Hi Waseem, Nice article. Regarding your advice on focusing on hair-on-fire problems- I find this a bit confusing. If you look at most of the recent successes, they don't seem to be solving hair-on-fire problems at least at the beginning. Isn't it true about Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Stripe, Robinhood, etc? These companies provided better alternatives that customers were not even asking for. In other words, their success came from anticipating future problems and addressing them better. Do you agree?
Yes, they solved problems better— but the problems they solved were (largely) hair-on-fire problems: It's impossible for my online business to accept payments. Search results are terrible. It's impossible to host video online in a painless way, etc.
All of these problems are *important* problems.
I agree that the "hair on fire" requirement breaks down more when it comes to consumer businesses, and especially new-market consumer businesses: no one had their hair on fire because they couldn't send out 140-character messages to people.
It is easy to say that in retrospect. In 2005, I don't think anybody's hair was on fire because they couldn't host videos. In 2009, there were many options including PayPal to accept payments, of course, there were pain points. Stripe didn't get traction for a couple of years, probably for the same reason. The distinction of b2b Vs b2c is important. At least, the formula for b2c seems to be that you need to identify some kind of need or problem for a small niche market, that is growing year over year and position yourself to dominate that market. Also, you can solve a small problem for a large number of people to be successful instead of solving a big thorny problem.
Suppose you have the idea and potential, but not confident to it , may be due to the thought of too much hard work or just because you don't think you can/should do it. What to do?
I know it sounds more like a motivation problem but I know a lot of people reading it, have the same problem.
In my humble opinion, if you're afraid of too much hard work, don't do it. And if you think you shouldn't do it, don't do it. But if you're unsure you've got what it takes and you'll be able to pull it off, then know that you do and you will if you work hard, persist, inspect, and adapt.
'' if you’re solving problem #10 for someone, you’re in trouble.'' That's true and we can see recently many startups have been closed just because of this reason.
Hi Waseem. Interesting article - as I understand you currently hire your own finance experts acting as CFO's instead of building a network of freelancers. Why did you decide to go this path instead of the freelancing one? Is it due to the time needed to ramp up with the software you are using internally or to decrease the risk of talents moving to other opportunities?
Because of how we do the work that we do, we have strong feelings about exactly what gets done when—there's a type of control needed over the process that I think doesn't lend itself well to the freelancing path. In particular, the team needs to do a good job every time but the team also needs to do it *Pilot's way* every time so that we're consistently high-quality as we scale.
I think not super-intertwined in the sense that your lawyer is probably at a totally different firm than your accountant, though these things do interact with one another.
Hi Waseem, Nice article. Regarding your advice on focusing on hair-on-fire problems- I find this a bit confusing. If you look at most of the recent successes, they don't seem to be solving hair-on-fire problems at least at the beginning. Isn't it true about Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Stripe, Robinhood, etc? These companies provided better alternatives that customers were not even asking for. In other words, their success came from anticipating future problems and addressing them better. Do you agree?
I only sort of agree with you.
Yes, they solved problems better— but the problems they solved were (largely) hair-on-fire problems: It's impossible for my online business to accept payments. Search results are terrible. It's impossible to host video online in a painless way, etc.
All of these problems are *important* problems.
I agree that the "hair on fire" requirement breaks down more when it comes to consumer businesses, and especially new-market consumer businesses: no one had their hair on fire because they couldn't send out 140-character messages to people.
It is easy to say that in retrospect. In 2005, I don't think anybody's hair was on fire because they couldn't host videos. In 2009, there were many options including PayPal to accept payments, of course, there were pain points. Stripe didn't get traction for a couple of years, probably for the same reason. The distinction of b2b Vs b2c is important. At least, the formula for b2c seems to be that you need to identify some kind of need or problem for a small niche market, that is growing year over year and position yourself to dominate that market. Also, you can solve a small problem for a large number of people to be successful instead of solving a big thorny problem.
Suppose you have the idea and potential, but not confident to it , may be due to the thought of too much hard work or just because you don't think you can/should do it. What to do?
I know it sounds more like a motivation problem but I know a lot of people reading it, have the same problem.
In my humble opinion, if you're afraid of too much hard work, don't do it. And if you think you shouldn't do it, don't do it. But if you're unsure you've got what it takes and you'll be able to pull it off, then know that you do and you will if you work hard, persist, inspect, and adapt.
Hi Waseem. Interesting article.
'' if you’re solving problem #10 for someone, you’re in trouble.'' That's true and we can see recently many startups have been closed just because of this reason.
Hi Waseem. Interesting article - as I understand you currently hire your own finance experts acting as CFO's instead of building a network of freelancers. Why did you decide to go this path instead of the freelancing one? Is it due to the time needed to ramp up with the software you are using internally or to decrease the risk of talents moving to other opportunities?
Because of how we do the work that we do, we have strong feelings about exactly what gets done when—there's a type of control needed over the process that I think doesn't lend itself well to the freelancing path. In particular, the team needs to do a good job every time but the team also needs to do it *Pilot's way* every time so that we're consistently high-quality as we scale.
Makes total sense. I guess the challenge will be how fast will you be able to scale your team when demand surges without compromising quality.
Hi Waseem! Really enjoyed your advice on B2B startups. In your experience, how entwined are accounting and legal management in a company?
I think not super-intertwined in the sense that your lawyer is probably at a totally different firm than your accountant, though these things do interact with one another.
And how do you facilitate that in Pilot? It's been a drag for our team to work with an accounting team/software that compliments legal decisions.
It's tough—we've assembled a collection of partners we know/like/trust that we refer out to.