The word "startup" was only recently coined. We didn't know what we were doing. At all. All the standard business knowledge and tech knowledge that is comon knowledge today had not yet been figured out. Incubators were not a thing. The VC market hadn't yet figured things out. Hype wasn't about getting a huge exit, it was about people paying you millions for a static HTML page that happened to get some traffic. And simply the ability to put up a site could be a viable business. There was no tie between business value and company worth. It was all chaos, and truly a wild west type environment.
As far as the work environment, it is exactly what you read about. A few guys in a basement or a garage. A desktop sitting next to you as the server. Slinging code and trying to get it to customers. At my first startup, we didn't even have an internet connection - we developed on a local LAN, and transferred the deliverable to the clients via FTP from home, or sometimes even via disk. We got a few customer and rented an office space, and then had 6 guys in 3000 square feet of open space with a few folding tables. Later, we were able to build out walls, hire more people, and make it a real office.
We went public, had lots of paper numbers next to our names, and then it all crashed.
All the standard business knowledge and tech knowledge that is common knowledge today had not yet been figured out.
You're right about that. The lean startup, "there's no truth in the office", Minimum Viable Product concepts just weren't a thing back then, they would have saved one of the companies I worked for if the founders had known and accepted them. Instead they spent way too much time in stealth mode, hired a corporate lawyer to get them a bogus patent, were way too worried about competitors instead of ever getting traction for their idea, spent too much time debating details of the website, and who would pay what for precisely what sort of service, and too much upfront engineering to handle a huge demand which didn't materialize due to sabotage by the last round of investors who were found in desperation half a year before launch.
That any discussion of your potential customers "inside" the office, purely between people in your company, is highly to entirely speculative. You've got to get "out" of the office and sell your product, or not, to know. Hence the emphasis on having a Minimum Viable Product as soon as possible to know if there's real demand for it, and at what price.
At all. All the standard business knowledge and tech knowledge that is comon knowledge today had not yet been figured out. Incubators were not a thing.
Seeing that most startups are failing and the only YC company that has ever gone public - Dropbox - is still not profitable, I am not sure that we have “figured it out”, if you define “successful” as a company that makes a product that can sustain a company profitable.
How many successful exits have been through acquisitions by larger companies where the original product was killed either outright or through neglect.
Comments
The word "startup" was only recently coined. We didn't know what we were doing. At all. All the standard business knowledge and tech knowledge that is comon knowledge today had not yet been figured out. Incubators were not a thing. The VC market hadn't yet figured things out. Hype wasn't about getting a huge exit, it was about people paying you millions for a static HTML page that happened to get some traffic. And simply the ability to put up a site could be a viable business. There was no tie between business value and company worth. It was all chaos, and truly a wild west type environment.
As far as the work environment, it is exactly what you read about. A few guys in a basement or a garage. A desktop sitting next to you as the server. Slinging code and trying to get it to customers. At my first startup, we didn't even have an internet connection - we developed on a local LAN, and transferred the deliverable to the clients via FTP from home, or sometimes even via disk. We got a few customer and rented an office space, and then had 6 guys in 3000 square feet of open space with a few folding tables. Later, we were able to build out walls, hire more people, and make it a real office.
We went public, had lots of paper numbers next to our names, and then it all crashed.
You're right about that. The lean startup, "there's no truth in the office", Minimum Viable Product concepts just weren't a thing back then, they would have saved one of the companies I worked for if the founders had known and accepted them. Instead they spent way too much time in stealth mode, hired a corporate lawyer to get them a bogus patent, were way too worried about competitors instead of ever getting traction for their idea, spent too much time debating details of the website, and who would pay what for precisely what sort of service, and too much upfront engineering to handle a huge demand which didn't materialize due to sabotage by the last round of investors who were found in desperation half a year before launch.
What is "there's no truth in the office"?
That any discussion of your potential customers "inside" the office, purely between people in your company, is highly to entirely speculative. You've got to get "out" of the office and sell your product, or not, to know. Hence the emphasis on having a Minimum Viable Product as soon as possible to know if there's real demand for it, and at what price.
At all. All the standard business knowledge and tech knowledge that is comon knowledge today had not yet been figured out. Incubators were not a thing.
Seeing that most startups are failing and the only YC company that has ever gone public - Dropbox - is still not profitable, I am not sure that we have “figured it out”, if you define “successful” as a company that makes a product that can sustain a company profitable.
How many successful exits have been through acquisitions by larger companies where the original product was killed either outright or through neglect.