Start-ups often fail by running out of money. However I wonder whether having too much money can also have a detrimental effect.
I see a lot of early stage start-ups raising increasingly large amounts of money on often mind-boggling valuations. This massively changes their behaviour and attitude to experimentation and risk.
Interestingly I think increasingly large amounts of money can help a company that probably would have failed get over an initial hump, because they essentially hire themselves out of problems (rather than iterate and learn). Which I guess is the point.
Of course I also wonder whether I'm re-enacting that scene from Monty Python where a bunch of old people reminisce about how tough they had it and how character building it was.
I think bootstrapped startups build a product which, if successful, allows them to build a company.
Well funded start-ups often focus on building a company, which allows them to build a successful product.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
It's amazing how much of management (and by extension, coaching) is asking people whether the thing they've just shared with you, they've also shared with the person they're talking about. Ideally in the same calm, even mannered and non-judgemental fashion.
What they've shared is almost always some perfectly rational concern, pitched in a way that makes them sound reasonable. Largely because people want to be seen as reasonable by their bosses (and coaches).
If they shared this concern in the same reasonable, rational and caring way with the person they're referencing, things would almost certainly work out fine. However they've almost certainly not tried this.
I think there are fundamentally three approaches to processional career development.
1. Hunter Gatherer 2. Single Crop Farmer 3. Multi-crop Farmer
Most people are nomadic hunter gathers. They're essentially opportunists. One job leads to the next job, which leads to the next job, following the opportunities presented to them. There's some directionality, but it's about the journey rather than the destination.
Some people can be super lucky following this approach and end up somewhere truly special, that they never could have imagined on their own. Others end up feeling a little lost and aimless, not happy with where the currents have taken them.
I see this so much in my conversations with founders. The belief that shipping that next major feature on your roadmap will somehow magically open the floodgates to a tidal wave of new customers.
This often happens because potential customers have told the founders that the reason they're not buying is because the product lacks said feature. However it's often just a polite (and less awkward) way of saying they're not interested in the product.
So rather than hurt the founders feelings they'll make up some excuse why they're not ready to buy. That excuse is usually some non-essential feature that seems like a helpful idea at the time.
There are a few newspapers I’d like to subscribe to but am always surprised by the cost. Partly because I’ve been trained by Spotify and Netflix that ~£10 pm for something I use a lot represents good value for money.
By contrast most newspaper subscriptions are over £30 pm. This seem to be based on the assumption that those taking out a digital subscription buy the physical paper every day, rather than somebody like me who buys one a couple of times a week.
I’d be happy paying £10 pm for a couple of newspaper subs, or £5 a month for a subscription that gave you access to 20 articles, but paying 3-5 times the cost of a Netflix or Spotify sub always feels slightly steep to me considering usage.
At the turn of the 20th century, the UK government decided that they couldn’t see a path forward for fixed wing aircraft and invested their attention into lighter than air vehicles instead.
In this super interesting article, @benedictevans talks about how a lot of early innovations are dismissed as experiments or toys. Something competitors do with much regularity, clouded by their “superior” understanding of the market.
The canonical version of this is Kodak, who helped pioneer the digital camera, but failed to see a world where digital would overtake analog.