3 questions to understand if your startup is too early

The most important ingredient in the recipe for a successful startup is timing. For every breakout success, there are thousands of startups that launched too early or too late, and were unable to last long enough to find Startup Valhalla.

Bill Gross, CEO of Idea Lab and founder of 100 startups, 7 of which have achieved valuations of over $1b, agrees that timing is the most important part of succeeding- more important than the founding team or the right investors- and responsible for 42% of a startup’s success.

Most often, timing can only be analyzed in hindsight. But entrepreneurs should still be aware of the risks of starting too early, and approach founding a company with a thoughtful conversation about timing.

RISKS OF STARTING TOO EARLY

If you start your company too early, the technologies you need to leverage may not be fully developed, and your customers may not be ready for your product.

Your potential customers have lived through enough hype cycles to be wary of buying into certain products too early. Technology hype cycles have tricked companies into early investments in the past, like when in 1958 headlines preached that ‘within ten years a digital computer will be the world's chess champion,” inspiring and early AI frenzy.

Clearly, this promise of technology, like many others, didn’t come to pass. So customers wait to see proof points.

This is an entirely justified response, and it’s one of the most frustrating truths of starting a company too early.

QUESTIONS TO HELP IDENTIFY YOUR TIMING

So before launching on the already challenging mission of starting a company, you should ask yourself 3 questions to take a good hard look at whether your timing might be too early.


1. Does a solution like yours exist anywhere else in the world?

Contrary to popular lore, entrepreneurs rarely create something the likes of which have never been seen. Even the most ambitious technology companies had some sort of predecessors. Google wasn’t the first search engine- it actually started 4 years after Yahoo. The iPhone wasn’t the first smartphone- Nokia had been making internet-connected phones since 2001.

If nothing like your solution exists in any form, proceed with caution. It could mean either that it’s been tried unsuccessfully, or that no one else (including many smart people) have wanted to give it a try.

If it’s the former, you should analyze that attempt and understand what went wrong. Did the failed entrepreneurs choose the wrong market? Were they missing a key industry insight? Has a crucial technology developed since their attempt?

If it’s the latter, and no one has really given it a real try before, is that because you’re the first to have thought of this idea (possible, but unlikely)? Or has something in the market (regulatory, technological, etc) changed recently that would allow you to succeed?

This was the case for Uber, which built it’s app-based ride-hailing service in 2009, shortly after the launch of the Apple App Store. No one had imagined a tech-based solution to taxi cabs before, because it was impossible until new technology, mobile internet and the app store, came around. Uber’s launch was perfectly timed, as they rode the waves of technological improvements without which their business model wouldn't have worked.

2. Is your solution as it works today especially helpful?

All startups are pitching MVPs with slow webpages, poor UI, and missing features. Often, it will take years to get to a product that people really and truly love beyond what they have today. But your product, with all of its many flaws, has to entice customers today.

Airbnb is a great example of this. They started as Airbedandbreakfast.com, with a janky website, few listings, and a lot of confusion about why anyone would ever sleep in a stranger’s home.

What they had on their side was product-timing fit. In other words, their janky solution was sufficient to solve a problem on day 1 of operations. By launching around the time of the Democratic Presidential Debates, they had the benefit of thousands of people traveling to concentrated locations, without the hotels to serve them. By launching in the midst of a recession, they had hosts who were looking to make some extra money and guests who wanted to save money.

So even though Airbnb was a long way from the seamless, ubiquitous experience they offer today, their timing allowed them to have a market at the time of their launch, with an unfinished product.

3. If you had 24 months and double the resources, would the solution you create be better than the status quo?

Customers will only put up with a broken solution for so long, and most investment rounds don’t look further than 1-2 years into the future. The right sales team can “sell the dream” to early customers, and a well-oiled customer experience machine can keep people engaged even as tech promises go unkept (which they always will be). But if you don’t deliver something of true value within a short time frame, you’re too early.

This is one of the many challenges that a company like Theranos faced. Their ambitious goal, to do 500 blood tests off of a single drop of blood, excited investors like the Walton Family and venture capitalist Tim Draper and customers like Walgreens and Safeway. Walgreens, to use one example, put Theranos equipment in over 40 stores. They were okay putting up with the technical inadequacies of the product, but only for just over 2 years before they canceled the partnership and sent Theranos into a downward spiral.

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If you answered 'no' to any of these questions, it doesn't mean you're doomed. Starting early has its advantages. If you can live through the inevitable winters and survive the challenging, lean years, once the pieces fall into place you’ll be the venerable genius in a crowd of young startups, gaining market share on the back of your sacrifice.

So if you find that your startup is too early, stay lean, be laser-focused, and go slow, and don’t worry about premature growth. Build your core technology, work with a limited set of important customers, set expectations, and hunker down. Hopefully soon (but maybe not too soon), you’ll be rewarded.

The Arts

"The leisure class cultivated the arts and discovered sciences; it wrote the books, invented the philosophies, and refined social relations [...] without the leisure class, man would never have emerged from barbarism"

-Bertrand Russell

I grew up going to a Russian Arts School every Saturday morning, and the related summer camp every year. We painted, read, wrote, acted, sculpted, and played. The most creative times of my life- perhaps the times in which I contributed most to the people around me- I was making no money (except that one summer they paid me $800- that was awesome.)

As work evolves and opportunities for low skill labor disappear behind barriers of expensive education and experience, I have a hopeful dream that people will turn to the arts.

Sure, we might just end up playing video games. But someone needs to design them. We may smoke pot and listen to music. But someone needs to pick up the guitar. And we might while away the days walking in parks and going to the beach. And is that so bad?

With the free time granted to those who for so long have been suffocating under busy-ness, opportunities for expression of passions may finally emerge. Music, painting, theater, fiction- these are all luxuries normally afforded to those wealthy enough to have the basics.

So here is a nice thought. The people who currently drive trucks for a living- they do it for a living. Not for fulfillment, or because they love it. What they really want to be doing is making music, or learning to cook, or performing local theater. And, with the right support from society (still figuring out the details here...) they'll finally be able to do so. And this will bring mankind into its next Rennaissance. 

The Transition

How do millions of people transition out of delivery driver roles into new jobs? The transition needs to allow them to bring money home for their families. It needs to bring them to a position with the same or better upward mobility opportunity and pay and benefits. And, ideally, it needs to bring them a greater sense of accomplishment, success, and meaning than any job they've had in the past.

Because isn't that what we're all looking for in our next jobs?

Teaching an old dog wolf tricks

For the millions of Americans employed in careers at risk by automation, their livelihood over the next 20 years depends on the rapid acquisition of new skills. What those skills are is a question of interests, goals, and available options.

To be clear, it's not just low skill workers- delivery drivers, machine laborers, and the like- that are at risk. Surgeons will become secondary to robots who can do their job more accurately. Paralegals will disappear as research becomes easier.

But to start with, we can focus on delivery drivers. Even more specifically, those drivers that work at least 40 hours per week at their job- not the part time pizza guys bringing back money so they can play in their band.

However quickly autonomous vehicles do or do not come, these people will need to up their skill sets, and fast.

The first step is understanding their own advantages. What are they good at? What are you good at?

Well, they're hopefully excellent at customer service. These people are personable and quick on their feet. Plenty of problems arise out of the blue in these jobs, and drivers need to solve them quickly.

They're excellent drivers, of course. They understand traffic patterns, can react quickly to changes, and can concentrate for long periods of time.

They're many other things too, of course. And they're a whole lot of skills that their current employment isn't taken advantage of. So somehow, they- likely with the assistance of the tech companies pushing the change and the governments permitting it- need to use those skills to contribute on the next level. It will be much more than just a few new tricks. The old dogs need to learn to be wolves.

Technology will take jobs

Technology is taking away jobs faster than before. Today, with advances in AI and ML coming daily, is not the same as yesterday, which brought slow but important improvements in manual tasks.

As an entrepreneur and humanist, this excites me. These are opportunities to make the world safer (self-driving cars), cleaner (smart agriculture), and more accessible (cheaper goods brought by lights-out factories).

As an entrepreneur and humanist, this worries me. These same advances will take away jobs at a faster rate than we've seen before.

These jobs - long hours delivery driving, manual labor picking crops, dangerous and toxic (looking at you, Foxconn) factory work - are not glamorous (but neither is pharmaceutical sales). And they're often not well-paying (but neither is art). And they're often not fun or rewarding (but neither is management consulting).

But a job is more than the paycheck. As JD Vance writes, it is pride and hope. It gives us comfort to support ourselves and our families. It moves society forward. It creates a ladder towards mobility and self-improvement.

So while I am excited, I am also worried. I worry for the hundreds of food delivery drivers I have managed. I worry for the many more that self-driving delivery vehicles will (but not for a while) replace. I worry for the factory workers and the laborers and the financial advisors. Sometimes, I worry for myself.

But in every worry is an opportunity. What that exactly looks like, I have yet to decide. But it's out there.

Some thoughts on privacy (based on 1984)

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“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
-George Orwell, "1984"

I just read 1984 and audio-booked The Handmaid's Tale. At the same time. There's a depressing combination.

But I finally understand the 'privacy matters' argument.

Knowledge is power, power is knowledge. If all of my data (biological info, transit patterns, texts) are shared with higher powers (companies, government), it can be both good and bad.

The good part is these higher powers can use it to make our lives better. Health can improve, traffic can move faster, and crimes can be stopped (maybe). Plus, it's all encrypted, so no one will really know it's me, anyway.

But as 1984 taught me, our freedom is the right to think "I'M FREE" without anyone knowing it. Even if it's encrypted. And as The Handmaid's Tale taught me, our freedom lies in illogical, irreverent actions without any supervisor.

Where do I stand? Privacy is freedom, and I'd be naive and idealistic to argue against that. On the other hand, society can improve if we all share information! On the other hand, isn't that literally what communism is? On the other hand, it's encrypted!

And that's the end of Adriel's weekly rant without any conclusions. Please respond here with a photo of your passport and most recent text messages.

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Be in touch with your audience

If you're looking for thoughtful meets goofy with a tech twist, sign up for my newsletter. Below is a taste of what you'll get. -- "People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it." -Simon Sinek So I was at Synergy Global Forum last week. Speakers included Richard Branson, Jack Welch, Robin Wright, Jimmy Wales. I'm so inspired, I might go start a podcast. Oh wait... Simon Sinek was one of the most highly anticipated speakers. The crowd went wild, circa Madonna 1987. In case you don't know, Sinek is a best-selling author about business and leadership theory. He's the Einstein of modern business- all theory, no practice, and lots of celebrity. He was speaking in big-time metaphors. Connecting the Vietnam War to Apple to modern leadership. "It is our role as leaders to build teams that play the infinite game!" And the crowd goes wild. I was watching a security guard watch this preaching. This guard, about 25 years old and as far removed from tech gospel like 'innovation' and 'disruption' as possible, was incredulous. Every minute, he would turn around and say to no one in particular, "What is this guy talking about?" or "I can't believe people LIKE this!" or, simply, "This is stupid". The dichotomy was comical. On the one hand, 3,000 of the most ambitious and successful people in tech and innovation. In awe at the magnificent widoms. On the other hand, a man who makes his blue-collar living working hard every day. Also in awe, but for a very different reason. Many leaders have taken up Sinek's cry of "Start with the WHY." We build the things we do to 'make the world better!' and 'distribute technology to the people!' It's noble and true and just and looks great in a TED Talk. But 'the people!' whom we are so excited to help call us out on the BS of our theoretical, metaphorical inspiration. They do it to our face. And it's hilarious. So yes, let's build 'for the people!' And let's get inspired by great theorists. But let's get our heads out of the clouds sometimes, because we can come off as real assholes.

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