Paul Graham at Startup School

Max Woolf · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Carnegie Mellon · 143 subscribers
I believe the issue with tech entrepreneurs is that many of them have a technical background, and *not* a background in the business skills needed to make a product succeed (marketing, finance, etc.) Sure, you can code the Web 2.0 app of awesomeness, but so can a million other people. Without the proper investment in balancing the books, getting your product known, and most importantly, product differentiation, you won't have a chance to succeed. (Disclosure: I am in my senior year of a business education with an emphasis on tech).

Paul Heintzelman · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Software Engineer at Alarm.com
The Dot.com bust was largely due to business minded peopled flocking to the Valley to create and market products with no real value, hiring the first developer they stumbled upon. I think the current model is much better although some kind of balance is always nice.

Cherry Plankton
I think you are right, but I would add to that that you actually need to have a problem that you have a deep understanding of that needs solving. If you dedicate your life to the technical solutions to solving generic problems, such as being a great software engineer, you will be needed and may come up with solutions specifically to software related issues, but your real world experience will be limited in discovering problems that need your expertise. Others who are average programmers working in other fields entirely will identify, describe and build prototype solutions to problems and then call you when they get funding.

Max Woolf · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Carnegie Mellon · 143 subscribers
Cherry Plankton The point I'm making is that you need a little bit of both to succeed. You need business skills for the high-level concepts such as direction and design, and you need technical skills for the low-level tasks such as development and implementation. For startups with limited manpower, a diverse skillset is much more important than in larger businesses which have more explicitly stated roles.

Larry Chiang · Subscribe · Top Commenter · CEO at Duck9
Some of this insight I don't understand but it is from the 40k altitude view of a journalist versus entrepreneur. Remember, Mark transitioned from blogger to entrepreneur. And a good entrepreneur. I recommend you do what Mark Hendrickson did versus analyzing his analysis.

- Mark and co-founders jumped into Facebook Rev fund via Dave McClure without a clear product.
- Mark's team didn't pitch during FB Rev Demo Day but debuted STRONGLY at SXSW when they forced their product upon SXSW with brilliant marketing.

Robert Scoble · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Chief Learning Officer at Rackspace Managed Hosting · 47,289 subscribers
The companies and entrepreneurs I like the best are ones that are built step-by-step. Paul nailed it when he said they should focus on problems. One of my favorite questions is "what pain does this solve?"

One thing that Startup School didn't cover very well is market windows. The biggest companies happen only during small market windows. Google happened when the Internet was expanding very rapidly. Flipboard happened when iPads were selling like hotcakes (if Flipboard announced this year everyone would have quickly ignored it). Instagram happened when iPhones were exploding in popularity. Pagemaker happened when Steve Jobs announced a laser printer. Photoshop happened when people started getting low-cost scanners for photos. Zynga happened when Facebook was rapidly growing (and the virality door was open).

It's hard to build a company of huge scale without having these market windows open. The best entrepreneurs figure out how to nail market windows over and over (look at Evan Williams for an example with Blogger and Twitter).

Amanda Peyton · Subscribe · MIT
How would you explain, then, the success of a company like Pinterest? They are mostly web-focused and launched at a time when social sites on the web were (mostly) saturated, yet they have managed to succeed despite that.

Max Woolf · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Carnegie Mellon · 143 subscribers
Sure, necessity is the mother of invention, but what "pains" do Instagram and Zynga solve? The pain of having too much free time? :P

Paul Heintzelman · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Software Engineer at Alarm.com
Max Woolf isn't that the pain TechCrunch solves for you? :P


Gabriel Anderson · Subscribe · Founder, Director of Marketing at Real Solutions, Inc.
here, here... get turned on by something, then build a business around it!

Max Woolf · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Carnegie Mellon · 143 subscribers
Isn't that how pimps work?

Ben Kellie · Columbus, Ohio
Max Woolf, excellent!

Ben Kellie · Columbus, Ohio
This phenomenon reminds me of an old joke about the glamour that used to surround the airline industry: A guy comes into a bar and smells awful. He is covered in the "blue water" from an airplane's holding tank (if you catch my drift). He says, "My job is awful. No one appreciates me, it stinks, and I have to go home in this horrible state." The bartender says, "Well why don't you quit and go find new work?" The man replies, "What! And leave the airplane business?"

The point being that so many of us are in such a blind race to jump into the entrepreneurship game that we don't care how we get there, or how much sh** we have to get covered in to do it. I agree with the others posting: just because you create a company doesn't mean you've created value.

Broad Castic · Top Commenter · Works at Founder at content delivery/responce startup www.Broadcastic.com
http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/videos

Yoni Ende · Top Commenter · Delray Beach, Florida
I think another reason YC is called the Harvard for start ups is that it is harder to get into than Harvard. I look forward to more YC type incubator funds popping up to give more start ups the structure, guidance and advising necessary to increase the chances of success.