What I’ve gotten from the comments is that you guys don’t think it’s smart to take an inside-view. That’s a separate argument in itself, but what I’m trying to do in this post is to take an inside view, so please take that as a given and comment on the components themselves.
I agree with VAuroch that this won’t help much, because in general taking the inside view is a bad idea.
But if you want a few examples of places you’ve gone wrong—both getting a good idea, and executing a business, any business, are much harder than you imagine. For example, you wrote:
“Failure to think specifically about benefits.”
“The big issue here is the first bullet point. As spelled out by Eliezer’s article, people are horrible at thinking specifically about the benefits that their idea will bring customers. They’re horrible at moving down the ladder of abstraction. They think more along the lines of “we connect people” instead of “we let you talk to your friends”. Even YC applicants (probably the best startup accelerator in the world) suffer from this problem immensely. I think that this problem is the single biggest cause of failure for startups. (They say that 90% of startups fail? Well >99% of people can’t think concretely.) However, I think that it’s something that could be avoided with willpower, reading the LessWrong sequences, and taking some time to practice your new habit.”
Well, not thinking specifically is one issue, sure.
But the other, MUCH BIGGER issue, is that you might not know what people want. If you’re building something for consumers, there’s a problem in that most people don’t know what they themselves want (imagine describing Facebook to someone years before it existed).
If you’re selling to businesses, then you have to actually understand the business and the market. And understanding markets is incredibly difficult. That’s not to say it can’t be done, but it’s hard even in the best case.
Remember—Some people fail at startups built to serve an industry, after working for 30 years in that industry. They still don’t manage to create a product that’s good enough.
As for the idea that just executing a business is so easy:
Let’s say you decided to build a restaurant. You know exactly, specifically what people want, so there’s no problem with finding a good idea, and you know how restaurants work. Talk to 10 restaurant owners and you’ll even have a much better understanding. Hell, you’re building a business that’s been done millions of times before. This is the polar opposite of a startup in terms of “idea risk”.
And yet, restaurants fail ALL THE TIME. Because the execution of any business is hard. Hiring is hard. Understanding your market, TRULY understanding it, is hard and takes years of experience. Understanding how to hire and manage people is hard. The thousands of little things you do every day, are all amazingly hard. Each one takes time, each one takes experience.
But the other, MUCH BIGGER issue, is that you might not know what people want. If you’re building something for consumers, there’s a problem in that most people don’t know what they themselves want (imagine describing Facebook to someone years before it existed).
Yes, it’s very difficult to predict what people want and will actually use, especially for a solo person. Asking your friends isn’t enough because they will just try to make you feel good.
To underscore your point, and try to help us calibrate risks, let’s examine the risks of significantly smaller projects:
Start a blog with 500 visitors a day
Run a Facebook page with 500 likes
Sell 100 copies of an eBook, handmade product, or piece of art
Create an open source software project with 100+ users
These goals are much more modest than starting a company with a mass market product, but they can still be tough for smart and talented people, and can easily use up all of someone’s free time for months. And it’s not guaranteed at all that someone will succeed at all in their first try at these projects.
Because executing and delivering something people give a shit about is hard. A real business is orders of magnitude more complex, risky, and time-consuming. If it’s tough to make something that a couple hundred people care about, then try to imagine how tough it is to make something that tens of thousands of people care about.
Remember—Some people fail at startups built to serve an industry, after working for 30 years in that industry. They still don’t manage to create a product that’s good enough.
Yes. Execution is hard. Production is hard. Design and marketing are hard.
There is a big difference between class-project level execution, or demo-level execution, and professional execution that will appeal to a consumer market, especially a wide market. I believe this point has not been sufficiently emphasized in the original poster’s entrepreneurship education.
Your product (rhetorical “your”) is not the platonic ideal of your idea. Your project is the execution of your product. It’s inseparable from the design, UI, marketing copy, and other presentational and aesthetic elements. The medium is the message.
Eventually, real consumers will face the real execution of your product, and there is an immense amount of variables involved in how they perceive it, which are really hard to predict in advance, involve the interaction of the features with design, UI, writing, etc… Predictions become really hard to make, hence, risk emerges.
And yet, restaurants fail ALL THE TIME. Because the execution of any business is hard. Hiring is hard. Understanding your market, TRULY understanding it, is hard and takes years of experience. Understanding how to hire and manage people is hard. The thousands of little things you do every day, are all amazingly hard. Each one takes time, each one takes experience.
Exactly. As another analogy, the author is like an unproven writer with a script who believe that they can make a popular movie. Or a solo game programmer believing they can make a hit game based off an idea and a demo. Yes, it’s possible, but it’s mega, mega risky (even creating a hit at an indie level). Even big studios with immense resource often fail at creating hits, because giving people something they want is hard, and execution/production are hard.
Why? If the basic assumption of your post is wrong, the rest of the follow-on arguments are irrelevant. You can logically derive any statement from a false premise.
What I’ve gotten from the comments is that you guys don’t think it’s smart to take an inside-view. That’s a separate argument in itself, but what I’m trying to do in this post is to take an inside view, so please take that as a given and comment on the components themselves.
I agree with VAuroch that this won’t help much, because in general taking the inside view is a bad idea.
But if you want a few examples of places you’ve gone wrong—both getting a good idea, and executing a business, any business, are much harder than you imagine. For example, you wrote:
“Failure to think specifically about benefits.” “The big issue here is the first bullet point. As spelled out by Eliezer’s article, people are horrible at thinking specifically about the benefits that their idea will bring customers. They’re horrible at moving down the ladder of abstraction. They think more along the lines of “we connect people” instead of “we let you talk to your friends”. Even YC applicants (probably the best startup accelerator in the world) suffer from this problem immensely. I think that this problem is the single biggest cause of failure for startups. (They say that 90% of startups fail? Well >99% of people can’t think concretely.) However, I think that it’s something that could be avoided with willpower, reading the LessWrong sequences, and taking some time to practice your new habit.”
Well, not thinking specifically is one issue, sure.
But the other, MUCH BIGGER issue, is that you might not know what people want. If you’re building something for consumers, there’s a problem in that most people don’t know what they themselves want (imagine describing Facebook to someone years before it existed).
If you’re selling to businesses, then you have to actually understand the business and the market. And understanding markets is incredibly difficult. That’s not to say it can’t be done, but it’s hard even in the best case.
Remember—Some people fail at startups built to serve an industry, after working for 30 years in that industry. They still don’t manage to create a product that’s good enough.
As for the idea that just executing a business is so easy:
Let’s say you decided to build a restaurant. You know exactly, specifically what people want, so there’s no problem with finding a good idea, and you know how restaurants work. Talk to 10 restaurant owners and you’ll even have a much better understanding. Hell, you’re building a business that’s been done millions of times before. This is the polar opposite of a startup in terms of “idea risk”.
And yet, restaurants fail ALL THE TIME. Because the execution of any business is hard. Hiring is hard. Understanding your market, TRULY understanding it, is hard and takes years of experience. Understanding how to hire and manage people is hard. The thousands of little things you do every day, are all amazingly hard. Each one takes time, each one takes experience.
Yes, it’s very difficult to predict what people want and will actually use, especially for a solo person. Asking your friends isn’t enough because they will just try to make you feel good.
To underscore your point, and try to help us calibrate risks, let’s examine the risks of significantly smaller projects:
Start a blog with 500 visitors a day
Run a Facebook page with 500 likes
Sell 100 copies of an eBook, handmade product, or piece of art
Create an open source software project with 100+ users
These goals are much more modest than starting a company with a mass market product, but they can still be tough for smart and talented people, and can easily use up all of someone’s free time for months. And it’s not guaranteed at all that someone will succeed at all in their first try at these projects.
Because executing and delivering something people give a shit about is hard. A real business is orders of magnitude more complex, risky, and time-consuming. If it’s tough to make something that a couple hundred people care about, then try to imagine how tough it is to make something that tens of thousands of people care about.
Yes. Execution is hard. Production is hard. Design and marketing are hard.
There is a big difference between class-project level execution, or demo-level execution, and professional execution that will appeal to a consumer market, especially a wide market. I believe this point has not been sufficiently emphasized in the original poster’s entrepreneurship education.
Your product (rhetorical “your”) is not the platonic ideal of your idea. Your project is the execution of your product. It’s inseparable from the design, UI, marketing copy, and other presentational and aesthetic elements. The medium is the message.
Eventually, real consumers will face the real execution of your product, and there is an immense amount of variables involved in how they perceive it, which are really hard to predict in advance, involve the interaction of the features with design, UI, writing, etc… Predictions become really hard to make, hence, risk emerges.
Exactly. As another analogy, the author is like an unproven writer with a script who believe that they can make a popular movie. Or a solo game programmer believing they can make a hit game based off an idea and a demo. Yes, it’s possible, but it’s mega, mega risky (even creating a hit at an indie level). Even big studios with immense resource often fail at creating hits, because giving people something they want is hard, and execution/production are hard.
Why? If the basic assumption of your post is wrong, the rest of the follow-on arguments are irrelevant. You can logically derive any statement from a false premise.