Keep Emotions Out of Your Startup

http://startupbox.posthaven.com/keep-emotions-out-of-your-start-up

by rupalim • 12 years ago

13 11 12 years ago

startupbox.posthaven.com

thebiglebrewski• 12 years ago

Didn't you guys kinda rip off AirBNB's design? And...idea? Just curious what differentiates you.

bitwarrior• 12 years ago

They're keeping emotions out of their startup, like guilt due to plagiarism.

LCDninja• 12 years ago

Easier said then done ;-)

makerops• 12 years ago

"A year ago, I was talking to a fellow start-up founder and I realized how much he likes to stick with his ideas.... I wondered: is this passion or simply stubbornness?"

The whole article is based on a false premise imo. There are a myriad of reasons why I would, or wouldn't listen to a suggestion from someone else.

The best I can do at least, is to listen to everyone, and try the often repeated suggestions, but if you are implementing every whim a customer suggests, you probably aren't operating optimally.

namenotrequired• 12 years ago

I agree - he's right that you should "make something people want" but ignores the question of whether the people who want X are in your target audience or not. Simply implementing the most popular suggestions can easily pull you in many different directions and take you away from your goal of making something people want.

cinquemb• 12 years ago

This might be a little bit meta, but for my start up we interpreted "make something people want" as make something that takes advantage of the behaviors people exhibit whether or not they explicitly say they want it or not. We get tonnes of feedback/complaints (that are very emotionally charged) about what we are doing every week that we don't respond to, but despite that, we keep growing.

I wish I could figure out how to turn this into a win(us)-(lose)them, into a win-win (because there could be an upside, like building a movement), but what people are demanding is in direct conflict of their behaviors (and our growth) so there little actualized incentive on our part except for maybe trying to exacerbate the issues more with a new feature in order to get more growth.

kordless• 12 years ago

Just like anything else dealing with emotions, keeping them out of your startup is a sure way to put a bullet in it.

Emotions like joy, trust, interest and surprise are critical to engagement with customers. Marketing is basically raising interest. Product deals with the rest. The CEO broadcasts all of them, if he's good at his job.

You also can't keep negative emotions from injecting themselves at the most inopportune time. How you handle those negative emotions, on the other hand, has far reaching implications.

gerbal• 12 years ago

This guy seems like yet another smart person who assumes themselves supremely rational and really is just bad at coping with their emotions.

As you said, running any successful enterprise depends on being aware of your emotions, your customers emotions, your collaborators emotions. You can't treat emotions as some alien thing you can ignore until they go away. All that will do is poison your project.

wellboy• 12 years ago

Your idea doesn't define you, you define your idea.

tsmith• 12 years ago

"Every new idea or piece of feedback about your start-up has immense value and it's up to the founder(s) to prioritize these ideas and suggestions and utilize them."

The author seems to be in the fortunate position of never having suffered from feedback overload.

In my experience, anyone is willing to give feedback when asked for it, and most of that feedback will be wrong and/or conflicting with the advice of others and/or inapplicable to the situation at hand.

As a founder, it is your privilege and your duty to free yourself from the opinions of others and blaze your own trail.

semerda• 12 years ago

The whole idea of selling products & services are built around emotions. Read the work of Sigmund Freud for deeper insights into how powerful emotions are and how our triune brain is wired for them.

The lesson when/where emotions are involved should be to develop your empathy.. now that will open up you mind & provide clarity!

Keep Emotions Out of Your Startup

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