Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Consumer vs enterprise makes a big difference here - there are a lot of successful repeat entrepreneurs in the enterprise world.

the success of consumer startups, especially one that relies on network effects, are often random. That's why so many of the 'How did X get traction' stories on Quora boil down to "It suddenly took off with group foo, we weren't sure why". That's why a lot of these consumer startup founders doing repeat companies fail - they can't replicate the same conditions again.

Enterprise startups are a different story. Since the variables (who the customers are, how much they can pay, how they buy, what they want) are better known and existing relationships counting for a lot, repeat entrepreneurs have a better chance of having a success. Of course, enterprise startups have their own separate issues to deal with.



The difference isn't technically with consumer vs enterprise, but with how big in scope something is.

For example, it's likely that something as big and successful as facebook is due to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and idea, but a neighborhood pizza shop can be more likely to be successful due to experience, skill, and non-luck factors.

Consumer startups just happen to usually need to be big in scope in order to succeed.

So outliers like Facebook, apple, etc may actually depend on luck to become as big as they are, but smaller scope enterprises may be more formulaic and repeatable.


He is talking about enterprise software startups e.g. Workaday.


I would wager it makes far less of a difference than you imagine. The problem here is survivorship bias. We naturally hear far more about consumer startups because we are their target audience (in a general sense). Therefore, we hear about consumer startups that fail more often than about enterprise startups. It then seems that enterprise startups are less likely to fail.

If that were true, the fact that VC money is focuses far more on consumer startups would be ridiculous. Surely if enterprise startups succeed more often VC firms would make investments where they could benefit from this fact, likely by structuring deals around taking a percentage of profits since big exits are rare but long spans of profitability would not be. There would be no point in playing the consumer startup lottery as you would be greatly overpaying for risk.


Exactly.

It's the difference between being a gold digger and a merchant.

The gold diggers might or might not find gold, but they all need the tools to look for it.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2026 batch! Applications are open till July 27.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: