A Quote by Brad Stone
Life inside successful Web startups - especially the really successful ones - can be nasty, brutish, and short. As companies grow exponentially, egos clash, investors jockey for control, and business complexities rapidly exceed the managerial abilities of the founders.
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For most people, life is nasty, brutish, and short; for me, it has simply been nasty and brutish.
It turns out that one of the biggest drivers of investors are both successful and non-successful startup founders.
Life is nasty, brutish, and short
There is a natural tendency for investors to devote a significant majority of their time to finding new ideas. After all, uncovering great companies selling at great prices is the lifeblood of successful investing. But in the never-ending quest for the next great idea, investors often give short shrift to their existing investments.
Life is nasty, brutish, and short. Death is easy.
Startups are companies that are still in the process of searching for a business model. Ventures that are further along and executing their business models are no longer startups; they are early-stage companies.
Investors do not like losing money. They do not like companies that fail. They do not like entrepreneurs that fail. There is not a culture of celebrating failure in Silicon Valley or anyplace else. That is a myth. Recognize this, and if you start another business, get it to a successful point before approaching outside investors again.
The life of a journalist is poor, nasty, brutish, and short. So is his style
Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
The Curbside founders are successful entrepreneurs, who each have sold their companies to Apple.
When companies are private, founders can share more about their future dreams with investors; report less; and the shares are illiquid, constraining short-term changes in valuation.
When courtesy fails, be nasty, brutish, and short.
Companies that acquire startups for their intellectual property, teams, or product lines are acquiring startups that are searching for a business model. If they acquire later stage companies who already have users/customers and/or a predictable revenue stream, they are acquiring companies that are executing.
Before I started Code for America, I spent my career around startups. First it was game developers, small teams trying to make hits in a tough business. Then, when I started working on the Web 2.0 events, it was web startups during times of enormous opportunity and investment.
Eighty percent of the cases used in the typical MBA program are about successful companies. Students graduate with this notion that 'If I do everything that the people in those cases did, then my organization will grow and be successful, too.'
Founders need sizable egos to believe that what they are creating is good enough to change the world. What makes for great co-founders is having those egos focused on complementary, not competing, skills.
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