from Hacker News

Startups Don't Die, They Commit Suicide

by ttol on 6/27/11, 8:03 AM with 24 comments

• by dools on 6/27/11, 10:02 AM

  "and every day we’ve continued to win the most important battle for any company: existence"

  That's just it. I had a client a few years back and I thought they were just, well, I mean it sounds harsh but I thought they were a joke.

  They were in a highly competitive industry and everything about their product sucked.

  I never really took them seriously. But then about 8 months after I'd been doing regular work for them they called me and said "There's a problem with the billing integration on signup". I was like "How did you know?" It was a problem that wasn't immediately apparent and there were no warnings in place on their system to detect this kind of problem. The guy said "well we usually get 5 or 6 signups a day and we didn't get any".

  This was astounding to me. I couldn't believe they got 5 - 6 people signing up every day.

  Now, 3 years on, they get about 40 signups a day. They have iteratively improved their service, and there's the really killer thing: the markets we're dealing with are HUGE here people. Huge.

  I had this little epiphany the other day, about my service 8centsms.com. Here is a service that makes between $500 and $2000 per month - but the bulk of that is from 1 or 2 bulk marketing clients. I want it to be a "personal" messaging solution though.

  The problem is, there are only 27 regular users. Pathetic. That's so small it makes me want to cry.

  But then I thought about it like this: what if I told you that I had a service that only had 27 regular users (who really love the service). Then I told you that I knew (somehow, theoretically) that those were the only 27 people on the planet who would ever use it or love it, and we'd already signed them up - wouldn't you think that was utterly impossible?

  In fact, the presence of 27 users just indicates that there must be more - many many many many more - who would signup and use our service if we marketed it properly. Isn't that amazing?

  Don't commit suicide, just exist. Engage with your users and get more signups. If even one person falls in love with your product, that proves that there must be thousands, even millions more out there that will do the same. Because the alternative (that you managed to find the 1 person out of 7 billion that love your product) is so unlikely as to be considered impossible.

• by revorad on 6/27/11, 8:48 AM

  That's a great writeup Justin, but it would lend you even more credibility if you mentioned the time you gave up - Kiko. The only reason I've seen cited in interviews is that Google jumped into the market and conquered it overnight. I don't believe that at all. I think if you stuck to your guns, you could kick Google calendar's ass and be successful despite the initial competitive setback, much like the great examples you give in your article.

  Did you get bored of working on Kiko or were you looking for a bigger, crazier idea?

• by mgkimsal on 6/27/11, 1:51 PM

  Let's see... the "fail fast" meme was pushed out by the "pivot" meme, and we're likely to start seeing more of the "persevere at all costs - see, I did it, so you should never ever ever give up ever!" meme soon.

  The only constant I see is "change the meme every so often".

• by Maro on 6/27/11, 10:27 AM

  Everything written here is true, but you have to be careful. Following advice like this, any startup, even ones ultimately doomed to failure can be continued indefinitely.

• by elrodeo on 6/27/11, 2:18 PM

  Reading tons of articles about succeeding in entrepreneurship I have learned one thing: it is a rat race in a labyrinth. A few will win; the rest will be consigned to oblivion. And you never know in which group you are until it's too late (or obvious).

• by jjb1 on 6/27/11, 2:44 PM

  my view on the article aside, the reason this type of advice is well received by entrepreneurs is because the blood/sweat/tears formula consists of elements we are all in control of (contrary to the outside investment/luck elements that you read about and say, "well hopefully that shit works out"). not a bad thing at all... primary focus should be on elements you can control, with the others being secondary