When I read an analysis paper, I find it more convincing if the dependant variable is continuous rather than binary. It's too easy to find spurious statistical "significance" otherwise. The heuristic holds up here as well.
There are actually plenty of references in there to publicly available numbers such as revenues, profit etc. and links to plenty of original data points, but for ease of reading I've mostly added them as links rather than lots of data.
That being said, I take your point there isn't data available to back everything up (as you'll know, companies are pretty selective about releasing some data points), and so I've leant more on press sentiment in those cases.
My favourite history book that I've recently read:
Simon Sebag Montefiore's Jerusalem: The Biography - amazing work of scope, depth and human understanding.
I also studied philosophy as a degree and agree there are no really great introductions. I finished my degree somewhat disengaged with the subject and haven't pursued it seriously since. My favourite book though was John Rawls' A Theory of Justice.
Hey - great idea: simple, original, useful - I like it a lot. FYI though, I tried signing up through twitter and keep getting a failed timed out message back. Might be a twitter issue but worth looking into. Hope it takes off for you.
As usual, an excellent and well articulated essay from pg.
Just a couple of thoughts on the paragraph about finding non-organic ideas.
If you're a developer and in need of an idea, I couldn't recommend highly enough to attend industry conferences (in any industry). Over the day or two you are there, you will hear speakers tell you the problems they face, hear which are the repeat questions asked from the audience, and have a chance to talk with delegates about their biggest problems and why they are attending (what are they trying to find out). I rarely leave a conference without several obvious pain points facing the industry jotted down. If one of them inspires you, sounds interesting, feels familiar etc. then that could be your start-up idea. Most of these could be 'eaten by software' I'm sure, so they would be ripe for a developer to tackle. You could even find your domain-specific co-founder there too - 2 birds, 1 stone!
Another place to look (and possibly cheaper and involving no travel) would be sites like twitter, quora, linkedin etc. where large numbers of users can ask each other questions or complain about some pain they have. You could look for trends and see if that sparks any interest.
Thanks, I've been looking a good, economical, way of creating an intro video, this looks like a really solid option.
Can I ask, do you think it has advantages over, say, recording your screen while you record yourself taking someone through a demo? Then maybe replacing your voice with a voicebunny voiceover?
I imagine cartoon v screen demo is dependent on your audience and objectives, but intrigued as to why you went this route. Cheers!
When we first launched we had a screen recording with a voice over.
Our problem with that is that, as a startup, our UI was changing every couple of months. The premise/goal doesn't change for the user... but we keep making it better. So that video got old too quick. And editing screen recordings every couple of months got tiring.
We are also looking to do some how-to videos with voice-bunny instead of our voices though. It ends up sounding much better.
Hi -
I would advise that you be genuine, show enthusiasm when listening to their story and be enthusiastic when telling yours.
Look for ways you can add value or help them.
Don't be afraid to ask them for specific help - though be mindful this is your first meeting, so anything you ask should be relative to the small amount of trust and respect you can build in one meeting.
Make sure you follow up, relationships aren't built in a single meeting.
Finally, try to relax and don't put too much pressure on it. A meeting like this should not be a binary one, where you could 'win' or 'lose' something, it is an exploration to see if you have common interests and may like working together in the future, either as co-founders or simply friends and acquaintances.
If it's not to be, don't worry or compromise yourself to try and be liked, as this won't help you in the long-term and the business relationship won't last anyway. Better to find out quickly and move onto the next meeting, where you might genuinely click with that person and have a great business relationship.
Hope that helps at all!
When your listening to them, take on board what interests them or where they are facing challenges, then:
- Send them links to articles they may find useful/interesting
- Just drop them a friendly/polite note in a week or two's time, giving them a super quick update on what you've been up to and seeing how they're getting along (try to reference something specific they previously mentioned e.g. how did that important meeting with investor A go?
- If you're starting to move in the same circles, you may bump into them at events, or you can specifically tell them you're going to one if you think it would be of interest
- Hopefully they'll also be in the social media circle too, so they will see content you produce on LinkedIn, Twitter, FB, HN, Quora, your blog etc.
- Finally, ask them if they want another meeting 4-6 weeks later...you'll have to gauge this on your first meeting. If you got on like a house on fire, then you can casually invite them for a drink and not worry too much about; if it was a little more formal, but you still think the relationship could be worthwhile for you both, be sure you have some interesting progress to talk about and have thought about value you can bring to them in the f/u meeting.
Networking and meetings a very much art over science I find, and you have to use a lot of personal judgement (and you won't always get it right) but if you can be yourself, add value and like the other person then these 3 ingredients should be just right for development some meaningful and lasting relationships.
Good luck with your meetings, let me know how they go!
I am starting a company and was in the same situation as all non-technical founders: hire an agency, give away half the company to a tech co-founder, or learn how to build it myself.
I went with the third option. Not only is it extremely gratifying to build it with your own hands, but it means I can make quick decisions and changes on the fly, the only cost is my time, and the vision and execution are 100% aligned!
Wow, I really admire your determination to learn how to build it yourself. I can only imagine the amount of time you're devoting to it. You're in an interesting position because as a solo founder you're responsible for so many aspects of the business.
How do you balance working on the product versus acquiring customers vs operations?
Otherwise it's just a case of being efficient with time and prioritising tasks, because everything works in lock-step i.e. have idea, get feedback, refine; create mockups, get feedback, refine; build mvp, get feedback, refine etc. so I take each step at a time.
Having said that, I will be looking for a more accomplished developer to join me as a co-founder imminently because the range of tasks and the timeframe do make it impossible to do everything myself.
Best of luck with Kera by the way, it looks like a great idea.
Hey, thanks for the kind words - I appreciate it. I think you're going to have a 10x better chance of finding a great technical cofounder because you took the time to prove the concept and build your technical skills. Not only will you have something in production (not just an idea or a lean canvas) but you'll have so much empathy for your cofounder. You'll appreciate what they go through in a way non technical cofounders can't do (or take a long time to learn).
My startup is Xavy (xavy.com), it's a video discovery & distribution platform for connecting professionals and conference organisers.
Idea is to provide free/very cheap access to world-class conference content (of which millions of hours exist!) and help generate leads for upcoming events through utilising that content - all in one place, organiser-neutral, searchable/filterable by type of content.
(I have a conferences background, so I know the space).
Sign up on the landing page and I'll ping you once the MVP is up and running, which I'm aiming to be Monday morning.
Sounds cool - I'll check it out. I'm not a conference organizer so I don't know if I'm your target customer. We actually spun Kera out of Big Bang Technology. I guess it's time to update my HN profile!
So hence they ended up in the 'losers' column.
Of course that doesn't mean they had quite as terrible year as some in the list...but for ease of reference it's a binary list rather than a gradient.