Comments on: Every Piece of Startup Advice is a Lie (including mine)

By: Workpost

Workpost — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:33:18 +0000

Great article and comments. Everybody has their own road to travel (and it may not lead to the promised land) but the road is long and you can never give up. I will think of this advice as I work to make my own site more useful.

By: Antman

Antman — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:59:30 +0000

Serendipitious! Timin’ couldn’t have been better to read. Know the feeling of bein’ on the “verge of death” far too well. Thanks money, when we come out the other end, I’ll be sure to reference this article as inspiration. Thanks Tony.

Peace!

By: Eric Willis

Eric Willis — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 19:47:36 +0000

Great advice

By: Startupbin

Startupbin — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:26:05 +0000

Startup Advice Frenzy - The Importance of Team, Product and Saving Money…

Fred Wilson has made a great roundup of the advice for startups from the past few days. A lot of great discussion has been going on (follow the discussion on Techmeme).
Just keep in mind Tony Wright’s comment: Every Piece of Startup Advice is a …

By: Ben Yoskovitz

Ben Yoskovitz — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 01:06:02 +0000

Advice is always given from the context of the person giving it, not the person receiving it - and there’s a good chance the context of the person receiving it is different. But that’s OK, because as you point out, it’s worth having the information at-hand and leveraging it when appropriate.

Having said that, I think a lot of interpretation is at play as well, when receiving advice. For example, I haven’t read the posts you link to in your first two points, but I don’t see those as polar opposites:

* “Release early & listen to users” vs. “Ignore users and build for yourself”

– To me, these are one and the same. Not taken to their extremes, but I think we see a lot of success stories where people DID release early, DID listen to their users, but ALSO built applications THEY wanted to use. And that’s really the takeaway from that second piece of advice — you can’t ignore users, they’re the people paying. Ignoring them is silly. But you should build something you want to use, and avoid the trap of throwing in every feature your customers want (cause they’ll almost always want -everything-).

* “Seek out Press early and often” VS “go guerrilla until you have a brilliant product“

Again, I didn’t read the two posts you link to, but to me you can do both. The press can be a guerrilla strategy in the sense that you don’t have to go out and spend big dollars on marketing campaigns. PR is great. It’s typically inexpensive, it can build you up as a domain expert, and generate results. And in my experience it’s the gift that keeps on giving, because once your name pops into a few articles about X and Y, people keep coming back to you asking for information on X and Y.

One guerrilla strategy is to start blogging even before you launch. Most startup founders do that. But that’s also a great way of getting press; the press are looking for “expert” bloggers, and the more popular your blog becomes, the more likely you’ll get press opportunities. So I don’t see those points as polar opposites.

By: Stiennon

Stiennon — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:48:11 +0000

Great advice. While it may be straight forward to find common denominators amongst winning businesses and, for that matter, losers, I still think there are some flaws in the way most VCs approach business opportunities. They are all trying to bet on the next Google whereas there are many more opportunities to bet on the next Chrysler, NYTimes, or housing development.

You would think that offering a consistent return on investment of 30-40% would be pretty attractive to the limited partners in VC funds. These types of returns are easy to achieve without hitting the ball out of the park. I think the problem is that VC’s assume they will get one Google for every 9 Webvans. They should shoot for 10 thriving businesses for ten investments.

-Stiennon

By: NewWorldOrder

NewWorldOrder — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:31:42 +0000

Nice post. I think there are no real rules. Nobody thought they needed PCs until they became available. Also, everybody thought that Aeron chair were crap initial. I think, in general, there are no rules — you make it up as you go along. However, the “safest” path is to create stuff people want. The hard then becomes determining what people want.

Perseverance is absolutely essential in just about any entrepreneurial endeavor. Good luck!

By: Rick Mason

Rick Mason — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:08:59 +0000

Tony,

You’re wrong about MySpace, it was built using Coldfusion. They built on the pre java version 5. They switched to BlueDragon which is a CF clone that compiles to dotNet instead of java. I am told they are slowly migrating to asp.net but large portions are still pure CFML ;

By: Lloyd Fassett

Lloyd Fassett — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:49:06 +0000

I think you need to weave in the idea of ‘value’. People want more of what they currently get for less. Just creating something that people want is unsustainable if your costs are higher than your income.

By: Jack Poller

Jack Poller — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 18:54:03 +0000

One of the issues I face as an entrepreneur when reading advice from you list of successful entrepreneurs (and my list mimics yours) is that so many of these folks are focused on the Web2.0 world. Outside of that very small world, many of the issues, such as viral marketing, have a completely different meaning and impact. If you’re market is regulated (medical) or you have a very long development cycle (hardware), you cannot “release early and listen to your users”.

On the other hand, many of these same folks have brilliant wisdom regarding interacting with the VC community.