Fuck founder mode. Work in "Fuck off mode"

https://old.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1fgv248/fuck_founder_mode_work_in_fuck_off_mode/

by neerajdotname2 • 2 years ago

227 89 2 years ago

sph5• 2 years ago

HN won't probably like the tone of this one. But one thing I want to emphasise from the post: you don't need to be innovative

I see a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs wanting to build something, and get obsessed about finding a new idea that's never done before, and failing at it.

As if there was only one of everything in the world. There cannot be another restaurant in this city because there's already one. No one can make money selling phones, shoes, browsers, utility software, because they already exist. Nonsense. Either you have a new idea and invent a monopoly, or you have an old idea but you make it better. And you probably don't want to build a monopoly just yet, that's a whole other game.

The bonus of being a startup is that you can afford to try out new approaches to old problems. You don't need a crazy new idea, just to make a marginally better product than the competition. Effort > originality.

ath3nd• 2 years ago

HN won't probably like the tone of this one.

Oh, I emphatically agree with both the post's content and the post's tone. I think it is a lot about building something you like well.

It doesn't have to be unique, it doesn't have to cost you a burn out and your health, it just has to be something well made and with some passion.

wouldbecouldbe• 2 years ago

I mean you can even have a shittier product as long as you nail your acquisition channel (seo, social media, mailing etc)

sph5• 2 years ago

No marketing - can sell only if it's a really good product

Half arsed marketing - can sell any half decent product. This is good enough for 99% of businesses

Excellent marketing - you can sell even the most blatant scam at this tier

astrobe_• 2 years ago

HN won't probably like the tone of this one. But one thing I want to emphasize from the post: you don't need to be innovative

I don't know anything about founding nor am I interested about it, but at least it was funny. On some other topic, I've found this kind of post to be refreshing and relieving, even if your inner voice says "yes, but...". It is kind of popping a couple of the nested bubbles you're in when you are deep in a project.

This line about innovation reminds me what one of the (founding) member of a band says in a masterclass session [1]: the music you make doesn't have to be entirely new all the time. They show an example with one of their own song and compare it to another famous one: "That's the same thing".

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwpXTeKhWYs

disqard• 2 years ago

Thank you for introducing me to Lake Street Dive!

pcdoodle• 2 years ago

Thanks for linking that video, fun watch.

minkles• 2 years ago

Yeah that. We just do what everyone else does in our sector. And do a 20% less shit job for 20% less money. And that not a hard bar to meet when everyone else’s products are dire and incredibly overpriced.

neerajdotname210• 2 years ago

Absofuckingletly. That's what I'm fucking talking about.

xenospn5• 2 years ago

Just take a trip to your local grocery store and see how many water bottle brands there are, selling the exact same product that you get for free out of your faucet at home.

namaria2• 2 years ago

In my corner of Europe the cool kids from the business course all start some sort of bottled drink company. Getting picked up by the big supermarket chain is always commemorated with cringe LinkedIn posts.

roncesvalles2• 2 years ago

It's that simple. If you can wrest just 0.1% of the American bottled water market with a 10% profit margin, it'd make you silly rich.

Onavo• 2 years ago

Well if you see other threads here today, it's all about finding product market fit in massive addressable markets that are absent of competitors. All the business advice here, in other words, are tailored for VC or hyper growth style companies that rely on scale, dominance and network effects.

orlp• 2 years ago

People that do believe you need to be innovative are in for a rude awakening when they actually do something innovative successfully only to find out a year later there are now 5 competitors copying you, with decent success.

neerajdotname210• 2 years ago

Even if you do innovate, it's very hard to have a strong moat. Look at IFTTT and Myspace. Their successors ate their fucking lunch.

al_borland4• 2 years ago

The will also be in for a surprise when they find out they can never be innovative enough to not have a group of people online downplaying the innovation, because of other things that came before it, or components and concepts that were used to create it.

Go all the way back to the first guy who made the first screw. A foundational innovation. The critics of the day might have said, “that’s not an innovation, he just wrapped an incline plane around a cylinder. What a joke.” Prior to that when the incline plane was described the critics may have said, “wow, what an amazing and ‘innovative’ scientist, he thinks he invented hills. Ha.”

There is no hard line that separates evolution from revolution at the design stage. It’s really up to the market. Seemingly small changes, like pre-sliced bread, can change everything. While things people think will be revolutionary fall flat… remember when the Segway (Ginger) hype, it was going to change the design of cities. It didn’t.

rich_sasha2• 2 years ago

I guess the interesting question is the ultimate financial return for the founder from (a) VC funded hyper-unique optimized lean startup, or (b) a somewhat boring, non-unique, well-executed business.

No doubt if you found Facebook and you swear blood about it he fine detail of SEO optimisation, there's no competition. But what about in average, where a realistic best case scenario is a fairly successful startup with a few 100m exit and a lot of dilution.

I don't know the answer but often wonder. Running a startup sounds fun, but also the whole VC treadmill sounds very stressful.

phil21• 2 years ago

I don’t consider VC funded companies as startups. If you have to answer to a board to stay alive due to needing that next round of financing, you are no longer in control of your own company and simply work for someone else with a fancy title and some extra steps. We call those folks CEOs.

It’s been weird watching the term morph into what it is today over the past 25 years. So much for hacking on a startup in your garage with friends after collecting enough money from friends and family to bootstrap yourself. Once you are taking millions of dollars from investors while being valued in the billions you are simply a boring old corporate enterprise to me. And that doesn’t even get into the absurdity of 10 year old “startups” with hundreds of employees.

I think the term loses all meaning when you are talking about established companies with HR departments.

jalapenos• 2 years ago

Absolutely this. Worse mistake I made was thinking a new business has to be innovative. Lost me years.

Anyone bootstrapping should make sure to copy an existing successful product or service. Copy it, copy its sales funnel, copy its ads, everything you can get away with.

Moonshots is for funded startups. Bootstrappers biggest risk, which will happen almost 100% if they have a technical background, is building stuff based on a logical "good idea", rather than mimicking what's proven to work as closely as humanly possible.

There's plenty of time for innovating later once the wheels are rolling and you're getting real time feedback.

j45• 2 years ago

Great points - Bang on.

If you're above solving small problems that users say hell yes too, it's very difficult to build anything big with that kind of ego.

All big problems are very regularly a lot of small problems very well understood on their own and in between each other.

Innovation can actually be faster, better, and cheaper, and still charge more.

In the cases where people want to hide in academic style R&D with no real connection to operationalizing or commercializing .. the pursuit of innovation for recognition of some kind can oddly correlate with seeking significance/self-worth.. from others.

- The disease and illusion of externally reinforced innovation can be very challenging.

- It's one thing to have this disease, and another to be able to deliver on it. Very few can, let alone do. Even fewer sit with problems for the time needed to let the understanding form.

- Being the first is not usually best, or the best. Usually early an the worst. Learning market timing and meeting the market is so important.

- Being unique is not great either most of the time, there are so many challenges created in needing to create your own market, and educate them.... the very first time you're being an entrepreneur lol. YC has some good videos on this.

- Adding or creating value isn't just invention, innovation, or even commercialization. Adding value to making the lives of people is beneath someone, they might not be a founder, and more of a finder of one's self-worth.

threecheese• 2 years ago

My observation is the rate of innovation - acceleration I guess - has just been increasing uncontrollably, driven by technology and capital. Is anyone mindful of the risks? “Technologist” here, not a luddite at all.

Looking back 500 years or so, you can put your finger on some innovations that have changed the world positively - Enlightenment, printing press, steam/coal/etc power, assembly line etc. These have all had some unseen societal cost associated with them, where change propagates and feeds back leading to unknowable outcomes. We’ve gotten through it (well most of us). Looking back just 50 years, computing, internet, globalization of trade, mass communication and media, social media/peer to peer, decentralization, and now AI; social mores have gone 180 degrees, social groups/religions that have persisted for centuries are falling away, hobbyists from across the globe can converge and share their interests with the rest of the world, and so can anarchists and bad actors. And if AGI happens, given we’ve trained it on 50 years of digitized “two feet on the accelerator pedal” innovating, I am not sure our civilization can take it. Or if anyone cares (besides a few anti accelerationists who are widely derided).

worstspotgain2• 2 years ago

Just to provide the contrarian view (== one of my specialties): what if you're in it to be innovative?

Some people want to start a company as a get rich or get influential scheme. It can work if you're cut out for it and you're lucky. This thread is arguing you're better off not being innovative. Perhaps, fair enough.

Some people need to start a company in order to improve something. It might be society in general, the way we use computers, or how we interact with one another. This is what motivates them and what makes them put up with the long odds and herculean requirements.

sph5• 2 years ago

Fine. What I am trying to say is that if you truly innovate, it's a whole different ball game. You want to build a monopoly, have a large enough moat, patents, make it as hard as possible for a competitor to copy you and do a better job at it. You need good lawyers, and need to grow ASAP, you cannot afford to faff about if you're sitting on a golden idea.

No startup course or ebook even touch upon these problems, and it is exponentially harder than simply being a "regular" entrepreneur.

Many just want to be their own boss, and don't need to ever go down this route.

zem• 2 years ago

I am not even remotely an entrepreneur, but if I were then this is totally the sort I would want to be!

8<-----------

I agree. The path is not easy but I'm not worried. As I said in other comments all Neeto products are "by products" of my consulting company. Even if I have zero customers today we are profitable as a whole company.

To prove my sincerity I have not yet built a way to charge money. Sign up for NeetoCal and there is no way for you to pay me money today.

Unlike Silicon valley fucking notion that you need to go "all in". I'm not all in. All in means I will cross the river or I'll drown. Fuck that shit. That's too risky. If Neeto doesn't work out nothing will change for me. That's why I can afford to compete on fucking price.

lofaszvanitt2• 2 years ago

Absolutely golden.

Paul Graham et al. are spewing out these godawful, borderline fucking idiotic ideas and he giggles as all the emptyheaded fucking idiots copy it, try to interpret it and gospel it like some fucking world changing mantra. Wake the fuck up naive plus stupid mudabitches, those who have the brains often feed shit to you, so you won't succeed.

Really, people are like pigeons. Walking around and picking up all kinds of debris, thinking that it will change their business or it has some groundbreaking idea enclosed within. Why? Because people are STUPID, utterly stupid, brainless monkeys.

He said that the sky is not blue, but green. He is an established person with high net wealth, he must be right. So let's say the sky is green. Fake it till you make it, suuuuuure.

Read books so you could hone your bullshit filter.

wg02• 2 years ago

And those"Lean Startup - million copies sold" pivot gurus.

passion__desire• 2 years ago

What about "Lean In"?

jwr• 2 years ago

I wonder how many people understand your username (I my case, having a Hungarian friend helped).

lofaszvanitt2• 2 years ago

That perfectly exemplifies my thoughts about certain happenings in this space.

nine_k2• 2 years ago

Not really golden. Sounds like an annoyed teenager; it's sad because the author is smarter than that. Basically his message sounds like: "I build what I want and I don't care." Well, yes, it works, as long as you enjoy the ride and don't plan to make money off it. (You of course can make money off the result, with some luck, if you build a useful thing.)

Most of things in the initial hate list are not useless. They just are not worth obsessing over. You don't need tons of SEO, market research, or analytics. A small but nonzero amount is still useful. That guy, for instance, used the overdose of profanities as a marketing tool to successfully get his product and his personality on the HN front page.

Mocking onboarding though is a more serious mistake. Most of your users won't "figure it out" unless you care about it well beforehand.

"Have you done market research to figure out your pricing?" is a very, very reasonable question. But likely the research for your (tiny) upcoming product should take under one hour. Looking at your competition's offers and at people's reactions along the way could give you an idea or two how to (slightly) improve your own product.

And "this whole notion that you have to build something innovative and magical" mixes up two unrelated things. Actually "innovative" is rare. But absolutely go for "magical" if you can! I see "magical" as "friction-free". Say, Docker was not very innovative but "docker run" was magical. Dropbox was famously lambasted on HN for not being innovative; still it was magical enough to be a big success. Google Wave was genuinely innovative, but it sorely lacked magic,

"You’re a startup. You’re a founder. Fucking act like it." Nope, nope. A startup is a "go big or go home" kind of deal. A founder's job is to convince VCs that the thing may go big, and do an honest effort to make it happen. But with this attitude, you're not a startup. You just have got a side project, or two. It's a completely fine thing to do. "My cushion is my consulting gig. Even if all my products tank, I’ll be fine." Good for you, sir. But this is a Wendy's.

scrollaway• 2 years ago

Agree with you until the last paragraph. Startups don't have to go for a VC and founders aren't VC pets unless they choose it. "Lifestyle startups" can absolutely be startups.

KaiMagnus• 2 years ago

Yeah, the part where he’s talking about „his startup“ not being all in, because he wants to do consulting as a fallback. Turns out that’s a little dishonest since he has a whole agency where benched employees work on „his startups“.

In the comments he goes on to say he’s based in India and people there can’t use intercom for some reason, so that’s why „he’s building“ some knockoffs.

Way different reality from what the first half of the original post makes it seem.

I guess this is some kind of meta commentary about not trusting startup influencers. While the post has some good parts, there’s also some godawful advice sprinkled in there.

namaria2• 2 years ago

The bear is sticky with honey

tim3332• 2 years ago

This seems to fit quite well with Paul Graham's main 'Make something people want' mantra. Here the guy is making a version of Calendly at 1/10th the price which he says people in India want as they can't afford the normal one.

waihtis• 2 years ago

"yippee look how edgy i am in saying the word fuck alot"

-written by some dude probably working a b2b saas product somewhere

archerx• 2 years ago

This is some creative (and cringe) marketing for a calendar app.

To summarize in a sentence; Basically build something that people want, make it accessible and don't burn out on useless cargo-culting

jitbit• 2 years ago

This.

The guy's reddit profile consists of self-plugging his own products in comments (that are mostly deleted by now)

dclowd9901• 2 years ago

Most of the time I'm impressed when a business acts humane. If your business does that, consider yourself novel.

sph5• 2 years ago

"Do things that don't scale." - Paul Graham

Personally connecting to your early customers is one thing a startup can do that none of its established competitors can afford to. It is only possible when you don't have many users, but people love that shit so make the best of it and use it to kickstart your user base.

roncesvalles2• 2 years ago

"Scale" in that quote is just a euphemism for "delegate" or "automate". Do the things that you can't just pay someone a wage or write a program to do.

entropyneur• 2 years ago

You are not the smartest person in the world. You are lucky if you get one thing better than everyone else, but you never know everything better than everyone else. So sorry, but fuck hubris and I'm going to follow the best practices whenever I don't know a specific reason why I can do better.

hn72774• 2 years ago

Good reminder to say "no" more often.

sph5• 2 years ago

My previous boss told me they really appreciated my services (as a consultant) because I was not afraid to say no and push back requests that were not reasonable, or that would require a lot of effort for little benefit.

Many employees and especially consultants are OK to waste time and effort as long as they get paid. This is one place where being a lazy bastard that doesn't want to do work unless it is really necessary becomes a valued feature. Work smart not hard.

al_borland4• 2 years ago

Sounds like a good boss. Acknowledging the push back, adjusting, and viewing it as a good thing is not always common.

theletterf• 2 years ago

This reads as if The Dude Lebowski was a software engineer. And that's immensely refreshing, almost as entertaining as Mataroa's blog posts (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40725329).

In line with other commenters, I think the biggest value of the post resides in remembering folks to think critically and not going full cargo cult.

neerajdotname210• 2 years ago

I had missed Mataroa's post. This is fucking hilarious.

mckn1ght• 2 years ago

Really sounds more like Walter to me, but they’d probably make a pretty good founding team! I’d like to see them do a pitch.

remoquete• 2 years ago

"Say what you will about the tenets of Perl, but at least it's an ethos."

jumpingscript• 2 years ago

Mataroa is the platform he posts on. The author is Ludicity though!

jimnotgym2• 2 years ago

Founder mode is a really terrible essay. It plain makes up a reality to make his theory sensible.

I enjoyed this much more

tim3332• 2 years ago

Founder Mode the essay is kind of about the problems companies like AirBnb have scaling beyond fifty or so people and seems fine for that but not really relevant for a one or two guy business like this one.

jimnotgym2• 2 years ago

... yes and the essay doesn't even consider that the failing lies with an inexperienced manager who doesn't know how to manage a large team.

polotics• 2 years ago

This would be a a great article if instead of "fuck off" it used the phrase "focus", all the points are valid, and the anger against low mental effort conventional herd mentality is also justifiable. Maybe to a a certaian extent, the strong wordage exposes a contradiction: why did you write this, if what you're thinking is only "F* off"...

arbaaz• 2 years ago

good one

spacebacon• 2 years ago

Fuck manipulation … oops there went the whole internet.

mrweasel• 2 years ago

The whole thing was a good read, but you have a point. I think we should say "fuck off" to the most of the things the author lists, but if we do, oh so many people will lose their jobs.

Not that I care much, modern marketing, SEO, social media, and all that non-sense, employees so many people who could be better utilized in other more honest lines of business.

yowlingcat2• 2 years ago

Great read.

If you are not going to take VC money, then I think this attitude should absolutely be the default approach unless you've got a proven reason not to. There is a large world to be tapped outside of VC funded category leaders where there is enormous, life changing amounts of money to be made by intelligent, pragmatic founders just trying to build real businesses.

And the reality of these businesses is that you don't need to be the best out of everyone -- you just need to be the right kind of good enough: better than the alternatives.

neerajdotname210• 2 years ago

Absofuckinglutely. That's the point. Build a good enough business that puts some money in your fucking pocket.

left-struck• 2 years ago

How about f- Saas? I started self hosting everything and I love it. If you have the know how, I recommend it.

renewiltord• 2 years ago

One thing I do enjoy is low cost clones of mainstream software. So more power to this guy. A reason I use Zoho is that it’s a complete suite I can use at low cost to run a company. There’s lots of non venture scale businesses where you don’t raise and costs matter. And software like this helps. If he can offer it at low cost that’s great!

mixmastamyk4• 2 years ago

Is that software like odoo? I like that one as it’s open source.

neerajdotname210• 2 years ago

Yes Zoho is like odoo. Neeto is trying to be like zoho.

jaybrendansmith• 2 years ago

For bootstrappers, the philosophy here is sound. Don't make a fancy restaurant, just build a better burger joint. There are endless burger places. Why? Because people love burgers. Innovation is great once you have money to burn. Until then, be the corner roast beef place that everybody loves and is an institution. The business model is sound, no great innovation is necessary, just hard work, persistence, cleverness yes but not genius. Startup this way is still challenging but not impossible, and initially no major pivots are needed. Customer acquisition is still the most difficult part, and that takes time no matter how well you are funded.

Waterluvian• 2 years ago

To add to this analogy: you also spend that time learning how to run a burger joint. That’s not wasted time. Walk then run and all that.

If you can’t make a burger joint work, you can’t make a fancy restaurant work. Don’t fool yourself by thinking the problem was the menu and atmosphere.

I experienced a startup where a bunch of mechatronics grads built a product line of simple robots for research use. Simple hamburgers of robotics. Only after years of that did they dive into far more complicated markets. From my rank and file vantage, this felt simple and genius.

neerajdotname210• 2 years ago

Great point. Spend time learning things that will put some fucking money in your pocket. Once you have financial independence then you can think about changing the fucking world.

otoburb• 2 years ago

This post reminds me of the John Goodman "The Position of F*ck You" scene in the 2014 movie "The Gambler", not only the tone but also the the attitude of self-sufficiency.

anon123123q• 2 years ago

Meanwhile in non startup land here…, title of upcoming talk: “dealing with toxic perfectionism, and other problematic mind sets”

anotherevan• 2 years ago

Reminiscent of https://programming-motherfucker.com/

Perhaps the attitude is just moving up the management stack? :-)

neuralkoi• 2 years ago

If you look closer, you can see what "Founder mode" is really about, and it's right there plain as daylight in the original post:

Airbnb's free cash flow margin is now among the best in Silicon Valley.
free cash flow margin

In the end, Paul Graham only cares about how you run your company insofar as it's VC funded, and aimed towards making him and his tech-bro buddies as much money as possible (any other externalities be damned).