46
techdoc
7y

Story of every failing tech startup (from personal experience, but a bit exaggerated):

Step 1: Come up with AMAZING idea that blows your mind!

Step 2: Run to investors to do presentation, continue to constantly repeat CLOUD, CLOUD, AI, CLOUD, MACHINE-LEARNING, MUCH WOW, MORE AI until investors are confused but mesmerized as fuck and decide to give you a shit ton of money.

Step 3: Hire all the developers you can find, a JAVA dev, a Python dev, a PHP dev, a Ruby dev, and ask them to get along with each other! I mean hey, they're adults right, they'll figure it out.

Step 4: Ask devs to launch the app, meanwhile, throw a LAUCH PARTY! HELLS YEA WE'RE ABOUT TO BE RICH BITCHES!

Step 5: Find out the hard way that no one needs a product that was launched! :/

Step 6: Pivot, and pivot next month again, and pivot again, and pivot in a middle of a pivot, and pivot pivot pivot pivot... and OH FUCK WE RAN OUT OF MONEY!

Comments
  • 2
    I think that's why there are businessplans and business cases to show how the business is running and how the profitability will be. So there would be no unknown risks beforehand.
  • 7
    @Minion biz plans don't apply to startups. For example, the biz plan for Uber, Tesla, AirBnB would have been, "this is illegal therefore it will fail", but they ended up working around the law to become billion dollar companies. By definition startup = something that has not been done before, and biz plans need accurate historical data to predict the future, therefore the two don't go along very well. Another example: if ur in the AI biz, u can be the next billionaire, or fail to develop a great product even after $100MM in investments, no one knows cause it's never been done before, and startups take advantage of this like crazy.
  • 1
    @techdoc ohh thanks for the explanation, I don't know that much about these things
  • 1
    Incidentally your rant is also the plot of Silicon Valley...
  • 0
    if it was so easy we'd have million Apple, Google, Microsoft ..etc. but there aren't people need to wake up :)
  • 2
    What does pivot mean in this context?
  • 3
    @taylan changing focus.
    In this context it means switching from one product/service to another product/service.

    Silicon valley is a good example, they kept changing their product.
    First it was a music app but that failed so they focused on the compression algorithm. The switch in focus is what they call a pivot.
  • 1
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