[HN Gopher] I've been building a database of successful companies
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I've been building a database of successful companies
5 years ago, after failing with a startup idea and being rejected
from YC, I started interviewing founders with the hopes of learning
what it takes to find a good idea and build a successful business.
I posted these case studies online (started as a side project) and
eventually it turned into a business, and started making enough
money for me to go full time on it (starterstory.com). For the
last 5 years I've been collecting data for each company we
interview, such as revenue, startup costs, age of the company,
gross margin, what channels they used to grow, and a ton more.
I've put all of this into a searchable, sortable, filterable
database and I wanted to get HN's opinion on the tool, and if you
find the data / information useful? Also, would love to hear what
other data points you think we should be collecting, or features we
should add! The tool is built with Rails, Postgres database,
search functionality using Elasticsearch, and it's hosted on
Heroku.
Author : patwalls
Score : 100 points
Date : 2022-09-21 15:26 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.starterstory.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.starterstory.com)
| cocacola1 wrote:
| This is neat. I wonder if there's a way to cull the Idea list,
| though? There's a lot to go through at the moment, and some
| entries are listed twice (i.e. Blog).
| patwalls wrote:
| Ah yes, been meaning to fix that. Was planning on cleaning it
| up and also adding a typeahead / search function. Thanks for
| the feedback.
| _tom_ wrote:
| Don't just record successful companies. You can't figure out what
| actually matters if you don't compare to failed companies.
|
| If ten successful companies do something, you'll think it's a
| good thing to do. But what if one hundred failed companies do it,
| too?
| codegeek wrote:
| I have come across this website that interviews failed
| founders. Looks like nthey pivoted to now doing both failed and
| successful but they def. started focussing on failed founders:
|
| https://www.failory.com/
|
| https://www.failory.com/graveyard
| logifail wrote:
| > Don't just record successful companies. You can't figure out
| what actually matters if you don't compare to failed companies
|
| Quite. Trying to reverse-engineer start-up success this way has
| more than a whiff of cargo cult about it.
| patwalls wrote:
| Good call, I could add this as a tag / make it filterable as
| some of the companies we've done case studies on have since
| failed, pivoted, or been acquired. Adding this to the backlog.
| sethammons wrote:
| somebody can probably find the real story better than I can.
| Back in World War 2, the B29 Bomber would go out on long
| flights but not all of them returned. Of the ones that
| returned, they saw the hauls were full of bullet holes, so they
| kept adding armor to the haul and kept losing planes. By
| focusing on the planes that were not coming back, it turned out
| the problem was holes in wings - planes were surviving the
| holes in hauls.
| tuckermi wrote:
| Look up Abraham Wald, e.g.
| https://medium.com/@penguinpress/an-excerpt-from-how-not-
| to-...
| melvinmelih wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
| [deleted]
| semireg wrote:
| There's also the successful side hustles that don't feel
| comfortable sharing financial details, whether it's because of
| competition, being seen as braggadocio, or maybe because you feel
| the business will grow even more next year.
| barelyusable wrote:
| It looks nice, but.... Failed companies would be much more
| interesting. Everyone knows the successful companies.
| patwalls wrote:
| I think both are important, but I appreciate the feedback.
|
| I know there are a 'zeitgeist' of typical SV successful
| companies (Uber, Dropbox, etc) but we actually cover a ton of
| companies you've probably never heard of. We cover a lot of
| side hustles, side projects, agencies, e-commerce, and more
| too.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Isn't this a massive case of survivorship bias?
| patwalls wrote:
| Yes but we don't solely cover VC funded startups with success
| rates of <5%.
|
| We cover a lot of small & bootstrapped businesses, e-comm,
| agencies, side hustles, etc that IMO believe anyone can start.
| This isn't the stereotypical list of successful companies ala
| Airbnb, Uber, Dropbox.
| hcks wrote:
| A lot of commenters here are rightly pointing out survivorship
| biais.
|
| Im even more concerned with the measure of << success >>
| employed.
|
| It seems that the only metric reported here is monthly revenue,
| which by itself can tell you if a project is further than the
| idea on a PowerPoint stage, but cannot tell you anything about
| meaningful success (at a very basic level revenue is not profit,
| and a few months data don't tell much).
| robocat wrote:
| And there are very profitable companies with failed founders
| (diluted, expelled, leverage failures, dot dot dot). And failed
| companies with successful founders (cashed out at IPO, WeWork's
| Adam Neumann is a billionaire, dot dot dot)
| spit2wind wrote:
| This is a great utility for inspiration. I wonder at its utility
| beyond that. I'm primarily concerned about rigour. How much is
| story and how much is study? What details are missing that
| completely change the context?
|
| For example, a case study of Bill Gates takes on a different
| light when the story includes how his father was a licensed
| attorney, that they worked together and appeared to have a close
| relationship. Surely that's an important detail. Secure family
| attachments, let alone the resources of knowledge and money, must
| factor in to the success of individuals.
| paulpauper wrote:
| But a $1/million year company ignores profit though. Easy to make
| revenue at a loss. The Uber losses model will not work unless you
| have a lot of VC backing.
| blantonl wrote:
| gross margin is included in the reports
| disqard wrote:
| For those interested in a parallel perspective, this also exists:
|
| https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
| exolymph wrote:
| Also Failory, the same business as OP but with the opposite
| angle: https://www.failory.com/graveyard
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >How I Started An Escort Service At 21 That Now Generates
| $200K/Month
|
| So pimping is a startup now?
| mym1990 wrote:
| It probably has a nice React front end and Stripe for payment
| processing, so that would put it in the startup bucket :)
| speakfreely wrote:
| Yikes, people still start new projects with Stripe after all
| the horror stories here on HN? In my mind they are on
| PayPal's level of broken fraud prevention by now.
| forgetbook wrote:
| Are there vendors other than stripe and paypal that provide
| online payment processing services?
| xapata wrote:
| "Nobody goes there, it's too crowded."
| [deleted]
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