Like Sports, Startups Have Leagues

Like Sports, Startups Have Leagues(scalablestartup.berkeley.edu)

22 points by andrewhyde 12 years ago | 17 comments

cortesoft 12 years ago |

This question presents a very false dichotomy: "Is the startup world a meritocracy, or are there leagues in startups?"

If we are making a sports analogy, then having different leagues does NOT imply that it is not a meritocracy. The very best (judged from merit) end up in the top leagues. Sports is the ULTIMATE meritocracy, in fact, because there is a simple and fair way to judge who is better.

Leagues just form so that that similarly talented people face each other in fair competition.

andrewhyde 12 years ago | |

Perhaps the BCS is a great analogy: there is a seemingly fair competition but luck, tradition and money sure help you get into the championship game.

cortesoft 12 years ago | | |

Ah yes, the most unsporting system in sports!

slg 12 years ago | |

Maybe a better analogy is the promotion and relegation system popular in European football[1]. The teams are all divided up into separate tiered leagues, but through success a team from a lower division can move up to the higher tiered leagues. Likewise a top tier team needs to keep a certain baseline of success to prevent themselves from being sent down to a lower league.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promotion_and_relegation

theboss 12 years ago |

I have to at least somewhat agree with the article. I'm on the outside looking in, and to me it looks almost like working in the Federal Government, how once you're in then "you're in" for life with the Big League Startups.

Startups love to talk about their work as extremely technically challenging when in reality the developers I know who work at startups are generally no better or working on no harder problems than people not working at startups or working at startups that aren't very well known or 'in the big leagues'.

I think it really has to deal with the mentors the startups end up with and the funding, and together these help the "Big League" startups continuously be successful. Also, startups that are invested in by places like YCombinator naturally get more press and their business will have a higher chance for success (when combined with excellent mentors)....

You're free to disagree or correct me if I have any obvious misconceptions...Like I said..I'm on the outside looking in.

conrey 12 years ago |

Hard to argue with this post. It really breaks out the "everyone can start a company" myth into something I've been trying to explain for a while.

The analogy I've been working with is comparing startups to the mid 2000s Poker boom - once the internet made it easier for anyone to play competitive poker, more and more people started doing it. Once one "regular guy" - Chris Moneymaker - won the WSOP and ESPN televised the hell out of it, poker rooms were flooded.

But who did you see still sitting back there taking in this new money? The same old guys who had been grinding out livings on the card table for years. The same guys you see regularly placing in the top 20 at WSOP events around the occasional flash in the pan newbies who get a hot streak.

andrewhyde 12 years ago | |

It is really odd to think of the skill development it takes to be in the top 20 of poker, or your niche league. Does this have anything to do with 10k hours of development time or being built as a 6'9" athlete (or the intellectual, or drive equivalent).

candybar 12 years ago | |

This isn't really true in poker - the online poker boom created tons of new poker celebrities and lots of online pros who are technically better and more profitable than old-school grinders.

Udo 12 years ago |

You don't know what league you're in until you try. With sports, it's relatively easy to see why someone isn't a pro player - startup founders are harder to judge. In fact, judging the potential league of a startup is such a hard problem that even VCs, who are in the business of making such judgements, have to make a lot of rather unsafe bets.

How's a person to know they're not good enough? Should everyone who doesn't come into the game already rich and well-connected just stay away?

theboss 12 years ago | |

I don't think you're right. Even in professional sports, bad scouting reports happen just like when VCs make the wrong call.

Sometimes a persons particular skill-set scales really well at the next level and scouts and VCs may not expect that (Tom Brady 6th round pick versus a VC who says wow I wish I invested in ____).

Sometimes a persons particular skill-set looks like they will play really well in the big leagues but they never really do, or a well-funded startup never really gets traction for whatever reason.

I think the sports to startup analogy might actually be quite good.

Udo 12 years ago | | |

Okay, so while you disagree with me and the article about the sports analogy, you seemingly still agree with me about startups (which was the central point of my post).

rokhayakebe 12 years ago |

The saddest thing about the little tech world we live in, the one only WE care about, is that somehow seemingly smart people have managed to convince themselves that 1)this is a zero sum game, 2) you need rock star any/everything (what ever that means).

prostoalex 12 years ago | |

It is a zero-sum game if you're hiring.

rfnslyr 12 years ago |

I can't stand reading posts like this anymore on HN. The title is literally the entire article.

Who knew the harder you work the more successful you are? I wish there were some sort of hypothesis. Grouping startups together, identifying what's unique/different, talking about founders, etc.

andrewhyde 12 years ago | |

The point of the article is the notion that you might not be able to graduate to another league by effort.

rfnslyr 12 years ago | | |

So this article introduced me to the concept of luck? Ok..