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Are you tired of people telling talking about how to be successful with useless example, not backed by any research? Do you think entrepreneurship is a game rather than a trivial bunch of cheap advises? This presentation is for you!
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The fallacy of Startup SuccessWhat can we learn from plane crashes and ben and jerry’s...
Franck Nouyrigat - @peignoir Startup Weekend co-founderUP Global VP - [email protected]
Wednesday, October 16, 13
Success does not mean anything if it is not associated to a goal
In the case of Startups the goal is to have 1. A stable Business Model (BM)
2. A scalable BM
if revenue > cost we can consider the startup BM stable if existing customer buy again it is a scalable BM
Example:
Wednesday, October 16, 13
Example of Fallacies (or BS)
Love what you do
1) Choose something that is in line with your own personal interest and passion, then it never seems like work. 2) Don't be afraid to fail. 3) It's critical to spend the time early on to hire the right people. If you are disciplined in finding the best and brightest people who are also team players then management is easy. 4) There is no substitute for talking directly to customers. Whether they are happy or upset about something, it feels great to connect with people who are using your products, because you immediately get a good sense for how to make it even better.
Brian Sharples co-founded HomeAway with Carl Shepherd in February 2005...he has raised nearly $405 million in private funding
Source : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamilah-corbitt/million-dollar-advice-fro_b_3960955.html
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The Success Fallacies always have the same structure : random advise + successful guy (ie made a lot of $) = The promise of you’ll be like this successful guy
Love what you do + Brian Sharples (400+ Million dollars) = I’ll be like him if I love what I do ...
The real question is : how many people who failed loved what they were doing (let’s define failure here by bankrupt)
Note that at least if the advise is somehow sincere it’s morally ok (Though still inefficient) , but what about people lying?
Wear a Black t-shirt + Steve Jobs = I’m steve jobs if I wear a black t-shirt
What if you are a total idot ... Well you might just end up with things like :
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WHY?"Society is founded on hero worship," the 19th-century historian Thomas Carlyle once observed
The term "hero" comes from the
ancient Greeks. For them, a hero was
a mortal who had done something so
far beyond the normal scope of
human experience that he left an
immortal memory behind him when
he died, and thus received worship
like that due the gods.
The concept of a story archetype of the standard "hero's quest" or monomythpervasive across all cultures is somewhat controversial. Expounded mainly byJoseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, it illustrates several uniting themes of hero stories that hold similar ideas of what a hero represents, despite vastly different cultures and beliefs. The monomyth or Hero's Journey consists of three separate stages including the Departure, Initiation, and Return.
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MY THOUGHTS ...(disclaimer: they might be wrong)
Keep your startup heroes (a poster of Steve for example)
And focus on cold thinking - research based advises
e.g. : Read Founders Dilemmas(http://www.amazon.com/The-Founders-Dilemmas-Anticipating-Entrepreneurship/dp/0691158304)
Challenge any speaker on their own fallacies
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THE SCIENTIFIC METHODSince Blaise Pascal (17th century) we can apply the scientific method of test and deduction to understand natural phenomena.
When a plane crashes we don’t look back at why the other one did not crash we focus on why the plane crashed!
Interesting enough planes never crash because of one reason, but because of an alignment of conditions (ie engine failing + bad weather + pilot sleeping) After each crash, the learnings are taken and applied to avoid them again... WE SHOULD DO THIS WITH STARTUPS!
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Why ice-creams fail?Ben and Jerry’s Graveyard...
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Why Startup Fail?
1. Steve Blank : The main reason is failure to find customers
2. Eric Ries : The main reason is spending to much time developing vs testing early
(Answer : Customer Development)
(Answer : Lean Startup Methodology)
3. Noam Wassermann : 65% of failures are due to people problems
Other Category : Jim Collins : Separating the good from the great...(Jim did focused on success vs failure and large corp vs startup)
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Now go back to work! Like every successful entrepreneurs did :)
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