I'm not sure I agree with his final conclusion that the <i>best</i> startups are somehow profit-agnostic. It sounds like he is romanticizing both successful startups as well as bands.<p>It's reasonable to assert that founders who truly <i>care</i> about their product may, on average, fare better than those who don't. However, it feels a little presumptuous to interpret the motivations and ambitions of <i>all successful and admired musicians / artists / founders</i>, en masse and from afar.<p>Would anyone argue that Amazon was not founded with profit as (at least) a prime motivator? How about Apple or Microsoft?<p>Moreover, even if <i>not</i> chasing monetary fortune, people can still be motivated by a multitude externalities such as recognition or fame - both of which != passion for the product.<p>TLDR; The conclusion the author draws is hand-wavy at best and paints a decidedly black-and-white picture of the musical scene and startup ecosystem.
"Music reviewers devote their attention to those who care about their work, and it’s rare to see a “classic” or universally-adored piece of music that was written for hire."<p>Let's not forget how european classical music came to be a form of work for hire where patrons, for variable amounts of time, sometimes decades, payed for musical art creation. Hope I am not reading that wrong but the op is lacking historical reference and concentrating on a very specific contemporary frame.
Conversely, bands are startups for musicians. There's probably some awesome business models that recognize that fact, rather than forcing musicians into sharecropper deals.
I was once given a somewhat peculiar reason by a biologist for not learning computer programming:<p>"Computer programming is overrated, it's the 'learning to play guitar' of the geek world."<p>This article reminded me of it.
People seem to realize this once a year... <a href="http://www.televisionsky.org/2010/04/tech-startups-vs-rock-bands/" rel="nofollow">http://www.televisionsky.org/2010/04/tech-startups-vs-rock-b...</a>
<a href="http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/04/nice-analogy.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/04/nice-analogy.html</a>
Then I'm the annoying guy who plays hits from the 90s on his guitar at small parties, amazes his drunk friends who exclaim "You should totally make an album! I have a great idea for a song!"<p>And I answer "No, no - I couldn't do that. Also, I'm not that kind of person", while secretly, in the evening, I spend about an hour writing short, simple, crappy songs for fun - sometimes thinking "maybe I could, if only .." and a thousand different reasons hammer my mind "if I were younger / had a clue / had the skills / had an education / had the time / didn't have a family to support" and so forth.<p>(Dedicated to all the scriptoldies out there - for keeping the passion alive.)
Slight correction to this statement:<p>Startups that set out to make a great product are, on the whole, adored for their work, and often enjoy success as a side-effect.<p>Startups that set out to make a great product are, <i>when they get anywhere at all</i>, adored for their work, and <i>rarely, but sometimes with a lot of hard work and luck</i> enjoy success as a side-effect.<p>Just like bands, <i>most</i> startups (esp. the "built in a weekend" kinds) will probably end up being more of a labor of love than a true money-making venture. That's fine, but don't pretend otherwise.
This is written by a guy who has never been in a band. You would think that fact would be a lightbulb moment that maybe you shouldn't write this blog post. Apparently not.
This analogy is a huge leap. Aside from the fact that both endeavors are largely entrepreneurial in nature, the two things are mostly distinct.<p>If you are actually trying to succeed as a musician, "success", you are going to make a lot of sacrifices. The opportunity costs are huge. If you're touring as a fledgling band, you are most likely giving up the formative years of your career. The time you're spending with music isn't going to be particularly helpful in other arenas. If you're hacking at a startup, you're acquiring desirable skills in the process. If your startup fails, you can still go get a really good job in SV. If your band fails, you're hitting the reset button. You could be chasing a career in the music industry for 10+ years and be no better off than you were a decade ago.<p>I also don't think the analogy between VCs and record companies really hold up either. Because of the low returns of signed bands, as compared to funded companies, the models work differently.<p>Additionally, as a musician, you're ultimately selling a piece of art. It's designed by you, and while it may be influenced by the market, the product is largely determined by your own creativity. A business operates in the exact opposite way. Business as art rarely work. I can give someone a copy of "Kid A", have them say "this sucks", reply back "give it a few listens", and the person may ultimately end up really liking the album. I'm not doing that with a company. If I think a product, say Basecamp, sucks, and I have to pay $20 a month for it, I'm not going to give it much thought after my "it sucks" reaction. We consume art differently than we use other products, because they are radically different things. Market demands are simply too important for businesses. They have to listen to the customers to succeed. The path to success is to take customer problems and figure out a creative solution to them. The customer is driving the most substantial part of the company.
When Zappos was sold to Amazon and Mint was sold to Intuit, I had the same pathetic angst as when I started hearing Nirvana and Pearl Jam on commercial radio.<p><i>I liked those guys before everyone else did!</i>
I have no idea why the guys at Planetary Resources do not redirect curious people to the KISS studies they talk about in their press conference.
<a href="http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/20120307_IEEE_Presentation.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/20120307_IEEE_Pre...</a>
<a href="http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/asteroid_final_report.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/asteroid_final_re...</a>
<a href="http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/20120314_ESA_ESTEC.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/20120314_ESA_ESTE...</a><p>I had to dig around for sometime and I thought these papers must be behind some pay-wall. I was surprised to find them on the KISS website. It is not that they are clueless about how to bring back an asteroid and extract resources from it. They just want their MVP to the be the act of prospecting itself. Also I was really surprised to learn that Ion Engines have been routinely used before for asteroid missions like Dawn(<a href="http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/ion_prop.asp" rel="nofollow">http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/ion_prop.asp</a>). The scaling they need to achieve for these missions is much smaller than the average non space geek would expect.<p>Does anyone here know if the scalability requirements of solar ion propulsion systems they need for the mission of tugging an asteroid into lunar orbit is realistically achievable by 2020?
Hacker Hacker Hacker.I am sick of this word. Whats wrong with simple words like techie. There are far more people considering themselves as Hackers nowadays even though they are simply an average engineer. Please stop abusing this word. Was Einstein a Hacker ? How about Leonardo Da Vinci ?<p>By the way, startups are for people who are interested in business. If you are interested in business, YOU ARE NOT A HACKER. Hackers are interested in technology for the technology's sake. They don't do UI, they don't do A/B testing. Please stop.
So startups are like bands without drugs and girls?<p>Agree with the similarities. Another one is disruptors. Think about successful bands and how they disrupted the music scene.
I guess that makes me a bit of a groupie, and HN, Rolling Stone (mag).<p>I read on The Verge that the boombox had the highest adoption rate for any gadget in history. Now we don't need it, we have our computers and we don't need to drive to someone's house to connect with them either. <a href="http://i.imgur.com/d29b0.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/d29b0.png</a>
And just like most bands, the vast majority of startups fail.<p>And just like most musicians, people who found startups have delusions of grandeur.<p>And just like most bands, even the ones that succeed are screwed by early-round investors (record companies/VC).
Nice post! I wrote something similar whilst observing my brother in academia through my startup lenses.<p><a href="http://pragmaticstartup.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/similarities-between-an-entrepreneur-and-an-academic/" rel="nofollow">http://pragmaticstartup.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/similaritie...</a>
I am not a musician, but I used to hang out occasionally with a large circle of traditional Irish fiddlers around Boston. I have never heard anyone talk about money more outside the financial sector. They talk about it they way a man dying of thirst might talk about water.
Well, take a look at interlude, it's an Israeli startup that was formally a band (and a very successful one in Israel, vocalist is Yoni Bloch). <a href="http://interlude.fm/team.php" rel="nofollow">http://interlude.fm/team.php</a>
Is it true that being in bands is now less popular because kids are now hacking rather than practicing their instruments? Or is it just that certain kids who didn't feel like bands were for them now have a "band" to join?
i was with you until you threw profitability under the bus. the best bands don't tour just to show their work off, they do it as part of building an audience for their business, which is selling tickets, selling albums, selling songs...
i have yet to pick up members of the preferred sex at bars talking about my startup<p>where are the groupies, the sex, the drugs<p>what am i doing wrong<p>(<p>More seriously: While there are certainly some similarities between the lifecycle of a band and a startup, the author seems to put forth a very structured form of the startup lifestyle--I think that claiming there is one true trajectory does any favors to us.<p>Also, something to muse on:
"The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band."<p>What do you think would be a reasonable mapping of this onto tech/startups/CS/engineering?<p>)
The part about pivoting is interesting. For a musician, changing the genre of the band has to be quite difficult, because an style is likely developed and the soul to the art will have to be changed. I wonder if it's the same for entrepreneurs, who likely have an affinity to a particular field due to passion or expertise. Pivoting, by definition, shouldn't be a complete redo, but I'd imagine it's as hard of a choice for a startup to pivot drastically as it is for a band to change genre.