Is this BS? – how to judge the success of a company

Want to know how to judge the success of a company in a single meeting?

1. Does the founder want to be right rather than rich?
2. Strategic Product Decisions
3. Team Discussion Dynamics
4. Respect for Leadership

http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/03/how-to-tell-if-an-early-stage-company-will-succeed-in-one-meeting/?n_play=549003aae4b0e8bea5037e29


  • “Shadow a product strategy management meeting and watch how decisions are made. ”

    Impossible to get the real pix, because CEO will prepare the team and warn employees to behave. Been there… yes it was a staged bs.

  • I’m not really sure how you can accurately gauge team discussion dynamics without knowing the personalities and backgrounds of the team really well.

    Equally unclear how you can tell leadership is being respected from one meeting – again, without some respectable length of history to draw from.

    I also wonder about the strategic product decisions: I don’t know about you, but it is rare that actual strategic product decisions are made. And so, how would you know that this particular meeting contained them, or not?

  • This is BS. Of course it is ! Every skilled writer can produce this kind of article. Put together all the good things necessary for a startup (perfect idea, perfect team, perfect product, perfect marketing, perfect financing…) and you MAY have a success. Nobody never sees that out of such papers. Reality is tougher. In real life, nothing is perfect. And despite lots of weaknesses, it is possible to succeed. Those who succeeded were not perfect. Maybe not better than you and me. But they found how to make it. And their recipe is ok for them, and nobody else.

    If you want to read something really valuable about the success of a company, it will take a real effort. Read that: http://skibinsky.com/godel-incompleteness-for-startups/

    This is quite long, mathematical, far from common sense, and it needs a real effort to be understood (unless you are already familiar with Gödel theorem). You won’t find there any recipe for success, but you will learn scientific notions about what makes a startup successful or not. It’s obviously worth your time.

  • Really? You can tell if the founder wants to be right rather than rich from just 1 meeting? Man, GTFOHWTBS. This thirst to publish something at all costs IS at an all time ridiculous high. I know every random body’s trying to stand out but

    if people have nothing to say, they should stop cluttering the net with junk..

      • You can easily judge their success by their stock price. But I think it is not the answer you expect. There is no answer. You can check any metric you want, you can’t predict the future. Guts and feelings are neither better nor worse than metrics or crystal globe. Metrics give you a measure of “seriousness”. But the foolish can also succeed. If such tool could exist, you would have 99% successful startups. Take the time to read Skibinsky’s blog (link in a previous post) to understand why your question can’t be answered. Because such answer would violate the laws of the universe (if you can excuse the pompous formula :o) ).

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