But they aren't a lottery. Startups (and business in general) is about
unfair advantages - knowing information that other people don't, and acting on that knowledge.
As a founder, your job is to find your unfair advantage and execute on it. Startups that successfully find a valuable secret and exploit it become worth billions. Startups that have no such advantage usually die.
I thought the article was getting at this, but it seems like a lot of the folks here missed it. Twitch succeeded because, as justin.tv, they were in a position to notice rising demand for gaming livestreams. And then when they did, they executed against it very effectively - look at Emmett's user interview lecture for how they systematically gathered feedback from prospective users to convert them to current users. [1]
That's what Justin's talking about when he says "Trust your metrics and your growth." They had an information advantage over VCs - there was very good reason for believing VCs were ignorant there, because in this case, they were.
[1] https://clip.mn/video/yt-qAws7eXItMk
As a founder, your job is to find your unfair advantage and execute on it. Startups that successfully find a valuable secret and exploit it become worth billions. Startups that have no such advantage usually die.
I thought the article was getting at this, but it seems like a lot of the folks here missed it. Twitch succeeded because, as justin.tv, they were in a position to notice rising demand for gaming livestreams. And then when they did, they executed against it very effectively - look at Emmett's user interview lecture for how they systematically gathered feedback from prospective users to convert them to current users. [1]
That's what Justin's talking about when he says "Trust your metrics and your growth." They had an information advantage over VCs - there was very good reason for believing VCs were ignorant there, because in this case, they were.
[1] https://clip.mn/video/yt-qAws7eXItMk