Guide to creating startups, part 1: why not start up a startup
This guide is a series of classic pmarca blog posts, and in life, Mark Andreessen, the creator of the Mozaic browser, from which Netscape has grown, and then Mozilla.
Links are specifically given to old versions of sites, current articles stored in the Internet archive.
In this series of posts I will share with you my knowledge and experience in creating high-tech startups.
My experience in this field is compiled when working in three companies in which I was a co-founder: Netscape, sold to America Online in 1998 for $ 4.2 billion; Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), a software company with a capitalization of about $ 1 billion; Ning , an online company that provides a social networking platform.
')
In general, I was lucky from the moment I arrived in Silicon Valley in 1994 to participate in the work of about 40-50 startups, and the participation was deep enough for me to know what I was talking about. I was a member of the board of directors, a business angel, an adviser, a friend of many founders, and a venture capitalist.
So I will not only talk about those things that relate to my companies - most likely these will be stories from the lives of various startups, in whose fate I was directly involved.
My experience is based on working in Silicon Valley, on its culture, people, venture capitalists, etc. Something is useful in other parts of the world, something is not useful. Caveat emptor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caveat_emptor)
After such an explanation, let's start over: why not start up a startup .
Startups, even after the collapse of 2000, were always fanned by mystery - everyone read how cool it was, how fun, investment in the future, free lunches, table football and other buns.
Of course, there are a lot of great things in startups . In my experience:
The ability to control your destiny. You yourself won or lost. Nobody tells you what to do. For people with a certain nature of the warehouse is already enough.
The ability to do something new is the very “clean sheet”. You have the opportunity, and in fact even the duty, to imagine a product that is not yet there, and create it, without any restrictions, usually inherent in large companies.
The opportunity to change the world - to give people a new way to communicate, a way to share information, work together, or something else that you come up with - to make the world a better place. Do you think it will be easier for people with small incomes to lend? Launch Prosper . Do you think that there should be an unlimited number of channels on television? Run Joost . Think computers should work on Unix and use open standards? Run the sun.
The ability to create the perfect culture and work in a dream team that you can assemble yourself. Want your culture to be based on people who have fun every day and who like to work together? Or a team of tough competitors who compete in work and games? Or a team creating new technologies? Choose you, and build the right culture for you too.
Well, money. A properly created startup can be very profitable. It's not just greed - when everything works well, your team and subordinates will be provided, they will be able to support their families, send their children to college, realize their dreams - and this is really cool. If you are very lucky, you can do charity work and support for other projects.
However, there are many more reasons not to start a startup .
First, understand that a startup will require such emotional turmoil and stress from you that you have not yet experienced.
You will constantly move from the euphoric consciousness that the world belongs to you, to the depressive confidence that everything is gone, and back again. And so in a circle. And this is only with those who are emotionally strong and stable.
So much uncertainty and risk in everything you do. Will the product be on time? Is it fast enough? Are there too many bugs? Will it be easy to use? Will anyone use it? Will competitors be ahead of you? Will there be reviews in the press? Will there be investors? Will this budding engineer join you? Will the main interface designer leave Google for you? And so on and so forth.
Sometimes everything will go well, sometimes - very bad. And the stress that will crush you will increase these emotional surges and drops to unprecedented magnitudes.
Have fun?
Secondly, in a startup, nothing happens by itself. The founders and employees of a startup immediately face this.
In a working company, no matter how poor and demoralized, everything goes on as usual. People come to work, code is written, interfaces are designed, servers are supported, markets are being analyzed, prices are being studied, sales are being made, trash cans are being taken out, etc.
The startup has no established procedures, rhythm, infrastructure.
In a startup, it can easily happen that the code will not be written, the interface is not developed ...
People may not come to work, and baskets may remain full.
You, as the founder, are required to create and configure all of these systems and procedures, and make everyone row. While not even in the right direction, just paddle harder to sail.
While you have not done this, nothing will happen. Unless, of course, you will not do everything yourself. Have fun taking out the trash.
Third, you are often denied. Really often. If you are not engaged in sales, you are most likely not prepared for failures. This is not very fun.
See Death of the Seller and Glengarry Glen Ross . That's about the way it is.
You will be denied by potential employees, potential investors, potential clients, potential partners, journalists, analysts ... Time after time, time after time. And when you do not refuse, in half the cases in a couple of days you will call back and still refuse. Begin to train not really smile.
Fourthly, hiring employees is a terrible headache.
You will be surprised how many people want to "just see."
Many people want to work in a startup, but when it comes time to leave their homeland somewhere in HP or Apple, they change their minds. It is easy for the average engineer or manager to be tempted into the place of an employee in a start-up team — you can participate in this exciting venture without being involved in really hard work.
As the founder of a startup, it will be extremely difficult for you to search for the main team. When Jim Clark decided to start a company in 1994, I was one of a dozen people from various Silicon Valley companies with whom he spoke about joining a startup that later turned into Netscape. And only I decided to say “yes” to him (mainly because I was 22 years old and there was no reason not to do this). The rest changed their mind and did not. And it was Jim Clark, an industry legend who came from the 1994 Valley's most successful company, Silicon Graphics Inc.
How easy will it be for you to think?
Then, even after you sift through a bunch of people and hire someone, it will be successful in 50% of cases, and if you are a big specialist in employment. I mean that more than half of people will not take root in a startup - they will be too lazy, slow, hard to lift, or just psychotic. And then you have to either live with them, or dismiss. What do you like more?
Fifth, and God help you, at some point you will have to hire managers. You thought it was difficult and risky to hire subordinates - wait until you had to hire a director of development, a director of marketing, sales, HR, etc.
Sixth, working time.
In the Valley, there was a lot of talk about how to relate working and free time, how to start a startup and at the same time be able to live a normal life. Personally, I sympathize with this view. And I try very hard in my companies (at least in the last two) to do everything possible so that the work does not crush people. But it is very difficult. The bottom line is that startups are a very expensive thing and require a lot from people even in the most favorable circumstances.
Just because you want to give people a good balance of work and personal time, it is very difficult to do when you run out of money, the product has not yet come out, you quarreled with the co-founder, and your competitor from Menlo Park, a company with an average age of 19 years old, comes on your heels. And so it will go almost all the time. Even if you can give this balance to your subordinates, you will not arrange it for yourself. If you are interested, yes, long working hours increase stress.
Seventh, it is very easy for a startup culture to go the wrong way. Because of the combination of the first and second reasons. The emotional buildup affects not only you, but the whole company. It takes time to set up a working culture. So that all people from the team understand what they are doing, what is the value of each, how they meet challenges and hardships. At best, you will have constant activity created by people who gather, support each other, and together try to bring the dream closer. In the worst case, you will get pessimism, bitterness, frustrating dreams, cynicism, bad morale and depression. And you, as the founder, will not be so easy to influence all this as you think. Guess which of the two directions usually goes.
Eighth, there are so many unforeseen circumstances that can meet you on your way and give you on the head - and you can’t do anything with them.
Market collapses. Terrorist attacks. The vagaries of nature.
A start-up with better funding, a more experienced team that worked more than you, and unnoticed - suddenly a product that instantly captures your market and deprives you of opportunities - and you didn’t even know it.
At best, any unforeseen factor can cut off your financing, force customers to delay payment or refuse payment - and at worst, close your company.
The Russian mafia (sic!) Can start laundering money with the help of your service , as a result of which companies processing payments by bank cards can close your accounts.
And the most interesting. I have not even stuttered yet about what you need to think up, what you will have for the product, make it, bring it to the market, and stand out from the crowd.
You still have to meet all the risks in the main activity of your company, and this will be discussed in the next article.
Part 2
Links are specifically given to old versions of sites, current articles stored in the Internet archive.
In this series of posts I will share with you my knowledge and experience in creating high-tech startups.
My experience in this field is compiled when working in three companies in which I was a co-founder: Netscape, sold to America Online in 1998 for $ 4.2 billion; Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), a software company with a capitalization of about $ 1 billion; Ning , an online company that provides a social networking platform.
')
In general, I was lucky from the moment I arrived in Silicon Valley in 1994 to participate in the work of about 40-50 startups, and the participation was deep enough for me to know what I was talking about. I was a member of the board of directors, a business angel, an adviser, a friend of many founders, and a venture capitalist.
So I will not only talk about those things that relate to my companies - most likely these will be stories from the lives of various startups, in whose fate I was directly involved.
My experience is based on working in Silicon Valley, on its culture, people, venture capitalists, etc. Something is useful in other parts of the world, something is not useful. Caveat emptor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caveat_emptor)
After such an explanation, let's start over: why not start up a startup .
Startups, even after the collapse of 2000, were always fanned by mystery - everyone read how cool it was, how fun, investment in the future, free lunches, table football and other buns.
Of course, there are a lot of great things in startups . In my experience:
The ability to control your destiny. You yourself won or lost. Nobody tells you what to do. For people with a certain nature of the warehouse is already enough.
The ability to do something new is the very “clean sheet”. You have the opportunity, and in fact even the duty, to imagine a product that is not yet there, and create it, without any restrictions, usually inherent in large companies.
The opportunity to change the world - to give people a new way to communicate, a way to share information, work together, or something else that you come up with - to make the world a better place. Do you think it will be easier for people with small incomes to lend? Launch Prosper . Do you think that there should be an unlimited number of channels on television? Run Joost . Think computers should work on Unix and use open standards? Run the sun.
The ability to create the perfect culture and work in a dream team that you can assemble yourself. Want your culture to be based on people who have fun every day and who like to work together? Or a team of tough competitors who compete in work and games? Or a team creating new technologies? Choose you, and build the right culture for you too.
Well, money. A properly created startup can be very profitable. It's not just greed - when everything works well, your team and subordinates will be provided, they will be able to support their families, send their children to college, realize their dreams - and this is really cool. If you are very lucky, you can do charity work and support for other projects.
However, there are many more reasons not to start a startup .
First, understand that a startup will require such emotional turmoil and stress from you that you have not yet experienced.
You will constantly move from the euphoric consciousness that the world belongs to you, to the depressive confidence that everything is gone, and back again. And so in a circle. And this is only with those who are emotionally strong and stable.
So much uncertainty and risk in everything you do. Will the product be on time? Is it fast enough? Are there too many bugs? Will it be easy to use? Will anyone use it? Will competitors be ahead of you? Will there be reviews in the press? Will there be investors? Will this budding engineer join you? Will the main interface designer leave Google for you? And so on and so forth.
Sometimes everything will go well, sometimes - very bad. And the stress that will crush you will increase these emotional surges and drops to unprecedented magnitudes.
Have fun?
Secondly, in a startup, nothing happens by itself. The founders and employees of a startup immediately face this.
In a working company, no matter how poor and demoralized, everything goes on as usual. People come to work, code is written, interfaces are designed, servers are supported, markets are being analyzed, prices are being studied, sales are being made, trash cans are being taken out, etc.
The startup has no established procedures, rhythm, infrastructure.
In a startup, it can easily happen that the code will not be written, the interface is not developed ...
People may not come to work, and baskets may remain full.
You, as the founder, are required to create and configure all of these systems and procedures, and make everyone row. While not even in the right direction, just paddle harder to sail.
While you have not done this, nothing will happen. Unless, of course, you will not do everything yourself. Have fun taking out the trash.
Third, you are often denied. Really often. If you are not engaged in sales, you are most likely not prepared for failures. This is not very fun.
See Death of the Seller and Glengarry Glen Ross . That's about the way it is.
You will be denied by potential employees, potential investors, potential clients, potential partners, journalists, analysts ... Time after time, time after time. And when you do not refuse, in half the cases in a couple of days you will call back and still refuse. Begin to train not really smile.
Fourthly, hiring employees is a terrible headache.
You will be surprised how many people want to "just see."
Many people want to work in a startup, but when it comes time to leave their homeland somewhere in HP or Apple, they change their minds. It is easy for the average engineer or manager to be tempted into the place of an employee in a start-up team — you can participate in this exciting venture without being involved in really hard work.
As the founder of a startup, it will be extremely difficult for you to search for the main team. When Jim Clark decided to start a company in 1994, I was one of a dozen people from various Silicon Valley companies with whom he spoke about joining a startup that later turned into Netscape. And only I decided to say “yes” to him (mainly because I was 22 years old and there was no reason not to do this). The rest changed their mind and did not. And it was Jim Clark, an industry legend who came from the 1994 Valley's most successful company, Silicon Graphics Inc.
How easy will it be for you to think?
Then, even after you sift through a bunch of people and hire someone, it will be successful in 50% of cases, and if you are a big specialist in employment. I mean that more than half of people will not take root in a startup - they will be too lazy, slow, hard to lift, or just psychotic. And then you have to either live with them, or dismiss. What do you like more?
Fifth, and God help you, at some point you will have to hire managers. You thought it was difficult and risky to hire subordinates - wait until you had to hire a director of development, a director of marketing, sales, HR, etc.
Sixth, working time.
In the Valley, there was a lot of talk about how to relate working and free time, how to start a startup and at the same time be able to live a normal life. Personally, I sympathize with this view. And I try very hard in my companies (at least in the last two) to do everything possible so that the work does not crush people. But it is very difficult. The bottom line is that startups are a very expensive thing and require a lot from people even in the most favorable circumstances.
Just because you want to give people a good balance of work and personal time, it is very difficult to do when you run out of money, the product has not yet come out, you quarreled with the co-founder, and your competitor from Menlo Park, a company with an average age of 19 years old, comes on your heels. And so it will go almost all the time. Even if you can give this balance to your subordinates, you will not arrange it for yourself. If you are interested, yes, long working hours increase stress.
Seventh, it is very easy for a startup culture to go the wrong way. Because of the combination of the first and second reasons. The emotional buildup affects not only you, but the whole company. It takes time to set up a working culture. So that all people from the team understand what they are doing, what is the value of each, how they meet challenges and hardships. At best, you will have constant activity created by people who gather, support each other, and together try to bring the dream closer. In the worst case, you will get pessimism, bitterness, frustrating dreams, cynicism, bad morale and depression. And you, as the founder, will not be so easy to influence all this as you think. Guess which of the two directions usually goes.
Eighth, there are so many unforeseen circumstances that can meet you on your way and give you on the head - and you can’t do anything with them.
Market collapses. Terrorist attacks. The vagaries of nature.
A start-up with better funding, a more experienced team that worked more than you, and unnoticed - suddenly a product that instantly captures your market and deprives you of opportunities - and you didn’t even know it.
At best, any unforeseen factor can cut off your financing, force customers to delay payment or refuse payment - and at worst, close your company.
The Russian mafia (sic!) Can start laundering money with the help of your service , as a result of which companies processing payments by bank cards can close your accounts.
And the most interesting. I have not even stuttered yet about what you need to think up, what you will have for the product, make it, bring it to the market, and stand out from the crowd.
You still have to meet all the risks in the main activity of your company, and this will be discussed in the next article.
Part 2
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/237507/
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