The right way to start a startup

Love the Q&A format of this. Straight to the point - super helpful - and doesn't sugarcoat anything. Great stuff!

Unpopular opinion: there is no "right" way to create a startup.

The "solve a problem" idea gets regurgitated ad nauseam because to the extent there's a repeatable formula, it's the closest thing to a repeatable formula. It can be technically true in the sense that you can frame anything as a "problem" post-hoc.

What problem did Twitch solve? It was a burning problem that people needed to share their Starcraft micro plays? You can come up with some mental gymnastics to frame it that way but it didn't solve a problem, it created something fun and novel..

Are you much, much more likely to succeed by shipping a MVP on a validated B2B problem, charging money as soon as possible, and iterating quickly on customer feedback than by trying a new free B2C social app? Probably.

Does that mean it's the only way you can ever succeed and anyone who dares try different approaches is predestined to failure? No, it does not, there are millions of counter examples.

My view: learn from the successes and failures of others. If certain strategies succeeded, you're more likely to succeed with them. If certain strategies failed, you're more likely to fail with them.

But if you 're just going to blindly defer to the experts, blindly defer to the best practices, never listen to your gut, never take any chances - why build a startup at all? There's much easier money and much more stability being an employee.

Interesting but I have to disagree with the Focusing on Hard Problems for first time founders. Yeah, this definitely worked for Tesla and some other startups. But these were capitalized companies with strong recruiting capacity from an experienced post-exit CEO. If you're solving a hard problem, understand that you need several unfair advantages working for you, not solely just having a "hard problem" to attract talent.

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I strongly disagree with some of the statements. Some of the markets grew from literally 0 customers and some from the few people only (check how Reddit or Apple started). Everybody thinking that you found the problem and once you started to work on it - people will pay you from month 1. But it's not true. For some products you need to teach the market or show the value of the product

I disagree about the "tiny market", that's not a good filter. It depends on the type of product you are building , for example, if you are building a network, a tiny market is exactly what you want. You want to build a stable atomic network inside a niche that's underserved for the problem you are focusing so that you can grow sustainably [Cold Start Problem].

One of the surest way to disqualify a bad product is by looking at retention.

A great read straight to the point, I loved the " this is the easiest part section, no staff, no investors, just your wildest dreams " very inspiring. 🫡

helpful post

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This was a great read! As someone starting their first micro-saas this is valuable.

Nice article!

There is certainly no right way to build a startup. There are faster ways and there are slower ways, that is all.

Also, ideas can be validated, sometimes quickly. You can start by building a simple landing page where you explain what your future product will do and let people sign up for a waitlist.

I’d say there is really no right and wrong here. I personally haven’t yet started one myself but have worked on multiple startups. I see some companies doing the same exact things and yet some of them are failing and some of them are not. I’d say there’s a lot of factors which I myself haven’t figured out what those are yet😅

Good

Great post - I love the Q&A format. However, I don't 100% agree with 'The bad news is that great ideas can’t be validated. You’ll know for sure only a few good years in.?'

For me, ideas can be validated (to an extent) in a reasonable amount of time - it shouldn't take years before you know whether an idea is great (or bad).

I (now) believe in time-boxing activities related to launching a new product or startup:

1. Decide how much time you are willing to dedicate to validating your idea
2. Define what success (a.k.a validation) will look like within that period
3. Put a bare bones version of it out there
4. Do as much as you can to get it in front of your target audience (a.k.a don't forget how important marketing is - after several failed business attempts, I now believe marketing is as important as the actual product)
5. Assess your success indicators as you go along

You should know by the end of the time-box if you consider that idea validated or not.

"How long does it take to find a good startup idea?
How long does it take to find the love of your life?"

Looks like we need a Tinder for startup ideas..

On a serious note, this comparison is accurate for a lot of reasons, helpful post !

Very blunt and straight to the point. Thanks for sharing super helpful and blunts ideas about the world of startups.

The takeaway here is if you want to live and breathe your startup idea then that's a great sign otherwise, it's a bad idea and you shouldn't proceed any further with it.