[highCs]

Just in case you got trapped, this is mostly a boilerplate which goal is not to help you but the author to get the appropriate image that would allow him to invest in companies that are doing well.

> How do competitors view you? Think about your 2-3 closest competitors. If you asked their CEOs to truthfully describe your company's strengths and vulnerabilities

Well, your 6 months old startup has no "strengths and vulnerabilities". It should also not have direct competitors. Only big companies have this kind of things. You have code, users and growth.

> Are you ready for a Series A? > Imagine that instead of being the founder of your company, you're an investor

You already ask yourself these questions.

> The debate from hell

This one is decent and I'm nice. You already did this with your cofounder most of the time.

> Was your MVP truly minimal?

Who cares, you've survived.

> Stomach-churning churn numbers

You will stress automatically about churn.

> The missing key

Don't hire "key role". Only big companies do that.

> Laughed out of the room

Decent and I'm nice.

> Unexpectedly large market

By the way, only investors say market when talking about startups. While this has sense, it's kinda a concept for big companies again. Your startup has early users and say pool / niche of those.

> Unexpectedly small market

You rarely have an unexpectedly small market. Most of the time you have no market at all: you have built something people don't want.

> How does the trajectory of the world over the next 5-10 years align (or misalign) with what you're doing?

If you're growing, you're "aligned".

And on and on. The intention is not really to help you here I believe.

[dang]

This sort of dismissal based on platitudes ("Most of the time you have no market at all") is the sort of comment we don't want on Hacker News. Anything can be dismissed this way, and anyone can do it. It feels good, gets upvotes, and generates more of the same—and thus the discourse clogs up up with more and more of this. That's bad. And what does your apparent critique boil down to? "The intention is not really to help you here I believe"—in other words, (a) you read minds and (b) you assume your conclusion.

For higher-quality discussion, we should apply the Principle of Charity: that is, assume the strongest plausible interpretation of an article and respond to that. Poking holes in a weak one may be fun but it is not substantive.

[highCs]

I have thought about that 10 more minutes and fortunately I get the same result as you: one can say of everything that "this is bullshit and the intention is bad". You dad got a new car? This is bullshit and the intention is bad. So my post achieve nothing good indeed.

So now, I have a question. I've noticed some people use a clever communication and social trick I call "word dropping". "word dropping" consists of forming sentences only in the intention to say or write a set of words because doing so can have an effect on some people. (Example of word set: de-risk, small market, big market, MVP, hire, key role, business plan, etc.) It is exactly like a text written with random words, it means absolutely nothing, but the trick is to do that with a limit set of words which when put together quasi-randomly provide a feeling of sense. One can see the disastrous consequences such a thing can have if people start believing into it. It's super powerful because word dropping cost nothing to produce and cost a lot to dismiss with proper arguments. This only hurts terribly.

I've found some people use plenty of social intelligence hacks like that, which works, hurts and decrease productivity. How do you protect someone from that? For example, say someone use word dropping to hurt me, what can I do? I guess I should read a book about that...

[highCs]

Sorry for that. Thanks for showing me this, I didn't know/notice.

[shurcooL]

> gets upvotes

Why would it get upvotes if it's not helpful? Just trying to understand.

[mjevans]

I think you're dismissing the competitors too early. It can be viewed more broadly as well.

You are not just competing with similar businesses, but also the potential that customers literally 'do nothing'.

In addition to that, there could also be legacy solutions or alternative ways of avoiding the issue that your company seeks to solve.

Another important spin on this might be if you /should/ have had competition but they no longer exist. That's something that the search here can turn up and provide further input for the other thought points.

[greglindahl]

A great way to look like an idiot is to get up in front of VCs and say there's no competition. The points that you bring up are all much better things to talk about than a flat "we have no competition" claim.