I have seen so many young entrepreneurs and intelligent, experienced engineers come through the door with “great products that will change the way people and businesses function” and most of them fail. They fail because the mentality towards what a business should be and how it should be run is different now. Years ago when you opened a business you had fixed costs and you hustled each month to cover bills and grow so that you could do more than just cover bills soon. Technology is not an industry, in my opinion, it is a tool that is used to make an industry more efficient and effective… now I know this means that the production of these tools is an industry, but how many companies today really create tools and how many create cool crap that is dead in 6 months?
Investors use terms like “sexy” and “viral” and 22 year old CEOs use buzz terms like scalable, robust and enterprise but there is no meat to anything anyone is saying. No one asks “how do you make money, how quickly, how much, what are your CPCA…” oh and 22 and you are a CEO… really… get over yourself…
The illusion of success, the delusion of being the next Zuckerberg… are we fostering great minds or setting the next generation up for failure and disappointment?
Comment on The Way I Work: Jason Fried of 37signals by David Calabrese, a founder of marketing and SaaS companies.
Jaryl Sim
on 04 Nov 09In my opinion, you can call it whatever you want and still succeed based on the strength of the network you have and how lucky of a person you are.
only
on 04 Nov 0923 year old here. My biz is two years old. We made 400k in profit our first year. So far this year we’ve made 2.3m in profit. Zero funding. I started with less than 1000 in my checking account. Most of my competitors are under 25 and are more successful. So yea, us young guys are killing it. You old farts only see what you want to see. Stop hating.
Mike
on 04 Nov 09I don’t think you fall into the “great minds” category that David was referring to.
Nate Klaiber
on 04 Nov 09I’d like to thank ‘only’, or Anonymous Coward, for only further proving the point in this quote.
GetFreePublicity
on 04 Nov 09The success of a business takes time, passion and knowledge no matter what age you are when you start the business. Technology is only a helping tool.
only
on 04 Nov 09Pardon the grammar in my last post. I am just waking up. I’m am certainly not a great mind, but I run a profitable business. As do my competitors. But really, you old guys only see what you want to see. Your perspective is shaped by the businesses you read about in blogs like Techcrunch, Silicon Valley Insider, 37signals, etc or the businesses being promoted by VC firms. The successful businesses emerging from my generation operate on two principles you OLD guys don’t understand. The first is that any press is bad press. When a successful app is featured on a blog it is copied and the first mover loses market share. Customers don’t read blogs, competitors do. Second, VC is for suckers. Launching a web app is essentially free. Ruby on rails is free. MySQL is free. Ubuntu is free. A crappy shared server is a couple bucks a month. So old guys, 90% of the businesses promoted by blogs and VC’s are laughable. Don’t let them freak you out and don’t use them to make conclusions about the state of the interwebs.
Elixon
on 04 Nov 09But honestly. Is it a common thing in US to ask entrepreneurs what are your “3α-carbomethoxy-4β-(4-chlorophenyl)-N-methylpiperidine”?
merle
on 04 Nov 09Hey only, you seem to have an “old guys” fixation. What’s that all about? If they didn’t exist you wouldn’t have anybody to feel superior too. Wouldn’t that be sad?
Ed Knittel
on 04 Nov 09I’m an old fart and I’m not even close to being as successful as ‘only’. I’d love to know what your business is ‘only’ as I think it would help me learn to be a better business man. What’s your company name or website address? Thanks, man. I appreciate it.
Jared
on 04 Nov 09As I read the last line of the quote I was struck by the similarity to Dean Kamen’s messaging around FIRST robotics.
“Kids who are now growing up in an entirely media-driven culture are really at risk of missing the point. Sports and entertainment are not the cause of our wealth and our success; they’re the result of it.” [1]
It’s strange though… like if we get what we celebrate… “profits and making money” then do we end up with the Wall Street excess and greed? I know Jason F likes to say that growing for the sake of growth is a poor strategy also. So it seems best to couple the make money notion, but stress that it needs to be throttled.
[1] http://www.xconomy.com/2008/01/02/you-get-what-you-celebrate/
David Andersen
on 04 Nov 09Since the dawn of markets, there have been hucksters trying to sell things of questionable value. It’s just more obvious and widespread now because of technology and general affluence.
Anonymous Coward
on 04 Nov 09@ed:
Likely porn.
EH
on 04 Nov 09“any press is bad press?”
OK
Scott Meade
on 04 Nov 09I’m not worried that we’re setting up the next generation for failure. The frustrations that Calabrese has about “sexy” and “viral”, the youth of CEOs, and buzz terms apply to only a sliver of the tens of millions of businesses in the world.
Most business owners I know don’t care who Zuckerberg is of worry if their business model is viral enough. They don’t know what Techcrunch, ReadWriteWeb, or Mashable are – and they don’t care. These business owners have fixed costs and payroll to meet. They have customers to keep happy and a traditional business model.
Don’t read a few tech blogs and get fooled into thinking this is how all investors operate and that “no one” is asking the tried and true traditional questions. Quite the contrary: Almost everyone still asks questions of revenue generation and profitability. (“Inc.”, the genesis of this discussion, definitely asks revenue questions. Their most popular issue is the “Inc. 500” which is based entirely on revenue growth.) The idea that no one is thinking about how to make money is nonsense.
Contrary to popular belief in the tech world, the time tested business models and business planning disciplines are alive and well. We just don’t see it because our hands and eyes are permanently fused to our keyboards and 30” monitors. Call a business mentor or a prominent business leader and ask their opinion. Walk around your neighborhood small businesses or into offices of the largest companies downtown. You’ll see that there is much more to business than what is represented by the few companies that are rock-stars in our small sphere of online web-apps.
Brad
on 04 Nov 09I like the “any press is bad press.” This youngster is on to something (but then again, he could quite easily be a 78 years old geezer just pulling everyone’s leg).
True, very true, no one reads blogs except the direct competition. So why would we disclose our shit to them?
Publicity is liability, he’s got that right. It used to be an asset, but not anymore. That’s how we know that times have, indeed, changed.
Ben Mc
on 04 Nov 09@only – I think everyone is assuming your business is either adult oriented or spam related. Clear the air please.
However, DO NOT knock only’s remark “any press is bad press”. Just ask the Twitter founders. They’ve said time and again that they’ll know they have a strong business when people stop talking about it – when it becomes just a part of our lives.
That being said, he’s right that only competitors read these tech blogs. Think of some great businesses that only made press once they had traction, once they were big. They lived in stealth mode.
Joel Spolsky just put out an article about his slow growth and word of mouth growth. If Bug Tracking software had been all over the news, blogs, press, etc, 10 year ago he may never had been able to grow at the pace he did because everyone in the space would have realized they could sell their own home-brew version and compete.
Anyway…
David Calabrese
on 04 Nov 09First let me say that there are successful young entrepreneurs, however they are the exception not the rule. I worked with over 1000 businesses through the city and their business development council, I currently work with several universities and have been involved with local high school entrepreneurial programs and the majority of the entrepreneurs in today’s age are tech-based entrepreneurs with the belief that they need to build a VC fundable business… So Only, I agree with you here. Don’t EVER build a business to get funded, build a business to be profitable.
Second… I am not that much older than you slick=Only. I started my first company at your age and was successful because I used the “tried and true” business principles to launch and grow the business.
I appreciate all of the comments, however my opinion is not based upon techcrunch, mashable or any other press. I don’t believe press is bad press… I believe any press is good press… after all it is free advertising.
What Only has done is demonstrate that it is a mentality towards business that makes us successful, not luck, but hard and smart work and that is not age or generation exclusive. My comments and my opinion are that the young generation of entrepreneurs, 18 – 25 so we have a frame on what I mean, do not on the average hold the same principles in business that have built successful businesses for generations… because it is so easy and cheap/free to build a webapp and throw something out there hoping it will be the next twitter.
So Only it is good to hear that you are young and get it. I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by people that helped me get it at a young age and I have spent the last few years helping as many of the next group to get it as possible.
Bill
on 04 Nov 09I think I remember reading this post in 1999 :)
Benjamin "balupton" Lupton
on 04 Nov 09“oh and 22 and you are a CEO… really… get over yourself…”
I started programming through advanced classes when I was 10 (1999), and started freelancing professionally at 16 – the same age I started university. I am now 20 with university finishing up allowing myself to focus on the business aspect of life full time. I have read Getting Real which I adored, and have been a long time follower of your blog. I can’t wait for Rework by the way. I am now collaborating with a life coach and with that and the the ease of information this modern age learning how to do things right has never been easier.
Your quote above I interpret as being quite naive to the modern world. Information is ridiculously easy to acquire these days and with each generation children are starting to learn how to program way earlier. Saying something like the quote above suggests that all your educative resources (blog, books, products) are useless to people my age and younger, that we have no chance to be successful at such an age.
Using age to determine experience/wisdom/knowledge is flawed – the only factor in how much somebody has is when did they start collecting it. – You can quote me on that.
Tom
on 05 Nov 09The reason for all this BS marketing of web tech is that the only way to make money in a non industry like Twitter’s is to induce a greater fool to think you have something of value.
We are heading straight for another correction - and by that I mean crash - in valuations of Web properties. The losers will be the balding venture capitalists who run out of greater fools, not the next generation. The kids, after all, are just along for the ride. They have nothing to lose.
Loki
on 05 Nov 09I agree with Benjamin. Comes back to the 10,000 hour rule. Some people only begin computer programming in university, others have been doing it since they were 10. Some people sell their first product when they’re 30, others have been selling since their first lemonade stand. Age is irrelevant.
However I do think some people (early 20’s) do begin to marinate themselves in buzzwords – CEO, scalable applications, web 2.0, cofounder – to convince themselves that their risk is justified. Brutal honesty is required to startup a company, and a hell of a lot of work. You need to be fulfilling a need 3 months, 6 months and even years after your launch. In that sense, I wholeheartedly agree with this quote.
SR
on 05 Nov 09The key word in the ‘22 year old CEO’ line was ‘CEO’ not ‘22 year old’.
If you are 22 and making an honest living providing valuable services to industry or the public, the comment wasn’t aimed at you at all.
If you are a 50 year old CEO who is making the errors described, congratulations! You are the fool.
Michael
on 05 Nov 09I agree with this statement: “Technology is not an industry, in my opinion, it is a tool that is used to make an industry …”.
Very little so called Web 2 designers actually create anything of much use. I’m pursuing a new approach to web technology, I think it’s time we create more applications that can actually benefit the not so tech savvy high end market.
For instance how many useful sites or apps are available for the “common” laborer such as a motor mechanic or plumber etc. These guys here us talk about the next revolution to follow twitter – thinking to themselves what are WE smoking!! How can there be a revolution in IT if they don’t have anything to measure it by?
Most entrepreneurs want to compete with glamor apps such as Facebook & the Twitters of this world while other opportunities are overlooked simply because the are short sighted.
Mark Zuckerberg
on 05 Nov 09Why would anyone want to aspire to be me? My company still has yet to turn a profit. I just like acting cool.
MT Heart
on 06 Nov 09Steve Jobs was 46 when the iPod was released. But what does he know?
David Calabrese
on 06 Nov 09What I find interesting is that those who are disputing my comment are supporting my point.
I agree with the “10,000 hour rule”. I agree that there are many brilliant young minds that can run product circles around people 20 years older. ... but I am not talking about programming, I am talking about being a CEO. What 16 year old rock star engineers are not properly prepared for is taking a great idea or product and turning that into a successful business. These are two very different areas of expertise… and being a CEO falls into the 10,000 hour rule as well… you need the experience or access to experience to be successful.
... and Mark thanks for weighing in. The thing about tech business now is that it is like a pop culture, where being a young CEO of a new high profile web-app is cool.
I think it is great that so many engineers are now expanding their horizons to look beyond some cubicle at IBM but at starting their own business… I want to see more succeed without VC.
Ignace
on 07 Nov 09In the future women will give birth to entrepeneurs which will be fortune 500 by the time they can walk..
This discussion is closed.