Your Startup Sucks

Your startup sucks. You know how I know that? I just heard about it for a few minutes, and I have no idea how your product is different from the other dozen in your market. And you know what? There's no way you can get customers to come to your new website. It's too hard, it's too expensive, and simply too crowded in your market.

By the way, you'll never be able to hire the engineers and marketers you need to grow your startup. No potential employees will ever see the long-term potential of your idea, and no potential employee would EVER leave their stable job to come and join you. You're better off finding some overseas engineers anyway. You'll spend a lot less money, and you can fail smaller.

Your startup sucks. Yeah, I just read about it on TechCrunch, but I also read all of the comments. There were a lot of valid points in those comments, and I don't know how you are going to possibly address all of them. If you don't fix each and every one of them there is no way you can get the "early adopters" to use your product. And you know that you need the early adopters if you ever have the chance to cross over the chasm to the mainstream user.

Ok, I used your product. It's nice, but I don't think I would use it again. But I do have a list of features that I'd love to see you implement. Where should I send that list? How come you don't have a feedback form for customers yet anyway? You really should get on that.

Oh, and you'll never get funding for that startup. Investors want to see real traction, real sales, and real competitive barriers. You don't have them. Trust me, I know what it takes to get funding for a startup, and there is no way you'll ever get an investor to believe in your vision. How many investors have you even spoken to so far? Did anyone even talk about giving you a term sheet?

How do you plan to market your startup anyway? Do you have a Facebook strategy? Do you know how to use Twitter to drive traffic? There's quite a bit of learning curve to understand what you need to do to be successful in social media marketing. If you don't, you better hurry up and learn. Do you know anything about SEM or SEO? It sounds like you're already way behind.

Who am I? I am everyone around you -- everyone who thinks you can't find a way to be successful. Everyone who doubts your vision, and can't see the opportunity that you can see. I am an angel group, a VC investor, a tech blogger, or a colleague. I am your mentor, your friend, or your family member -- everyone who doesn't vocally support your efforts, and has no idea how lonely starting up a company can be. I am everyone but you.

SWAMI SAYS: This post is dedicated to everyone who is in the process of starting a new company or trying to grow their startup. Don't look for outside validation. Don't listen to those who doubt. Fuck them. Keep going. If you believe you can do it, that's the only thing that matters.

Matt Douglas is the Founder & CEO of MyPunchbowl.com He writes the Startup CEO Blog, Startup Swami

The most important startup word: HOPE

There are many words that are important to a startup: revenue, customers, employees, investors, service -- but I'll argue that no word is more important than the word "hope." What do you think? Is there a word that's more important in a startup? Allow me to explain why I believe that "hope" is so important.

When you begin the journey of a startup, you don't have very much that is concrete. In fact, for the first year of MyPunchbowl, I didn't tell anyone that I was working on a startup. But I had a lot of hope -- hope that I could figure it out, hope that I could find some developers willing to help me, and hope that I would be able to tell a story that would attract investors.

Many months later, I was finally ready to launch the product to the world. Would users like the product? Would we get any press coverage? I had no idea, and lots of worry and anxiety. But I also had a lot of hope, and that sustained me in the early days.

Fast forward to the months I spent raising money and meeting with potential investors. The process of fund-raising is one of the most brutal things an entrepreneur can go through. Meeting after meeting, rejection after rejection. How can I possibly pick myself up and show up at the next meeting? Why should I bother taking that next phone call? Why? Because of hope. Hope that this this phone call will result in a meeting with the decision makers. Hope that my company will be one of the very, very few that is able to raise money for their startup.

And what happens after you raise $3M in venture funding? You have to move forward, build your product, and work on earning as much revenue as possible. Your investors will ask you lots of questions, and probe hard to find the holes in your plan. And guess what? You don't have all of the answers. But you will have a lot of hope.

As I sit here writing this today, as the CEO of my own growing startup, there are many things that I'm worried about. I don't know how we can grow faster, I worry about the overall economy, and I'm nervous about my ability to raise a third round of funding. But I believe in myself because I have hope.

SWAMI SAYS: There is no more important word in the world of startups than hope. You can have investors, revenue, customers, and all of the critical praise in the world. But there will always be the next milestone and the next challenge ahead. Hope can get you there.

What do you think? Is there a more important word to a startup that hope?

The story of the Startup Swami

Only a handful of years ago, I was a toiling away in a cubicle at Bose Corporation. I didn't know much about startups, raising capital, or how to run a company. I didn't have a network of people who I could turn to in the startup world, and I struggled with some of the basics of starting a company.

While I now know that there are a few really good startup blogs out there, I don't think that any of them are brutally honest about how to start a company. I haven't found one that talks about very personally about how to deal with key startup issues: setting up the company, finding a lawyer, how to hire people, how to raise capital, and how to launch a company. I haven't found one that truly captures the raw emotion of what it takes in the trenches.

I created the Startup Swami to address these issues. So what kind of things are you going to see on the Startup Swami?

1. Very personal, raw thoughts and experiences as I continue to navigate the startup world
2. In-depth and specific stories from my startup experience
3. Advice, tips, and "how to guides" about launching a startup, from the very beginning through every step
4. Answers to specific questions from the community

With some of the articles on the Startup Swami, I'll try to supplement with a video. I'll experiment with how this works as the blog develops.

Thanks for reading and welcome to the Startup Swami.

SWAMI SAYS: Tell me what you want to know about what it's really like to launch a startup. I'd love to hear from you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Who is the Startup Swami?
A: It is I, Matt Douglas, Founder & CEO of Punchbowl.com

Q: Who decided that you are the Startup Swami?
A: Um, I did.

Q: Are you available to an advisor to my startup?
A: As the CEO of my own startup, I'm not available. Sorry.

Q: Will you answer my specific startup related question?
A: Sure, I'll try. Send an email to swami at startupswami dot com and I'll try to address your question in a future post.

Q: Are you related to Chris Berman (the Swami on ESPN)?
A: Sadly, no. But we are kindred spirits.