Simple Entrepreneur

Je viens enfin de terminer le livre de Jessica Livingston (une des fondatrices de YCombinator). Il est vrai que Founders at work n’est pas un livre comme les autres, puisqu’il s’agit d’un recueil d’interviews de créateurs de startups.  Grâce à ce livre, il est ainsi possible d’en savoir un peu plus sur le parcours d’une trentaine d’entrepreneurs à l’origine d’Apple, Hotmail, 37Signals, Blogger, Craigslist, Flickr, …

Intitulé Stories of Startups’ Early Days, ce livre de presque 500 pages s’intéresse surtout aux débuts mouvementés, hasardeux ou difficiles (au choix) de ces startups. Cela n’a rien à voir la plupart du temps avec les one-night success stories que la presse essaient généralement de nous vendre. Et chaque entrepreneur interviewé est invité à prodiguer des conseils pour ceux qui voudraient se lancer dans l’aventure à leur tour.

Ce livre devrait être obligatoire dans tous les nouveaux cursus axés sur l’entreprenariat qui sont apparus ces dernières années dans les écoles de commerce ou d’ingénieurs. La richesse des interviews, le partage d’expérience avec des entrepreneurs qui ont été confrontés à de réelles difficultés et la diversité des sociétés étudiées (toutes ne datent pas uniquement de l’ère web 2.0) en font un véritable must-have.

Après lecture, et sans trop rentrer dans les détails, on remarque que beaucoup d’entrepreneurs ont déjà créé plusieurs boites avant, comme par exemple Max Levchin de Paypal qui avait monté trois sociétés pendant sa scolarité. Certains ont également rencontrés des problèmes avec les sociétés de Capital Risque qui les avaient financées. D’autres ont commencé à travailler sur un produit avant de basculer sur autre chose qui n’avait plus grand-chose à voir avec l’idée initiale.

Ce livre est parsemé de gemmes. J’ai par exemple été bluffé par l’histoire de Steve Wozniak qui est un véritable passionné. On y découvre aussi qu’Apple n’a jamais vraiment commencé dans un garage et que les relations avec Steve Jobs étaient un peu particulières. Dans un autre genre, Charles Geschke, le fondateur d’Adobe, nous fait revivre les tous débuts de la Silicon Valley. L’histoire d’Evan Williams est aussi une leçon incroyable de persévérance et de courage.

Non, vraiment, vous ne pourrez pas être déçu en lisant Founders at work. Je vous recommande vivement son achat. Pour vous donner l’eau à la bouche, voici d’ailleurs une petite série de citations que j’ai notées lors de ma lecture (pour ceux qui voudraient en savoir plus, il y a également ce blog en anglais qui a rédigé des versions synthétiques de chaque interview) :

Paul Graham

The less energy people expend on performance, the more they expend on appearances to compensate.

Jessica Livingston

They all were determined to build things that worked. In fact, I’d say determination is the single most important quality in a startup founder. If the founders I spoke with were superhuman in any way, it was in their perseverance.

Starting a startup is a process of trial and error. What guided the founders through this process was their empathy for the users. They never lost sight of making things that people would want.

Max Levchin (Paypal)

I think the hallmark of a really good entrepreneur is that you’re not really going to build one specific company. The goal - at least the way I think about entrepreneurship - is you realize one day that you can’t really work for anyone else. You have to start your own thing. It almost doesn’t matter what that thing is. We had six different business plan changes, and then the last one was Paypal.

Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail)

Don’t try to change user behaviour dramatically. If you are expecting people to dramatically change the way they do things, it’s not going to happen. Try to make it such it’s a small change, yet an important one.

Steve Wozniak (Apple)

So it starts with a huge dedication. You start with a lot of motives and values and who you are going to be in life. You start with those very early - some of mine even go back to elementary school. But some of these things you want so badly in life that, when the doors opens, you are going to get there.

All the best things that I did at Apple cam from (a) not having money, and (b) not having done it before, ever. Every single thing that we came out with that was really great, I’d never once done that thing in my life.

Joe Kraus (Excite)

The international things were rarely pivotal in those early days, but the being persistent, following-your-nose thing made a big difference. The chain of events that led our funding had no connection. You write them all down in a line and you wonder how these all led to each other, but the chain was very direct from step to step.

No, it was never clear that we were on to something huge. You never know anything. The hardest part in a startup is that you wake up one morning, and you feel great about the day, and you think, “We’re kicking ass.” And then you wake up the next morning, and you think “we’re dead.” And literally nothing’s changed. You haven’t made some big deal, you haven’t sold something new. Maybe you wrote a few lines of code over the course of that last day. Maybe you had some conversations with people, but nothing’s really moved.

I see way too many people give up in the startup world. They just give up too easily. Recruiting is a classic example. I don’t even hear the first “no” that somebody says. When they says, “No, I’m not interested,” I think, “Now it’s a real challenge. Now’s when the tough part begins.” It’s hard to identify talent, but great people don’t look for jobs, great people are sold on jobs. And if they’re sold, they’re going to say no at first. You have to win them over.

So I guess the last lesson is that people make all difference in the world. Everybody says that people matter most, but boy, I’ve never worked with a finer group of people. They just were inspired.

Dan Bricklin (Software Arts)

Bob and I always wanted to found a business together. We both had parents who were entrepreneurs, so the idea of running your own business was a normal thing. There are people who come from backgrounds where they’re used to working for a company, and they couldn’t dream of doing it themselves and not having that safety net. When your parents and family are entrepreneurs, you know it’s nothing special. I worked at big businesses and I worked at small businesses beforehand, so the idea of starting your own business was just a normal thing.

Mitchell Kapor (Lotus Development)

It’s just wrong, but the fact is when the VCs do their deals and they do the paperwork, they take advantage of entrepreneurs who haven’t been through this before. They do things on terms that favor them in a way that really can’t be justified - that take advantage of their ignorance. It’s not a good way to do business.

Arthur van Hoff (Marimba)

If you have the energy to do it, then you should try it yourself. But you do need to have the ability to form a team around you with good people. Talent attracts talent.

Mike Ramsay (TiVo)

Neither of these guys were thinking about, “How much money do we make? Is the market ready?” They certainly weren’t thinking about, “Are they going to violate copyrights or get sued?” or all that stuff that we got threatened with. They just thought, “Here’s a couple of people that have a fascinating idea. Who knows if it’s going to work or not, but we’ll give them some money and see what happens.”

All the resources they have in the world, all the billions of dollars, can’t stop people being creative. There are a lot of companies who, in one way or another, have changed the rules of the game for the better. It’s just going to happen.

Paul Graham (Viaweb)

Before Viaweb we had a startup called Artix. We were going to put art galleries online. The problem was, art galleries didn’t want to be online. They still don’t want to be online. We spent a long time trying to convince these people to use something they didn’t want before we had the idea that maybe we should make something people actually did want.

People start startups to get rich, but what keeps them going day to day is the fear of failure. You’ve said, “Ok, I’m starting this startups and I’m going to get all the users and be successful, ” and once you’ve told everybody that’s what you’re doing, if you fail you’ll look like a fool.

So when we did sell the thing finally to Yahoo, in the eyes of the world, because we got bought, we were a success. Arguably we were already a success, since we had more online stores than anybody else. But getting bought kind of locked that in. At that point you would think someone would be thinking “Wow, this is great. I’m rich. I can go buy everything I want.” But all I was thinking was, “Thank God we didn’t fail.”

Joshua Schachter (Delicious)

I was always very careful (not anymore, because the guys that I work with are better programmers) to structure de code - each chunk of code wasn’t larger than the screen - such that I could come in and look at it, figure out what I’m doing, do it, and be done for the day in 15 minutes. So if I could get one thing done a day, I was happy. A lot of stuff, if I could spend more time, I did, but as long as I could get one or two things done a week total, if I didn’t have time, I didn’t have time.
So ti moved pretty slowly. I worked on it for years.

My father was the consumer advocate for the Long Island Railroad and was in the newspaper all the time, so I got training sort of that way. When this stuff started happening, I knew that you have x messages and when you talk to the press, any question they ask is answered with one of the messages.

Mark Fletcher (ONElist, Bloglines)

Startups are just so amazingly fun; they are so amazingly stressful. Whether you are an engineer or whether you are a founder, at least for me, it takes every emotion you’ve got and multiplies it 100-fold. Higher highs, lower lows than any other work experience. A startup is all-encompassing, so do it when you are young and when you don’t have a family because you’ll lose it all.

Brewster Kahle (WAIS, Internet Archice, Alexa Internet)

Most people have a very difficult time imaging something they can’t see at least a demonstration of. If you can get a demonstration -or, worst case, a video - it communicates an idea better than hand-waving for hours. So get to a demo quickly.

Charles Geschke (Adobe Systems)

If you aren’t passionate about what you are going to do, don’t do it. Work smart and not long, because you need to preserve all of your life, not just your work life.

Stephen Kaufer (TripAdvisor)

Be wary of distractions, but if you’re lightning-focused one just one thing and aren’t willing to consider others, you probably don’t have the flexibility to make it when things don’t go according to plan. That’s one truism: things won’t go according to plan.

At the earlier stages of the company, when you’re actually out trying to get some customers, do whatever the hell the customer wants. If they’re going to pay you, the customer is right. Because you need that initial money. You need that customer on the list to go get the next one. If you have to give away whatever you’re doing, give it away. Get the customer. Make them into a reference account. Make that customer into the person that sings your praises the loudest, and really uses your product or service.

On the Web, it’s particularly easy to try something and get feedback. It if doesn’t work, drop it.

It’s the old adage: if we’re not failing at something on a regular basis, we’re just no trying hard enough.

Most recruiters don’t work that way, don’t think that way. Recruiters want to know, “What requirements do you need in the job?” My answer is, I want passion. I want people that really care about doing a great job. It’s just a different mindset. That’s software, that’s customer acquisition, that’s branding, that’s PR. It’s really not in any one department. It’s an attitude. And it makes a company a hell of a lot more interesting to work at.

James Hong (HOT or NOT)

Entrepreneurs want to make money. It’s not that they do it for the money, but they want to make money. Because money is the measuring stick; it’s how they know if they’ve won or not. And I think a lot of what drives entrepreneurs is the kind of legacy they are going to leave. They wan ti make a mark in the world and feel like their life mattered. Entrepreneurs are the kind of people who love ideas and want to build thinks, and add value to the world.

The hardest decision you make as an entrepreneur is not one that you make while you’re building the company. For me, the hardest decision was not about solving the hosting issues and all that. It was the one I made years before HOT or NOT even existed. When I said, “I’m going to be an entrepreneur,” what I really was saying was, “I’m going to forgo the normal, safe route, where there’s a clear path. I’m going to take a higher risk and go for a higher reward.”

One, do it while you’re young.
Two, there’s no right path. There is no one plan that fits every business; you have to figure it out yourself. There is no magic formula.
Three, even if you raise money, spend it as if it’s your own and you have none. Your organization has got to remain smart and lean. Be cheap. There’s no shame in being cheap. I still fly coach.
Four, there’s no such thing as easy as entrepreneurship. It’s going to be painful, it’s going to be emotionally unstable, you’re going to fell insecure. If you’re not already bipolar, you will feel like you are.

James Currier (Tickle)

That it is incredibly painful and it will take over your life. If you care about it and if you have any chance of succeeding, you will stop being present for the softer things in life like family, friends, or dating life. And when you are there with them, you’re not really there with them; you’re thinking about this thing because you’re creating it, and it take that amount of passion to make it work.

Mena Trott (Six Apart)

Don’t apologize for wanting to be a company. You see so many people who say, “Oh, we won’t charge; things should be free.” It’s like you don’t think you’re worth being paid for your time.

There’s room to have more than one software doing that. I don’t think people realize that. They see it as an all-or-none game. I think it’s really important to realize that you are building a market, and you have to build for the most number of people and not be so worried about counting. It’s not as much as numbers game as much as innovation.

Bob Davis (Lycos)

I think the life of an entrepreneur is a life of setbacks, challenges, disappointments, and failures. It’s not how you celebrate the successes, it’s how you overcome the adversity and the hardship that determines how the business succeeds.

Ron Gruner (Alliant Computer Systems, Shareholder.com)

I went to an executive conference several years ago in New York. One of the most interesting sessions had about six chief executives, all of whom were very successful, and the moderator asked, “If you could describe in one word the key to success for a company, what would that word be?” Very few answered in one word. Some of them said integrity, or communications, and things like that. The last person to talk was Michael Dell, and he said one simple word: persistence.

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