Every link from mixergy.com seems to follow that same format, too. "How [Someone Just Like You] Made [Large Sum of Money]". Why make your site sound like a late night infomercial? Maybe there is decent information about starting a successful company in these interviews, but I never bother reading them because the titles are lowest common denominator.
1) If you click on the link, the first four words are "At 17 years old", so I think it's fair to call him a kid.
2) He used a credit card instead of seeking investors, waiting until he saved up money, or just foregoing entrepreneurship because he had not money.
3) His company was called VoodooPC (context).
4) He sold a company he started with a credit card.
That's an awful lot of information to put into a 14 word title. I just took about 100 words to describe it. I think Andrew's headlines are very well written.
There's a reason they sound formulaic - he interviews successful entrepreneurs.
Who are the entrepreneurs everyone respects, and how would you tell their stories in 20 words or less?
College dropout writes software for PCs, makes billions.
Ex hippie makes PCs more stylish, then does the same for music, makes billions.
Two college braniacs use research project to find all the world's information, make billions.
Wannabe artist helps people sell stuff online, then helps start startups.
They all sound trite compared to what we all know about Gates, Jobs, Brin, Page, and pg, but for these less well known entrepreneurs, it's helpful to get a concentrated dose of context.
For what it's worth, I think Andrew's interviews on Mixergy are some of the most useful content on the internet.
Why is #3 relevant? Voodoo was the name of (at the time) the hands down best quality graphics cards on the market. Was 3DFX some 'kid' because it decided to name its product after magic?
His product was a well made, top end PC and was aptly named. Compared to the rest of the market, his PC was literally magic. Why this makes him a kid, I have no fucking clue.
I hate seeing the word 'kid' used to describe anyone young and talented. It's derogatory. "Look someone young did something mentionable" it's as derogatory as "Look a woman's in technology gasp!"
This guy was obviously going to fund this project himself, so again I don't see what the relevance of #2. It's $1500, if he had it in his account he'd have likely used it. If he'd have taken out a loan, he'd have been charged almost an identical interest rate . . . but he's 17 so he'd have likely been denied for a loan anyway. How could he have got investors? It's $1500, the only people willing to give that would have been family and dealing with money with family tends to be a bad idea. Instead of going to family, like a child would, and simply asking for money that may well have never been paid back he took the debt onto himself.
How not being a leech on your family can be childish, I don't know. I still know people well into their 20's who still leech off of their families for cash, this guy at 17 acted maturely.
Mixergy links virtually always get a click from me because they're good. If I hadn't heard of VoodooPC before, I wouldn't have touched this link, the title is god awful. It tells nothing, and the article (at least the writing) is shit awful. No mention that this "kid" now works for HP!
This was very poor writing by Andrew. He's a good interviewer, but he seriously needs to work on his copy editing to sell his interview talents.
But the context never matters as much as most people think. I know a few people who have completed 1-3 of your list. None of them made the business into anything approaching VoodooPC. Why? Did this particular 17 year old just get lucky? If so, why interview him? If not, why not lead with the insight that helped his business succeed?
On that line of thought, why just interview the successes? Cargo cults are made of "success stories". Personally, one of the best business books I've read was Richard Gabriel's essay on the fall of Lucid, especially with how that related to "Worse is Better".
>> Maybe there is decent information about starting a successful company in these interviews, but I never bother reading them because the titles are lowest common denominator.
So you ignore it knowing that there will possibly be useful information that can help you be successful? It's definitely your right to do so, but you'll very likely miss out on a lot of excellent things life has to offer with that attitude.
If I read everything that came up on HN because it could possibly be useful, I won't have much time to start that business. For worse or better, we all have certain filters that every once and a while have a false positive. I was just elaborating about one of mine.
You're missing out. Andrew has excellent interview skills and is always well prepared in these interviews. He also picks people who have good lessons and information to share. It's not fluff content. (Though I expect there may be an exception that proves the rule.)
Good point. I came in to post that it's remarkable that nearly every Mixergy interview (maybe even all now?) makes the HN front page. This stuff is like brain candy to entrepreneurs.
I keep wanting to do the same with HTPCs (not so much the high price/ferrari aspect, but the niche aspect). This interview may have given me the kick in the ass to stop being so scared/hesitant and move from prototype/research to production.
I sat in on the venture class at UChicago last night (I'm auditing the MBA program).
They actually talked about this and the professor referenced some study out of UVA of successful entrepreneurs and one of the recurring traits was that their investments are guided not by the size of the opportunity but by their own conception of 'acceptable loss'.
It was emphasized multiple times that you really should _not_ fund your venture on credit cards, 2nd and 3rd mortgages on your homes, etc even if you think an opportunity promises to be the next google, twitter, whatever.
I can't disagree with that. It's a reasonable point.
But when I left school, I used tens of thousands in credit card debt to build my first business because I just HAD to be an entrepreneur and there was no other way.
- I didn't want a side job, because I felt it would be an excuse to procrastinate when the going got tough at my startup.
- I couldn't raise money, because I didn't have the slightest clue where to begin. (All the books I bought on how to raise VC money were useless. My family didn't have the cash. And my family friends kept telling me I should get a job.)
I would have given anything just for a chance to start a business. My kid brother and I actually talked about me selling a body part to raise money. Sounds ridiculous now, but it shows how determined (desperate?) I was to be an entrepreneur.
Losing my money, credit, house, etc, all that meant nothing in comparison to a shot at being like the people I admired.
I wonder if you can make it without that kind of determination. I wonder if someone who thinks rationally about not taking on too much debt can have the irrational passion to be an entrepreneur (or to do anything exceptional).
I wonder if you can make it without that kind of determination. I wonder if someone who thinks rationally about not taking on too much debt can have the irrational passion to be an entrepreneur
I'm thinking "You can" and "Plenty of people do", and that we just filter out their stories because they don't fit the narrative.
Again, 37 signals like VoodooPC is just an exceptional example. That's why it is useful to look at aggregate numbers like the UVA/Darden study (I'm still trying to find an online copy for you guys) which tells you what the majority of successful entrepreneurs (who themselves are already a minority of entrepreneurs) do.
And the majority of successful entrepreneurs do not invest assets based on their perception of the magnitude of the opportunity but rather on their own idea of acceptable loss.
Stripped of the emotional mumbo-jumbo and romantic appeal of putting literally everything into an investment, the statistically successful position makes perfect sense.
