We keep seeing this. If you had to point out the fundamental problem, what would it be?

I think it’s the disconnect. Each persona is an expert in their own field but is completely oblivious to other critical areas.

The founder knows how to raise money but doesn’t really understand the customers. The engineer knows the tech but doesn’t really understand what it takes to keep the business afloat. The salesperson knows what customers want but doesn’t really understand what’s possible to make. The investor knows the numbers but doesn’t really understand how poorly the business is run.

I suspect if you look at successful startups you’ll often see a very small (1-3) group of founders who are very close, each can do more than one thing really well, and their combined expertise means that together they have very few blindspots.

To me, the fundamental problem is what Paul Graham pointed out here: https://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

"The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself.

Why do so many founders build things no one wants? Because they begin by trying to think of startup ideas. That m.o. is doubly dangerous: it doesn't merely yield few good ideas; it yields bad ideas that sound plausible enough to fool you into working on them."

Finding a problem _you have yourself_ also increases the chance that you understand the problem space.

> The engineer knows the tech but doesn’t really understand what it takes to keep the business afloat.

This is assuming there IS a way to keep the business afloat. It's this framing of thinking that has caused more suffering, frustration, and bad will in all the places I've worked at which are just reskins of this article.

A business is entitled to it's model but it is not entitled to success. This story which is more than just a strawman or anecdote gets it right: The engineers are doing their job the best they can with unreasonable expectations set by people who do not feel they need to be constrained by reality and just have dollar signs in their eyes. The engineers do not share the same type of blame as everyone else at the company. Their failure was enabling nonsense and greed.

I read somewhere that almost every very successful person’s results can be attributed to 2-3 tricks that they consistently apply to great effect.

With Elon, I think one of his is “build it as cheaply as possible, and then you can afford to only sell to people who are purely excited about the tech.” I don’t know when he learned this (I actually wonder if it was a lesson he learned from Eberhard/Tarpenning at Tesla, who were only selling the roadster to sports car enthusiasts who cared more about 0-60 than fit & finish, or range, or cost, or anything else).

Anyway, my current interpretation is that the pizza guys shouldn’t have sold to pepepizza (or friends and family, probably). I know startups do this all the time, but whenever I’ve seen it, it always seems to turn into a distraction from the Big Idea that is the company’s thesis. Then Big Customer gets hung up on ancillary requirements and Cool Startup doesn’t really get to test their thesis at all. Maybe the key is to stay small, focus on finding people who really care about the new oven tech, and size the company to that market until you’ve solved enough problems to expand to people for whom the cool tech is concern #2 or #3.

It seems to start with the fact that the founder doesn’t understand the business domain at all:

How do people actually buy ovens? What actually matters for customers, not what do they say matters? Who are the competitors and why do you think you can actually do better than them in at least some niche? What culture actually works for an oven producing company?

The problem is that people are not listening to each other. Part of this is just working together is hard, but a bigger part is that there is status associated with being "in charge" of things as founder. The desire to feel like you are controlling the outcome and people need to take instruction and direction from you rather than working together to find a path through the forest.

Your solution is to fire CEOs, shareholders and only make employee-owned businesses? I mean I'm on board.

The fundamental problem is that reality has a surprising level of detail (as described in an article by the same name). The founder is the same kind of guy that believes the government should just get rid of inefficiencies.

Isn’t a large part of fundamental problem the lack of clarity and mental discipline to stay focused on MVP and if it’s clear it’s necessary then pivot but still stay focused? It seems clear to me that real problem is lack of focus and discipline.

Balance the power between business, engineering, and sales. I suspect this is at least partially why PG likes founders with an even equity split.

There are two fundamental problems: one is the inability to admit mistakes and shed the false aura of omniscience in front of customers, investors or employees. The second (almost a corollary of the first) is overpromising and, as a result, underdelivering because those who face the customers/investors want to appear infallible.