What really bothers me about this type of thinking is the assumption that every team is equally talented & motivated. I might go as far as saying the talent/intelligence landscape is somewhat homogenous but having been around early stage startups for years now there is definitely a power law distribution of motivation & organization. It's a lot easier to say you will do anything to succeed and act the part and struggle and listen to your investors like they're bosses and let your startup die out while going through the motions than it is to be relentlessly resourceful. It also benefits to be self critical and unattached to an ideal of a product in a way to allow your product to be what your users respond to rather than some stubborn vision.
All this to say, there are definitely a ton of bad startups out there, people who see an easy fundraising landscape, take advantage of connections or even make them. Or people that get to a certain point and don't really want to face reality. Instead of floating all the platitudes we float about there being lots of talented teams, it would be nice to see some honesty. That a lot of startups have a founder or two that isn't that dedicated but is there because he/she isn't sure what else to be doing. That a lot of startups are a vanity project of one of the founders and the founder doesn't have the modesty to actually sell to users/potential employees. That at a lot of startups there is friction between the founders that puts the product in danger because they have equal-ish power but between them lack a coherent vision for the future.
And a lot of these companies with bad foundations have brilliant founders. Just because companies are founded by smart people doesn't mean they have a strong foundation. That is something we should be honest about. This isn't to say that it doesn't take luck, but there is a lot that helps to get right that a lot of startups aren't getting right off the bat.
Just to add to your first point: it's hard for people to recognize that there can be a huge difference in ability between the best and the 20th best team. They can both be great, but the 20th best team is much less great than the best one.
This goes against most of our intuition (at least, mine), because there's essentially no difference between the 10,000th and 10,020th most talented teams. But it becomes obvious when teams are put in repeated direct competition with each other. e.g.: how many people expect the US (ranked, I think, 13th in the world) to beat Germany (ranked 2nd) in the world cup?
It's a lot easier to say you will do anything to
succeed, and act the part and struggle, and listen
to your investors like they're bosses, and let your
startup die out, while going through the motions,
than it is to be relentlessly resourceful.
Well said. The rest reads like the ten (well, maybe four) commandments of Please Fuck Off And Die with your bullshit-as-a-service, viral social mobile app.
- platitudes about there being lots of talented teams
- a founder or two, not that dedicated but there because
he/she isn't sure what else to be doing
- startup vanity projects
- lack of modesty to actually sell
To that last one, I'd also append "a peacock's hubris that their shit is so hot it doesn't need a pathetic and grovelling or disingenuous sales pitch."
That's a double edged sword, though. Everyone knows that a shitty deal is always preceeded by a hard sell, or cold call, even though not all hard-sell sales pitches/cold calls necessarily package dog shit.
This is the MBA shit list though. There's also a version for developers which invloves being an aloof, detached, aimless, defensive coder constructing an opaque fortress of code out of a want for job security, or over-engineering out of a cryptic brand of obstinate vanity or morbid curiosity.
And then there's the ivory tower developer that sows the seeds of confusion into every meeting, phone call and conversation because more often than not, the developer possesses a keen awareness of the total technical ineptitude of the stakeholders, who may in fact suffer actual intellectual disabilities, or might just be completely out of their depth in a field far more complicated than they bargained for.
Coming up against evil developers is like fighting a lich king commanding a pack of tarrasques. You will be bled dry by them, and transmogrified into a ghoul.
Consider it a situation not unlike being brought to a police station for questioning without a lawyer. Retain an expert, who is assuredly on your side and knows the law. Even if you are a lawyer, don't default to the idea of representing yourself (especially considering security concerns and crypto). A second pair of eyes, formal QA and testing, and sometimes an entire community is required to professionalize the fruits of many technical disciplines.
A slight spin on that assumption that I've seen in some lean startup materials is to assume that "software delivery is constant and guaranteed" - which is used to help move the identification of risk away from technology and towards the business viability.
In that case, I think it is somewhat useful, but speaking as a software developer - it is very rarely the case that a software project goes as smoothly and reliably as a fancy pitch deck makes it out to be. It is easy to say things like "small iterations", "continuous delivery", "move fast", etc but much harder to, you know, do them. Any old team thrown together off the street is not going to have that skillset to achieve that.
I don't think it entirely discounts the ideas or concepts, but I certainly gives me pause.
All this to say, there are definitely a ton of bad startups out there, people who see an easy fundraising landscape, take advantage of connections or even make them. Or people that get to a certain point and don't really want to face reality. Instead of floating all the platitudes we float about there being lots of talented teams, it would be nice to see some honesty. That a lot of startups have a founder or two that isn't that dedicated but is there because he/she isn't sure what else to be doing. That a lot of startups are a vanity project of one of the founders and the founder doesn't have the modesty to actually sell to users/potential employees. That at a lot of startups there is friction between the founders that puts the product in danger because they have equal-ish power but between them lack a coherent vision for the future.
And a lot of these companies with bad foundations have brilliant founders. Just because companies are founded by smart people doesn't mean they have a strong foundation. That is something we should be honest about. This isn't to say that it doesn't take luck, but there is a lot that helps to get right that a lot of startups aren't getting right off the bat.