All the deals falling through really felt familiar to my experience with my first startup. There was a week where we went from about $100,000 in handshake deals to $0. We shut down the next week.
One of the things I learned from that experience was that an effectuative strategy really only works if you have strong/solid relationships with your partners or deals in writing, not just acquaintances and handshake deals. Definitely taking that learning into the next startup.
Wow, that must have really sucked to lose out on $100k. I can’t imagine what that’s like, things never got that concrete for me.
I think you’re probably right about acquaintances + handshake deals, but it’s still a little counterintuitive to me. There’s a lot of things that I think of as basic human decency, and expect 99% of the population to do. Following through on a handshake deal is one. Not ghosting people is another. It still feels tempting to me to continue with those expectations, but Rational Self feels pretty confident that the expectations are unrealistic.
All the deals falling through really felt familiar to my experience with my first startup. There was a week where we went from about $100,000 in handshake deals to $0. We shut down the next week.
One of the things I learned from that experience was that an effectuative strategy really only works if you have strong/solid relationships with your partners or deals in writing, not just acquaintances and handshake deals. Definitely taking that learning into the next startup.
Wow, that must have really sucked to lose out on $100k. I can’t imagine what that’s like, things never got that concrete for me.
I think you’re probably right about acquaintances + handshake deals, but it’s still a little counterintuitive to me. There’s a lot of things that I think of as basic human decency, and expect 99% of the population to do. Following through on a handshake deal is one. Not ghosting people is another. It still feels tempting to me to continue with those expectations, but Rational Self feels pretty confident that the expectations are unrealistic.