How Not to Die

http://paulgraham.com/die.html

by subhash • 19 years ago

169 143 19 years ago

paulgraham.com

donna• 19 years ago

thank you, i needed the boost, perfect timing. ;-D

palish3• 19 years ago

"I only wrote it down because I only had two hours before dinner and think fastest while writing."

Hmm.. I wonder if writing can help one to think through software design faster, too.

I suppose that writing consists of actual programming, though.

euccastro2• 19 years ago

It definitely helps, as does drawing.

ph0rque4• 19 years ago

>> We've done this five times now, and we've seen a bunch of startups die. About 10 of them so far.

So, not counting this batch (19), 10 out of 39 [1] startups died so far. So, the survival rate is 72%. Not bad! I know that some more YC companies might die at some point in the future, but the numbers so far seem impressive.

[1] The following article quotes 58 companies funded in all: http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/08/paul-...

gms• 19 years ago

I don't think 72% is particularly good (I think it should be higher). I'm not sure you realise just how scary the thought of failing in front of so many hard-working people is...

ph0rque4• 19 years ago

I think it's certainly better then when you hear about a 10% survival rate for startups, as stereotypical as that is. But you're right, it could be better. PG mentions a 90% survival rate is possible.

SwellJoe8• 19 years ago

"I'm not sure you realise just how scary the thought of failing in front of so many hard-working people is..."

Failure has a different meaning in Silicon Valley (kind of). There have been a couple of quiet fizzle outs from WFP that I'm sure of, and I've spoken to two of the guys from those fizzle outs since then...one is working on new ideas, and another has moved to another company (perhaps the most flexible of the bunch, in that they changed their entire business model and started from scratch during the program) from the same program that raised some money and he's happy and enthusiastic. While there is a bit of averting of the gaze when I asked how things were going, the fact that they were there at a YC event and talking about new things tells me they will probably go on to great things.

It's the folks who went back home, went back to consulting or school, who aren't going to be among the winners in the end. Which comes back to pg's assertion that just by staying in touch and staying involved you could very well guarantee success...I'm not sure if it's the cause or the effect, but I do think the folks who've stuck around and keep coming to the events and keep in touch with other YC'ers will probably do well.

pg5• 19 years ago

There are several more that seem moribund, but we give them the benefit of the doubt, because there have been cases of startups coming back from the dead.

There were 38 before this batch, 20 new ones this summer, 1 of which immediately merged with a startup from a previous round = 19 in Cambridge.

hornbeck• 19 years ago

Very good, made me wish I had not given up.

zach2• 19 years ago

Interesting to hear about this since many of us wonder what ends up happening. Kind of an unappealing subject -- nobody wants to read Founders at Rest, right?

I guess startups are like old soldiers, they just fade away. Anyone want memamp.com? It went to unregistered status a week or two ago.

But this was a good handling of the subject, and good for founders to hear. What I think is great about YC's structure is that it gives startups feedback and deadlines, and I agree that just getting those is enough to keep startups going. Someone should start a startup that just calls people once a week and talks with them about what they got done! It would work even better if the caller was of higher status, but it would work well enough with friends.

But seriously, for startups this would work great. Get together with a group and make a weekly appointment for each person to call another each week and chat about what they're doing, preferably with a little demo. I'm sure one of you is already thinking of how to make this a Facebook app, but I think a personal phone call would work best.

P.S.: "Francisco."

ph0rque4• 19 years ago

I think this is a good idea...

>>I'm sure one of you is already thinking of how to make this a Facebook app, but I think a personal phone call would work best.

Actually, my first thought was meetup group in a certain area.

zach2• 19 years ago

That would be better, but also easier to flake on.

ecuzzillo2• 19 years ago

I would definitely read (and even buy) Founders at Rest; in Founders at Work, you get a bunch of stuff about what successful founders do, but you don't know which stuff is necessary and which stuff is coincidental. You need a bunch of negative data points to make a really correct assessment about necessary and sufficient conditions for startup success.

davidw3• 19 years ago

That's one of the points in 'The Black Swan'. People concentrate way too much on success stories without looking at the failure stories.

danw2• 19 years ago

openCoffee club is perfect for this. Turn up every week and you'll get to know people who you respect. They'll always ask you what you're up to and what you've done since last week. The simple fact that you don't wan't to look bad in front of them is a great motivator.

Or perhaps some kind of demo party. Everyone has to present something for 10 minutes, something they've done or learnt since last week.

nabeel• 19 years ago

danw, I don't think OpenCoffee club really is like this right now. But after reading PGs essay I think that perhaps it should.

Perhaps opencoffee should have a culture of demoing every week. You show up, you get scrutinized, but it's all for the best.

steve3• 19 years ago

So we're all experiencing the same thing?

That's relieving to hear.

bharath• 19 years ago

A great read as always. Unlike the usual PG, more inspiring than analytical.

brlewis3• 19 years ago

What makes this inspiring is the extent to which it really is analytical; it's based on his accumulated experience with startups. Someone known for careful thinking is stating that for 90% of startups that look good based on an application and a single interview, success is only a matter of determination.

nostrademons4• 19 years ago

It makes sense when you think about it. The yCombinator application weeds out people who are unintelligent; the interview weeds out people who are inflexible. So anyone who gets into the program is bound to be both intelligent and flexible.

What can go wrong with startups? You can work on the problem wrong, which is hopefully averted by smarts. Or you can work on the wrong problem, which is averted by flexibility and subjecting yourself to reality checks. If you've got both of those elements, the only thing that can really go wrong is that you give up before you hit upon an idea that's useful.

jsjenkins1682• 19 years ago

I will say it plainly: This is the most influential, well written essay I have ever read. It hit a chord very deep with me..

mynameishere• 19 years ago

I hate to always be the jerk on this board, but:

1) How can a just-now-released essay be influential at all?

2) At least half of pg's essays are better written than this, which to me seemed a little phoned-in. It's not really an essay anyway, but a peptalk. He didn't even have the usual cavalcade of proofreaders at the bottom.

3) The most influential essay I've ever read is the first essay of "Genealogy of Morals".

SwellJoe8• 19 years ago

"1) How can a just-now-released essay be influential at all?"

It can, obviously, be very influential to one reader...and instantly. Time is irrelevant once it reaches that one reader.

jsjenkins1682• 19 years ago

I've read all of his essays too, but I guess for me in particular this one strikes a chord because:

1) I just resigned from my day job this week to pursue startup ambitions and

2) I am definitely having "oh shit what am I doing" thoughts right now.

So given the timing for me, this kind of inspiration is very moving. As far as how it is written, I would argue that the phoned-in and impulsive nature is what makes this essay so elegant. It is clean and concise, stating the idea simply: dont give up. Anyway, this is all one mans opinion so you are certainly entitled to disagree.

Jd• 19 years ago

"Hang in there. Stay plugged in. Oh, and in case you didn't get it the first time, don't give up."

The most influential, well-written paragraph I've ever read!

imp• 19 years ago

I think that sometimes off-the cuff speeches/essays are more influential because they aren't heavily edited and flow more like how a normal person would speak. I thought this was a great essay.

mattmaroon• 19 years ago

All of Paul's essays are better written. This wasn't an essay. It was a talk, and one written quickly.

Neoryder2• 19 years ago

i think his use of influential is a on a more personal note.

trekker7• 19 years ago

Agreed, this is the best one yet. Here's to determination.

rokhayakebe• 19 years ago

If I was a rapper, I would say "PG you the Truth, man". I wanted to say "you the shit, man", but that sounds bad although that means a good thing in music language.

rms4• 19 years ago

It's kind of depressing to not have any real startup peer group in Pittsburgh. News.yc is serving as a kind of substitute, for me. I'm really looking forward to when we get to turn our startup's shopping cart on and ask news.yc for feedback.

SwellJoe8• 19 years ago

You need to get to a startup hub, if you're serious. It makes a huge difference in mindset, and odds of success.

I've started companies in Houston, Austin, and now in the Valley. Austin was vastly better than Houston, but Silicon Valley is worlds apart from anything I've ever seen.

The only benefit to not being in a startup hub is that you don't have as short of a runway during that very early self-funded stage. You can live on peanuts in most parts of the country...but in the valley you will go broke fast if you don't have income or funding. So, it seems like "not dying" would be easier in places where the cost of living is very low, but I think it's probably a zombie-like existence. You also don't have to move as fast...and if you aren't moving fast at 3 months into your company, you're as good as dead.

SwellJoe8• 19 years ago

I should also add that, given the conversations I've had with investors since being out here and the things I know now: I believe quite strongly that my previous company would have been a success had I started it (or brought it) here. Several companies with very similar implementation and business models started around the same time (and whom I actually had numerous personal interactions with--their products being deployed along-side my companies on a similar scale) here in the valley have gone on to quite nice success.

utnick• 19 years ago

this is really OT

im from austin, live in dallas short term now

but where did you find all the hot startup action in austin?

are there any groups or communities that you frequented? any websites that you conncected with other hackers on? is austinventures really the only game in town? It seems like austin has the free spirit startup culture, but I dont feel near the amount of startup community there as I do when I read about the valley on here and other startup oriented blogs/sites. maybe im just out of the loop tho. got any tips for an aspiring austin starterupper?

rms4• 19 years ago

I'm an undergraduate in college, studying industrial engineering. I ask myself regularly what the point is, because I have absolutely no desire to work as an industrial engineer. You may remember industrial engineers as the efficiency experts from films such as Office Space and American Beauty.

So I know the thing to do is to drop out and move to the Valley. But the only socially acceptable way I had to do that was acceptance into Y Combinator, or angel funding from someone else.

So for now, my company is in Pittsburgh. It's going to be really easy to "not die" because there is absolutely no way for my company to fail because we have no expenses. Unless we get sued and can't afford to defend ourselves. While we're not dying, we should start making money. So if we have enough revenue to support a Bay Area or NYC lifestyle, we would happily move the company there, regardless of college education.

geebee• 19 years ago

50% sounds like really good odds to me, given the payout. It depends to some extent on what it means to fail, and how long it takes to succeed. But if your odds of a substantial payout are 50%, and the length of time to get to success or failure is less than 4 years, then these are phenomenal odds.

Of course, it's not just money - you "pay" in other ways. If it takes, say, 4 years to get to the success or failure point, then some people will have worked for over 12 years with grim determination and still never quite nail it. I wonder if this is a memory-less process (ie., how does a previous failure affect your future attempts?). Wisdom and exhaustion in equal parts, I'd suspect, and only one side is going to win.

SwellJoe8• 19 years ago

I'm on my second startup. My first was a "failure" by some definitions of failure (it paid the bills, bought me a 350Z, and worked me nearly to death for seven years...it never really stopped being a service business despite my attempts to convince myself that I was selling products--I consider it a failure, but I learned a lot).

"Wisdom and exhaustion in equal parts, I'd suspect, and only one side is going to win."

Agreed. I'm just stubborn enough to keep trying. I'm also lucky enough to have a fantastic business partner, which I didn't have the first time around (I should have brought him on back then...he was already doing contract work for me on a regular basis).

This time around I put much tighter time constraints on myself. I'm not giving myself 7 years to figure out if I have a failure on my hands. Every 6 months I evaluate where we are, and if I don't see clearly how to get to the next level, it's time for a serious change. So far, that hasn't happened...wisdom gained from the previous startup seems to have allowed me to avoid most pitfalls.

vlad4• 19 years ago

Vote this guy up, he's smart. I, too, will never do a startup alone, as it's just too draining to do so.

At the same time, it's exactly what someone should do who's starting out, if they can't get funding or a team together. Try to get all three for as long as it takes.

brlewis3• 19 years ago

Thank you Paul.

If we can be recipients of messages like this, I don't think any of us not funded by YC should feel like we're outside the club.

ecuzzillo2• 19 years ago

Except that for many people outside the club, what he says won't be true, since many people outside the club aren't actually that smart, and, worse, aren't actually working in a market where there is obviously something to be had.

far33d• 19 years ago

A good friend of mine once described pg as a "modern-day Horatio Alger for hackers".

Alex3917• 19 years ago

I really like that description. I think the phrase "luck, pluck, and virtue" has been permanently grafted into my brain ever since reading Ragged Dick in HS. That and, "I seen my opportunities and I took 'em."

aswanson2• 19 years ago

Though not religious, I would compare him to Paul the Apostle, wiping the scales from his eyes after that talk to the Harvard kids to spread the startup gospel from city to city...

uuilly• 19 years ago

I think of him more as the pied piper leading the children away from the corporations.

benhoyt2• 19 years ago

Very helpful and inspiring. Thanks! But:

> We're taking on some consulting projects, but we're going to keep working on the startup.

All good if you're single, but what if you've got a wife and family and just need the cash? (Okay, feel free to say you shouldn't start a startup with a family, but it's too late... :-)

ph0rque4• 19 years ago

Why not ask the wife to be the temporary breadwinner while you concentrate on your project?

benhoyt2• 19 years ago

It might be a good solution, except that we have a 6-month-old daughter. And I'm very happy that we do, but it does make startup decisions harder. :-)

steve3• 19 years ago

That's really dodging his question:)

palish3• 19 years ago

It seems like the success rate for that situation is minuscule, if you define 'success' as getting rich and not just supporting yourself.

run4yourlives2• 19 years ago

Life is about compromise.

I don't think most startup founders with families are looking at the same picture of success as those right out of college.

brlewis3• 19 years ago

This can still be a totally inspiring essay for that situation.

The real threat posed by taking on consulting is not what it does to your time; seeking funding would eat up lots of time as well. The threat is what it does to your determination. When the startup seems hopeless you can easily drop it and make consulting your focus.

If you're determined enough, you'll come up with a plan to maintain that determination even if consulting goes well and the startup goes terribly.

edw519• 19 years ago

Absolutely! Sometimes I think that I'm "startup cursed" because I find it so easy to pound the pavement and rustle up a few bucks. Ironically, what is an asset in the real world is a liability in the startup world. I haven't completely turned my back on other income while I code my startup, but I have to look at it very carefully. All other activities must pass an additional acid test: "What will this endeavor contribute to my startup?" If I don't have a good answer, I pass on it and get back to coding.

electric• 19 years ago

I have two kids, my wife works, I used to work at a high tech company and we had to save up for a couple of years before going the startup route. Now it is all startup -- so that is good.

We gave up a lot financially to be here. If you have kids and a family it does take a lot more work, but it is not impossible. Just work it out with your wife.

gscott• 19 years ago

>All good if you're single, but what if you've got a wife >and family and just need the cash?

This is doable, you need to be able to at least get your application developed and maintain hosting for it, but work also for others so you can have an income. This is what I have done at least.

I thought my system would develop revenue right away, but the number of sign ups it took to create a paying customer cost more then what I could afford and natural search traffic was just not coming fast enough.

So I gave it away free so I could figure out the money part later. Not to mention the system wasn't very mature, it needed a revision to bring the quality up and then what seemed like months of bug fixing.

Out of my biding my time, putting out incremental improvements, and building good repore with the users I have discovered instead of putting out a generic product, success will come from taloring very specific products out of my generic product. Using my application as sort of a platform of generic parts to build a system for a particular market.

Having kids, wife, things have still worked out fine.

Goladus• 19 years ago

Fear of humilation and fear of failure is also the most significant thing to overcome in terms of applying to Y Combinator at all. I'd far rather be rejected from the start, having failed at the application process, than to get into the program and disappoint everyone.

binnymathews• 19 years ago

This is probably among the most operational focussed essay I have read from PG on startups. Its so true - nothing focuses the human mind more than deadlines and public statements to live upto. I go around telling everyone I know, including people at work that I want to start a company and it has a very subconcious effect on me, when people are constantly asking me so whats happening on your startup front.

Also very good point about how peers motivate each other. When I am sitting in my weekly target meetings and see that my peer did 110% of his target and i did only 95%, it immediately triggers me to go and re-examine my methods.

steve3• 19 years ago

Finding motivation from my peers and making lots of little mental deadlines have been two of my "secrets" to maintaining very high levels of output while feeling great for all these years. It's great advice.

garbowza• 19 years ago

This is fantastic. The essay feels more "shoot from the hip" and emotional than normal. It will certainly stay with me!

juwo3• 19 years ago

Before you get too excited about this article, realize that if you are not in the YC club, this article was not intended for you.

In other words, the warm encouraging phrases have qualifiers - you have to figure out what they are and if they apply to you.

dfranke3• 19 years ago

The only qualifiers I see are "smart" and "flexible". If both those things apply to you, then so does the article.

juwo3• 19 years ago

How about this: If you are in the YC club, you and your cofounders, the idea, prototype, business model, user base have passed muster. Your team is in a startup hub like SFO/BOS. You will have the backing, connections and resources of YC.

Otherwise, the qualifiers that apply to any other startup in general, apply.

alex_c• 19 years ago

But that's true for anything you read, online or otherwise. All advice or opinions have qualifiers that you need to evaluate.

euccastro2• 19 years ago

For a more broadly targeted, more nuanced version[1] of this I found The Dip, by Seth Godin, quite helpful.

Like this essay, the book gives much advice of the "don't give up" type. But the book also mentions some cases when you should quit: you should quit activities that are a cul-de-sac, those in which you are not committed to become the best, or that don't help you become the best at what you most want to do. The rationale is that current society rewards the very best, ignoring the rest, out of proportion with actual quality/merit. I'm oversimplifying of course.

Obviously, PG doesn't think any of the YC startups is in a cul-de-sac, so he can dispense with that exception and tell all of them to just push forward. If anything, he warns the folks not to 'unquit' school and other attention/commitment escape valves.

[1] Edit: I was focusing on the "don't give up, don't lose focus" part. This essay has other big theme, shame as a motivator, which is not touched in The Dip.

oditogre2• 19 years ago

I wish I had known about Octopart before reading this essay. I needed a part a couple weeks ago that I had no idea what the technical term for it was, my best guesses lead to things that were totally wrong, and the company that made it was now under a different name, and I could find no trace of the device or anything similar on their online catalog. Oh, and my predecessor, who bought the thing in the first place, 'picked it up at a garage sale'. The correct part from the correct (newly named) company was the first result from Octopart when I tried it just now.

sam• 19 years ago

Cool. Could you shoot me an email with the part number? Just curious. (sam <at> octopart.com)

oditogre2• 19 years ago

Will do. And BTW, Octopart is now in my bookmarks toolbar at work, so please follow this essay's advice and don't die. :)

miannini• 19 years ago

Great essay! It applies to life in general not just start-ups!

spacerguy• 19 years ago

I totally agree with your niche market strategy and writing about stuff people care about, stickability is vital too! Thanks for these great ideas, Its a shame my deep passion is gobbled with my (NONPROFIT) star trek sci fi blog! A source of income would help run it!!

thingsilearned2• 19 years ago

Argh! I just moved back to Minnesota....

augy• 19 years ago

Tell that big company, with that cool project, you changed your mind X commit your life to startups X and move back to SF. If you don't you are going to lose that unusable VIP pass to her pants ; )

http://thingsilearned.wordpress.com/2007/07/09/the-dangers-o...

thingsilearned2• 19 years ago

haha! It goes through my mind every day...

staunch• 19 years ago

A big part of why The Woz was so eager to hack up a PC was to show it off to his peers at The Homebrew Computer Club. Once he got a reputation for being smart it must have been a lot of motivation to maintain and improve that reputation.

arey_abhishek• 19 years ago

Its a great post. Very reassuring to hear someone confirm and re-confirm that startups bring a lot of bad shit :) .

wesleyb• 19 years ago

Inspiring (as always).

aswanson2• 19 years ago

Or, in the words of the immortal bard 50 Cent, 'Get Rich or Die Tryin'.

sbraford• 19 years ago

Dangit Mr. Graham you're making me want to do a startup again!

(just when I'm finally making > $100k if you include all the bad-ass benefits & shit!)

mudge• 19 years ago

Thanks Paul for deciding to write that. Reading it helped me.

skeptic• 19 years ago

"It would be unthinkably humiliating to fail now. At this point he is committed to fight to the death."

I'm going to have to disagree with the majority of fanboys here and say that I (still) disagree with Paul's premise that a good way to spend your life is to be miserable in anticipation of a tiny chance to be wealthy. I'd rather enjoy my job every day instead of live in the kind of environment where failure would be synonymous with my actual death. Many great things have come of "failure."

portLAN• 19 years ago

> Many great things have come of "failure."

Especially condom failure.

pg5• 19 years ago

> in anticipation of a tiny chance to be wealthy

It isn't tiny in the case of Octopart or the audience I was addressing. They've all been selected out of a much larger pool. For them the odds might be as high as 50%.

vikram• 19 years ago

What counts as not dying? If you drop the initial idea and start work on a very different one does that also count as dying?

pg5• 19 years ago

Not usually. But it can be if the initial idea was good and the new one is bad.

damir• 19 years ago

I read lot's of biographies (of self made rich pepople). Almost every single one finishes at least one chapter (or book) with "... but don't give up!".

PG, you just scored.

knewjax• 19 years ago

Nice essay. A nice moral booster.

objectoriented• 19 years ago

I figured out the part about distractions, because I kept doing it to myself, and I KNEW it. When I was back at the University and had a crusher class I wanted to escape. I caught myself once, and had this little chat "hmm...why do you just HAVE to change the oil NOW?' Now I'm being crushed alive in a startup and I know with absolute certainty that what I am doing is worth a hundred million, AND the only thing that will stop me is ME.

e40• 19 years ago

> I realize this will sound naive, but maybe the linkage works in both directions. Maybe if you can arrange that we keep hearing from you, you won't die.

Or, maybe they stop communicating because they know they're going to die.

I love it when people take a statistic and try and "cheat" it.

For example: a report came out last year that statistically speaking most people that have dogs and cats have children that don't have allergies to dogs and cats. It may be that having dogs and cats around makes children not have the allergy. Or, since allergies to dogs and cats are hereditary, maybe only people that don't have the allergy get dogs and cats, and those people would be more likely to have children without the allergy.

That's how I feel about the "communicate you won't die" comment.

rms4• 19 years ago

Agreed. It's a lot more embarrassing for a founder to email and say "Yeah, another week and we have no users or funding or motivation or new features or incremental improvements" than to just not respond.

wcrosby• 19 years ago

I could hear PG's voice and speech patterns while I was reading this one. I even "heard" the pauses for audience laughter and impact. Nicely done.

sytelus• 19 years ago

I don't think that million dollars can ever replace those years that you could have rather spent at school. Is money is everything Paul wants everyone to run after. Is there a place for passion for creating things without worrying about money, learning new stuff or just plain old play a better idea to spend your ONE life than to keep worrying about creating something that you would bag a big fat ass beurocratic giant to buy out? Paul seems to think his success is repeatable 50% of the times and looks like he won't hesitate to sacrifice schoole years of these kids for his part of million.

zaidf• 19 years ago

"Is there a place for passion for creating things without worrying about money, learning new stuff "

Funny you say that because every single founder I was with this summer had two things in common: they were passionate about what they were doing and they learned A LOT over the course of the three months.

Relax. If you dislike an individual, you can simply state it rather than using some twisted logic to express the same thing.

Neoryder2• 19 years ago

I think PG expressed why making money is important in an earlier essay. So that we get making money out of the way of us making a life, or something like that.

Deneb• 19 years ago

What a great article... once again. How inspiring, it comes at a perfect time for us. Kudos Paul!

fauigerzigerk• 19 years ago

Paul, you did another startup. It's Y Combinator. And judging by this essay, it won't die ;-) I love your determination.

BlueSquirrel• 19 years ago

Excellent!

Mistone• 19 years ago

glad I took the time to chill out today with this talk/paper. I've already felt like crawling away a few times and we are just at the starting line. I love the idea of making it really matter if you fail, making it public to friends and family, risking something of yourself, these are the things you think about when its grim, "what will her mom say?", how will we repay the CC debt?, when it will hurt to fall, your better off holding on tight.

very inspiring, thanks pg!

german• 19 years ago

I liked it, not because it is (or isn't) technical, but because it is inspiring. That's all I need to start working even harder and tell myself that all the decisions I've taken were the right ones.

Another inspiring speech is this one from Steve Jobs:

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-06150...

lemi4• 19 years ago

Check out Aaron's (partial?) response: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/perfectionism

yamada8• 19 years ago

This article is complete nonsense and I don't think anybody will disagree by the time they read the end of this post.

Nice talk but the problem with this insight, like most on this site, is that it is largely in-applicable and I bet nobody would actually act on it if presented with the opportunity in real life.

Hey, Mr. Graham - I have the absolute best business idea in the world bar none and I'm so dead serious about it I'd sign a blood contract with you that I will commit Seppuku with a dirty, rusty, blunt sword if it doesn't radically alter the world in 4 years of its launch.

According to this essay, my "dead seriousness" about the quality of this idea should translate into a surefire success. Couple that with the notion that you won't need a weekly update as to what we're up to because you'll wind up a daily user.

Surely if this is the leading indicator of the next multi-billion dollar thing, a measly little NDA would be a small obstacle to have unfettered access to this. Care to sign a measly NDA to hear it?

Thought so. But why not - if I'm dead serious and you wind up a daily user and so you know what we're up to every day, then according to this article it's a surefire success story in the making.

Care to test the premise of this article? Thought so.

Same with that article on "outside the box ideas need to come more from outside the box people."

Outside the box people have good ideas all the time because they have a more strategic, top-down perspective and can see adjacent markets / fields of study where good ideas can be cross-polinated.

How many times have you looked at a product and thought to yourself, "I could do better than that."

11 years ago I thought, "What someone made a palm-pilot case ... with a flexible rubber keyboard on the inside which folded three ways to a full size, but flexible keyboard?" A friend and I made a working but ugly model out of parts from stuff we bought at Staples/Office Depot.

We were "dead serious" about making it work but after a year of college where we dedicated every spare minute to "making it work" nobody at palm would even listen to us because they found it impossible that anybody outside of palm could think of any useful ideas for a palm product. No investors wanted to talk to us because we didn't work for palm. And we couldn't afford the tens of thousands of dollars for the many patents it would require. BUT - WE WERE "DEAD SERIOUS." For a year.

This summer Sony just patented a "flexible, material-embedded data input device" ie, the same idea we had over a decade ago. But we were very serious so why didn't it work? The only difference between us and sony is $$$$$$ and connections - the real critical variables. Wake up people.

Try being one of those people with no connections in the industry and getting anybody in the field or investors or whatever to get you seriously enough to work with you.

In my experience, if by some far-out chance you ever get a credible party in an industry to sit down and take you seriously enough to listen to you, they still won't work with you out of sheer spite for for being an outsider and coming up with something insiders haven't thought of.

Most VCs will think you're stupid if you don't have an MBA, most programmers will whine on their blogs about how come nobody in the business world respects them just because they don't have an MBA, yet they in turn think anybody who didn't major in computer science is stupid, and so on and so forth.

The whole world is full of theorizing hypocrites and the sooner people wake up to this reality the better.

Many of these articles are taken from a top-down, "Wouldn't the world be better/nicer/more efficient if only ..." perspective.

I'm sure there are many brilliant programmers in china, bulgaria, romania, russia, etc. who would gladly hack off their legs for an opportunity to "do their thing."

But unless they live in California or, increasingly, Boston ... well tough luck.

So the CRITICAL VARIABLE is not "Dead seriousness" or even good ideas or even intelligence, resiliance, ability to ride out the storms, ability to motivate yourself when it appears like nothing is going right, etc. It's physical proximity to and connections with someone with the cash and connections to get stuff rolling.

How good idea is and how serious you are and how many times you call to tell people, "this is what we're up to today/this week/this month/this hour/next 5 minutes" would have no relevance if you lived in, say, Japan or Italy or Australia and you can argue all you want but you all know I'm right.

yamada8• 19 years ago

Also, this whole essay falls under the classic an quite fundamental analytical error of confusing correlation with causation, ie, startups who do "x" all wind up having success, therefore success is caused by "x".

Example - all of our successful startup founders admitted to smoking pot, therefore pot makes you successful at starting a startup.

Then the mind comes up with all sorts of sophistry to explain a possible relationship with a tentative link at best.

Example - all of our startup founders smoked pot ... must be some chemical thing that stimulates "creative thinking." And their "in the face of the man and his system" attitudes probably subconciously registered and gave them some sort of extra confidence. Yeh - that's it.

Just be careful when you follow the pied piper guys. Ever wonder what happens to guys who try and never make it? What happens to their careers? Do they go back to "Big Corp." and explain that they were "on their own" for 2 years? Most people will be jealous and snicker at them inside, thinking, "Who did you think you were, some genius or something?"

What happens to those guys. Obviously there are a lot of them. But you never hear about them. They're kept hidden. On purpose.

A professor I had once told me that the only reason people don't want socialism is because deep down inside they secretly expect that they're gonna hit the jackpot and dammit, nobody will come between them and their ferrari parked in front of their mansion full of sexy ladies.

And so we all labor on under similar secret personal delusions, each thinking that "somehow, someway ... in the end we'll prevail - because we're special that way."

And that's how the system works. Once in a while we get discouraged and read some financial porn-o-graphy about some new multi-billionaire success story to keep us sweating more and trying harder.

Only they don't tell you the part about how most of such success stories are usually deep, well-developed scams that serve other purposes.

Oracle had deep connections to intelligence agencies.

A recent (1year ago?) report by some french intelligence agency examined microsoft and concluded that it more than likely received quite a bit of help from the nsa.

Look at the charges about the connections that facebook's investors have with big brother.

And google? the "let's not be evil" company - what does it do the second it makes big money? Start offering lucrative retirement packages to attract intelligence guys to come on board.

You think all this is a coincidence? You don't think those peope have colleagues who call them up and say, "Hey - what do you think about so and so's search habits?"

Donald Trump, as fans of Rosie know, made his first "deal" at age 30 only because his billionaire father co-signed the bank loan. Then he died and left him most of his money.

His counterpart in vegas, Steve Winn, is now, as people are finding out, the "legit" clean face for the mob, which still controls vegas, though only more corporate and proper like.

Famed investing "genius" George Soros is now, as it turns out, less of a lucky genius than he is a front for a european faction of investors with very close, personal ties to the folks who decide financial policies for nations.

What do you think they discuss when these people all vacation together, the weather and whether Brad Pit and Angelina are getting back together?

No they discuss whether interest rates will rise or fall ... weeks ahead of official announcements.

THE POINT OF ALL THIS IS in the final analysis, you never know why a tech company became a big success.

Suppose you start a company where people catalogue their deepest fears and share them with each other.

You think it would be difficult to find funding for that from some VC firm with intelligence connections? If you could get people to trust you and sign up, you'd find tens of millions in first round funding over night.

Learn to think for yourselves and stop mindlessly following every pundit with a slick blog.

Just because somebody writes well doesn't mean that the info is useful. Just because they were successful 10 years ago when people were raising $100 million first round financing for a website that sells scissors to cut your dog's butt hair, doesn't mean they can do it now.

True story - some of you may remember this: 6 months before the 2000 market crash, 2 extacy potheads with rich parents raised $300 million seed financing for a site which imported sneakers and watches from europe that people who frequented nightclubs wanted but couldn't find in the U.s.

Soon they were all over FastCompany, Business 2.0, Wired, etc., blabbering for 50 page articles about "how to raise money" and "the new economy paradigm shift" this and that.

you think anybody would give those fools 50 cents these days? Don't think so.

Guy Kawasaki is very derisive and flippant about all the silly plans he gets from entrepreneurs. But what exactly has he done except become an expert at being an expert at makign every body feel he's an expert?

When you think deeply, most of these pundit blogs are nothng more then a clever, well-connected mutual admiration society where pundits all write about each other and how smart they are and link to each other's blogs and interview each other wherey they proclaim their own friends genius, etc. - As cools as giving your own forum comments props on the next forum.

Go ahead. Drop out. Look with big gleaming eyes at that facebook guy and think, "Maybe, someday, if I work hard enough and don't quit ..."

But make sure you realize that in today's world, where you'd be lucky to find a job at all that isn't on it's way to india or china or where-ever the next hot place to send US jobs is, if you don't make it ... well then what?

Try and try again.

Right. Easy for people like Bill Gates who came from a wealthy and unbelievably well-connected family (his mommy sat on the board of directors of the american cancer society, alongside the then IBM CEO --- wonder if that had something to do with his getting a meeting with them when he had no product to speak of yet?).

Easy to try and fail when you got financial backup, rich families, well-connected uncles who can help you get a job if you mess up.

But what if you don't? What if you're not one of the 1 in a thousand ... or 5 thousand who has any measurable success?

"Oh, you'll learn a lot and that will be valuable."

Try putting that on your resume and see who will care.

All I'm saying is think clearly before chasing pipe dreams and if you do it, do it because there is something really there and there's a better than average chance - not because some guy on the internet puts up glossy, emotional propoganda to give it another go.

Look at the housing market. Just a year ago you could still walk into a bank and find all these glossy, emotional posters - "Refinance now - NOW's the right time - You can afford it and we can help you afford it! Ask a representative today."

Now look what happens when euphoria hits reality.

Most of these pleas are from folks who believe that some "next big wave" is coming because Google and YouTube happened.

Google is, if you think about it, Total Information Awareness program - except its voluntary.

YouTube was a fluke.

Think carefully if your own impression of your chance of success is based on your own impression ... or one that was carefully crafted via slick PR firms and well-worded blogs.

yamada8• 19 years ago

Look - here's my point sans babble-bot 2.0 software: In ANY new endeavor, you need to have balance. Balance is the pre-requisite to the power you need to make it. The young, naive entrepreneur is supposed to focus on success because this re-weights the equation to give his enthusiasm a higher co-effecient. BUT - this has to be tempered a more mature, wiser presence who builds up your will to overcome and helps you refine your model by discouraging and criticizing you. I know this sounds dysfunctional but it's reality. You don't built muscle by having weights which help you pull them up while writing articles to encourage you to continue. You do so by finding the will to push inside yourself while the weights push against you. If you have a mentor who just blows sunshine and rainbows at you, how will you ever find and develop your entrepreneurial muscles? The other point is that enthusiasm has to be tempered by a cold hard calculation of reality. Not that either is more important - reality is in flux but enthusiasm only goes so far at some moments. Balance. This article just seems to convey a "you think you can do it, we think you can do it, and let's meet every week in a friendly mutual admiration society where everybody thinks they can do it." Cult-like. Aren't you better off in the long run meeting up with people who hate your guts and point out 30 flaws in your idea, so that you can get that much stronger by fixing 20 of them? Sure. It is harsh and brutal. Welcome to the real world of business. The operating motto is, "If you can be discouraged, you should be discouraged." All this article seems to do in my mind is change that to, "If you can be discouraged, well then we'll put you in an artificial environment where you'll receive a lot of outside encouragement at the cost to you of finding ways to develop your own ability to encourage yourself." And it never seems to cover the very real issue of "what if you just don't make it?" You know that venture capital adage of "1 in 10 of our companies go on hit the big time and that's all that matters!"? If that were true, well them we would be awash in thousands of Yahoos and Googles and YouTubes. But we're not. So the odds of making it are at best calculated wrong and at worst lied about. But if you got financing from smart VCs, that means you must have passed many, many prequalifying criteria. So why do you wind up statistically likely to not make it? I'm sure somebody will say, "Well, at YC, OUR criteria is far more clever and wise than any VC, so if you get in YC, your odds of making already are that much greater." In the end, you need an adult to say - go like gang-busters for 6 months, then if you don't see minimum this that and the other goals met, move on. Leaving it open-ended with a "just keep trying" approach only gives you the impression that if you just hang on, maybe next month will be that special one ... or the next month ... or the next one ... how then do you know it's not next year? Or the one after that? Or next decade? There are plenty of entrepreneurs whose idea was a decade ahead of its time. What happens to them after they maxed out 50 credit cards and mortgaged their homes? Nobody knows because in polite entrepreneurial society, it's best not to talk about very real risks. But ignoring them doesn't make them go away and being really, really committed doesn't reduce them very much. I'm not being pessimistic. I applaud you folks. But I find this go-go cheerleader coaching style dangerous. Hitting the weight room and getting up early in the morning, putting your sneakers on and going for a run will prepare you better for the big game. Listening to the cheerleaders tell you how great you are and how much they believe in you is only setting you up for a rude awakening.

create_account• 19 years ago

PG and Yamada are the Yin and the Yang of the startup experience.

One succeeded and is now overly optimisitic, the other failed and is overly bitter.

pg5• 19 years ago

I don't think I'm overly optimistic. For one thing, I've both succeeded and failed (http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html). But also there are the 58 startups YC has funded over the past 2 1/2 years. With that amount of data, I think I look at the startup business with a fairly clear eye.

nostrademons4• 19 years ago

"Leaving it open-ended with a "just keep trying" approach only gives you the impression that if you just hang on, maybe next month will be that special one ... or the next month ... or the next one ... how then do you know it's not next year? Or the one after that? Or next decade? There are plenty of entrepreneurs whose idea was a decade ahead of its time. What happens to them after they maxed out 50 credit cards and mortgaged their homes?"

I don't think YC encourages people to keep trying with an idea that doesn't work. Rather, they encourage them to drop the idea and find another one. Many YC startups have switched their idea even during the initial 3 months.

It's fairly common for a failing idea to still be a failing idea 10 years later. It's fairly uncommon for an entrepreneur to come up with 40 failing ideas in a row. Usually by the 4th or 5th, you've stumbled onto something decent.

yamada8• 19 years ago

>> I don't think YC encourages people to keep trying with an idea that doesn't work. Rather, they encourage them to drop the idea and find another one. Many YC startups have switched their idea even during the initial 3 months.

But you imply that if you keep switching ideas, it's guaranteed that soon you'll come up with the right one. What if you don't? How then do you account for the time? Where do you get the money that you spent back? There needs to be a clear line - if young kids are dropping everything and moving to Boston, that situation can only be maintained for so long. How do you determine when that is before that becomes personally ruinous. I see that a note is left that YC funded hundreds of startups. Great. how many went anywhere? What happens to the rest? Are they still in Boston? Did they move back? Can they still attend YC dinners? Does Paul still take their calls if they don't make it? Or are they in some weird limbo where they need to go back to "real life" but have to account for lost time and opportunities? Paul is not your father nor is he the father of any of these young people trying this. If you make it, great! But if you don't ... (sounds of crickets). Well let's just say I doubt he'll offer you room and board until you find the next thing or get back on your feet.

>> It's fairly common for a failing idea to still be a failing idea 10 years later.

Yes it is. It's also fairly common for a failing idea to become a huge hit on the 11th year because something in society changed. Entrepreneurs are usually a bit more right-brain oriented and can see patterns in social dynamics which is why they are more likely than others to predict how to profit from emerging patters. But predicting a change and timing it exactly are two different things, as anyone on Wall Street will tell you.

>> Many YC startups have switched their idea even during the initial 3 months.

That's my point exactly. How do you determine if you're wasting time or just one idea switch away? What if by the time you hit your idea the market is in the course of moving away from it? Do you get invested in continuously to keep trying? Who's paying your personal bills during this time? Does Paul write a letter explaining what you've been up to for 6 months if you go back to school? Are there companies in Boston that will hire you if you don't make it so you can stay around while you think of the next YC idea?

YC0101• 19 years ago

I like very much your statistics: 1.- 50 % of YC startups will get success.

 2.- Only 1 of 1000 of startups will get success.

 3.- you can foresee the future of your startups:
     disaster perhaps with one exception, the one
     that thinks by himself.

yamada8• 19 years ago

Don't forget the numerous articles that indicate that nearly 100% of YC startups have found success. Quite a heady business this entrepreneurism is ... 0.1% chance, 50% chance, 99% chance ... it's all so ... "dynamic".

GauravNischal• 19 years ago

this is inspiring to read this article. I am reading the second article on this site. Good Job

monx• 19 years ago

Inspiring. Thank you

ABrennan• 19 years ago

As a young (19 year old) co-op Computer Sciences student currently stuck in cubicle hell for 4 months I'd like to say that re-reading this essay just saved my day. I really wish I'd discovered Paul Graham a few years ago.

bruno1• 18 years ago

Thanks for posting your thoughts on start ups. This was very encouraging to read. See, we do need to hang in there!

warrens• 18 years ago

Good stuff.

The actual statistic (Business Links, UK) is 90% of startup businesses go bust within the first 6 months. If you can hang on longer than this, the statistics improve. This mainly has to do with cash flow, startup costs etc. which many starups don't adequately plan for. If the business model enables you to survive "indefinitely" and and you have minimum operating and living costs, this works fine. However, the other problem is stagnation - if you're not growing and no new ideas or changes are going into the business, you're going nowhere, no matter how long you hold on. Sincwe markets change quite rapidly, chances are that an idea that was great 3-4 years ago, will be stale and done by somebody else if it's not acted on quickly enough.

combinatoRICK• 18 years ago

Very thought provoking in title and concept. Do the next re-write on the back of an envelope with a little more on the rebirth of our nation's economy and an economic analogy with the Gettysburg Address will be complete.

Thanks for this influential piece. Those who would rebuild the production base of the Information Age and who still believe in Yankee Ingenuity applaud your fighting spirit.

I'm going to link to this from EconomicsWorks.com and bibusiness.com.

miuzu_dave• 18 years ago

Hoooooollllllly Crap! That was breathtaking to read. I can hardly type. Paul, man, how could anyone say it better?!?!

archi• 17 years ago

Really a good read. Business incubation is so much evolved in Western world...In India we are still struggling to educate people about VC n INcubation.

Archana archanag@aikonlabs.com www.planeaikon.com

thepanister• 17 years ago

hmmmmmmm

Thanks to Paul... I am trying to build something since 2005... and his words just push me!

gregking• 17 years ago

Good essay. Just spent the weekend reading Hacker's and Painter's. Very good as well.

How Not to Die

Related Stories