The Leanest Startup in Silicon Valley

http://www.inc.com/magazine/201207/leigh-buchanan/the-leanest-startup-kurt-varner-dailytoaster.html

by joshavant • 14 years ago

62 30 14 years ago

inc.com

kurtvarner2• 14 years ago

Direct link to DailyToaster - http://dailytoaster.com

More info on my blog - http://kurtvarner.com

jackhammer2022• 14 years ago

This is a great endeavour.Being resourceful to the maximum. But a question that comes to mind is fitness. This kind of lifestyle might be detrimental to health,especially sleep related disorders. How are you tackling this ?

tomjen3• 14 years ago

Brilliant. By living in a car, you will have very few distractions, though I wonder how do you get electricity and an internet connection?

kurtvarner2• 14 years ago

I wrote about the logistics of everything here (although a few things have changed since this post) http://kurtvarner.com/post/19347794553/man-car-startup

dr42• 14 years ago

How exactly is this brilliant? There are way more distractions living in a car, like basic needs, keeping warm, going to the bathroom, changing clothes, internet, charging the laptop, being moved on by the police etc etc. a nice quiet office in some cheap shares space is a much better environment for building software.

brittohalloran• 14 years ago

Sooo... what IS it (daily toaster)? Google Now for iPhone?

da02• 14 years ago

Why not slap a layer of buzzwords, while keeping your original concept underneath?

Latest fad is turning everything social. Ugg... But, it might get the attention of fad-followers:

DailyToaster: Social wakeup calls. Friends take turn to call you up. They win "points" by getting you to your destination on time. Leader-boards, badges, etc...

Did I say friends? Why not strangers. Plenty of loudmouths. Might as well put them to use. The calls are routed through the DailyToaster call system to prevent spam and protect phone privacy.

Why stop at meetings? Apply this to weight loss, book reading, etc.

mindcrime2• 14 years ago

Man, I love this guy. I'm not convinced that the idea is big enough to get him where he wants to go, but the moxie, the hustle, the spirit... you can't help but root for somebody like this.

I'm shocked he didn't get into YCombinator, to be honest. Pg always talks about how it's about "the team, not the idea," and if anybody has the moxie to get in as a solo founder, I'd have thought it would be Kurt.

Anyway, Kurt, keep banging away and keep believing! I believe big things will happen for you if you stay dedicated.

fusiongyro2• 14 years ago

> you can't help but root for somebody like this.

I can. Dude left his wife three hundred miles away so he can live out of a car to work on his idiotic startup. "Moxie"? I'm sure that's something his second wife will be able to appreciate. In the meantime, I agree with "Herbert": he's a tool, and this moronic stunt is transparent and far from endearing.

mindcrime2• 14 years ago

I'm not a huge Teddy Roosevelt fan, but I think his words fit this discussion quite well:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

dbecker• 14 years ago

Maybe YCombinator judges applicants based on productivity rather than suffering.

I don't mean that as a criticism. He may be a great guy... he may be productive too.

But sleeping in a car (or a mansion) is unlikely to be the key to success.

capsule_toy• 14 years ago

A lot of ppl have the drive, and have made sacrifices. I was temporarily homeless for a few months and slept out of the company's office. One of my friends is living rent free in an investor's living room, and I've heard of others doing this.

Don't get me wrong. The vast majority of people probably wouldn't be willing to make these kinds of sacrifices. I'm also not putting down Kurt's drive, but sacrifice is probably not a big enough limiting factor to auto get into YC.

kposehn• 14 years ago

> "People who aren't successful yet," says Varner, "can do anything they want."

This is the most important bit of the entire article. While not profound at first glance, this actually is very insightful.

When you don't have anything yet, what really holds you back? Are you going to lose your job? If you don't have one, no biggie. When you live in a car, are you going to get much more in the (pardon the term) gutter? Not really.

Going for it is a great thing.

jonny_eh• 14 years ago

Unless you get in a car accident :-/

zinssmeister• 14 years ago

I met Kurt for the first time about 4 months ago and have been sharing beers with him since. Definitely a guy with vision, the right kind of work ethic and attitude. Also a very talented Product Designer.

firefox• 14 years ago

Many of us go through incredible hard times and have to make difficult lifestyle decisions, if you can get media attention while at it - more power to you!

wpietri2• 14 years ago

Oh god. I admire his pluck. But the headline is killing me. Lean != cheap.

Toyota is a major source of the Lean philosophy, and as the world's largest car manufacturer, they spend plenty of money. They just continually seek to deliver more customer value per dollar spent.

Lukeas14• 14 years ago

Met Kurt at a few meetups and based on his pitch I have to disagree with the "too niche" criticisms mentioned in the article. The number of people, including myself, who have trouble getting up in the morning is a huge market. I'm not sure if his current idea is the right solution, but if he can make me productive during the 30-45 minutes that I spend hitting the snooze button every morning that'd be worth paying for.

My only criticism is that I feel he's ignoring the root of the problem, which is not getting enough sleep. Most people don't have trouble getting up after a nice, long 10 hours of sleep. It's getting up after 4 hours of sleep that's tough. And if Daily Toaster served its function of waking me up quickly after 4 hours of sleep I'd inevitably pay for it later that day/week anyways.

wpietri2• 14 years ago

Amen. I used to try to control when I woke up by setting an alarm clock. Now I control it by having a regular schedule, getting plenty of sleep and making sure there's bright light, hopefully natural, at the time I want to wake.

It reminds me of when I was a young sysadmin, leaping from emergency to emergency, alarm to alarm. That was fun, but eventually I realized that the maximally lazy approach was to rig things so that alarms were never necessary.

kyt• 14 years ago

I like his drive, but where are his 10,000 hours? I'd at least think you'd be an expert at something before starting a business with zero cash.

base698• 14 years ago

Sounds like this guy took War of Art a little seriously.

http://www.amazon.com/The-War-Art-Winning-Creative/dp/159071...

As a younger person in college I always felt that being confident enough to move to Silicon Valley and try to get attention you'd have to be able to code a compiler in an interview for a language you've never seen on a machine you were unfamiliar with. Or if you were the artist type you'd produce work universally lauded for both it's execution and creativity. I guess you have to start somewhere, why not here? Oh yeah, 10,000 hours rule that's right. :)

damonpace• 14 years ago

Repeat after me...You do not have to suffer to build a business. So many stories like this are sensationalized in the media and it convinces so many young entrepreneurs that it's a right of passage to struggle while building a business. It's not true. Yes, other entrepreneurs had determination and some sacrifice...but they most likely didn't suffer so dramatically, nor make their loved ones suffer along with them. Don't fall for the trap. Be smart enough to build a business without the struggle.

Capitalism says that in order to improve your life you must first improve the lives of others. The more lives you improve, the better your life will become. If you eliminate your own self interest of a good life, you have forgotten the biggest reason you are building a product in the first place. You aren't respecting your life, your wife, your business or your customers by doing this.

Stop struggling and build something valuable that people will pay you for. Living out of a van down by the river may get you a few news articles and motivational speaking gigs, but your struggle is not related to your success. I've been there...I've done it. It is irrelevant and unnecessary.

tptacek• 14 years ago

Best HN comment in months.

aswanson• 14 years ago

Amen. Kindly dead the romanticism of starving and being pushed to the brink...realize the first, last, and only thing that matters is providing a solution for a human want. Period.

BradleyStC• 14 years ago

"Capitalism says that in order to improve your life you must first improve the lives of others."

I absolutely love this quote. It so succinctly wraps up the core idea of PG's essay "How to make wealth - "http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html I think everyone should write that quote down and reread it before even thinking about executing their next great idea.

rokhayakebe• 14 years ago

This guy needs to start a rent-your-car-for-the-night-as-a-bed , an AirBnB for your car. Or a startup that sells kits allowing you to turn any car into a place to live while camping or travelling cross country. Or a startup that sells life-saving kits allowing you to live out of your car for up to x days in case of an emergency.

jordanthoms• 14 years ago

I have seen people renting their cars overnight on airbnb :)

readymade• 14 years ago

Good for him and all, but it's still a questionable product idea. He might be better off spending his 3 months figuring out a product people actually want and then moving up north.

The Leanest Startup in Silicon Valley

Related Stories