Item — HN Reader

by sebg·15y ago·view on hn ↗

The thing that stuck out was that all of the 32 startups and the 20 reasons chubbybrain gave for their failure could be summed up in "lack of information." Lack of information regarding markets, how to approach investors, location, etc.

If you look at people / startups who have succeed you can always trace it to an unquenchable desire to think/collect/process more information about their problem area. Sometimes this means doing a phd at Stanford on information aggregation (google) and sometimes it means living your startup for a year (airbnb).

A/B Testing, mentors, books, blogs, YC, everything is about taking information out of the ether, processing it so that you can use it for your startup, and making progress.

After all, "An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field." ~Niels Bohr

By making the mistakes you collect information for the next time.

Thanks for reading the post (yes - it's long) and interesting point. But information alone isn't enough, right?

There is the conflict of knowing vs. doing. So having info helps on the knowing side but not getting investors, being in the wrong location are also issues of not doing.

I would argue that doing is the execution of knowing. So I would posit that if you are executing that 100% in the best direction you know, then if you are in the wrong location it's a matter of not having the information on why you should be in another location.