The Early Early Stage

It's pretty hard to start a startup while you have full-time employment you're relatively happy with, both because of physical time constraints and reconciling the risk mentally.<p>In the past I felt exactly like these guys did: apply for incubators, which will provide both validation and financing, which makes a transition a lot less painful. It's one thing to tell your wife, "yeah so I quit my $125,000 job to work with Joe on our startup, which is really just a bunch of unreleased code at this point" as opposed to, "yeah so I quit my $150,000 to work with Joe on our startup, but we're in YC, which is like Harvard for startups, and we're getting over $150,000 in funding, and like half these companies raise venture capital really quickly after the program." Hell, it's a lot easier to <i>tell yourself</i> that.<p>A few months ago I wrote a post about my experience interviewing at YC and getting rejected, and I mentioned how we didn't continue working on our idea, and a lot of people asked me why. And the most honest answer I could give was, "I felt it was too big of a risk to take off my golden handcuffs without Paul Graham's approval," which sounds kind of absurd but is the most plain explanation I can give.<p>Well it's been over a year since then and I've realized two main problems with that way of thinking. 1) All an incubator can really do is <i>amplify</i> your ability to conceive of ideas and execute well on them. But if you can do both of those things well anyway, then you'll be successful regardless of acceptance or not. 2) If you refuse to embark on starting a startup without getting accepted into an incubator, then you're limiting yourself to "incubator-friendly" ideas, which is generally something that is consumer-facing and disruptive in some theoretically huge market (or eventual market) (e.g. AirBnb, Dropbox) or is a tool/platform that can improve the startup ecosystem of tools and platforms (which it seems like Keen.io is, if I understand their value prop on their home page correctly).<p>So congrats to the Keen.io for getting into TechStars, and I'm sure their product will be great, and they'll go on to be successful without having to sacrifice much more than going out to dinner a little less and downgrading their Netflix subscription. But it's very possible they were going to be successful anyway.

It sounds to me like you guys are more focused on getting into an incubator and less focused on starting a company. Maybe it's just the gist of the post, but you guys <i>do</i> realize that this is, for lack of a better term, the 'real deal', right? Every choice you make has consequences, and spending so much effort focusing on incubators when instead you could be doing the "schleps" that pg talks about may be opportunity squandered when you have the time together with this idea as a priority.<p>Balance in all things. Incubators are surely helpful, but they surely should not be your <i>primary</i> focus right now, and you're setting yourself up for failure if you are banking on getting into one. This <i>is</i> a zero sum game, and putting creative energy into a YC application when it could be going into a product is a real choice, and I hope you guys are <i>aware</i> it's a choice. I'm not saying it's the wrong one, but this post led me to feel you are looking at the goal of starting a company similar to getting into college. It is not. It is not a game of one of one or two big victories and resting on your laurels, but instead a game of many small ones (hopefully peppered with a few big ones as well :)) If you are focusing just on the big ones then you are doing it wrong and will likely join the 99% of those who do not make it. Incubators, funding, and so on are a means to an end not an end in itself. Remember that and carve a path that makes sense for <i>your company</i> and <i>your team</i>, not one that you think is in line with what everyone else is doing.

I really connected with this post, because my startup is also in this "early early stage". It's only been a month or two that we've actually taken our idea seriously, after coming to the realization that "woah, we could actually do this!"<p>Too many blogs like to focus in on what it's like in the "early stage" but not enough focus on that stage before you get funding, when everything looks much scarier and your idea feels like total shit. Hopefully this post will help many other startup founders to realize they're not alone. I've added this to my "suggested reading" list in my company, as I think my cofounders will appreciate it as much as I did.

Congratulations getting into TS Cloud. I can't wait to see all the amazing companies to come out of the program. Beware of "Mentor Whiplash", I hear it can be a real problem.<p>I've thought of quitting my job to start a business. I know it would give me the best chance of success. With that said moonlighting makes much more sense to me. It has much less risk and if the business fails I'll still have something to fall back on. Getting into YC and TS feels to me like winning the lottery. With acceptance rates around 2%-3% it doesn't seem like a realistic option.

So happy for you guys!