acoustik

Don’t build a good company.

Build a great one.

Good startups are worse than bad ones. Bad ones you can shut down right away. But with good ones, you’ll get positive feedback, maybe even a strong user base, but will get stuck at a local maximum and struggle for months, years to get past it. And then will keep pivoting until you shut down. That’s a terrible place to be.

Now, great ideas, those are powerful. When you have a great idea, the world slowly opens up for you, you feel like a snowball rolling down a steep hill, picking up more and more momentum, getting bigger and bigger and bigger. 

I know, because I’ve been a part of all 3.

Kickfour, a social TV startup I founded with @whereandy and @yishaiknobel, was a bad idea. I won’t bore you with the details, but all you need to know is that we barely used it ourselves, which for the record is usually a sign that you have a bad idea.

Sensobi, a smarter address book for your phone (also founded with @whereandy), was a good idea. We launched out of TechStars Boston and grew to several hundred thousand users, many of whom used the app every day (including us). And those users would email, tweet, let us know that our app made their lives better. Including one email from a mother with an autistic child, which described how Sensobi helped her track her calls, emails, and texts with all her son’s physicians and services. Our users loved us, which made us feel like we were onto something great. These were heady, inspired times. 

But our growth slowed and we struggled to grow the product into a real business. At that point we could have realized that we had a good, not a great idea, and pivoted to something in the same space but better, but it was too late. We had momentum, which allowed us to be less critical of our idea. There were warning signs from the beginning, but instead of realizing that our product was targeting a limited market, we were blinded by the attention, and ended up spending two life-consuming years on the business. To keep our expenses low, I moved home with my parents, right after I turned 30. Andy relied on his wife for financial support. We would find scraps of work to pay the bills. 

That is what good ideas do. They eat up years of your life, years that you can never get back, years that would have been better spent building a great idea.

GroupMe allowed us to feel what a great idea is like. When I met Steve and Jared, I immediately saw that they were onto something big. They had a product that I (and, at that point, thousands of other people) were using every day. They were growing at a breathtaking speed, and were building one of the best teams I had ever seen. They were sitting on the top of a massive iceberg, with an opportunity to transform the way we communicate with each other.

And comparing GroupMe and Sensobi, I first saw the difference between Great and just Good. It was as if both companies were exploring the same sea, but while Sensobi was furiously paddling in a small row boat, GroupMe had giant sails with a full wind at its back.

Fortunately for us, they liked what we had built and offered to acquire us to join the team. And unlike other companies that were trying to acquire us, we saw that GroupMe had a great idea, so we accepted. Which is about as good an outcome as you could hope with a good idea.

Of course, GroupMe hasn’t changed the world yet. But today, with millions of users and billions (and billions, and billions) of messages sent, we are on our way. 

Good is the enemy of great. Don’t settle for good.

Of course, telling the difference is hard. Which is why you need to be brutally honest with yourself. 

And even when you think you’ve found a great idea, remember, it still sucks. 

Here’s the thing about your startup ideas: they all suck. That new mobile app? Sucks. Website? Terrible. That new open source developer platform you’re thinking of building? The worst.

Look, I’m not passing judgment on your ideas or on you. I’m just trying to help: to help you become more disciplined. 

If you want to start a company, but believe your ideas suck, then those ideas are going to get better.

This is a post that I wish someone had written 4 years ago, back when we first started Sensobi.

So you want to start a company

Why do you want to start a company? 

To get rich? Stop. Leave now. It’s not going to work, and we don’t even want you here.

Because it’s cool? You too, get out. Trying to be cool is for middle school. That’s not what we do.

Because you hate your job? That’s easy: get a new job.

Because you want to be your own boss? Life lesson: you are never your own boss.

Or do you want to change the world and make it better? Yeah? Alright, you’re ok, you can stay.

But remember, it’s hard.

Guess what: changing the world is HARD. The world doesn’t really want to change. The world likes itself the way it already is.

Starting a company from scratch is also hard. You’re going to drain your savings, lose sleep, get fat, lose touch with friends, make your girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband/partner feel under appreciated, stress all the time, work weekends, work weekend nights, not be able to take vacations, question yourself, be filled with self-doubt and second guesses, get depressed, feel like shit and then amazing and then like shit and then amazing and then like shit again, be constantly pitching and shilling yourself and your company, feel super paranoid about anyone who remotely smells like a competitor, frequently feel like giving up, get psychologically scarred, lose years off your life.

And, after all that, you will most likely fail.

You don’t want to start a company. You don’t want to change the world. 

Stop reading now and go back to your day job.

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Still here? Good.

If you want to build a company that will change the world, have your eyes wide open to how hard that is, and are still prepared to undertake that journey, then I will try to help you.

Back to our first lesson: all your ideas suck.

We all have ideas. And if you’re the kind of person who thinks they can change the world, then you’re an optimist and believe in yourself. That’s a very good thing. 

But that probably also means that you think your ideas are awesome.

You’re smart. What are the odds that one of your current ideas is going to be the next world changing company? Hint: pretty low. 

But what are the odds that you might be able to find and build a world changing idea? Still low, but if you are disciplined enough, then the odds are significantly higher. 

So you have to be incredibly self-critical, to push yourself to think deeper and bigger, and take all your shit ideas and slowly make them suck less. All new ideas are bad to begin with: you have to push through the bad to get to the great. 

Developing and testing startup ideas is an art. E.g., how do you know if you’re on the right track? It’s tough, but this post by Paul Graham is a good place to start. 

Here’s a nice benefit of not being in love with your idea: you will be more open to feedback that will help you improve it, and people (and especially your closest friends) will be more open to give you that feedback. They may not be right, but you need to hear and process what they have to say.

This is Your Life

There are many, many startup cheerleaders out there, who encourage people to blindly start companies without fully describing what’s involved.

Sure, there’s some value in being naive as an entrepreneur, to try paths that others have abandoned. But entrepreneurship is about taking calculated risks, not blind ones.

And most of these cheerleaders are investors. It’s in their best interest to foster as many new companies as possible, as long as they can pick the best ones.

You need to look after your own interests. You have to make sure that, if you are going to commit to this company, it has a chance to be a great one. Because this is your life. Those hours, days, years you spend on a bad idea, you will never get back.

Which is why being extremely self-critical is so important.

Make your ideas suck less

All your current ideas suck, but there’s a great idea out there. Go find it, refine it, and build it. 

Even when you think you’ve identified a great idea, remember, it still sucks. It could be better. Make it better.

Oh, and also, this blog post sucks.

Now get back to work.

Some thoughts on Android.

Android is not what you think it is.

It’s not like iOS. It’s not even like Windows, Linux, or any other OS we’ve seen before.

Android is the Platypus of the mobile world. It’s weird. [1]

Like the Platypus, Android is a complicated beast, a bizarre combination of two very different animals. But unlike the Platypus, Android is slowly taking over the world.

Here’s what we’ve found at GroupMe: there are two Androids markets. 

As a developer you need to build for both, and they’re not at all like each other. That’s the paradox.

Read more on Quora.

Who the hell are you? 

About.me just spun out from AOL and raised $5.7M to help you answer that question. [1]

But About.me has a major problem: it’s static. Beautiful, maybe, but unchanging. [2]

You’re not static: you’re a living, breathing thing.

So, who are you, and what’s the best way to represent that unique snowflake that you are?

Read more on Quora.