The Golden Rule of Startup Success | Hacker News Reader

The Golden Rule of Startup Success

centernetworks.com

21 pointsjmorin0079 comments

To all of those who wrote about what it takes to build a successful startup, I challenge you: is there another golden rule of startup success that trumps my Golden Rule?

I don't think this is very clever. While "don't give up" is important, it could also be "don't forget to breathe", or something like that. It's not enough just to keep trying if you are not doing the right thing. I think there is not a Golden Rule, there are many smaller rules we all have to use to be successful (well, actually, as there are many different paths to success, there are many possible sets of rules-to-be-successful as well).

But even if I say this, I liked the article. I just didn't like the assumption that "don't give up" as a rule is an order of magnitude better as a rule to success than any other one.

Yeah, "Make something people want". If you don't also keep that in mind, you can end up spinning your wheels for decades on a problem nobody really cares about. Eg. Xanadu, Chandler.

On the other hand this guy never gives up either. It won't help you if you're a nut job working on nonsense. There is a point where you do have to listen to smart people and try to gain an accurate perspective of yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Newman_(inventor)

Never give up. But know when to change directions. You don't want to keep banging your head against a wall.

Bad ideas can be salvaged with good work ethic and execution. But make sure that you have the right idea before you start your march forward.

I think this point is overlooked by the article. There is a little too much of the "Little Engine that Could" which tends to encourage entrepreneurs to ignore disconfirming data from prospects. For me, the key point is to decide what failure looks like before you start (and unexpected success, which for an entrepreneur signals that a product deserves more investment, potentially even third party investment in addition to re-directed internal resources) so that you know when to quit. I blogged about this in more detail (and with some good but long quotes from Peter Drucker) here: http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2007/05/25/seth-godins-book-the...

I agree but trying to pin down what disconfirming data actually constitutes is very difficult. I like the idea though of deciding beforehand (probably when you are thinking most clearly) how you will define failure or success.

Prioritize

I'm not giving up!!! ;-)

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