Don't Read Tech Blogs: 10 Pieces of Startup Advice from Backupify's Rob May

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2012/03/07/don%E2%80%99t-read-tech-blogs-10-ideas-from-backupifys-rob-may/?single_page=true

by gthuang1 • 14 years ago

48 7 14 years ago

xconomy.com

shingen• 14 years ago

I knew Rob back when he was running BusinessPundit. He's a great guy, classic entrepreneur. He was about ready to give up on starting businesses - penning a sad blog entry about failing and not being sure where he was going next - when he came together with some other founders to do Backupify. I've never liked the cliche about success being closest when you're just about to give up, but it seems to ring true an awful lot.

WiseWeasel• 14 years ago

Quite the conundrum; had I followed his advice, I may not have discovered it.

snprbob86• 14 years ago

I interpreted tech as referring to engineering. I know that 99 times out of 100, Googling around, reading blog posts, and otherwise banging my head on the latest and greatest is less productive and produces lower quality software than just reading some damn man pages and spitting out some code.

JamesLeonis• 14 years ago

To be fair, he says "Don’t read too many tech blogs."

markbao• 14 years ago

> 3. Incubators aren’t thinking big enough. ... If you want to build something really big, May says, “three programmers and $50K isn’t going to get you very far.” He appreciates lean startups as much as anyone, but when it comes to disrupting big industries and building big companies, you need time and capital.

Well...

HARD: finding a product that has very good product-market fit and has the possibility to be a huge company.

EASY (at least relatively): raising money when you've got a product with great product-market fit.

Three programmers and $50k isn't meant to make you become a big company. It's meant to allow you to experiment with ideas to see if it gets traction, to determine whether it's a big company or not. If it is, then the big bills can come out to make it a big company.

Maybe incubators aren't thinking big in the sense that they're sinking $10 million into an idea that might have dubious traction, but they are thinking pragmatically.

ScottWhigham• 14 years ago

>> Don’t read too many tech blogs... Part of the reason, he says, is that many of the bloggers are 23-year-olds who haven’t built a real company yet

Ha - I'm sure will ruffle many, many feathers around here. If we could downvote articles, I'm certain that many here would do so for this reason. And, although I'm sure I'll get downvoted for saying this, I'm pretty sure that those of us who are 35 or older who have built successful companies nodded in agreement as we read that line. I thought I knew a lot at 23 but, at 40 when I look back, I really appreciate just how much "naive exuberance" I had.

robmay• 14 years ago

Just to clarify the "don't read blogs" comment... what I meant was that tech blogs are disproportionately written by engineers. You don't see, for instance, many middle managers at Apple or Amazon blogging about their work. So if that's all you read, you have this skewed view of how a company should work based on what a bunch of young, small startup engineers tell you.

There is a disconnect between how the world works and how you think it works if you spend too much time reading these blogs, and that disconnect hurts you more than it helps you.

Don't Read Tech Blogs: 10 Pieces of Startup Advice from Backupify's Rob May

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