Are you tired of people telling talking about how to be successful with useless example, not backed by any research? Do you think entrepreneurship is a game rather than a trivial bunch of cheap advises? This presentation is for you!

1. The fallacy of Startup Success
What can we learn from plane crashes and ben and jerry’s...
Franck Nouyrigat - @peignoir
Startup Weekend co-founder
UP Global VP - franck@up.co
Wednesday, October 16, 13

2. Success does not mean anything if it is not associated to a goal
In the case of Startups the goal is to have
1. A stable Business Model (BM)
2. A scalable BM
Example:
if revenue > cost we can consider the startup BM stable
if existing customer buy again it is a scalable BM
Wednesday, October 16, 13

3. Example of Fallacies (or BS)
Love what you do
1) Choose something that is in line with your own personal interest and
passion, then it never seems like work. 2) Don't be afraid to fail. 3) It's
critical to spend the time early on to hire the right people. If you are
disciplined in finding the best and brightest people who are also team
players then management is easy. 4) There is no substitute for talking
directly to customers. Whether they are happy or upset about
something, it feels great to connect with people who are using your
products, because you immediately get a good sense for how to make it
even better.
Brian Sharples co-founded HomeAway with Carl Shepherd in
February 2005...he has raised nearly $405 million in private funding
Source : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamilah-corbitt/million-dollar-advice-fro_b_3960955.html
Wednesday, October 16, 13

4. The Success Fallacies always have the same structure :
random advise + successful guy (ie made a lot of $) = The promise of you’ll be like this successful guy
Love what you do + Brian Sharples (400+ Million dollars) = I’ll be like him if I love what I do ...
The real question is : how many people who failed loved what they were doing (let’s define failure here by bankrupt)
Note that at least if the advise is somehow sincere it’s morally ok (Though still inefficient) , but what about people lying?
What if you are a total idot ... Well you might just end up with things like :
Wear a Black t-shirt + Steve Jobs = I’m steve jobs if I wear a black t-shirt
Wednesday, October 16, 13

5. WHY?
"Society is founded on hero
worship," the 19th-century historian
Thomas Carlyle once observed
from the
ero" comes
The term "h
a hero was
ks. For them,
ancient Gree
something so
o had done
a mortal wh
scope of
the normal
far beyond
he left an
rience that
human expe
him when
emory behind
immortal m
ived worship
nd thus rece
he died, a
ue the gods.
like that d
Wednesday, October 16, 13
The concept of a sto
ry archetype of the
standard "hero's quest" o
r monomythpervasive
across all cultures is so
mewhat controversial.
Expounded mainly byJos
eph Campbell in The
Hero with a Thousand
Faces, it illustrates
several uniting themes of
hero stories that hold
similar ideas of what a he
ro represents, despite
v a s tl y d iffe re n t c u lt u re
s a n d b e li e fs . T h e
monomyth or Hero's Jou
rney consists of three
s e p a ra te s ta g e s in c lu
d in g th e D e p a rt u re ,
Initiation, and Return.

6. MY THOUGHTS ...
(disclaimer: they might be wrong)
Keep your startup heroes (a poster of Steve for example)
And focus on cold thinking - research based advises
Challenge any speaker on their own fallacies
e.g. : Read Founders Dilemmas
(http://www.amazon.com/The-Founders-Dilemmas-Anticipating-Entrepreneurship/dp/0691158304)
Wednesday, October 16, 13

7. THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
Since Blaise Pascal (17th century) we can apply the
scientific method of test and deduction to
understand natural phenomena.
When a plane crashes we don’t look back at why the other one did
not crash we focus on why the plane crashed!
Interesting enough planes never crash because of one reason, but
because of an alignment of conditions (ie engine failing + bad weather
+ pilot sleeping) After each crash, the learnings are taken and applied
to avoid them again... WE SHOULD DO THIS WITH STARTUPS!
Wednesday, October 16, 13

8. Why ice-creams fail?
Ben and Jerry’s Graveyard...
Wednesday, October 16, 13

9. Why Startup Fail?
1. Steve Blank : The main reason is failure to find customers
(Answer : Customer Development)
2. Eric Ries : The main reason is spending to much time developing vs testing early
(Answer : Lean Startup Methodology)
3. Noam Wassermann : 65% of failures are due to people problems
Other Category : Jim Collins : Separating the good from the great...
(Jim did focused on success vs failure and large corp vs startup)
Wednesday, October 16, 13

10. Now go back to work!
Like every successful entrepreneurs did :)
Wednesday, October 16, 13