Founders at Work.pdf

372 Founders at Work
providing a good service for the customers, because word is spreading. And
TripAdvisor is the conduit in the travel space for spreading that word.
Livingston: Looking back on your experience with TripAdvisor, what was most
surprising about it?
Kaufer: Certainly the most surprising to me was how much people voluntarily
share their experiences. I had never written a review before starting
TripAdvisor. I had never posted my comments on Amazon or anywhere else.
But we’re able to collect millions of opinions each year. It is 2006, and we’re up
to over five million now. So you have a lot of people out there that, for
absolutely no reward whatsoever—we don’t pay them for opinions, we never
have—will take the time to write a review or answer someone else’s question.
Maybe it’s because we’re the size we are and that people have gotten a lot of
content, so now they’re interested in sort of giving back to the site that helped
them make a decision. But the fact that we’re able to collect so much on an
ongoing basis isn’t something I would have predicted.
Livingston: Is there any advice that you would give to someone who is thinking
about starting a startup?
Kaufer: Certainly the founding team makes the biggest difference. Usually
founding teams don’t stay together for very long. That happens. If the founding
team splits in the first 6 months, that can be pretty devastating to the birth of a
company. So getting to know someone before actually joining forces, spending
some more time thinking through what the roles and responsibilities will be
between the founding team members. You hear breakup stories of, “Well, I was
going to do this.” “No, I wanted to do that.” “Oh, you’re taking too much control
over this.” Unfortunately, odds are high that’ll happen anyway. But if you
can iron all that out before you actually start the company, or pick different
founders, it’ll improve your chances of success.
Tip number two: you can’t get too attached to your vision in a startup,
because things may change. It’s not a sign of failure to change your vision. I
remember in a previous company, we wanted to be this, but we were offered a
consulting contract to do this, that, and the other thing, and, yeah, that wasn’t in
the plan, but we’ll take that, because that’s going to add $50,000 to our startup
capital, and it’ll only take x amount of time. Yeah, be wary of distractions, but if
you’re lightning-focused on just one thing and aren’t willing to consider others,
you probably don’t have the flexibility to make it when things don’t go according
to plan. That’s the one truism: things won’t go according to plan.
At the earlier stages of the company, when you’re actually out trying to get
some customers, do whatever the hell the customer wants. If they’re going to
pay you, the customer is right. Because you need that initial money. You need
that customer on the list to go get the next one. If you have to give away whatever
you’re doing, give it away. Get the customer. Make them into a reference
account. Make that customer into the person that sings your praises the
loudest, and really uses your product or service.