Hello fine people of Backchannel, this is Sandra.
When a young startup called AptDeco first launched, it was one of the cool kids: it was a platform, nothing but software, following in the gilded footsteps of Uber. But it wasn’t long before its founders faced an important, almost existential question: Should they buy themselves a fleet of vans?
The company had a simple premise: make it easier to buy used furniture from apartment dwellers by streamlining payment and pickups. You’d fall in love with a listing on AptDeco’s site for a gorgeous velvet sofa, say, and AptDeco would line up movers and coordinate with the couch’s owner for you. They loved the idea of being only a platform, and resisted amassing something as anachronistic as physical trucks.
But the difficulty of coordinating deliveries with available movers was holding the company back, so they plunked down for their own vans. It seemed to be working beautifully — until one van spontaneously burst into flames.
Co-founder Kalam Dennis had just three words: “Insurance is important.”
AptDeco’s van on fire.Dennis was on stage two weekends ago at Startup School, a YCombinator event with a packed room of entrepreneurs and aspirants of all ages. As I underwent a sort of flash-flood indoctrination in Silicon Valley-think, I was struck by a recurring theme among the biz tips: it also sounded like excellent advice on how to be an adult. Get insurance, check.
Here’s another example: Ooshma Garg, the founder of a food-delivery company called Gobble, advised the crowd to do things that don’t scale. Silicon Valley heresy! But she’d been casting about for ways to collect more customers, and decided to jog door to door in Palo Alto and leave handwritten notes and flowers at every house. She realized she wasn’t just peddling food — she was in the business of “creating moments of love.” Maybe those words make you cringe; I get that. But the point is she realized she needed to make an emotional connection with the customers she was courting. It wasn’t all about rows and columns. It helped to be a lovely person, too.
Ben Silbermann, CEO of Pinterest, got what might have been the best advice of his life from his then-girlfriend, now wife. While working at Google in a job he didn’t love, he entertained himself by dreaming up startup ideas and building prototypes in his spare time. Week after week, he’d share with her his latest idea and muse about how it’d be cool if that product actually existed. One day, having listened to one pitch too many, she turned to him and said, “You know, maybe you should just go do it — or stop talking about it.” So he did, and eventually Pinterest was born.
Silbermann isn’t bad with the career advice, by the way. When asked for his thoughts on recruiting, Silbermann dished out the following wisdom: “People don’t want a guarantee of success, but a guarantee of adventure.” Amen to that.
Happy weekend!
Sandra
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