What Makes Startups Stick? Who Cares. Taste Is What Counts.

I've been involved in a couple of startup companies, ChristianAudio.com and LetterPop.com.  Neither have made me a Web 2.0 hero.  And for now, my Schwab advisor checks in once a year.  Yet neither of my first two startups have been a failure.  ChristianAudio.com is profitable and growing well.  LetterPop.com has a nice following and sufficient potential.  So in the grand scheme of things, I'm doing better than most.  With that as my platform, I'd like to say something about successful startups.  First, a question.

How do you cook linguine?  Yesterday, I made linguine.  I cooked the pasta while my wife made a delicious lemon basil sauce.  After about eight minutes, I tasted the linguine to see if it was done.  It wasn't, so I cooked it for a couple more minutes.  Now some people don't taste pasta to see when it is done.  Some people throw it all around the kitchen to see if it sticks on the walls.  That seems odd to me.  The point of cooking pasta is to make it edible, not sticky.

Attitudes about starting companies, especially web companies, are not unlike methods of cooking linguine.  Some people think that you "throw something out there" and see if it sticks.  If it sticks, it's done and you've cooked up a startup success.  Figuratively speaking, there are a lot of awful-tasking starchy strands of uncooked linguine sticking all over the web.

The best way to get a startup right is to cook it for a reasonable amount of time and then taste it to see if it's done.

All metaphors break down if you push them too far.  So I'm not going to keep stirring the pot here.  Startups that make news and make people happy are cooked to taste.  The founders are personally interested in the product.  They don't throw the idea out to see if it sticks (i.e. see if millions of people happen to think it's done).  Founders of successful startups know that if it tastes good, people are going to like it.

Here's a lesson learned.  Entrepreneurs need to learn how to cook.

Comments

[pab]

In a long ago movie Arnold Schwarzenegger said something about pasta... or was it hasta la pasta??

Pasta cooking as a colloquium for internet startups and founders? This sounds daft. Even wet noodles are good with peas and carrots.

Knowing that you have come from a most excellent upbringing of Italian cusine; I find your comparison of starchy Noodles and Startups to be garlic fused, dill enhanced and offered with a smatttering of rosemary all around.

What happened? Did you eat to many meatball sandwiches or garlic parsley balls?

Noodles and cooking are an art and I am surprised to read that you may have complications figuring out how to cook liguini or other noodles after such a great exposure to the art of cooking pasta and preparing most excellent dishes. Chow Mein?

I think some of your family members would be glad to come over and help you prepare something better than limp noodles.

Hot water is a good start, along with some music, familia' and conversation. and if it tastes good your guests are going to like it just like a great internet start-up.

Speaking of which....

[Dave Bruno]

Is this the best comment I can get when I don't write about consumerism? Yikes!

[pab]

Perhaps it is the best for now as it is at present the only comment offered.

I thought an absurd humourous response was best at the time.

You wrote: Founders of successful startups know that if it tastes good, people are going to like it.

I disagree with that comment unless they are food oriented. The founders of successful startups have found there biggest success through Marketing to the tastes of the public and the public has a huge appettite for non-sense and useless websites.

[Dave Bruno]

Paul, yours is a valid opinion. And in one sense I would not dispute that some startups are worried more about the odd tastes of some trendy demographic. But I'm less cynical about the companies I respect. I really don't think that, say, 37 Signals or Panic or Flickr or many others are marketed to those with a huge appetite for non-sense. They all make great products that first and foremost "tasted good to their founders" who knew that other people out there wanted what they liked.