Huge thank you to everyone who spoke to me for this article, especially those whose stories I couldn't fit in.
One of my favorite anecdotes I didn't end up using was from Jerry Shen, co-founder of Welcome (https://www.experiencewelcome.com/), about an earlier startup he co-founded:
“We didn't really know anything about how the restaurant industry worked. We probably should've picked a different idea from the get go. I remember when we would walk into restaurants in SF trying to sell our software (which was basically a CRM for ordering wholesale ingredients). We would usually get cussed out because they were busy serving customers. I remember one time this old Chinese lady in Chinatown cussed me out in Chinese. Basically, we didn't realize how the etiquette worked at all. Trying to cold outreach restaurants while they were open was a big no no.”
"We focused too much on the tech, and not enough on the users. We also approached things with the mentality of "we are right, let's show our product to the world" instead of "assume we are wrong, let's see what we can learn.
"We now assume we are wrong, and seek to prove ourselves right. This makes it easier mentally to throw away work that's not working or focus on MVPs rather than over-optimizing because we expect things won't live on forever."
Huge thank you to everyone who spoke to me for this article, especially those whose stories I couldn't fit in.
One of my favorite anecdotes I didn't end up using was from Jerry Shen, co-founder of Welcome (https://www.experiencewelcome.com/), about an earlier startup he co-founded:
“We didn't really know anything about how the restaurant industry worked. We probably should've picked a different idea from the get go. I remember when we would walk into restaurants in SF trying to sell our software (which was basically a CRM for ordering wholesale ingredients). We would usually get cussed out because they were busy serving customers. I remember one time this old Chinese lady in Chinatown cussed me out in Chinese. Basically, we didn't realize how the etiquette worked at all. Trying to cold outreach restaurants while they were open was a big no no.”
Also Philippe Noel, co-founder of ParadeDB (https://www.paradedb.com/):
"We focused too much on the tech, and not enough on the users. We also approached things with the mentality of "we are right, let's show our product to the world" instead of "assume we are wrong, let's see what we can learn.
"We now assume we are wrong, and seek to prove ourselves right. This makes it easier mentally to throw away work that's not working or focus on MVPs rather than over-optimizing because we expect things won't live on forever."
It's always a good read when it's about founders and their way!
Great article Andy :)
Great post Andy! Thanks for giving my Stripe article a shoutout 🙏
Truth bombs!