My 2 Startups didn't work, But here's what I've become | Meta Mick Johnson (2/2) | EO

Failed startups taught Mick Johnson what he was capable of

Mick Johnson spent sixteen years moving between big tech and small startups, and the two companies he founded built interesting things and never scaled. He argues the trade was still worth making. Founding teaches you what you are capable of, because nothing stands between you and the dream but you, and the failure hands back a resilience and self-belief that a smooth career never would.

Takeaways

• Startups are a poor financial bet, rich personally. Founding teaches you more about what you are truly capable of than almost anything else, because the only thing between you and your dream is yourself. He calls it a great pursuit for anyone into self-development or inner learning.
• Ex-big-tech founders neglect go-to-market. At Google or Facebook a feature reaches billions without much effort, so founders from those companies deprioritise distribution. Building the product and relying on referrals is not a plan. Strong go-to-market turns a pretty good product into a great one.
• Product-market fit is found by wandering. You build one thing and nobody responds, then another and nobody responds, until one finally takes off. Both of his ventures built interesting things in the end, and neither scaled or succeeded.
• Build something ten times better. Early-stage founders should aim for something ten times better rather than a little better with a few new features. He wants a product that changes how people think about doing something, not an incremental addition to an existing one.
• Startups trade constraint for unbounded ambition. In a startup you choose whatever problem you want and attack it however you want. At a tech company you are constrained by your codebase and policy. Going back to a startup reminded him that payroll and insurance has nothing to do with the product.
• Rejection revealed resilience he did not know. He pitched an idea to 40 venture capitalists who all gave polite maybes, and after a month he accepted it would not work. Rejection from investors, a product without product-market fit and failed hires showed him resilience he did not know he had.
• He stopped needing to prove himself. He felt he had to prove himself to the world. He came to see he was proving himself to himself, which gave him courage to take the less well-trodden path. Responsibility for other people later taught him he only had to do great work.

The first startup, in numbers

1. He and his cofounder were new to Silicon Valley and to its culture, with no map for raising money. They did everything they could think of.
2. Their Y Combinator batch paid something like $6,000 per founder at a time when that was the going rate.