“Startup” is just a word…
In response to my post below about the definition of a startup, an influential NYC angel told me:
The word startup is just a word. Your life is made up of specific moments that when connected through opportunities or experiences is all about building your own successful future.
Other definitions of “startup” include:
New business venture in its earliest stage of development.
And:
The initial period of operation of a co-operative or other business or service, usually the period before the enterprise begins receiving income.
Given the foregoing, I am happy to report that I am working on a startup again, and my 5 a.m. mornings have renewed purpose.
One startup is a niche e-commerce website. My goal is to build the site, teach my mom how to run it, and give it to her as a retirement gift.
The second startup is a web application for evaluating your relationship with your significant other. Ambiguity intended.
Source: ted-is-a-nerd
Failures comes in many flavors
I recently read a post by Van Tran, an aspiring Y-Combinator entrepreneur. There, he described his failed interview with the Y-C crew. You should read the full article, but here is a bullet point summary:
- Don’t pitch the wrong thing
- Disclosing half-baked tactics which gives bad impression
- Didn’t try to pitch the overall vision
Failure =/= scarlet letter; failure = merit badge
I was watching people tweet from the Pipeline Fund Conference. Looks like a great event. Here is one of my favorite tweets:
@PipelineFund failure another step in your experience ladder, NOT scarlet letter, as #entrepreneurs we’ve ALL had failures #PFFConf
But the fundamental question remains: when do you fail?
At a recent HackersFounders event, I met a hacker/founder and eventually talked about the meaning of a failed startup. I told him about my failure (4 months of research, surveys, prototyping, and eventually death by IRS regulations). According to said hacker/founder, this was not a failure because I never “started.” He considered my work a “side project,” which never rose to the level of a startup.
Which brings us to another question: how do you define a startup? That hacker/founder claims that a startup is a company that has taken funding or is earning revenue.
So the last four months did not lead to a scarlet letter. Apparently I was not working on an actual “startup” or, if I was, the failure is more of a merit badge than a scarlet letter. Bottom line, however, is that my “side project” is dead. And that sucks — not because it “failed,” but because I’m not waking up with the rush of working on something big and meaningful.
Some additional posts on Failure
Here are some great posts on failure from the Victus Media blog:
msg:
Survey Monkey acquired Wufoo and this badass FAQ was created
Source: wufoo.com
What is a failed startup?
Few people talk about their failed startups. One reason is that success is easy to measure, failure is not.
Success is a public affair, often measured by your last round of financing, the number of users you have, the amount of press that you receive, your exit, etc. Whereas failure is oftentimes a private matter… you never received press because you didn’t get traction. Further complicating matters, there are issues with measuring objective versus subjective failure. Did you fail according to a community standard (e.g., raising money and getting no traction), or did you fail according to your own goals (e.g., you wanted an IPO but were “merely” acquired for $30 million).
Some people believe there is value in your failure, that you can learn from the experience. But others disagree, pointing to statistics from several HBS professors. It’s unclear that these commentators are talking about the same type of “failure.” According to the HBS professors, a “failure” was not reaching IPO. Marting Zwilling, on the other hand, gives no definition of “failure.”
What is a failed startup? If you had an idea but never executed that idea, does that count as a failed startup? Or was that not even a startup to begin with? What if you created a prototype but discovered issues that wrecked the revenue model? What if you raised money but couldn’t get traction? What if you bootstrapped the company and had a small exit?
Whatever the defining moment, let’s talk about our failed startups. Hopefully Zwilling is right, and there is much to learn from our collective experience. Tell us: when did your startup fail and why? (Who knows, you might even become more hireable in the future. See Concern #2.)
As an example, read “10 lessons from a failed startup” by Mark Goldenson. There, Mark gives us an excellent post mortem analysis of his failed startup. I intend to do the same for my failed endeavors.
My designer is Google
Good post by anorexicstartup:
Let me start by showing something to you. This is the website of a company with several hundred billion dollars in assets.
But hold on, don’t reach for your guns just yet. I’m not saying design doesn’t matter. Of course it does. But there’s a lesson we can learn from Buffet here: you are never too rich to stop caring about your spending priorities. And especially not when you are just starting.
Source: anorexicstartup
Q:WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE INANIMATE OBJECT?
My laptop.
