Why making startups is hard: three principles
09/10 - startup life - 4 min
Making startups is hard.
Of course it is, otherwise we’d all be doing our grocery shopping in helicopters or on yachts.
But why is it so hard?
No, it’s not because “the system wants us poor” (conspiracy theorists, this article isn’t for you).
There are many reasons, and I won’t list them all here, but there are three basic principles that govern this ecosystem and stop you from succeeding.
Before we continue, sit down.
You’re about to get hit by a truckload of reality, and it’s not going to be pretty (especially for your ego).
Ready? Let’s go.
First principle:
the ideas that will likely come to your mind are the ones with the least potential and the hardest to execute,
the ideas that will not come to your mind are the ones with the most potential and the highest chance of success.
By this I mean that we’re eight billion people, each with our own problems and a thinking brain, so it’s very likely that someone else already had your same idea (I’ve talked about this here: )
and the more obvious your idea is, the more people will try to execute it, increasing competition and lowering your chances of success.
On the other hand, the less obvious an idea is, the fewer competitors there will be, but it’s also almost impossible that you will be the one to come up with it.
A perfect example is Airbnb. When it was born, it sounded insane: “Let strangers sleep in my house? Never.”
And yet, that’s exactly why no one else thought of it, and why there was a massive market gap waiting to be filled.
Second principle:
the ideas that are easy to build will be the hardest to sell,
the ideas that are hard to build will be the easiest to sell.
This principle focuses on the technical difficulty of a product.
If something is easy to make, many will try, increasing competition and lowering your odds of success.
But what happens if the product is hard to build and the problem is obvious, like a cure for cancer? Things change.
You move from post-launch competition, that is, marketing campaigns, billboards, commercials, to pre-launch competition, focused on research and development, where thousands of research centers fight it out with test tubes and lab results.
From that battle, only one winner emerges, the first to find the cure.
The rest are forgotten.
And that winner won’t need massive ad campaigns or million-dollar TV spots, the product will sell itself.
If tomorrow a big pharma company discovered the cure for cancer, do you think they’d need to spend even a dollar on marketing?
The problem? It’s very unlikely that you will be the winner.
Third principle:
everything is necessary,
nothing is sufficient.
This principle highlights the role of chance.
Hold on a second. Before we move on, let’s pause on this terminology.
Something is called necessary when its negation implies the negation of something else.
For example, having tickets to the game is a necessary condition to see it live. Without them, you can’t get in.
Something is called sufficient when its affirmation implies something else.
For example, going to the game is a sufficient condition to say you bought the tickets.
Now, when it comes to startups, this means that all the tools available in this ecosystem (books, articles, incubators, accelerators, VCs, agile methods, business model canvas, this blog 😊) are necessary.
Without them, you can’t succeed, or at least your chances drop dramatically.
But none of them can guarantee it. Not even all of them together.
The only factor that can is luck.
You might have a product that isn’t great, a team that’s a total mess, and you might have ignored every signal from the market, yet still succeed.
- Maybe because you nailed the timing.
- Maybe because you shook the right hands.
- Or maybe because you stumbled upon a more hidden idea.
The only problem? You can’t control luck. So stop worrying about it.
What you can control is everything else — how hard you work, how well you know your market, how much you learn from your mistakes, and how fast you adapt. And that’s where the real game is played.
Good luck and be brave
Author: Marco Carabelli
Based on personal thoughts