Excluding the financial incentives and rewards associated with a successful start-up (i.e. acquisition price, IPO value, etc.), what other events or factors would allow you to feel that your start-up is a 'success'?<p>In other words, what is 'success' within the realm of a start-up (excluding $$$)?<p>I personally feel that a start-up's success is measured on its number of active users and its impact on other businesses and/or the world/society.<p>What is 'success' for you? I'm curious to see how other entrepreneurs view 'success'.
I've been thinking about this lately myself. I have come to believe there are different levels of success in a startup, which could also be viewed as milestones in a way. Particular startups will only get to a certain level, but attaining any level is a success to some degree. Perhaps, they aren't really levels, because that insinuates a linear process. You can tell from this rambling that I haven't really nailed this thought down yet...I hope someone can build upon it. But off the top of my head:<p>Level 1: Actually make something that is functional.<p>Level 2: Actually have someone test it.<p>Level 3: Actually have someone buy it/use it for real.<p>Level 4: Actually have the users from the previous Level maintain their use, i.e. convert to real users.<p>Level 5: Get to some level of profitability.<p>Level 6: Make a decent amount of money.<p>Level 7: Make a lot of money, i.e. from an exit event or just large value of company, etc.<p>I know this includes financial stuff, which you specifically didn't want. However, I think this is inextricably tied to the higher levels of startup success. Obviously in the lower levels, some people may have other metrics beyond other use, like organizational metrics such as hiring employees or making something that grows beyond themselves, i.e. can be passed on.
Changing the way people work or behave - for the better - or give them more understanding about things they can change.<p>- Meetup.com is getting people out and into social situations with lots of benefits
- Google maps helps people to find things more quickly without getting lost
- Ebay and Craigslist changed the whole value structure of entire classes of goods and enabled a lot of people to do useful work and earn money they couldn't have before.
- Reddit and related sites are the office-worker's version of talk radio. I'm thinking they're going to have a noticeable affect on politics, hopefully for the better (besides creating a significant drop in productivity of the average programmer.)
- Google.<p>I'm not sure how social networking sites fit in all of that.<p>But the revolution isn't anywhere near over yet.
- Government <a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/07/why_congress_ne.html" rel="nofollow">http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/07/why_congress_ne.ht...</a>
- Medicine - Portable medical records, better understanding of outcomes and genetics can make us all healthier.
- Business - People waste way too much time in offices moving data from one place to another and then trying to balance back to the original. Businesses go broke and partners sue each other because they didn't understand or keep track of or share information. People waste money and time because they didn't understand trends unfolding around them.<p>And there's a lot more.<p>And then there's all that money, too.
Success is when you've significantly improved your users' lives. Great success is when you do this with tons of users. Marlboro is a failure. Wikipedia is a great success.
My interpretation of success is when a client/user says, 'Thanks, it works great!' or 'Great job!'<p>Hearing that sincerely puts a smile on my face and makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside
A lot of the comments seem to focus on influencing the lives of lots of users. That would pretty much cut out the entire Enterprise startup category wherein a few 1000 IT admins are enough to take a company to profitability. Of course, employees of the company end up becoming indirect users. As to what defines success, the following quote works well for me:<p>"When all is said and done, the journey is the reward."
- Randy Komisar
As a business, I tend to think success has to have SOME connection with revenue/profit... Unless you want to bet your success on your ability to sell a profitless venture.<p>I'd say when you have customers who want to keep being customers is a pretty good measure of success. Customers are the people who pay the bills... So if you have a free service, it means advertisers who are reaching an audience they care about and getting a good return on their investment.<p>I find the emphasis on 'users' to be a bit too simple, and decidedly not very bubble-proof. It's probably also important to qualify who your users are and how much you know about them. 100,000 users that you have no information about aren't very valuable.
Success is defined by the goals you set for your startup. Some people may create a startup in hopes to match their current salary at their "real job", so that they can quit. Once that goal is attained they consider their venture a success. Others have higher, loftier goals (go IPO) and if they don't achieve that goal then they feel that were unsuccessful and thus continue creating/joining other startups and ventures until that goal is reached. One man's failure is another man's success.
If you had/are having fun and don't regret for a minute having left your day job to start your startup, then it's a success.
Of course, it's best to measure that at least a year into the thing.
When corrupt old men in Europe who all know each other from P2 meetings agree that you have to be assassinated, then you know you've succeeded. That or if you can make 10,000 people in Silicon Valley slam their heads into a wall and shout, "F^#% ME!!! WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT?!?!?!?"