The few paths to startup success

The few paths to startup success(nathanspeller.com)

56 points by nspeller 13 years ago | 16 comments

eduardordm 13 years ago |

Nice heads up. It seems that most newbie entrepreneurs don't really want to get their hands dirty (which is obviously not programming).

Yet, success is a very abstract concept. With that in mind I don't think that, in general, success is rare. Failure and success are both abundant. A single outcome can be a success and failure, depending on what is your baseline.

For example, when I built a small financial firm my goal was to build something cool AND get bloody rich. I failed on that. Yet, we have millions of customers right now. My dream of retiring before 30 to work for fun didn't work out.

cateye 13 years ago |

Ask the right questions. Create hypotheses. Create experiments to test your assumptions. Measure, measure, measure.

This is what everyone always, consciously or unconsciously is trying. Taking a more scientific approach doesn't necessarily need to increase your chance.

The thing is: there is no pattern for success generation. This is against the nature of being exceptional. Stop seeking it.

giulivo 13 years ago | |

> The thing is: there is no pattern for success generation. Stop seeking it. This is against the nature of being exceptional.

Of the same idea is Alberto Savoia in his book about pretotyping, where he describes such a Law of Failure.

What one can do is try to fail faster and I very much suggest to read the book, it's for free: http://www.pretotyping.org/pretotype-it---the-book

cateye 13 years ago | | |

Failing fast is in my opinion also not a formula for success.

speeder 13 years ago |

Too bad the theory sometimes is hard to implement...For example, my startup don't have enough money to test our marketing theories, the only thing we can do is forever change our products, but that won't help, when you make mobile apps, you /need/ marketing, otherwise you /will/ fail.

jordanmessina 13 years ago | |

I hate buying into the idea that any company /needs/ marketing. Word of mouth is very powerful. I think all companies need to position themselves for slow growth. For example, I LOVE the Weebly story: http://startupschool.org/2012/rusenko/

Over night successes rarely happen. That's my issue with incubators. A lot of times they invest in potential overnight successes when they should really be investing in those most positioned for slow growth.

speeder 13 years ago | | |

If you have zero people seeing your stuff, how they will word of mouth it?

bravura 13 years ago | | |

Marketing != advertising

Marketing, for a startup, means finding a repeatable sales model.

danmaz74 13 years ago | |

From what you write, it looks like you equate marketing with advertising (unless it's your marketing theories that include advertising as the only path to success). That's not the case - advertising is one of the tools of marketing, not the only one. If you're interested in expanding your horizons, one interesting read is Frank Lane's "Killer Brands" - the start of the book is a little too boombastic for my tastes, but the content is very good.

speeder 13 years ago | | |

I also include in marketing generating word of mouth, good site, store SEO, and so on.

But it is needed anyway, apps ( specially on iOS ) do not get traction anymore by pure organic growth alone.

For example: Apple removed the new app list from iTunes, and the search take in account popularity, so a new launched app has zero visibility.

d0m 13 years ago | |

So get money. Either by raising or contracts, or whatever. Or shoot your idea, people can help here.

samtp 13 years ago | |

there is always alternative marketing solutions including web in person and other. Be alert to the changing demographic in the area. and if it is too hard to user feedback test, go for a leaner product without so much non-tested assumptions. Gud luk bro

schiang 13 years ago |

I think the trap that a lot of entrepreneurs fall into is trying to create the next billion dollar company. It's better to start small. Find your niche and solve an actual problem for that niche. If it really is a good product, it will eventually grow on its own.

jacques_chester 13 years ago |

Part of the problem with the backtracking analogy is that the graph changes while you're traversing it. It changes due to external factors. The act of moving to different nodes may cause the previous edge to be deleted. And so on.