Most startups end up doing something different than they planned.
The way the successful ones find something that works is by trying
things that don't. So the worst thing you can do in a startup is
to have a rigid, pre-ordained plan and then start spending a lot
of money to implement it. Better to operate cheaply and give your
ideas time to evolve.
Successful startups are almost never started by one person. Usually
they begin with a conversation in which someone mentions that
something would be a good idea for a company, and his friend says,
"Yeah, that is a good idea, let's try it." If you're missing that
second person who says "let's try it," the startup never happens.
And that is another area where undergrads have an edge. They're
surrounded by people willing to say that.
Look
for the people who keep starting projects, and finish at least some
of them. That's what we look for. Above all else, above academic
credentials and even the idea you apply with, we look for people
who build things.
You need a certain
activation energy to start a startup. So an employer who's fairly
pleasant to work for can lull you into staying indefinitely, even
if it would be a net win for you to leave.
Most people look at a company like Apple and think, how could I
ever make such a thing? Apple is an institution, and I'm just a
person. But every institution was at one point just a handful of
people in a room deciding to start something. Institutions are
made up, and made up by people no different from you.
What goes wrong with young founders is that they build stuff that
looks like class projects. It was only recently that we figured
this out ourselves. We noticed a lot of similarities between the
startups that seemed to be falling behind, but we couldn't figure
out how to put it into words. Then finally we realized what it
was: they were building class projects.
Class projects will inevitably
solve fake problems. For one thing, real problems are rare and
valuable. If a professor wanted to have students solve real problems,
he'd face the same paradox as someone trying to give an example of
whatever "paradigm" might succeed the Standard Model of physics.
There may well be something that does, but if you could think of
an example you'd be entitled to the Nobel Prize. Similarly, good
new problems are not to be had for the asking.
real
startups tend to discover the problem they're solving by a process
of evolution. Someone has an idea for something; they build it;
and in doing so (and probably only by doing so) they realize
the problem they should be solving is another one.
Professors will tend to judge you by the distance between
the starting point and where you are now. If someone has achieved
a lot, they should get a good grade. But customers will judge you
from the other direction: the distance remaining between where you
are now and the features they need. The market doesn't give a shit
how hard you worked. Users just want your software to do what they
need, and you get a zero otherwise. That is one of the most
distinctive differences between school and the real world: there
is no reward for putting in a good effort. In fact, the whole
concept of a "good effort" is a fake idea adults invented to encourage
kids. It is not found in nature.
unfortunately when you
graduate they don't give you a list of all the lies they told you
during your education. You have to get them beaten out of you by
contact with the real world.
really what work experience refers to is not some
specific expertise, but the elimination of certain habits left over
from childhood.
One of the defining qualities of kids is that they flake. When
you're a kid and you face some hard test, you can cry and say "I
can't" and they won't make you do it. Of course, no one can make
you do anything in the grownup world either. What they do instead
is fire you. And when motivated by that
you find you can do a lot more than you realized. So one of the
things employers expect from someone with "work experience" is the
elimination of the flake reflex—the ability to get things done,
with no excuses.
Fundamentally the equation is a brutal one: you have to spend
most of your waking hours doing stuff someone else wants, or starve.
There are a few places where the work is so interesting that this
is concealed, because what other people want done happens to coincide
with what you want to work on.
So the most important advantage 24 year old founders have over 20
year old founders is that they know what they're trying to avoid.
To the average undergrad the idea of getting rich translates into
buying Ferraris, or being admired. To someone who has learned from
experience about the relationship between money and work, it
translates to something way more important: it means you get to opt
out of the brutal equation that governs the lives of 99.9% of people.
Getting rich means you can stop treading water.
You don't get money just for working,
but for doing things other people want. Someone who's figured that
out will automatically focus more on the user. And that cures the
other half of the class-project syndrome. After you've been working
for a while, you yourself tend to measure what you've done the same
way the market does.
the most important skill for a startup founder isn't a programming
technique. It's a knack for understanding users and figuring out
how to give them what they want. I know I repeat this, but that's
because it's so important. And it's a skill you can learn, though
perhaps habit might be a better word. Get into the habit of thinking
of software as having users. What do those users want? What would
make them say wow?
