Startup Advice
sari and
Startup Advice
Generally, teams think about switching costs as the amount of time and money needed to install one solution and remove another. But true switching costs are much more than that: they include the politics, emotions, career ambitions, esoteric business processes, competing priorities, and sheer laziness that all favor the existing solution. Those... See more
Jake Fuentes • Lessons learned from a startup that didn’t make it
The “bedroom startup” approach, an audience-centric model
On building “Flavored” startups
Enterprise software is (mostly) not flavor-based. Sure, there are enterprise fads like the metaverse, but generally speaking, large companies only sign contracts when it feels like there is an obvious commercial advantage to doing so.
Networks are (mostly) not flavor-based. If you’re using an app because of the content created by its other users, it’s not necessarily a guarantee for success, but at least if it fails it probably won’t be because it hit a flavor-based asymptote. For instance, BeReal leveraged a unique flavor of photo sharing to build a network, but people are still using it because they like the way it helps them stay in touch with their friends. If it were just a single-player utility, it would not have scaled in the same way. Another historical example is Instagram versus Hipstamatic. Both had a cool new flavor called “photo filters,” but one had a network and the other did not. Here’s a more recent example: the network is what sets Substack stands apart from its flavor-based competition.
Tech-enabled services are not flavor-based. If you act like a tech company but really do grocery delivery, banking, education, housing, healthcare, or any other real-world service, your competition is mostly not flavor-based because starting this type of business involves a lot of cost and complexity. (Also, some, like ride hailing and delivery, are networks.) The downside is that your cost structure is probably not as great as pure tech companies, but the upside is that you have less competition.
All of these types of products can involve some flavoring to help them get off the ground. The point is not that flavoring is bad. It’s good! But it has a very specific role. Flavor provides an initial product wedge. It’s helpful for standing out initially but doesn’t provide long-term differentiation or durable advantage.
Many founders, out of their fear of things slowing down, are missing the opportunities that [slowing down] affords them.
Amy Buechler, Founder Coach at YC
-1 to 0 is when you figure out what you want to work on. It’s when you decide where to allocate the next 5-10 years of your life.
This may sound simple, but it can be overwhelming and isolating in practice. That period before SPC was not my first -1 to 0 experience. I spent the year after leaving Facebook to start Cove feeling like I was banging my... See more
This may sound simple, but it can be overwhelming and isolating in practice. That period before SPC was not my first -1 to 0 experience. I spent the year after leaving Facebook to start Cove feeling like I was banging my... See more
Ruchi Sanghvi • To Go 0 to 1, First Go -1 to 0
“Everyone bifurcates the world into content and distribution,” Whaley told me. He has brown hair, is of average height, and was wearing a nondescript gray t-shirt and jeans when we talked. “From the beginning, we viewed those as the same thing. Each object gets better with more participation, and so does MSCHF. Scale is not the goal. Scale is a... See more
Evan Armstrong • The Art of Scaling Taste
What is the “right” problem to solve?
uxdesign.cc