Thread by @DonAndrewBailey

Alright, pals. It’s story time for Blockchain and IOTA fans.

Many years in a far away land (just kidding, a few years ago in a tech startup city) I was introduced to some entrepreneurs who were nice, fun people. Nothing wrong with them at all. This isn’t one of “those” stories about relationships gone sour. I actually dug them.

But it became pretty clear pretty fast that the direction they were going was going to crash and burn something fierce. Yet, they were still able to start raising funds from multiple source, grow their board, and gain a decent following.

Why?

Cult of personality is a fascinating thing, and so is time management for most modern citizens of the tech/startup world. There are a lot of smart people, but not everyone can “own” every domain. It’s impossible. So, we, as a society, tend to turn toward personalities we like.

That’s an important word: like. Not trust. Not respect. Not “vet”. Like. When we *like* someone, it is easier to trust their judgment, even if you know nothing about how they analyze opportunity, or if they are technical. If someone makes you *feel* included, you wanna trust them

And so this startup was able to grow quickly even though their technical skills were nil, making exceptionally grand gestures about what they would build and what kind of tech they would integrate with. Example? They were going to use supercomputers to help optimize travel paths.

One might stop and say “but wait... why would someone need a supercomputer for that?”.

They don’t. That’s the point.

But when this team queried their friends and advisors, the technical details were ignored because the *story* has too much benefit.

“We’re going to use next-gen supercomputing power to help solve traveling by optimizing blah blah”

To someone that *likes* an entrepreneur, and is *not technical*, it seems like an exciting, high-potential opportunity, yes?

Of course it does! Supercomputers!!!

But while the team was using these lofty goals (there were others, but I don’t need to pin into specifics here) to entice investors, they failed to realize they grew something called: technical debt.

Not technical debt as in “look at all these servers we have to manage”.

But technical debt as in

“Shiz... we have investors now... who bought into the idea that we were going to next-gen map... What do we do?”

What DO you do?

Well... you can be honest and tell your investors your MVP methods have shifted to something more realistic.

Or... you can do the unethical thing and bullshit.

I won’t comment on what this particular team did, but here’s the lesson.

They were so busy focusing on how to target those lofty goals that they *sold* to their investors, they forgot to actually *build* their tech.

So what happened?

They ended up hiring a third party engineering firm to generate their hardware last minute in order to just ship *something* out the door. The result of this?

Intellectual property infringement.

Point being, startups are founded on the principal that Moonshots *can* be real.

But startups that want to actually *go to the moon* start simply, then iterate.

They don’t perpetuate these lofty goals except in their long-term vision that they show iterative milestones for.

Want to actually go to the moon? Great!

Well, is rocket fuel too expensive for you at this time? Yes?

Ok, well then maybe you start out by demonstrating another part of space travel, then raise money for rocket fuel.

*You don’t go and design a new type of rocket fuel*

My most important takeaway from living the startup/consulting life for the past 6 years, and working on custom IoT embedded systems for over 9:

Realism, honesty, and ethics are paramount.

If someone sells you on a long dream and they don’t iterate toward it? Get off the rocket

The end. <3