A thought provoking article on if you should do a startup or not by Paul Graham, a programming languages researcher and LISP guy, now running Y Combinator, an early stage venture firm.
Its important to first acknowledge that to be uncertain is human:
There's nothing wrong with being unsure. If you're a hacker thinking about starting a startup and hesitating before taking the leap, you're part of a grand tradition. Larry and Sergey seem to have felt the same before they started Google, and so did Jerry and Filo before they started Yahoo. In fact, I'd guess the most successful startups are the ones started by uncertain hackers rather than gung-ho business guys.Unless you are looking at an industry that is crying for new business models, I do agree with Paul that an early stage tech startup probably needs kick ass engineers rather than "gung-ho business guys."
Those of us trained to look for data, gather support and be deliberate before making a decision (could degenerate to analysis paralysis) may find it interesting that he offers some support for the blink theory:
Several of the most successful startups we've funded told us later that they only decided to apply at the last moment. Some decided only hours before the deadline.He then cites a whole bunch of reasons for people's reluctance to start something up. Some interesting ones that may provoke interesting discussions...
I get a fair amount of flak for telling founders just to make something great and not worry too much about making money. And yet all the empirical evidence points that way: pretty much 100% of startups that make something popular manage to make money from it. And acquirers tell me privately that revenue is not what they buy startups for, but their strategic value. Which means, because they made something people want. Acquirers know the rule holds for them too: if users love you, you can always make money from that somehow, and if they don't, the cleverest business model in the world won't save you.This is certainly true about YouTube and all those other Web2.0-ish companies like MySpace, Flickr etc that offer up a strategic value simply because of number of eyeballs. We all know venture investments are a high-risk "asset class" but Paul seems to rationalize that in a very odd way. I am not sure I buy the comparison between a startup (i.e something like Justin.TV) and a value stock:
The most valuable truths are the ones most people don't believe. They're like undervalued stocks. If you start with them, you'll have the whole field to yourself. So when you find an idea you know is good but most people disagree with, you should not merely ignore their objections, but push aggressively in that direction. In this case, that means you should seek out ideas that would be popular but seem hard to make money from.No idea? No problem!
In fact, we're so sure the founders are more important than the initial idea that we're going to try something new this funding cycle. We're going to let people apply with no idea at all. If you want, you can answer the question on the application form that asks what you're going to do with "We have no idea." If you seem really good we'll accept you anyway. We're confident we can sit down with you and cook up some promising project.Or follow some practical advice.
So here's the brief recipe for getting startup ideas. Find something that's missing in your own life, and supply that need—no matter how specific to you it seems. Steve Wozniak built himself a computer; who knew so many other people would want them? A need that's narrow but genuine is a better starting point than one that's broad but hypothetical.For those of us not in our 20s, I found he addresses three other relevant misgivings: need for structure, not ready for commitment and family to support.
