There’s an interesting rant on Hackernews about why a start-up succeeds or fails. In short, the reality is that the entrepreneur has no idea why they succeed or fail.

Here’s an excerpt:

“But honestly – startup founders literally have no idea why things take off and they have no idea why they win. That’s why they have to keep pivoting – it increases their luck surface area and their ability to gain traction – after which they simply must hold on tight while surfing the wave.

  • YouTube was a dating site – didn’t work – pivot – video traction – venture up – ride.
  • PayPal was a Palm Pilot app – didn’t work – pivot – traction – venture up – ride.
  • Google sold corporate search – didn’t work – pivot – copy PPC from Overture – lever up – traction hits – ride.
  • Instagram – started with a location checking HTML5 app 2 years too early – pivot – copy PicPlz and Hipstamatic – hit traction – lever up – ride.
  • Angry Birds – fail at hitting nearly every game in the past decade – pivot – take a shot at the iPhone – hits traction – lever up – ride.

Of the startups that didn’t pivot – they either skipped the pivot thanks to previous side projects/companies or already had traction – and all they had to do was lever up and ride.

I’m going to make this clear – there is absolutely, positively nothing wrong with this – not at all – it is merely reality and not particularly unfair.”

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Probably, most of us entrepreneurs would agree that  much of the time we dont what’s going to happen and yes virtually all successful start-ups begin by growing oranges and end up selling bannas.

But for me that’s no reason to define us as having no idea about the path to success. A natural path to success with early stage business is recognizing and embracing the need to experiment, test and iterate around basic market assumptions.

The entrepreneur who can do this rapidly and do it using the limited resources available, will have the best chance of winning in the shortest time.  Especially, if she can avoid scaling prematurely and burning through all those resources chasing something nobody wants to pay for.

And as for all that banter around terms like Lean Start-up, Pivot and Iteration, well it’s great but it’s nothing new. Successful entrepreneurs have been doing for ions under the guise of other terms (ask Thomas Edison).

 

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