"There is one high-profile, highly successful software entrepreneur right now who is burning through something like $80 million in venture funding in his latest startup and has practically nothing to show for it except for some great press clippings and a couple of beta customers -- because there is virtually no market for what he is building."<p>Anyone know who this was now?! hehe
Groupon is a great counter to consider in terms of the product-market fit theory. Few companies have ever had the product-market that Groupon had "Groupon is so effective that Mason claims Groupon now has 35,000 companies clamoring to be on its roster. Only one in eight applicants makes the cut." [0]<p>Instead a better model is to think about having a great product in a great market has phase 1. But if the company can't create a moat it still dies. "One problem with the Groupon model: Anyone can replicate it. More than 200 copycat sites have sprung up in the U.S., with another 500 overseas, including 100 in China."[0]<p>[0] <a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0830/entrepreneurs-groupon-facebook-twitter-next-web-phenom.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0830/entrepreneurs-groupo...</a>
This:<p>"Personally, I'll take the third position -- I'll assert that market is the most important factor in a startup's success or failure."<p>seems to be at potential odds with what I've seen Marc say in a lot of recent interviews he has done. Over and over again, he'll very specifically focus on the people being the single most important thing, when he discusses what matters the most.<p>For example, he reiterates this point about people again the other day ("most of what we do is evaluate people"), in this excellent Bloomberg interview podcast:<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2017-05-19/interview-with-marc-andreessen-masters-in-business-audio" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2017-05-19/interview-wi...</a>
As one might expect, these sort of oversimplifications are make great headlines, but aren't usually actionable. Data and metrics which validate hypotheses like this should be the standard we strive to meet.<p>See also: The only thing that matters is oxygen - unless, of course, you are anaerobic.
I think this is totally true, and often consider it myself when thinking about the startup I work for. I use it as kind of a north star in decision making to make sure we don't lose our way. The way I think about it is solutions are for consultants, products are for problems. And if you're really lucky, you're solving a problem people don't know they have yet just before they become aware. When you build this way, you get sucked along by market inertia. I thought about this a lot when I worked at DigitalOcean. I think we did a great job because we cared, but in the back of my mind I always kinda wondered if we had to, the market was growing faster than we could have addressed it at.
Striking similarity to Sun Tzu's advice: know enemy, and know youself. There's a special emphasis in "The Art of War" that you can't win, even in full strength, if the enemy doesn't expose some weakness. Here Marc rehashes this very idea, that your preparation isn't enough. Instead, to meet enemy's weakness is critical.
This ancient idea doesn't require any exceptional intelligence to understand.
The hard part is actually discern this weakness, or market.
This is a much better version: <a href="http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html" rel="nofollow">http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html</a>
What if they were all necessary conditions of success, and each insufficient by themselves? One of the main reason startups fail is founder conflict (lack of team), and many teams have trouble building something that actually works (lack of product). The market can't "pull the product out" of a dysfunctional group of incompetents.