This is a brilliant account. Thanks Suril - not enough is said about these “middling” outcomes. The figmas of the world seem to get the most attention - that’s understandable. But your story is one of scoring a very good result from a challenging set of circumstances that many startups might find themselves in
I’m going to share this on with quite a few people I know that will really benefit. You’ve shown “the art of the possible”!
"Each week, YC partners pulled us into “group office hours” with five other startups to grill us on customer traction. These sessions lit a fire. Terrified of being caught with our pants down in front of our peers, we sprinted seven days a week to sell our product to whomever would listen.
…
Even without a clear grasp of what problem we were solving and for whom, we began selling."
How common of a phenomenon was this sort of peer pressure-driven prioritization in your YC batch? How would you approach those office hours (and YC in general) differently if you were to do it again?
Thanks Samir! Hard to generalize for other YC founders, but I will say assembling the top x% of startups from around the world in a room creates enormous motivation and urgency. These are all high achieving people who like to learn from, challenge, and help others in pursuit of excellence. Part of YC's magic is bringing these folks together during the most formative time of company building. This reminds me of Bollettieri in tennis, an individual sport, who pioneered a group living & coaching facility in Florida for teens. His academy's approach produced an outsized number of legends, including Agassi, Becker, the Williams sisters, Roddick, Sharapova, etc.
That's all to say the ethos of YC and group office hours is wonderful -- I wouldn't change it. What I might do differently is be singularly focused on my company's performance on an absolute basis each week / push away any urge to monitor relative progress vs. others. I'd only look to my peers for learning, problem solving, inspiration, etc. but let intrinsic factors (customer feedback, launching features, etc.) drive performance goals week-to-week.
So in the end they did not manage to find product-market fit and did not get to profitability but still managed to return some funds to the investors via acquisition.
Interesting article as I never thought about it from this perspective. I would be curious what then actualy happened to the IP. Whas it actualy used or thrown away? Sometimes it's easier to build some features from scratch rather than integrating an existing product with all of it's tech debt into whatever you are building. Saw this issue first hand.
I guess this is quite the hard lesson that could tell you - you need a VERY long runway for problem discovery & don't rush into building a company".
Then on the other hand you could see the other companies that suvived (surviver bias?) and say that you should start to discover the problem later or learn how to discover problems?
What % of stumbling upon the problem is due to pure luck (eg. just happend to be interested in the right thing at the right time, meeting the right person)?
Hey Saso - Thanks for the comment. Savvy's IP is being integrated into the acquirer's solution (you can read more in the press release linked above). To your point, acquirers typically assess whether it makes more sense to build de novo vs. acquire a product. Having differentiated, well-architected technology is an advantage. This was an important part of due diligence.
On your second question, while luck can certainly contribute to discovering a problem, I think the best startups / founders are exceptional at problem-seeking. They learn how to look for compelling problems: focus on the right people (customers, not "experts"), ask probing questions, question assumptions, limit bias in their research, and develop a sense for problem depth. This disciplined problem orientation requires no luck and is different than what you might expect a "technologist" to do, which is to imagine a unique future world and build a great technology solution. I'd focus on problems, not solutions.
I think it is still worth emphasising that to truly discover if a problem realy worth solving takes a lot of time and good chunk of funds on its own (unless you strike lucky on the first try). Especialy if you want to do it full time and go deep. Of course there would be variation in the seed funding needed depending on the industry.
And also I would say luck plays a bigger role than we realise and I agree that the ony thng we can do is be systematic and persistent at it while realising that you don't know when you'll strike the right thing.
In any case, glad that you shared this story. I think the internet is too ful of unicorn company stories and most people will not strike that big. Most will likely need to sort it out like you guys did or have a worse situation. It is helpful to see how others handled it.
As an early career person
Who aspires to be a founder one day
This was very eye opening!!
Thanks for sharing your journey @suril. Love the transparency. Lots to think about and would love to chat. LinkedIn.com/jay-sen
oops wrong bio in case you wanted it: www.linkedin.com/in/jay-sen/
This is a brilliant account. Thanks Suril - not enough is said about these “middling” outcomes. The figmas of the world seem to get the most attention - that’s understandable. But your story is one of scoring a very good result from a challenging set of circumstances that many startups might find themselves in
I’m going to share this on with quite a few people I know that will really benefit. You’ve shown “the art of the possible”!
Great retro!
"Each week, YC partners pulled us into “group office hours” with five other startups to grill us on customer traction. These sessions lit a fire. Terrified of being caught with our pants down in front of our peers, we sprinted seven days a week to sell our product to whomever would listen.
…
Even without a clear grasp of what problem we were solving and for whom, we began selling."
How common of a phenomenon was this sort of peer pressure-driven prioritization in your YC batch? How would you approach those office hours (and YC in general) differently if you were to do it again?
Thanks Samir! Hard to generalize for other YC founders, but I will say assembling the top x% of startups from around the world in a room creates enormous motivation and urgency. These are all high achieving people who like to learn from, challenge, and help others in pursuit of excellence. Part of YC's magic is bringing these folks together during the most formative time of company building. This reminds me of Bollettieri in tennis, an individual sport, who pioneered a group living & coaching facility in Florida for teens. His academy's approach produced an outsized number of legends, including Agassi, Becker, the Williams sisters, Roddick, Sharapova, etc.
That's all to say the ethos of YC and group office hours is wonderful -- I wouldn't change it. What I might do differently is be singularly focused on my company's performance on an absolute basis each week / push away any urge to monitor relative progress vs. others. I'd only look to my peers for learning, problem solving, inspiration, etc. but let intrinsic factors (customer feedback, launching features, etc.) drive performance goals week-to-week.
So in the end they did not manage to find product-market fit and did not get to profitability but still managed to return some funds to the investors via acquisition.
Interesting article as I never thought about it from this perspective. I would be curious what then actualy happened to the IP. Whas it actualy used or thrown away? Sometimes it's easier to build some features from scratch rather than integrating an existing product with all of it's tech debt into whatever you are building. Saw this issue first hand.
I guess this is quite the hard lesson that could tell you - you need a VERY long runway for problem discovery & don't rush into building a company".
Then on the other hand you could see the other companies that suvived (surviver bias?) and say that you should start to discover the problem later or learn how to discover problems?
What % of stumbling upon the problem is due to pure luck (eg. just happend to be interested in the right thing at the right time, meeting the right person)?
Hey Saso - Thanks for the comment. Savvy's IP is being integrated into the acquirer's solution (you can read more in the press release linked above). To your point, acquirers typically assess whether it makes more sense to build de novo vs. acquire a product. Having differentiated, well-architected technology is an advantage. This was an important part of due diligence.
On your second question, while luck can certainly contribute to discovering a problem, I think the best startups / founders are exceptional at problem-seeking. They learn how to look for compelling problems: focus on the right people (customers, not "experts"), ask probing questions, question assumptions, limit bias in their research, and develop a sense for problem depth. This disciplined problem orientation requires no luck and is different than what you might expect a "technologist" to do, which is to imagine a unique future world and build a great technology solution. I'd focus on problems, not solutions.
I think it is still worth emphasising that to truly discover if a problem realy worth solving takes a lot of time and good chunk of funds on its own (unless you strike lucky on the first try). Especialy if you want to do it full time and go deep. Of course there would be variation in the seed funding needed depending on the industry.
And also I would say luck plays a bigger role than we realise and I agree that the ony thng we can do is be systematic and persistent at it while realising that you don't know when you'll strike the right thing.
In any case, glad that you shared this story. I think the internet is too ful of unicorn company stories and most people will not strike that big. Most will likely need to sort it out like you guys did or have a worse situation. It is helpful to see how others handled it.