Bodega" Represents What's Wrong With Tech Funding, but It Won't Kill Your Actual Bodega. The founders of Bodega, the new vending machine startup that wants to replace convenience stores, probably didn’t expect the internet to immediately and vociferously hate them. But they should have. The headline of their launch- day article in Fast Company—“Two Ex- Googlers Want To Make Bodegas And Mom- And- Pop Corner Stores Obsolete”—isn’t unfair. FC quotes co- founder Paul Mc. Donald directly: “Eventually, centralized shopping locations won’t be necessary, because there will be 1. Bodegas spread out, with one always 1.

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Bodega is a chain of internet- enabled vending machines located in gyms, dorms, and apartment buildings. Each five- foot “pantry box,” unlockable with a mobile app, contains non- perishable items that you purchase simply by grabbing. The startup probably doesn’t have a chance, in part because most startups don’t have a chance.

But who knows! No one knows anything.) Still, whether or not they succeed, they will temporarily be in charge of a lot of money, as a reward for presenting a certain vision to a certain set of people. And to most onlookers, Bodega’s vision seems distasteful; it’s one where we leave our house less, where our day includes one less human interaction. And unlike other “disruptive” technologies, the only seeming innovation here is fewer trips to the corner store.

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That’s the sum total of the new value Bodega brings to the world. Bodega also promises “customized items” that vary from location to location—this is what bodegas already do.) It’s not nothing!

But what does it ask in return? For Bodega to succeed, to make the kind of money Silicon Valley investors demand, it would need to take money away from the stores that currently sell these items. Mostly that’s grocery stores and CVS. In certain major cities, it’s the real bodegas that Bodega named itself after, seemingly an attempt to co- opt the positive and “authentic” associations we make with the friendly corner bodega in service of corporate profit.

Besides being in shockingly poor taste (and attempting to re- route your cash from a local, likely immigrant- owned business and back to Silicon Valley), this is also a questionable- at- best business plan. As all of Twitter pointed out, besides keep your money local, real bodegas are much more than giant vending machines; they might sell you a loose cigarette, a dirt- cheap coffee, or a fresh egg sandwich. They might hold your spare key or remember your usual order or say the first “hello” you hear that day. They might chase away the man trying to follow you home.

And even as vending machines, they’re much better at storing your favorite brand of toothbrush, or 1. Cottonelle, or fresh produce. All these advantages mean that bodegas probably can’t be beat this easily. The swift backlash is probably overstating the threat. But it’s not overstating what Bodega, its founders, and its investors wish would happen, or the troubling fact that over and over again, Silicon Valley investors pour money into companies like Bodega, which don’t create value but merely shuffle it around. Among the recent crop of unicorns, even those that provide new value to the customer are destroying major value elsewhere. Uber isn’t just a better way to handle taxi rides, it’s also a monopoly that will eventually dump its workforce in favor of self- driving cars.

Airbnb isn’t just helping people make an extra buck or find a place to stay; it’s also pushing up rents and eroding the tax base. This isn’t shocking. About ten years ago we all started getting mobile internet, a technological innovation so massive that Silicon Valley is still finding all the economic implications. But by doing so, they’re de- prioritizing the next technological innovation.

They’re behaving like hedge funds, extracting and redistributing value by reworking existing industries, while demanding to be seen as genius philanthropists fighting to make the world a better place. See also: Lyft essentially re- inventing.. But, as Buzz. Feed’s Ben Smith recently wrote, we’re all starting to see through that: “The tech industry has also benefited for years from its enemies, who it cast—often accurately—as Luddites who genuinely didn’t understand the series of tubes they were ranting about, or protectionist industries that didn’t want the best for consumers. That, too, is over.” Now political figures on the left and right see these companies, and their investors, for what they are: just another round of Gilded Age robber barons riding high on the once utopian promise of their main innovation, now squeezing the last breath out of the rest of the economy. With their fatuous appropriative marketing and their explicit threat to the business owners they want to mimic, the founders of Bodega walked right into this characterization. Bodega wants to kill your bodega, and they will almost definitely fail; don’t worry about that.

But do worry about why they didn’t even think you would be mad, and who gave them all that money in the first place.

The 1. 8 Mistakes That Kill Startups. October 2. 00. 6In the Q & A period after a recent talk, someone asked what made. After standing there gaping for a few seconds I.

It's equivalent to. Afterwards I realized it could be helpful to look at the problem. If you have a list of all the things you.

And this form of list may be more useful in practice. Russell Peters: Outsourced Full Movie In English. It's easier to catch yourself doing something you shouldn't than. In a sense there's just one mistake that kills startups: not making. If you make something users want, you'll.

And if you. don't make something users want, then you're dead, whatever else. So really this is a list of 1. Nearly all failure. Single Founder. Have you ever noticed how few successful startups were founded by. Even companies you think of as having one founder.

Oracle, usually turn out to have more. It seems unlikely this. What's wrong with having one founder? To start with, it's a vote. It probably means the founder couldn't talk any. That's pretty. alarming, because his friends are the ones who know him best.

But even if the founder's friends were all wrong and the company. Starting a startup. Even if you could do all the work. The last one might be the most important. The low points in a. When you have. multiple founders, esprit de corps binds them together in a way. Each thinks "I can't let.

This is one of the most powerful forces in human. Bad Location. Startups prosper in some places and not others. Silicon Valley. dominates, then Boston, then Seattle, Austin, Denver, and New York. After. that there's not much. Even in New York the number of startups per.

Silicon Valley. In towns. Houston and Chicago and Detroit it's too small to measure. Why is the falloff so sharp? Probably for the same reason it is. What's the sixth largest fashion center in.

US? The sixth largest center for oil, or finance, or publishing? Whatever they are they're probably so far from the top that it would.

It's an interesting question why cities. Standards are. higher; people are more sympathetic to what you're doing; the kind. Who knows exactly how these factors combine to boost. Silicon Valley and squish them in Detroit, but it's. Marginal Niche. Most of the groups that apply to Y Combinator suffer from a common. If you watch little kids playing sports, you notice that below a. When the ball comes near.

I didn't make a lot of catches. I used to close my eyes and hold my glove up more for. Choosing a marginal project is the startup equivalent of my eight.

If you make anything. You can only avoid competition by avoiding good ideas. I think this shrinking from big problems is mostly unconscious. It's not that people think of grand ideas but decide to pursue.

Your unconscious won't even. So the solution may be to think about. What would be a great idea for. Derivative Idea. Many of the applications we get are imitations of some existing.

That's one source of ideas, but not the best. If you. look at the origins of successful startups, few were started in. Where did they get their ideas? Usually from some specific, unsolved problem the founders identified. Our startup made software for making online stores.

When we started. it, there wasn't any; the few sites you could order from were. We knew that if. online shopping ever took off, these sites would have to be generated. Pretty straightforward. It seems like the best problems to solve are ones that affect you. Apple happened because Steve Wozniak wanted a computer. Google because Larry and Sergey couldn't find stuff online, Hotmail. Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith couldn't exchange email at.

So instead of copying the Facebook, with some variation that the. Facebook rightly ignored, look for ideas from the other direction.

Instead of starting from companies and working back to the problems. What do people complain about? What do you wish there was? Obstinacy. In some fields the way to succeed is to have a vision of what you.

Starting startups is not one of them. The stick- to- your- vision. Olympic gold medal. Startups are more like science. So don't get too attached to your original plan, because it's.

Most successful startups end up doing something. You have to be prepared. And the hardest part of. But openness to new ideas has to be tuned just right. Switching. to a new idea every week will be equally fatal.

Is there some kind. One is to ask whether the ideas. If in each new idea you're. Whereas if you keep. Fortunately there's someone you can ask for advice: your users. If. you're thinking about turning in some new direction and your users. Hiring Bad Programmers.

I forgot to include this in the early versions of the list. I know are programmers.

This is. not a serious problem for them. Watch The High Sign Online Flashx. They might accidentally hire someone. In a pinch they can. But when I think about what killed most of the startups in the.

A lot. of those companies were started by business guys who thought the. That's actually much harder than it. They don't even get a.

In practice what happens is that the business guys choose people. Microsoft Certified Developer) but who aren't. Then they're. mystified to find that their startup lumbers along like a World War.

II bomber while their competitors scream past like jet fighters. This kind of startup is in the same position as a big company. So how do you pick good programmers if you're not a programmer? I. don't think there's an answer. I was about to say you'd have to. But if you can't. The Broken Online Putlocker. Choosing the Wrong Platform.

A related problem (since it tends to be done by bad programmers). For example, I think a lot of. Bubble killed themselves by deciding to build. Windows. Hotmail was still running. Free. BSD for years after Microsoft bought it, presumably because. Windows couldn't handle the load.

If Hotmail's founders. Windows, they would have been swamped. Pay. Pal only just dodged this bullet.

After they merged with X. CEO wanted to switch to Windows—even after Pay. Pal cofounder. Max Levchin showed that their software scaled only 1% as well on. Windows as Unix. Fortunately for Pay. Pal they switched CEOs instead.

Platform is a vague word. It could mean an operating system, or a. It implies something that both supports and limits, like. The scary thing about platforms is that there are always some that. Windows in the 9. Java. applets were probably the most spectacular example.

This was. supposed to be the new way of delivering applications. Presumably. it killed just about 1.

How do you pick the right platforms? The usual way is to hire good. But there is a trick you could. Slowness in Launching.

Companies of all sizes have a hard time getting software done. It's. intrinsic to the medium; software is always 8. It takes an. effort of will to push through this and get something released to. Startups make all kinds of excuses for delaying their launch. Most. are equivalent to the ones people use for procrastinating in everyday. There's something that needs to happen first. Maybe. But. if the software were 1.

One reason to launch quickly is that it forces you to actually. Nothing is truly finished till it's. The other reason you need to launch is that it's only by.

Several distinct problems manifest themselves as delays in launching. Fortunately you. can combat all of them by the simple expedient of forcing yourself. Launching Too Early. Launching too slowly has probably killed a hundred times more. The danger here is that you ruin your reputation. You launch. something, the early adopters try it out, and if it's no good they. So what's the minimum you need to launch?

We suggest startups think. This is the same approach I (and many other programmers) use for. Think about the overall goal, then start by. If. it's a subset, you'll have to write it anyway, so in the worst case. But more likely you'll find that. The early adopters you need to impress are fairly tolerant. They. don't expect a newly launched product to do everything; it just has.

Having No Specific User in Mind. You can't build things users like without understanding them. I. mentioned earlier that the most successful startups seem to have.