A really successful startup always increases its own market. E.g. the microcomputer market grew after VisiCalc was invented, which only happened because microcomputers existed.
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It's very dangerous for those in authority to require proof of the potential of an idea before allowing it to happen. The best ideas always embody this sort of self-growing cycle, but it tends to be impossible to predict, even by the people who have the idea.
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Two possible solutions for people who have to decide which projects to back: 1. Admit you're deciding based on hunches, and just try to be really good at that. 2. Make the cost of failure low. E.g. back a lot of small projects instead of one big one.
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Why not cultivate forecast accuracy as a skill? It seems strange to think that this is something fundamentally hard, rather than something that people are bad at because they have relatively little practice, and get fairly little feedback on the rare occasions they do predict.
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But there is a huge chasm of different ways to evaluate potential that lie between requiring an externally verifiable proof of potential and relying on hunches and/or diversifying - for example, isn't that part of what startup pitches can accomplish?
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The problem with that is that it’s almost exclusively the big projects that are really worth investing into in the long run, be it time, effort, or money.
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I think item 2 can be dangerous advice. Seen a lot of companies jump from idea to idea every few months. They fail fast and always. If they chose one of those ideas and persisted on it a little while long I feel like they’d have a better chance of succeeding
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@pmarca put it very well- fail fast in tactics, not in strategy: https://youtu.be/GfZ41h086N4
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In the ERP space, there are +300.000 consultants, mostly in big corp for whom going independent can only happen if they are right a software development. We eliminate that need, and the market will be huge. What do you think? Also, the age of hyper-personalized CRM is coming
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And also, as
@paulg has argued, invest largely on the basis of the people involved, even if their ideas seem overly ambitious. Which IIRC was why@ycombinator backed AirBnB: idea seems likely to fail but IF it was at all possible, sure seemed like this team would figure it out -
Yeah bro
@Airbnb used to sell pizza at one point because their initial MVP failed then they stumbled upon the renting homes/rooms per night... - Show replies
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This has been the direction of startups for more than the last decade, as "the cost of finding out" has fallen dramatically- used to be only option was to start big- there were no "start little and test" options till more recently.
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#2 is the only viable solution, everything else is deluding yourself to some degree.
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Some sort of delusion is necessary as far as running a startup or building a successful product is concerned.
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