Doing It Wrong
(Fail Snail used under CC license; originally from http://flickr.com/photos/ronin691/2634356788/)
Note to self: “If you aren’t making any progress, you are probably doing it wrong.”
I have been following the YCombinator scene since the beginning. For those who are not familiar with the recent rumblings in the industry, there has been a resurgence in the hi-tech sector in the last couple of years. I am sure you are familiar with the biggies: Facebook, MySpace, etc. YCombinator is a startup incubator program for highly-motivated people to create the next big thing. While the YC program is a pretty high profile face of this bubbly web activity, there is certainly much, much more Web 2.0 startup activity than you can shake a stick at.
Back a few years ago, I certainly was chomping at the bit. Why not? I certainly fit the profile of someone who could do a startup. I started drinking the Kool-Aid pretty heavily. Metaphorically, this was reading the writings of Paul Graham and following the crazy startup activity. Last year, I even took a trip down to check out YC’s one-day Startup School at Stanford (I went in 2007). I shook hands with of one of the founders of reddit. I took a few months off work to see if I could make something.
But alas, I really don’t have anything to show for. If I actually try to put a time-wasted estimate to this, I wouldn’t even be able to tell you what it would be. Let’s just say that some weeks I wasted more time than other weeks.
Recently, I have been having an awakening of an epic variety. It was time for a good hard look at the mirror. I think I finally understand.
All this time I was merely greedy and actually didn’t have the passion or drive to follow through properly. For example, it is pretty clear that I needed some kind of co-founder but I didn’t do any networking; I needed to recognize that my technical skills are a tad outdated and I needed to train in the mountains for a bit first. I had been massively underestimating what it took to do a startup.
The thing about this “trying-to-do-a-startup” thing is that you don’t fail in a noisy crash-boom-bang kind of way. My quiet non-productivity was really failure but at a much slower rate. It is easy to have the illusion that web surfing or reading articles about startups is actually productive. Lusting for the success perpetuates the fantasy of winning the Web 2.0 lottery jackpot.
I am going to officially shut down this activity. I am not sure if I would return to it or not eventually. If you catch me talking about Web 2.0 startups, please give me a hard smack to the face.
Time to do something fun for a change.
