Its fair to say, most of the recommended practices, were applied both by every single successful entrepreneur but also every founder who saw their startup fail.
The problem of these types of recommendations, like work hard, have self-confidence, think independently, is that they are condition necessary but not sufficient for startup success.
It's similar to recommendations on how to make a cake: Make sure the eggs are fresh, measure well the amount of sugar and the oven temperature. None of that will guarantee a prize winning cake:-)
A great piece of advice for founders would be on how to found a startup, and despite consuming 30 millions dollars, still manage to find a buyer willing to pay 43 million dollars for the business. The explanation of those details could provide the business acumen, insight and experience many young founders require.
Certainly all, successful and less successful founders, are focused, working hard, and thinking independently. Otherwise they would not be startup founders.
"In 2005, at age 19,[9] Altman co-founded and became CEO of Loopt,[10] a location-based social networking mobile application. After raising more than $30M in venture capital, Loopt was shut down in 2012 after failing to get traction. It was acquired by the Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million."
> "In 2005, at age 19,[9] Altman co-founded and became CEO of Loopt,[10] a location-based social networking mobile application. After raising more than $30M in venture capital, Loopt was shut down in 2012 after failing to get traction. It was acquired by the Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million."
What a great success...create tons of hype, run the company into the ground and offload overpriced equity onto a bigger fool. The American dream.
No wonder he likes Musk so much. It's basically the same modus operandi.
Title suggestion for next blog-post:
"How to fail upwards" also
"How to play poker with chips payed for with teachers pensions funds"
"No wonder he likes Musk so much. It's basically the same modus operandi."
Both SpaceX and Tesla got helluva lot of traction. The US now depends on the Falcon/Dragon combo to get American astronauts into the orbit, a task which Boeing so far failed to accomplish. And the Ukrainian artillery is pounding Russian targets to pulp with use of Starlink
How this is basically the same as Loopt, I cannot see.
Musk has been at the helm of Tesla for 20 years and in that timeframe he didn't even manage to get to 1% of total vehicles sold globally. In FY21 Tesla still accounted for 0.9% of vehicles sold globally. And it was a slow year for the global auto industry.
That's basically after billions of tax breaks and subsidies at the County, State and Federal level, which were showered on Tesla during the last 20 years, not even mentioning the blind eye that regulators turned on Tesla and Musk personally because they all bought into the narrative that he was Phoney Stark. Again not even 1% in 20 years.
SpaceX is totally dependant upon the goodwill of taxpayers, the moment they lose interest in space, then down goes SpaceX.
The only traction that a person anchored in reality sees is the cult of personality and techo-utopianism that mr. Musk managed to create around himself.
Your space argument is extremely misleading. Space industry in general is dependent on government orders, this is not a unique problem of SpaceX / Musk. How long do you think that Boeing or Morton Thiokol space facilities would survive if the US space program were shuttered?
Unless you consider the entire space activity of humanity a kind of cult/scam/hype, you have to admit that SpaceX technology is competitive.
Couple of interesting bits: So Sequoia Capital had done a 20 million series B into Green Dot Corporation ( now GreenDotBank ) followed by a private equity investment according to public records. By the acquisition time the initial funding of Green Dot was recorded as total of 33 million dollars.
Now it happens Sequoia Capital was also a VC for Loopt, and had put at least 17 million dollars into Loopt, also according to public records.
The deal was 43 million in cash! including 10 million dollars for employee retention of Loopt employees.
Now such a good deal, is what I call the definition of success. And how to close one of these would be a blog worth writing...
The problem of these types of recommendations, like work hard, have self-confidence, think independently, is that they are condition necessary but not sufficient for startup success.
It's similar to recommendations on how to make a cake: Make sure the eggs are fresh, measure well the amount of sugar and the oven temperature. None of that will guarantee a prize winning cake:-)
A great piece of advice for founders would be on how to found a startup, and despite consuming 30 millions dollars, still manage to find a buyer willing to pay 43 million dollars for the business. The explanation of those details could provide the business acumen, insight and experience many young founders require.
Certainly all, successful and less successful founders, are focused, working hard, and thinking independently. Otherwise they would not be startup founders.
"In 2005, at age 19,[9] Altman co-founded and became CEO of Loopt,[10] a location-based social networking mobile application. After raising more than $30M in venture capital, Loopt was shut down in 2012 after failing to get traction. It was acquired by the Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman