Michael Seibel

> Building a profitable business reduces both the problem and the solution space by a huge margin, and if you can find a way to get rid of that, the space opens up. That's one way to look at it. Usually though, for upstarts, what's paramount is not the profits part, but the risks inherent in working on a solution for a perceived problem (or worse, for customers one is ill-placed to sell to [0]). I like what Seibel recommends: the v1 must solve an acute problem for the customer to pay up [1]. From there, building out a holistic product may put our upstart on path to growth & profitability while simultaneously expanding the scope of the problem space building such a product brings [2]. [0] https://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/users-you-don-t-want [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13109480 [2] https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211024

Big fan of Michael's content over the years - will miss his videos with Dalton. One incredible thing about Michael is behind every sentence you can hear the amount of pain he had to endure to succeed. He's not just giving you startup advice, he's a lone survivor who's come back to tell the tale. The whole startup game is about extreme outliers and he's always been very real about this fact. Was re-reading his post on How to Pitch Your Company from 2016 (The Seven Questions), it's a great read: https://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/how-to-pitch-your-company

Yeah! I agree! I asked that because I think it's hard to distinguish yourself by solving this general consumer entertainment problem. Seems that all game companies do that, even when thinking about small studios, it is hard to find differentiating factors that does not rely on the game itself. I also agree that A/B testing is super important! We are following exactly what you have described here http://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/product-development-cycle-fundamenta… but for a game, and the results are pretty interesting! Specially because we don't need a GDD (a document describing the game), all members of the team are involved in the creation process (and they feel more motivated to work - and believe me, this is big problem in indie studios) and is easier to propose changes and improvements to the game, since them just need to bring us closer to our goal with the game (for example: 20k ad visualizations / day). I'm anxious to get into this A/B testing phase! We haven't launched yet. Thank you so much for sharing the knowledge! These posts were really valuable and helpful for me! And I think they are complementary!

Michael Siebel[0] said in YC Startup School that you have product market fit if (and only if) you can't keep up with the demand for your product and you don't have time for anything else except closing sales. If it's not there yet, it's not product market fit. [0] http://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/the-real-product-market-fit

Interestingly, this cuts exactly against the advice of Michael Seibel, the current CEO of Y Combinator, who advises co-founders split equity equally: http://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/how-to-split-equity-among-founders

Really enjoyed your piece on product dev cycle fundamentals: http://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/product-development-cycle-fundamenta… Just curious growth wise, did Socialcam have a lot of word of mouth, or was some growth hacking involved as well. 16 million downloads in 3 months is incredible.

I went through an IPO. Joined the company early enough that I made enough for 15ish years if I continue my same lifestyle. Prior, entrepreneurship has been my passion. Founded 3 startups in the past with zero to small success, but nothing life changing until this IPO. Journey to IPO is not easy. Culture and values are no longer the same. It's not a surprise. Different culture / values is fine, but they declined in my POV. I did manage to survive & adapt, to see it through IPO, as a means to buy financial freedom. It also taught me a lot about perseverance. There is not much left in the company that aligns with my values or principles. Probably I hit the peter principle[1]. Compared to my younger self, now I have 2 daughters. As an immigrant to bay area, never got a chance to truly take a break between the jobs. My passion for entrepreneurship is still there. I truly want to give it enough shot either to build something meaningful or prove to myself that it's the game I no longer enjoy. Currently my plan is to - quit the company by figuring out alternate means for immigration - put aside money for 1.5yrs - for at least 3 months, be the househusband and nothing else: daily home & kid chores (like a stereotypical housewife); focus on physical fitness - after 3 months, start scoping out next venture - keep trying and failing until i land on a financially feasible idea. have a large network and potential co-founders At a high level I thought I would cap my adventure to 1year.…

Growth hacking is hard. We had to learn a few tricks to grow our Hacker News alternative (https://laarc.io) Suppose you were to start a site similar to HN. How would you get the word out? The most reliable way to grow is to have an audience (or access to one). But they have to be interested in what you're showing, else you're little better than a spammer. Looking over the traffic for the last month (https://imgur.com/a/O1wtzav) the spikes were from comments posted to lobse.rs: https://lobste.rs/s/jqkqwb/what_are_you_doing_this_weekend#c_v1rpuv https://lobste.rs/s/kx4ojt/what_are_you_doing_this_weekend#c_wivai7 This won't keep working, but it might have been enough. The site seems to be spreading through word of mouth now, and about 400 people show up each day. Communities are also a strange thing to grow. Grow too fast, and you'll spoil it. Ditto if you grow from the wrong source of people. Fundamentally, you have to have a product that users love so much that they spontaneously tell their friends about it. But press coverage – or at least social media coverage – seems to matter a lot. You probably need both. We've been using https://playbook.samaltman.com/ as a mantra, and it's been effective so far. But it's only been a month. We'd like to try Michael's advice next: http://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/getting-press-for-your-startup