, if I want to do
| something crazy, it's my close friends, my heroes, and my
| mentors that I go to first to get advice, and if I'm doing
| something that they don't see as sensible, I truly hope they
| tell me. I mean, they have done plenty of times already! And
| either I can give them a good answer and we can talk it over,
| or I can't give them a good answer, and then I know I need to
| think things over - either coming up with a better answer, or
| realising that what I was doing wasn't as sensible as I
| thought.
|
| Likewise, I have friends where I hope I can be that person to
| them as well, and try and offer a critical perspective when I
| think they're viewing things in a rosier light than they
| realise. Obviously how you say that is always important, and in
| moments like that I try hard to frame my own perspective
| helpfully (and accept that my perspective may be missing
| something that they're seeing), but if there is a deep enough
| trust in a relationship, I think those sorts of things are
| possible and healthy.
| nwsm wrote:
| I got click baited :(
|
| The title says `Please don't ask founders existential questions`,
| but the article tells me not to berate my friends with pessimism
| about their startup ideas. Thanks for the tip!
| CPLX wrote:
| Indeed. I was curious to discover why founders should not be
| queried about the existence of God and the nature of reality.
| Oh well.
| contingencies wrote:
| Personally I love questions. Especially from people with no
| background whatsoever in business, tech or the field in question.
| The interest clusters of responses help to attune to public
| perception.
|
| Amazingly, the main one I get (seven years and counting) is
| "don't they have that in Japan already?". So on our timeline,
| entry #3 or something is "Research in Japan". Total waste of
| money, but a memorable trip!
| dasil003 wrote:
| As a founder you are fighting an uphill battle every step of the
| way. I'm not sure trying to convince the world to stop with the
| middlebrow dismissals en masse will bear much fruit. If the
| naysayers are getting you down you need to find coping strategies
| like spending time with more positive people, or just not talking
| about your startup with people who aren't helpful. There's a
| reason incubators are a thing.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I agree, but for entirely different reasons.
|
| Yes, someone ought to ask those questions; no, it should not be
| you. Sadly, most of the time someone gets really fired up about
| an idea, you can't really stop them, even if it is a terrible
| idea on the face of it. All you can really do is be around to
| pick up the pieces after they slam headfirst into one of the many
| obstacles.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| As a founder you have to be a little bit delusional in order to
| balance out all the naysayers in your life (especially the ones
| who are closest to you!). It's a lonely game until you "make it"
| - and then everyone suddenly wants to be your friend / family
| member.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| Founders need to be asked those questions. Those are important
| questions, that the founders should be asking themselves, but
| also are going to have gaps in asking themselves. The same
| enthusiasm that causes them to want to work on these problems
| also causes them to miss vital questions.
|
| Be mindful when asking that type of question. Not every founder
| needs to hear every question from you. But if they come to you
| for council, do ask those questions, because a ton of them they'd
| better have immediate answers to, and the rest they probably
| should have thought of already. But one of the most valuable
| services you can provide, as a friend, is to be a sounding board
| and to make certain they have iterated across all of those
| questions. That does mean a substantial mental investment from
| you in maintaining that checklist.
| gaze wrote:
| Don't be a jerk but _someone_ is gonna ask these questions. Might
| as well ask them before they make big sacrifices.
| icehawk wrote:
| It seems really weird not to as ask the question "why would
| someone use your engine over Google," as a friend because "Why
| would I use your search engine over Google?" is _exactly_ what
| every single customer is going to ask, prospective employees and
| founders aside.
|
| If that's not something they have a cogent answer for, they
| should probably look into some other line of business.
| victorbojica wrote:
| I'm a founder and I've gotten all lot of these. I usually don't
| take them to the heart, but at some point you start questioning
| yourself and they might shine a new perspective on it. They might
| be right, or they might be wrong, but the answer and the actions
| are mostly on you.
|
| My take after all this is that you should question your friend,
| but if the drive is there, there's no point in arguing or being
| the "rational" one. The best way forward is support.
| duxup wrote:
| I feel like if you're a founder... you gotta be able to brush
| that off / have answers (granted you don't have to get into the
| weeds with everyone).
|
| Rando existential question guy is going to do his thing
| regardless.
| holler wrote:
| You're correct that it requires thick skin, but there is such
| thing as pushing too hard, and I've dealt with that personally
| when a close friend became almost aggressive in their
| viewpoint.
| randrews wrote:
| Could not disagree more. If your plan is to build a search engine
| and you _can't_ answer such a basic question as "why would
| someone use your engine over Google," then your plan is going to
| fail.
|
| If you're a founder you should anticipate these kinds of
| questions and have answers for them that make sense; if you ask
| these kinds of questions you should expect an actual answer, even
| if you don't agree with it.
|
| Edit, to hopefully avoid some predictable replies:
|
| - If the point is "don't be a jerk" then fine, there's a way to
| ask these basic questions without being discouraging.
|
| - The author is right if the project isn't supposed to be a
| business. "Why would someone use your hobby language instead of
| C++" is a stupid question because the point of writing a hobby
| language is the fun of writing it.
|
| But if someone is putting their life savings into a business idea
| and can't answer the most basic questions about it... Maybe they
| need a little discouragement.
|
| Edit, again:
|
| Also, I'm not a founder, but I have a side project, and I've
| gotten these sorts of questions about it... and I love them!
| Because it's a starting point into talking about my side project,
| which I love doing with people! I'm not discouraged by someone
| questioning why I'm building my thing, because I know perfectly
| well why I'm building my thing and I enjoy sharing that with
| people.
| nickff wrote:
| The OP is 'begging the question', by not explicitly stating the
| purpose of such conversations, and the fundamental reasons for
| avoiding these questions. Here is the critical paragraph:
|
| > _" It is almost certain that if someone is smart enough to
| build a search engine while living off of ramen, they also know
| more about what Google is capable of. Your attempt to question
| them is not helpful to anyone. If anything, you're totally
| denying the fundamental aspect of innovation and entrepreneurs
| throughout history who have established that one or ten person
| team can conquer many a Goliaths, or bring to the world
| something entirely new."_
|
| Notice how the author says: _" [y]our attempt to question them
| is not helpful to anyone"_. They also say imply that non-
| technical conversations about start-ups are basically useless:
| _" [t]here is already enough knowledge about startups"_.
| notahacker wrote:
| I think the key part is less that and more the _way of
| phrasing it_. So you 're encouraged to ask non-technical
| questions how they're supposed to be better than the
| competition but not allowed to say "but Google dominates that
| space, doesn't it?" to imply they don't necessarily need to
| exist. (though the author also says "I think your UI is not
| good" is 'constructive' feedback, so they don't think you
| have to be nice!)
|
| I think there's a point to that especially if it's a business
| you don't know and you're not a VC or angel, but I also think
| there's a surprisingly large number of entrepreneurs out
| there who are smart enough to live off ramen and program
| something complex like a search engine who do have a massive
| blind spot about routes to market or the complexity required
| for the software to actually be viable rather than just
| minimum. Sometimes the blunt approach "doesn't the network
| effect of $dominantplayer create a massive lockin" is more
| helpful than a general "so how are you going to get
| customers?" which is easy to answer with a generic
| "sales/marketing/referrals/affiliates". The entrepreneur
| ought to be able to give a more interesting answer to the
| first question, and if they aren't able to they're going to
| need to figure it out...
| randrews wrote:
| > who have established that one or ten person team can
| conquer many a Goliaths, or bring to the world something
| entirely new.
|
| I wonder how many of those teams couldn't answer what was
| better about their product than the one they were replacing?
| I'll bet Google themselves could have answered that question,
| comparing themselves to Yahoo, back in the day.
| felipellrocha wrote:
| I don't know if I agree with you. The point of the article is
| that those questions are not only unhelpful, they're
| distracting, and you shouldn't be trying to distract a founder.
| The reason why people are asking those questions is because
| they themselves are nervous and they're projecting their nerves
| onto you.
| kazinator wrote:
| But the article's author would probably regard "why would
| someone use your engine over Google" as a reasonably good
| question, as opposed to "nobody is going to use your engine
| over Google because it's a household verb".
|
| It's not the same as the author's example "what makes you
| believe you can do better than Google" because that question
| assumes you are doing exactly the same thing as Google: that
| all the prospective users of the idea are fully satisfied with
| Google, and have to be convinced to use something else for no
| reason at all. Your "why would someone use your search engine
| over Google" is better; it's more closely in line with "how
| will you get your first users".
| randrews wrote:
| > "why would someone use your engine over Google" as a
| reasonably good question, as opposed to "nobody is going to
| use your engine over Google because it's a household verb".
|
| Well, one of these is a question, the other is a statement...
| Actually I noticed that if you look at his examples of what
| not to say, none of them are questions. So maybe a better
| idea is "don't say discouraging things to your founder
| friends, ask them questions instead."
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| GP picked that example because the article explicitly calls
| it a bad question. The third paragraph of the article:
|
| >Let's say your friend is obsessed with building a new
| search-engine. When you ask them why do they believe they can
| do better than Google, you are literally telling them that
| they shouldn't be doing this since if it was 'correct' or
| possible or profitable, then Google would have already done
| that. This is bad.
| Animats wrote:
| I had just that conversation with one of the founders of Cuil.
| Anyone remember Cuil? Search engine company, 2008-2010. They
| actually got it running, but not very well. I asked what the
| revenue model was. They didn't have a good answer. They ran out
| of runway before finding more investors or revenue.
|
| Cuil was a nice demo, though. With under 100 people, they got a
| search engine going that did its own crawls and was roughly
| comparable to early Google. But this was before Google started
| to really suck, and there wasn't a market.
|
| Google hired their key people to keep them off the market.
| the_common_man wrote:
| Is your point here that cuil should not have been started
| because they failed to answer your question about revenue
| model?
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I think the point is
|
| "If you cannot espouse the benefits and possible market of
| the product you yourself are building - why are you
| building it?"
|
| Basically - be your own advocate. If you can't handle
| someone asking about your product (even in a negative
| fashion) how the hell can you hope to have the conviction
| and drive to actually sell it?
|
| You don't need to "convince" every critic - but you sure as
| hell need to be able to step into the ring and talk to
| their points.
|
| This is the same reason debate teams often explicitly spend
| time reviewing the problem from their opponents perspective
| - you _must_ be able to understand and counter arguments
| from your detractors.
| Animats wrote:
| Well, lack of a revenue model killed them.
|
| There was more pressure back then to build a profitable
| business. Today there are companies growing by funding
| round after funding round without reaching profitability.
| syzygyhack wrote:
| > You awake as a hamburger. You start screaming only to have
| special sauce fly from your lips. The world is in sepia.
| mdonahoe wrote:
| I was very confused by this response, but searching Google
| for this text returns the following page on "Cuil Theory"
|
| http://cuiltheory.wikidot.com/what-is-cuil-theory
| function_seven wrote:
| Holy shit. I had completely forgotten about that until just
| now. Reading your comment, I was struck by the most intense
| deja vu. Took me a few seconds to place it.
|
| 3!?, might as well start looking up those old rage comics.
| productceo wrote:
| This comment is correct.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Just frame it as the author recommends: "How will you get your
| first billion users?"
| [deleted]
| pavon wrote:
| This article makes me very curious about what the author
| considers an existential question. I don't disagree with the
| content of the article, but the title is throwing me. None of
| the examples he gave of unproductive things to say are
| questions at all, and I would consider one of his recommended
| questions (What is the competition missing that you think you
| got?) to be pretty close to an existential question for a
| startup.
| randrews wrote:
| I took it to mean any question that, if you don't have a good
| answer, means your startup shouldn't exist. Like if the
| answer to "why would someone use you instead of Google" is
| null, then you are probably not going to successfully compete
| with Google. Or, you could come up with the best tool that
| ever existed for converting WEBP images to PCX, and if you
| don't have an answer for "who on earth has used the PCX
| format in the past thirty years" then you're probably not
| gonna sell many copies of that tool.
| hgomersall wrote:
| It's more the point that sometimes you don't want to have to
| justify yourself to all and sundry, especially when the person
| you're talking to has no real insight and wants to appear
| smart. I've been to loads of events where you just want to have
| a nice chat and before you know it you're getting a lecture on
| all the ways in which you're going to fail. One time, I didn't
| even want to talk about my stuff but was basically forced to
| have to justify myself.
|
| Do this a few times and it gets exhausting. It's got nothing to
| do with whether you can answer the questions, and everything to
| do with the fact that sometimes you just don't want to answer
| the questions.
| randrews wrote:
| "Yeah, that's the kind of thing I spend all day working on,
| but right now I just want to hang out with you guys and have
| dinner / play this game / enjoy the party / whatever."
| natch wrote:
| This is such a defeatist line of thought.
|
| 1) Delusion is a real thing. Some would-be startup founders are
| deluded and could use help from their friends. Some are not
| deluded. But, again, some are.
|
| 2) Curiosity is a real thing. Asking questions about a startup
| idea and wondering how it gets around the obvious objections does
| not equate to saying the idea is worthless.
| brandonhorst wrote:
| > It is almost certain that if someone is smart enough to build a
| search engine while living off of ramen, they also know more
| about what Google is capable of.
|
| I'm not sure this is a given. Tons of brilliant developers
| (myself included) build complex products without having ever
| considered the market, or just assuming that users will come out
| of the woodwork if it's technically awesome enough.
|
| Seems to me that if a founder doesn't have immediate answers to
| some of these "existential questions", that's a red flag right
| there.
| titanomachy wrote:
| Also the only information you really have in this example is
| that they're smart enough to say the words "I'm building a
| search engine".
| stathibus wrote:
| Yeah the premise is clearly untrue. People build useless stuff
| all the time. If you're going to build something without having
| answers to these questions you need to be honest with yourself
| that you're doing it for fun, and for many that moment will not
| come unless they are challenged on it.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Does anyone have an example of a useful, interesting post that
| started with "please don't"? (Rhetorical question)
| dkarl wrote:
| How about this: go ahead and ask, but without the rhetorical
| intent of proving that your milliseconds-in-the-making gut
| reaction contains insights they haven't yet considered.
| halfdeadcat wrote:
| Perhaps if a founder is too delicate to be asked questions
| grounded in reality, they should consider a different profession.
| motohagiography wrote:
| I made things because I legit thought, "these people are stupid,
| they haven't leveraged this brilliant insight, I can do this
| better," and then find out that none of that is true. Dead demos
| include a protocol for encoding hashes in QR codes for tokenizing
| all the things in a supply chain, a marketplace for anonymously
| referring non-fit employees and coworkers out to recruiters to
| get them hired away, a collaboration tool for producing security
| features of a product using threat modelling, etc. The conceit
| beneath each of them was they weren't _for_ anyone, they were in
| reaction to a situation, and a kind of expression of thwarted
| nerd revenge on the world. Maybe it 's a great impetus for
| writing pop songs, (though perhaps more emo), but not for making
| tools for people. They were un-buyable and un-investable for all
| the reasons.
|
| The question I've learned to ask is, "is there a specific person
| you have talked to in the last 6 months who this is for and who
| wants this?" Can't say I always live by that advice, as I still
| have another troubled-loner-ware project in me, as the creative
| urge is merciless, but the one thing I would never do is
| discourage a friend, I would only accelerate them to their next
| conclusion. The best you can do is help them forward faster, and
| if they find a dealbreaker, it's better they find it fast and
| move on to the next one.
| eternityforest wrote:
| If your business skill is good enough to sell your probably-
| useless thing(Which it may well be), then you'll probably have no
| problem answering a casual question, right?
|
| Just say it's a privacy preserving deep learning homeomorphic
| blockchain to end war and famine with a novel proof scheme for
| your digital legacy and we'll be like "Yep that's some buzzwords,
| I bet someone will buy it" and move on.
|
| If you don't have an answer at all what will you tell customers?
| joshstrange wrote:
| Well I expected this blog post to be about something completely
| different. Really the title should just be "Don't ask founder how
| their idea is supposed to work". Asking how they are going to
| complete with <insert competitor here> is 100% valid. That's not
| an "existential question".
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >Individuals obsessed with working on hard problems are very
| rare, so please don't be a jerk to them.
|
| Is this guy for real? "Obsessed with working on hard problems"
| describes basically every single university grad. And it's almost
| always a bad idea.
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