pg wrote about this in a rather uncharacteristically short essay titled Schelp Blindness [0] where he specifically says that hackers ignore obvious problems [1] because they are... erm... blind.
Excerpts:
> No one likes schleps, but hackers especially dislike them. Most hackers who start startups wish they could do it by just writing some clever software, putting it on a server somewhere, and watching the money roll in—without ever having to talk to users, or negotiate with other companies, or deal with other people's broken code. Maybe that's possible, but I haven't seen it.
> How do you overcome schlep blindness? Frankly, the most valuable antidote to schlep blindness is probably ignorance. Most successful founders would probably say that if they'd known when they were starting their company about the obstacles they'd have to overcome, they might never have started it. Maybe that's one reason the most successful startups of all so often have young founders.
> Ignorance can't solve everything though. Some ideas so obviously entail alarming schleps that anyone can see them. How do you see ideas like that? The trick I recommend is to take yourself out of the picture. Instead of asking "what problem should I solve?" ask "what problem do I wish someone else would solve for me?" If someone who had to process payments before Stripe had tried asking that, Stripe would have been one of the first things they wished for.
>writing some clever software, putting it on a server somewhere, and watching the money roll in
That made me chuckle because I recall walking across the office in 1992, looking at a machine in the corner, and thinking "wow, with this Internet stuff the way it's going I really want to write some clever software, put it on a machine like that and watch my bank account balance grow...".
And it has been fun to watch out that all played out subsequently.
Even before Paul Graham and Viaweb, the stats were that about 90% of new businesses fail and a big predictor of success (but still at low odds) was ignorance of those odds.
Our new business just "failed" after 15 years (it was designed to support our family, which unexpectedly grew). But, regardless, when I checked the failure rate reported in gov stats in UK was far lower than the common wisdom held; which surprised me somewhat.
Do you have a source of solid figures to back up that 90%?
The whole "90% of businesses fail" thing is pretty meaningless without a timespan attached to it. Obviously almost all companies eventually go out of business for some reason or another.
About three quarters last more than a year, about half last to 5 years, and about a third last to 10 years.
Also if you forget the whole startup "go big or go home", what also matters is whether the company left the people involved - the founders, the employees - richer than they were before, or did it ruin the founders. Because a business that lasted 5 years and closed because the market dried up, but in that time netted the founder more than a regular job would, is pretty successful in my books.
Thanks for posting that, TeMPOral. It helps to put things in a good perspective - our business has given us much joy, far more joy than a regular job would. Not so great on the money aspect; which I guess is why no-one has stepped up with interest to take it on.
Yes, sorry, the phrase repeated by nearly everyone was "90% [of [small] businesses] fail in the first year". Which compared to your 25% figure is pretty markedly different - that's the sort of discrepancy I was seeing.
> But, regardless, when I checked the failure rate reported in gov stats in UK was far lower than the common wisdom held; which surprised me somewhat.
Does the UK government split into VC backed and not VC-backed? I always thought that number only holds for the "go big or go home" type of business (i.e. VC backed), not for normal ones.
Perhaps they were aiming for 1 and they got 3 or 4? I remember a colleague a few years back had that 'problem' (planned 1 turned to 3) and he got a very generous raise that year.
It’s also possible for someone to become a child’s guardian if their parents lose the ability to fill that role. I don’t know how widespread this is across cultures, but in my family, parents of newborn children name a “godfather” and/or “godmother” (usually an aunt/uncle) who become responsible for this by default.
Excerpts:
> No one likes schleps, but hackers especially dislike them. Most hackers who start startups wish they could do it by just writing some clever software, putting it on a server somewhere, and watching the money roll in—without ever having to talk to users, or negotiate with other companies, or deal with other people's broken code. Maybe that's possible, but I haven't seen it.
> How do you overcome schlep blindness? Frankly, the most valuable antidote to schlep blindness is probably ignorance. Most successful founders would probably say that if they'd known when they were starting their company about the obstacles they'd have to overcome, they might never have started it. Maybe that's one reason the most successful startups of all so often have young founders.
> Ignorance can't solve everything though. Some ideas so obviously entail alarming schleps that anyone can see them. How do you see ideas like that? The trick I recommend is to take yourself out of the picture. Instead of asking "what problem should I solve?" ask "what problem do I wish someone else would solve for me?" If someone who had to process payments before Stripe had tried asking that, Stripe would have been one of the first things they wished for.
[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html
[1] http://paulgraham.com/growth.html