I think this kind of advice is more useful when it comes from someone whose business model has nothing to do with startup lifecoaching. Otherwise it has a tendency to get a little self-serving and divorced from useful experience.
Honestly, these tips are not very good. One advises you to work on the startup in your spare time. Something tells me that is not the secret to success.
> One reason I like startups is that they represent a middle way: you can get some equity or ownership in a business that might turn out very well, but you also get a salary.
Yeah just search HN for the horror stories. Enough said.
Work out if the EV is better working for big corp and using your extra salary to buy shares. But...
> Can you guess what happened next? The dot com crash happened, and shares of Cisco plummeted to $12/share.
I am really puzzled about your perspective on job-hunting decisions, such that you see this, and nothing else, as the relevant context which would allow any of us here to give you useful advice.
It's not a blanket generalization, I think that's the misunderstanding here. I should clarify that my advice is targeted at early stage startup founders. I don't think it applies to small businesses or lifestyle businesses. I don't think it applies in your case because you weren't working on an early stage startup.
I've always had more of an interest in patterns at startups, particularly early stage. I wrote a book on this because of my interest, and the founders echoed the same sentiment with the pattern of competitors wanting to acqui-hire by talking early on. More info on my profile if you're interested.
With respect, I completely disagree with you. I'm sure a lot of this advice is valid and useful for founders, maybe even the majority of it, but I see a lot that strikes me as false.
I'm not a founder of a startup, but I don't think a lot of these are good advice because Slava comes across as so condescending when he states them. That's not to say I'm attacking his tone instead of the advice, but I don't think the advice is valid because it comes from a place of dogmatic declaration (I understand he has a lot of experience, but I don't think some of these subjects can have absolute statements said about them).
Take this one, which other commenters have mentioned already:
>"If it doesn’t augment the human condition for a huge number of people in a meaningful way, it’s not worth doing."
I'm going to say this is not only blatantly false, but just bad advice and nothing but discouragement.
'cperciva's startup, Tarsnap, is not something I'd say "augments the human condition for a huge number of people in a meaningful way" - it's Colin's full-time job, and I personally think it's fantastic, creative, and genuinely useful to his client-base.
But apparently, it's not worth doing because it doesn't "augment the human condition." (I don't mean to involve you, Colin, it's just a relatively well-known example on HN).
Let's see...'patio11. His most recent startup, Appointment Reminder, might fall into the category of augmenting the human condition. Does Bingo Card Creator? Maybe I'm reaching here...but no, probably not. Was it not worth doing? Absolutely not. (Again, same to you Patrick).
Then we have this tidbit:
>"Pick new ideas because they’ve been made possible by other social or technological change. Get on the train as early as possible, but make sure the technology is there to make the product be enough better that it matters."
This encourages the stream of, for example, crappy camera apps that currently saturate the app store. A lot of developers got on the train, but giving this kind of advice will probably (as history suggests) make founders believe they have the technology to genuinely make a difference in a highly saturated market.
On the other end of the extreme:
>"Don’t build something that already exists. Customers won’t buy it just because it’s yours."
If you do get on that train early, and you can genuinely innovate, or just plain reverse-engineer at a lower manufacturing cost, by all means do it. That's a good starting recipe for profit.
>"Pick implementations that give 80% of the benefit with 20% of the work."
The 80/20 ratio has cropped up everywhere and grown in popularity for a while now, but I think it's too vague. In particular, I believe this advice would encourage the wrong kind of behavior. It could be interpreted as being efficient, or it could be interpreted as foregoing the more rewarding, effort-filled path with the one that's only marginally useful but exponentially easier. Risky absolutes for advice.
Finally:
>"If you can’t get to ramen profitability with a team of 2 – 4 within six months to a year, something’s wrong. (You can choose not to be profitable, but it must be your choice, not something forced on you by the market)."
Maybe Slava successfully did this, but I don't think it's fair to hold all startups to this bar.
I also don't think things like being a "final say" CEO are fully compatible with evenly splitting stocks. This is a very highly debated part of startup financial management. So, yes, this is my opinion, but equally importantly, the opposite advice is also Slava's opinion.
Now, on the other hand, a lot of these statements are really good. I'm not flaming the entire post. In particular, I liked:
>"Product sense is everything. Learn it as quickly as you can. Being good at engineering has nothing to do with being good at product management."
Yes, very true, and something you have echoed before as well, pg. Running a company in any sense of the term is completely different from engineering a company's product.
>"Learn the difference between people who might buy your product and people who are just commenting. Pay obsessive attention to the former. Ignore the latter."
Often stated, definitely true, also applies to investor courting.
My personal favorite:
>"Morale is very real and self-perpetuating. If you work too long without victories, your investors, employees, family, and you yourself will lose faith. Work like hell not to get yourself into this position."
This is one of those murky, non-actionable truths of startups that you don't really get until you've tried it. Judging from the "I failed" Ask HN: posts, I think this might be one of the least expected but extremely true ones. I might even say that for personal well-being, this might be the most important piece of advice.
I'm sure I'll be downvoted for this, but I would ask people to at least explain why they disagree so we can have productive discussion. I respect the OP, I'm just expressing my disagreements here.
Do you really think "work for hire" is a great way to generate startup ideas? This is exactly what pg is pitching there.
The advice also goes strictly against what pg himself is advising in the same article: The place to start looking for ideas is things you need. There must be things you need. [14]
But let's look at the one example that pg gives in the article: Rajat Suri didn't offer to write any software restaurants might need - he learned what they needed, and then struck out on his own.
If anybody had suggested he should just work as free IT for restaurants, that would sound kind of ridiculous, no?
But please, try out his advice, see how it works for you.
It'd be nice if startup advice wasn't so absolute and instead presented "rules" or suggestions as being situational. "If you’re doing a startup, you should have less features than your competitors" may very well be good advice for certain startups (or Musicwalla in this case) but it should not be considered gospel for all startups.
The issue is not that you shared your experience but it is that you provided no real insight or value into how to get a job at a start up. This article is just platitudes referencing your anecdotal experience.
If you're going to post your personal blog, here are some examples of decent posts:
What do they have that your post doesn't? Depth. They bring a topic up and have insightful perspectives on that topic. If your goal is to write compelling or informative articles about getting a job at a start up then you could speak with founders/engineers about what they're looking for in a new hire, etc.
I'm sorry if you take it personally, I'm just giving you honest feedback.
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