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You Won’t Believe What Running a Startup is Really Like

…until you’ve actually done it.

If you’re running a startup, or thinking about it, or have an inclination that some day you want to, or you work at one, go read Paul Graham’s latest essay, What Startups Are Really Like.

For me it reads like my “startup autobiography”. He’s publishing a list of “surprises” that he asked Y Combinator members to send him about startup life. Nearly every single one of them is something I’ve experienced. And I can guarantee you that’s the same for most startup founders.

  • People can tell you all they want about what it’s like to run a startup (including me!), but until they’ve done so themselves, they really don’t know.
  • And on top of that, you won’t really listen anyway – until you’ve jumped in, started a company and you’re off to the races. Then, as you experience these “surprises” you’ll remember what you were once told (or read) about startups, and hopefully benefit from that knowledge.

But you have to experience it to believe it.

How To Write Great Surveys with Actionable Data Results

Writing a great survey isn’t easy. At first it might seem straightforward, but after banging out a few questions with your favorite survey tool (I use Wufoo most of the time), you start to see the complexity and intricacies involved.

More and more startups are creating surveys as a means of collecting data from early prospects and customers. I’ve seen a few examples of this implemented; there’s a landing page with an email sign-up, and once you’ve converted, a survey pops up. This is a great way of collecting user feedback. But only if the feedback you collect is useful.

Recently I’ve been helping a friend collect data through surveys for a project he’s working on. (Sadly I can’t go into more detail than that, but it’s definitely interesting!) I logged onto Wufoo, created a new survey, and started writing questions. As I looked back at the questions, I asked myself, “What’s the point of each question?”

Good question.

Actually, out of all the questions I wrote (or asked myself in my head) that was the best one. What’s the point?

In reviewing the questions, I wanted to be crystal clear on each one’s objective. It took me a fairly long time re-working the survey before I felt it was ready for action.

I’m far from an expert survey-writer. And below I’ve included a number of great resource links to help you learn more about writing great surveys. But I wanted to share what I’ve learned to-date:

  1. Take the necessary time to write a great survey. Don’t rush this step because you’re eager for customer data. And don’t rush this step because you “just know” that all the answers are going to be what you want. Take your time. Do the research. Think things through.
  2. Surveys don’t have to be static. Feel free to iterate on your surveys, changing them as you see data coming in, adding / removing / editing questions as appropriate. I wouldn’t take this step lightly, because it could make the analysis more complicated, but don’t assume you nailed the perfect survey right away. And I think it’s reasonable to try A/B testing your surveys too.
  3. Focus on actionable data and metrics. You need results that you can actually do something with. There have been some great posts on actionable metrics. I encourage you to read them all.
  4. Be strict with yourself. I found when writing surveys it’s easy to let things slide a bit. You throw in a question, even if you’re not sure it’s right. Or you don’t edit the language carefully enough, assuming people will understand questions clearly. You need to be ultra-vigilant. And you need to be unafraid to kill a question completely if it doesn’t meet the proper standards.
  5. Don’t worry too much about length. I’ve experimented a bit with various survey lengths, and haven’t found it’s made a huge difference in completion. I suspect this is similar to the debate between long and short landing pages — it’s not the length that matters as much as the quality and effectiveness of the content.
  6. Ask tough questions. You have to force yourself to ask tough questions. You can’t be afraid, otherwise you won’t get enough honest, raw and actionable results. The survey.io tool (for very simple but useful customer surveys) asks, How would you feel if you could no longer use the product? That’s a tough question to ask, because you might not like the answer.
  7. Stay open-minded to discovery. As I look at the survey results I’ve collected, I’ve noticed that there’s lots to discover that was unintentional. This may not be a great thing, but it’s still interesting. I have a couple of open-ended paragraph-style questions in the surveys and the results are absolutely fascinating. They lead me to think about new ideas, and also make me want to follow up with respondents to dig further. It’s just about staying open-minded to the possibility that you don’t know everything about everything (which is fairly easy in my case!)

I have a lot to learn about writing great surveys. But one thing is certain: You need to recognize the importance of collecting actionable survey metrics, testing surveys and putting a lot of effort into getting them right.

Here are some resources for writing great surveys:

Raising Startup Capital is an Achievement, But Not the Most Important One

HubSpot recently raised $16M dollars in a new funding round. The total capital they’ve raised to date: $33M. That’s a huge amount of money. Dharmesh Shah, one of HubSpot’s founders isn’t in love with the idea of raising venture capital (but he did it, and explains why too.) He considers himself a bootstrapping guy.

After raising all that money, Dharmesh tweeted:

Startups: Closing a funding round is not value creation. It’s the *opportunity* to create value.

So what’s the deal?

The reality is this:

  • Raising capital is extremely hard. So you can’t deny that it’s an achievement, and one that very few startups ever accomplish. And if one of your goals is raising money, you should recognize the success.
  • But where startups fall flat on their faces is when they think that getting investment is THE achievement.

It’s not. But it sure is easy to think that way. Someone hands you a big, fat check (sadly they don’t do it with those really big checks that lottery winners get photographed with, although that could be fun!) and tells you to go spend the money.

But as Dharmesh points out, raising money by itself isn’t real value creation. It’s just one of the tools in your startup toolkit that can be useful. And as much as startups say, “We know this is just the beginning…” it’s clear that there’s an obsessive focus on the importance (some say necessity) of raising capital, and once done, an over-indulgent sense of success.

The biggest challenge for any startup isn’t raising money, building a product, acquiring customers, marketing, hiring, etc. It’s focus. Focus is so hard to accomplish for startups – both in terms of what to focus on and how to focus properly. It’s so hard to take a macro-level focus on prioritizing everything that has to be done, and then be able to get into the insane little details as well.

And when everyone obsesses too much about raising capital it enforces a disproportionate amount of focus on the process and need to do so. And that creates a disproportionate sense of success from getting it done (or the opposite if you don’t.)

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About Ben Yoskovitz
I recently joined GoInstant as VP Product. GoInstant changes how we use the web, making it shareable like never before.

I'm also a Founding Partner at Year One Labs, an early stage accelerator in Montreal. Previously I founded Standout Jobs (and sold it). I'm a hands-on startup guy, helping companies grow successfully from the idea forward. You can reach me at byosko at gmail dot com.

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