Roman Mittermayr: On My Way

Founder’s Hell: Competitive Horror

EDIT: This seems to be getting a lot of traction on Hacker News. Just wanted to say, you guys are the opposite of TechCrunch in so many ways. I really like hanging out at Hacker News, you rock. Follow me at @mittermayr - would love to hear about your thoughts and companies. Happy to give feedback!

EDIT2: Our website at twentypeople.com has major issues with the sign-up process. This couldn’t come at a better time, pushed updates yesterday, today the internet visited. Sorry! We’re working hard to fix this right now.

EDIT3: Should be fixed. For those who just want to see what it looks like without signing up, use this demo account wisely (20demo@binkmail.com / twentypeople) - thanks a lot guys.

When working for Microsoft, I learned that competition is an awesome thing. It really helps you get a perspective on your own work. Despite many people believing otherwise, Microsoft actually is a hyper-innovative company. I’ve met people and saw things I never ever would have attributed to Microsoft’s innovation labs. Fact is though, Microsoft isn’t known as the innovator, rather more as a company waiting for markets and products to establish and later land the enterprise on that market, crushing out all the little startups. That’s why they’re having a hard time being known as an innovative business - that’s also why I was jumping around when I learned that they finally decided to release the PhotoSynth iPhone app. If you haven’t tried it, do so.

This post is about something else though.

My job transformed into a “Competitive Product Planner” position after about a year at work there. I evaluated competitors, their perspective on things, their traction, plans and models. Not to imitate, but to drive innovation. Are they on a market worth exploring? Are the masses just crazy and it’s a fad, or is it actually a trend?

At the beginning of 2011, I left my job at Microsoft and started my own company, twentypeople.com. I figured I’d be a whole lot different than most startup founders. My experience with competitive intelligence would make me a different person. I would not fear competition, I would hope for it. I would want really, really good competitors. It would validate the market and what not.

About 11 months in, I have probably wanted to crash this whole idea more than a dozen times since I started. I have lived the absolute horror. And good times. But also fucking horror. Let me tell you about the horror, just a little bit more:

You start with an (obviously) great idea. You go hunting on the web, trying to find people who are in the same business, possibly the same idea. You find maybe one or two similar services, but come up with great ideas on how to differentiate almost immediately. Things are looking good, let’s roll!

A while after, it’s more often than not a TechCrunch post, you read an article about a company doing something very close to what you are working on. You feel somewhat motivated, but also stressed out, they’re ahead. What if they are soon known for being the go-to-place for what you wanted to offer? Time to speed up, you add features, you move faster, you long for early reviews/previews/beta-testers. Feedback is scarce, and not very insightful. You would pay for good feedback. Then, huge investment announcement for this random company you never heard of, they just got shitloads of cash. You, well, you still have your lousy personal bank account, thousands of lines of PHP code and a dream. Albeit a slightly deformed one already. You need investment, it’s the best PR after all, and you’ll be able to find employees easier with cash. You’ll prepare some slides, spend hours in Photoshop and Keynote and feel good about the result. You pick investment companies based on their investments and what it would sound like, would they invest in your company. You send them pitch decks. Most respond, which sort of makes you feel there’s success just around the corner, until you realize pretty much everyone was just nice telling you to come back later. You met one or two investors, it’s an awesome conversation, you already wonder about where to put all the money and what to spend it on (you actually have that in the deck) and what not. Weeks later, you get the e-mail. It’s worse than a break-up text message. “After careful consideration, yadadadaa….”

Uhm, so, what’s next? Time off! You’ll need a break, you feel unease creeping in and you don’t want to risk losing interest. Vacation it is, or parties, or whatever.

A bit later, you’re back in the game. You have new spin on the idea, a perspective you didn’t have before, this will unlock the masses. Let’s go crazy on it. Full dedication, lots of code written and you simply can’t wait to push it out. As days go by, your hyper-excitement fades out, maybe it’s not a good idea after all, maybe it’s a waste of time. You release a tiny preview, nobody cares. The internet moves on, you’re stuck.

So my idea isn’t good enough?

Minutes later, your feed reader delivers new depressing updates. Huge investment, everyone’s in it, from Ron Conway, Adreessen Horowitz to Dustin Moskovitz (one of the Facebook founders). You’re fucked. That team will beat your team anytime, even if they’d call everyone and their mum an asshole on the front-page. They’d still make more traffic than you. Why, why, why? Maybe you picked the wrong investors? Maybe your deck wasn’t good? Maybe timing wasn’t perfect, or maybe your location simply sucks? Was it the lack of co-founders? The wrong team? WHY WHY WHY TELL ME INTERNETZZZ!! No answer…

So, time to move forward. You pause a bit, see a new perspective and take another stab at it. Things continue, you feel it’s moving. Yet the only thing ticking forward like a clock is the negative, linear progression of your bank account, seemingly coherent with the increase of lines of code of your product. You create more, yet you have less.

Panic creeps in. It’s been a long time, the end of year one is approaching. Profit? A few hundred, maybe a few thousand dollars, maybe nothing. What’s next? Keep doing what you do? This is what everybody says, right? Don’t give up….

What if though, everyone who didn’t quit but kept going actually had a really good idea and your idea sucks? What if I have the worst idea in the world and I’m stupid enough to believe it could be working out, since, I’m not one to give up easy! I’ll stick to it, right? Or, do I? These are the best of your nights. Sleepless, ready to just quit the fuck out of this whole game of nonsense.

And to make matters worse, and I’d like to name-tag this oddity please, suggestions welcome, as you think you might be on a track worth staying on for just a little longer, someone releases a product, with hundreds of thousands of users. Complete nobodies, how could you miss them?? And they do what you do, but they do it really, really good. They have cash, they have an absolute stunning design, the right vision, they are fucking nice on their website and if you weren’t competing against them, hell, you would post that idea all over the internet because it rocks.

That particular moment, my friends, is what I would love to put in a little can and sell it. Anyone quitting a job, thinking entrepreneurs are having the time of their life and such, should get such a little can of horror. Pop it open, enjoy. If you can withstand that horror, you’re ready for the startup game.

It’s insane, and I often hope that people will make appropriate decisions when going through this horror. If it’s too much, go back to what you love, if you’re scared about the money, hey do something on the side, get a temp job or do something you always wanted to try out despite the low salary or whatever. It will all quickly remind you again of why you went into all of this.

I have the absolute deepest respect for everyone in this game, everyone who pulls through this shitstorm of pure horror and comes out stronger on the other side. It’s a deeply personal fight, happening between going to bed and falling asleep, walking home from this or that startup event, finishing reading the wrong TechCrunch article… It’s often a tiny trigger moment, ensuing absolute horror for hours or days.

Try to stay sane, make sure your life is hooked up with things outside of this world. Have an awesome girlfriend (which is why I stay sane), play sports or learn an instrument, hell, have a band and make weird music (which is my plan B) and just remind yourself of things outside of crazy town. You’ll be fine, this sounds like it’s all a big deal, fact is, it’s not. Your real life is more important, and it’s happening outside of all this weirdness.

I think success often is around the corner, but crazy town is where everybody else hangs out, so you naturally go and idle around, waiting for things to happen, for TechCrunch to cover you, or for a random investor to make you a success… It’s not going to happen, unless you’re the kind of person who likes betting on the 0 in roulette…

There’s a plethora of successful businesses, ideas, projects and products, all happening outside of TechCrunch, investments and startup weekends. It’s all out there. I wish we could take that insanity out of the “startup” culture, and come back to what it really is. Work, business, and money.

Good luck.