Comment by ktamura | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ktamura | Hacker News Reader

This is everything that's wrong about Silicon Valley: we perpetuate the false virtue of overnight success, a flash of brilliance and youthful vision when, in reality, it comes down to years of slogging along, many nights of crying dry tears and adapting to the changing environment continuously.

It's sad because every operator I know knows this yet succumbs to the myth-making "hack" because that's how you tell a "good story" that attracts much needed attention among media and the investment community. Traction, hockey stick curve, growth and all that jazz.

And to be fair, it's not entirely VCs's fault either. They have to deliver on their investment promises within a certain timeline. What's really terrible is that there's not enough discussion about this in the VC-backed entrepreneurship community to accept that this is the "game" that everyone has to play.

I wish the game was talked about more. It became painfully clear to me during my first round of pitches to traditional VCs. We ended up going with a strategic investor whose goals were actually aligned with ours.

I disagree. Overnight success means good market traction, which eliminates one of the biggest questions in a startups lifetime.

"Overnight success" is virtually always a bullshit lie.

And in the very few cases where it's not, it's worthless as an example and incredibly dangerous to chase.

Put your head down, do the work, and enjoy the "overnight success" stories in a decade, if ever.

Overnight success is a misnomer because it's impossible to demonstrate true success overnight (or in a few years) as it relates to a business. Just the headline of this article should make a good argument to be wary of startups that appear to be doing too much in too little time.

If you invest a startup that claims to have been founded only 2 years ago and says to have already acquired so and so number of users, you might assume a certain velocity of growth for that company. If it turns out that the founders had unofficially invested 5 years of labor rather than 2, you just lost 60% value in your investment assuming the company valuation was somewhat proportional to their "traction."

The biggest question in a startups lifetime is "will they be profitable?" not "have they spent enough on Google AdWords to make it look like usership is going up?"

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