Once again, you hit the nail on the head. For someone who's been around this space a bit longer than you, it's yet another reminder that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In the late 90s the Valley lured hordes of people in search of get-rich-quick opportunities (yours truly included), valuations were insanely out of sync with any realizable value, VCs shortcut the due diligence process to avoid missing out on the next big thing ...and everyone thought the party would continue for ever. The silver lining, if there is one, is that the market forces rationality on irrational investors and reverts to real value-seeking. We see proof of this in the fewer companies that emerge from bear markets and go on to greater heights.
Those of us who grew up in Silicon Valley have graduated from this awhile ago. From experience, takes about 10 years for new folks to come to the same conclusions as you have, Benn https://segah.me/post/on-growing-up-in-silicon-valley/
So, why not hack the system? You’re a data startup. Why don’t we find a better metric to measure our success by, and encourage people to start using that? Eric Ries is doing it for public companies with LTSE. It is harder and messier to do that for startups, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try…
Ironically, I think is actually one of the problems with Silicon Valley already - fundraising numbers and market caps provide an easy way to quantify success. There's a single, empirical ruler on which you can weigh the whole industry. In other fields, that's not so easy.
That doesn't mean that metric is a good one (and I clearly don't think it is). But the challenge is harder than create a scale for success; you have to dismantle the default one first.
Huh. I don’t think so. I have found it far easier to “disrupt” an existing measure by incubating an alternative community, instead of critiquing the existing one head-on. #MoneyBall
I think that's what I mean? While there's not really a "community" around measuring startup and career success by VC numbers, there's definitely a well-established belief hierarchy around it. While subverting that through some counterculture type of approach might be easier than telling everyone to just forget the old thing (which didn't go so well for the "gross national happiness" movement's efforts to replace GDP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness), it seems like a much steeper climb in tech because such a quantitative hierarchy is already in place.
Okay, sure. That’s standard Geoffrey Moore “Crossing the Chasm.” We have to create a metric that is 5x to 10x better, which is hard because the existing financial metrics are already darn good proxies for internal company cohesion and external value created.
Yet you and I both believe it must be possible to do way better. Maybe we should do a BOF at Coalesce 2022 to brainstorm some options…
Once again, you hit the nail on the head. For someone who's been around this space a bit longer than you, it's yet another reminder that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In the late 90s the Valley lured hordes of people in search of get-rich-quick opportunities (yours truly included), valuations were insanely out of sync with any realizable value, VCs shortcut the due diligence process to avoid missing out on the next big thing ...and everyone thought the party would continue for ever. The silver lining, if there is one, is that the market forces rationality on irrational investors and reverts to real value-seeking. We see proof of this in the fewer companies that emerge from bear markets and go on to greater heights.
A timely reminder to focus on creating value for your user, and have little fun while you’re at it.
Timely insights and timeless advice.
Well spoken.
Those of us who grew up in Silicon Valley have graduated from this awhile ago. From experience, takes about 10 years for new folks to come to the same conclusions as you have, Benn https://segah.me/post/on-growing-up-in-silicon-valley/
So, why not hack the system? You’re a data startup. Why don’t we find a better metric to measure our success by, and encourage people to start using that? Eric Ries is doing it for public companies with LTSE. It is harder and messier to do that for startups, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try…
Ironically, I think is actually one of the problems with Silicon Valley already - fundraising numbers and market caps provide an easy way to quantify success. There's a single, empirical ruler on which you can weigh the whole industry. In other fields, that's not so easy.
That doesn't mean that metric is a good one (and I clearly don't think it is). But the challenge is harder than create a scale for success; you have to dismantle the default one first.
Huh. I don’t think so. I have found it far easier to “disrupt” an existing measure by incubating an alternative community, instead of critiquing the existing one head-on. #MoneyBall
I think that's what I mean? While there's not really a "community" around measuring startup and career success by VC numbers, there's definitely a well-established belief hierarchy around it. While subverting that through some counterculture type of approach might be easier than telling everyone to just forget the old thing (which didn't go so well for the "gross national happiness" movement's efforts to replace GDP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness), it seems like a much steeper climb in tech because such a quantitative hierarchy is already in place.
Okay, sure. That’s standard Geoffrey Moore “Crossing the Chasm.” We have to create a metric that is 5x to 10x better, which is hard because the existing financial metrics are already darn good proxies for internal company cohesion and external value created.
Yet you and I both believe it must be possible to do way better. Maybe we should do a BOF at Coalesce 2022 to brainstorm some options…
"During this talk, we'll tell you why you should be doing something other than paying attention to this talk..."
I’m done with sermons. Let’s run a workshop :-)