Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately

https://plus.google.com/111091089527727420853/posts/NN7YJRT7S8m

by domino • 15 years ago

140 63 15 years ago

plus.google.com

pace6• 15 years ago

Tons of useless advice from a guy who never delivered a product himself -- excuse my harsh words. Scoble was/is/stays a blogger, always blogging while having a safe job. He never raised, never started a real venture or done an exit. This guy hasn't got the vaguest idea of what it is to quit your job, start a venture and take high risks. Never experienced how the lowest points of a startup-life full of despair can feel. His words are counter-productive, destroy motivation and are just wrong in many regards (e.g. MVP, etc.).

Those who can, do -- those who can't, teach.

Why should we listen to him?

PakG1• 15 years ago

Not going to discuss what he had to say, just the logic of your statement. Because those who can teach well, teach well. There's a reason why many superstar athletes turn out to be horrible coaches, but many non-superstars turn out to be amazing coaches. I imagine the same isn't impossible in the startup world. If one is a good teacher, why not listen to him, whether or not he's had personal success?

pace6• 15 years ago

I think this idiom refers to something different: it's not about the "pedagogical" skills -- everybody who wants to teach or to transfer knowledge needs to be a good "pedagogue" or should have some basic skills. Those who do have much, much more experience than those who never did -- latter take their wisdom just from books and experiences from others. But if you want to be really good you have to do it yourself, you have to fail, you have to make mistakes to learn from them. Those who stay with teaching, never tried, never made mistakes and so on.

Look: if you want to get a lawyer who managing your transaction with a VC. Who would you take? A guy you did +50 transactions and know the entire village or somebody who took all his wisdom out of a book, let's say Venture Deals and is blogging like Scoble?

revorad4• 15 years ago

Why should we listen to him?

Because he spends a lot of time looking at new products and technologies. He really tries them out. He does fantastic interviews with founders, often asking quite good questions about the products.

He's built a huge network of people who consider him a credible source for new product recommendations. Getting featured by him can be huge for an early stage product.

Just because someone is a blogger, it doesn't make their advice useless.

Programming is not the only valuable thing in the world. Learn to respect other professions. You're not going to make it without them.

pace6• 15 years ago

Everybody can

- spend a lot of time with new products and tech (no achievement)

- try them really out (no achievement)

- do interviews and they are not fantastic (no achievement)

- nowadays build a huge network w/Facebook, G+, LinkedIn (no achievment)

It is no achievement to blog while sitting for years at Microsoft doing some wishy-washy corporate job. But it is an achievement to build a startup, get traction and raise money w/empty pockets and a family to feed -- and that's just more than "programming". Don't get me wrong but this is a different psychological level than blogging from your safe job.

route66• 15 years ago

OT, just as a remark on that muscled but empty one-liner:

I noticed that people who can't teach what they are doing mostly suck at it.

SriniK• 15 years ago

most successful vcs never done any startups themselves yet very good at picking winners. he has nice taste and energy in trying out new things and blogging about them.

middus• 15 years ago

I watch 33,000 of the world's best users and if they aren't using your app I probably will delete it after a few days and forget it

Laughable. The world's best users. How do you qualify for that? By adding Scoble to your Facebook graph?

biot• 15 years ago

That's a logical fallacy. Someone who has never been a stock broker in their life can still validly point out that a stock broker sucks when the broker squanders everything that person had on a foolish speculative investment regardless of how much blood, sweat, and tears the broker went through in losing their money.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter how tough the journey is if the product you put out at the end of the process sucks. I don't think it takes an entrepreneur to call out various "me too" social/mobile/local clones for being derivative and void of innovation. The world is a harsh place and effort has never been rewarded; all that matters is results.

dchuk• 15 years ago

I love how he has 7 key pieces of advice for startups to follow if they don't want to fail, and there is not a single mention of revenue, let alone profit, whatsoever.

But don't forget to integrate with Twitter or you'll look like a dummy!

revorad4• 15 years ago

If no one uses the damn thing, you won't even get a shot at making any revenue. That's what he's getting at.

drusenko• 15 years ago

Scoble is telling you what he wants to see before you show it to him and hope he writes about it, but that's literally miles away from where a startup first gets off the ground.

Before even talking to Scoble, a startup should have come up with the idea, have built a first version, launched as early as possible (but only after what you have is better/more useful than what is currently out there), found a core group of users that sticks around and uses the product, and iterated based on their feedback.

The fact is, this is likely to take at least a year, if not more. And only after you think you've achieved product-market fit should you be going after the press "big guns".

Don't take Scoble's post as advice on how to get a startup off the ground -- take it as advice on how far along you should be before you pitch him.

david9272• 15 years ago

No please do take this as advice on how to get a startup off the ground. There's more here than "Scoble wants polished startups."

What he's saying is that many products are similar to other efforts with additional features. That's not going to cut it. Page Rank wasn't a little bit better than existing search engines. It wasn't Yahoo but with feature x,y,z; it was a completely new approach to vetting results. I won't switch for a few features. I don't care if you're better; I care if you're solidly different.

Show us the insight! Show us the corner turned. Show us why this rocket has escape velocity when all others fell back to earth. Stop trying to simply make money and start trying to significantly innovate.

nandemo2• 15 years ago

I don't know, he doesn't sound like he would've given a damn about PageRank if Sergey and Larry had gone to talk to him back then. He might have dismissed the first version of Google because they didn't index as many pages as the leading search engines. Look at his own example:

> Another company tonight that I met showed me a similar app, when I started it up (I do that while you talk to me) it gave me an error. Gone.

For all we know that company might have created some revolutionary technology but, who knows, their build system is still crappy and they forgot to change a symlink somewhere?

kingsidharth• 15 years ago

VERY TRUE!

Don't try if you look less sexy than XYZ is NOT the way to go. Every startup has different dynamics. For some design is core for others timing might be.

Scoble is a tech blogger he hardly knows anything of startups. Oh wait, he never had one! There are just too many moving parts to declare why a startup failed, Scoble is the last person I'd ask what those parts are.

Shipping stays at top. No matter what. Even if startup fails, learning is priceless.

viandante2• 15 years ago

I am assuming Scoble is a famous guy. As he expects quality from wannabe entreprenours, I would then expect quality in his analysis, which I don't think (allow me to give a honest opinion) is true.

He forgets totally about the business sector. A crappy looking app with some errors would still be years of light ahead of consolidating a P&L from 30 different excel files sent from 30 different parts of the world.

Don't know, maybe people are focusing too much on the same thing.

Angostura2• 15 years ago

Examine what he says a little closer:

"...the market is very crowded now for certain kinds of apps. Especially location-based and social network ones. So, if you're gonna pitch me something it better provide magic. Angels better sing when I open your app up. Otherwise, why should I use your app instead of Instagram, Foodspotting, Foursquare, Yelp, or my new ones, Batch, SocialCam, or Oink?"

So yes, he's not concentrating on the business sector. On the other hand, the very first piece of advice he gives would rule your hypothetical application in in:

1. Have at least one very clear, and cool, use case. I.E. have something you can show someone else that makes them say "oh, my, that's freaking useful."

In fact the first 5 pieces of advice also apply.

viandante2• 15 years ago

I did read that, but the focus of his article was clearly on quality good looking apps. I would push more for quality of processes. How does this app make the business more efficient? How much the client saves using this app? Etc.

He makes some good point, they just don't apply everywhere. And even if he says people are doing too many similar apps, his examples are still about the kind of apps he complains about in the first place. You see the flaw?

praptak• 15 years ago

"Instagram? I had five comments within two minutes (and that was back when there was only 80 users on it)."

Take note: ask your friends back at the HQ to pose as enthusiastic users while you're pitching your next app :)

rokhayakebe• 15 years ago

Better yet, just Mechanical_Turk it. 2 cents per comment.

jiggy20113• 15 years ago

If it doesn't do something with both Facebook and Twitter (with Google+ to come) then you are gonna look lame.

Am I the only person who feels slightly bored that about 50% of startups I hear about are basically all about sharing links on social networking websites?

YourAnMoran• 15 years ago

Well I agree. There are billions of bucks to be made in the domains of enterprise and industrial applications, and social network integration is not really a business case there - maybe just a potential security issue.

Since when did start-up become synonymous with consumer application start-up?

mindcrime2• 15 years ago

Since when did start-up become synonymous with consumer application start-up?

If it makes you feel any better, our startup is enterprise focused. Not everybody is focused on just consumer apps.

I don't know about you guys, but I am enticed by the idea of selling something to organizations that generally expect to (and do) spend actual money on products and services. The whole advertising based, or even freemium model, world of consumer apps just doesn't resonate with me. Not saying it doesn't work, obviously it does. Just saying that it doesn't feel like where I personally want to be.

mjbellantoni• 15 years ago

Not at all.

Am I the only person who feels that social media is a lot of work with little reward?

jiggy20113• 15 years ago

I feel that we must have exhausted social media for the time being , how many different ways do we need to share stuff with each other?

Wouldn't it be more interesting to find new stuff that people can do with computers. We have all of these "Post PC" devices now, but to be honest I feel I have yet to see a killer application for them.

From what I remember in the early 2000s these social websites mostly started out as some geeks spare time project to show off their mad php skillz , some of them gained traction and become fulltime businesses some didn't. Now everybody seems to want massive financial backing and rockstar MIT programmers to build them.

I remember using late 90s versions of ICQ which was remarkably ahead of it's time and I'm surprised it never gained more traction although later versions seemed like a regression.

adaml_623• 15 years ago

If I say that he sounds like a Hollywood Producer talking about what he wants to see in his next script then I hope people follow the analogy.

He uses 33000 people to tell him it's good. So you get things that appeal to the average.

There is no place for niche apps and no cult hits in his world. Just the sexy and the summer blockbuster.

But there are other lots of other bloggers out there in the world.

tobiasu• 15 years ago

I don't know a single app(?) whose names he mentioned in this article. I simply can not connect these new product/startup names with what they're supposed to be doing for me.

Curious if anyone else has this experience.

ekidd• 15 years ago

MVPs force founders to (1) talk to customers and (2) actually ship something.

Most early-stage founders I meet are working in a vacuum. They have ideas, but no way to validate those ideas against reality. Mostly, they're just wasting time on half-baked visions of world domination. The game doesn't start until you ask a customer for money.

It's a bit like whitewater kayaking: You can float around all day looking at the rapids, but eventually you've got to let the current suck you downstream towards the waves and rocks.

Now, maybe in Scoble's world, the rules are different. He sees so many startups that anything less than perfection on the first try is a failure. But this suggests that Scoble's market is getting saturated—perhaps we already have enough mobile/social/local apps for tech bloggers?

Maybe it's time to listen to patio11, and find markets where any solution at all will make users climb across their desks with a checkbook in hand.

patio11• 15 years ago

It takes an awful lot of work to be the sixth most impressive thing Scoble (or the New York Times, or Techcrunch, or $PICK_A_GATEKEEPER) will see this week. It takes much, much less work to offer a better user experience than a) an Excel spreadsheet sent over email, b) having your office manager act as the endpoint to a REST API, or c) doing anything involving actual paper. These are frequently the competition in underserved markets.

There's a million fun, valuable, important problems to solve out there which you go grow old and die without ever reading about on a Valley blog.

DanielRibeiro• 15 years ago

Couldn't agree more. What many people fail to realize is that MVP is not about succeeding. It is about failing!

If most startups fail, and your idea is most likely to fail, the best way to find something that works is to fail, pivot, and fail again, until you get something people want.

The MVP entices this fail/pivot loop to happen as fast as possible.

And Scobble is right! If you are still on the failing phase, you shouldn't be seeking attention. Failing silently makes the whole experience less traumatic. And then we can move on to refraiming fail fast to learn fast.

9oliYQjP• 15 years ago

Isn't Scoble famous for being the guy who essentially took Microsoft, then facing uncertain times because of lack of direction, and suggest that one of their top priorities be to embrace employee blogging at all levels? It's the early 2000s and in the midst of unprecedented competition on all fronts -- everything from the iPod, to the LAMP stack (and its brethren), to Google -- he managed to convince Microsoft to get their employees to take what was essentially their 20% time and apply it not to a concerted defensive product response. But instead, he convinced them that their best strategy was to blog about wtf they were working on with Longhorn instead of, you know, preparing some voice recognition demos that actually didn't screw up because of an echo in the auditorium and threaten to kill (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1123221217782777472).

Bravo, the guy is really convincing. But he's a marketer and his opinions should be sandboxed as such. He's right, the bar is really really really damn high now. But he has hasn't a clue on what it takes to get your chin up above the bar. I see a fat guy at a chin up bar and see somebody who, if they ate healthier and did some exercise, could do ten chin-ups easily. He sees a fat guy who shouldn't even bother to try.

JulianMiller520• 15 years ago

I'm reminded of a scene in the now-defunct "Playmakers" TV series. It entails a football player mouthing off to an aide who then bets the player that he can get the ball further down the field than the arrogant player. The player takes the bet and launches the ball a solid distance down the field. The aide waits for a maintenance cart to drive past. He tosses the ball into the back of the cart and watches as it rolls past the player's ball.

The player assumed that winning the game depended on his arm alone when the truth was many things had to align with that arm to win games. The vantage point from the turf isn't the only one.

mindcrime2• 15 years ago

The player takes the bet and launches the ball a solid distance down the field. The aide waits for a maintenance cart to drive past. He tosses the ball into the back of the cart and watches as it rolls past the player's ball.

There's a similar sequence in the movie "Tin Cup" where two golfers make a bet about who can hit a ball the farthest. One hits his ball actually onto the golf course where lands in some grass, rolls a foot or two and stops. The other guy hits his ball onto the highway where it lands on the asphalt and rolls and rolls and rolls and rolls...

The player assumed that winning the game depended on his arm alone when the truth was many things had to align with that arm to win games. The vantage point from the turf isn't the only one.

Indeed. Having something like that to break one out of one's tunnel vision and preconceived notions can be a powerful thing.

AznHisoka2• 15 years ago

If I were to make an app/product, I hope Scoble is the LAST guy in my target audience. I want moms, corporate CEOs, team leads, fitness trainers, restaurant owners, heck even teachers.. anyone but Scoble.

coderdude3• 15 years ago

Gruber: Tells you to develop apps for iPhone -- doesn't develop apps for iPhone

Scoble: Tells you how to create a successful startup -- never even tried

Can we start getting some advice from people who actually do this shit for a living?

jeffclark• 15 years ago

That's one of the biggest issues with "experts": those that appear "successful" are just the ones that can get the most media.

I'm not suggesting you ignore the media, but put it into perspective: The guys actually creating things don't have time to be writing about creating things on Google+.

tfb• 15 years ago

Bingo. And we occasionally upvote comments such as this one when we're reading aggregated articles during short breaks between long development sessions so we can learn how to better approach entrepreneurship. :)

adestefan• 15 years ago

Scoble isn't telling you how to create a successful startup. He's telling you how to create something that he'll use and in turn hype and recommend. If that's what you want, then listen to his advice. Otherwise, just forget it.

coderdude3• 15 years ago

He is telling you how to create a successful startup (see: the ordered list under "Some advice:"). He just also sprinkles in little hints on how to wow him personally. He talks about how he scolds CEOs/entrepreneurs because he doesn't agree with how they're doing things or what they think will make them succeed. Yet he can only speculate on what might make you succeed.

That's the same as Darren Rowse (problogger.net) not having a blog and never having blogged before but still giving you advice on how to become a pro blogger.

danielamitay• 15 years ago

Although I agree with the sentiment, this is a logical fallacy. Does an art critic need to be an artist themselves to be taken seriously?

Robert isn't telling us what makes a great company, he's telling us what has become a minimum standard.

coderdude3• 15 years ago

I do not take seriously critique by anyone who judges something they can't (or don't) do themselves. Even Roger Ebert is at least a screenwriter as well as a film critic.

mikedougherty• 15 years ago

Hopefully they're all too busy making stuff to bother blogging about it.

funkah• 15 years ago

I'm not sure what you mean about Gruber, he doesn't really do advocacy like that. Sure he thinks the iPhone is really great and all, but I don't see him telling people to develop for it. They already are, he doesn't need to.

pace6• 15 years ago

My thoughts to his post consolidated: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3243330

rgrieselhuber• 15 years ago

I was hoping to see something about having an actual business model in his advice. Alas.

jroseattle• 15 years ago

Scoble is the TMZ of the tech industry. I view him largely in the same sense as paparazzi. He has a video camera and a bunch of followers, but little in the way of substance.

His past proclamations, i.e. Google Gears will kill MS Office, Google Chrome OS has already won, put him on very shaky ground with me from a credibility standpoint. That said, I don't discount all future comments from the guy.

In this post, he does offer up some sound advice: clear use case, compelling product -- but really, if you're in the business this shouldn't be news to you anyway.

Unfortunately, one is forced to look past the short-sighted, the mis-aligned or the presumptive to find any take-away value. Focus on a use-case, but make sure the app works for everybody? Magical applications are those where people make comments right away? Without Facebook or Twitter integration, your app is lame? The narrow-minded-ness of these comments simply reflect Robert's lack of scope on the world.

The fact that he's arriving at these conclusions now shows more about his thought process than anything else.

shouteagle• 15 years ago

If your app is targeted at the 40 something marketing demographic, Scoble and his audience can provide you quite a bit of sound advice.

Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately

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