<story><title>Why Your Startup Shouldn&apos;t Copy 37signals or Fog Creek</title><url>http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/8354//Why-Your-Startup-Shouldn-t-Copy-37signals-or-Fog-Creek.aspx</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mechanical_fish</author><text>This guy has gone to the zoo and interviewed all the animals. The tiger says that the secret to success is to live alone, be well disguised, have sharp claws and know how to stalk. The snail says that the secret is to live inside a solid shell, stay small, hide under dead trees and move slowly around at night. The parrot says that success lies in eating fruit, being alert, packing light, moving fast by air when necessary, and always sticking by your friends.&lt;p&gt;His conclusion: These animals are giving contradictory advice! And that&apos;s because they&apos;re all &quot;outliers&quot;.&lt;p&gt;But both of these points are subtly misleading. Yes, the advice is contradictory, but that&apos;s only a problem if you imagine that the animal kingdom is like a giant arena in which all the world&apos;s animals battle for the Animal Best Practices championship [1], after which all the losing animals will go extinct and the entire world will adopt the winning ways of the One True Best Animal. But, in fact, there are a hell of a lot of different ways to be a successful animal, and they coexist nicely. Indeed, they form an &lt;i&gt;ecosystem&lt;/i&gt; in which all animals require other, much different animals to exist.&lt;p&gt;And it&apos;s insane to regard the tiger and the parrot and the snail as &quot;outliers&quot;. Sure, they&apos;re unique, just as snowflakes are unique. But, in fact, there are a lot of different kinds of cats and birds and mollusks, not just these three. Indeed, there are creatures that employ some cat strategies and some bird strategies (lions: be a sharp-eyed predator with claws, but live in communal packs). The only way to argue that tigers and parrots and snails are &quot;outliers&quot; is to ignore the existence of all the other creatures in the world, the ones that bridge the gaps in animal-design space and that ultimately relate every known animal to every other known animal.&lt;p&gt;So, yes, it&apos;s insane to try to follow all the advice on the Internet simultaneously. But that doesn&apos;t mean it&apos;s insane to listen to 37signals advice, or Godin&apos;s advice, or some other company&apos;s advice. You just have to figure out which part of the animal kingdom you&apos;re in, and seek out the best practices which apply to creatures like &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt;. If you want to be a stalker, you could do worse than to ask the tiger for some advice.&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;[1] The ants are gonna win. Hölldobler and Wilson told me so.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Your Startup Shouldn&apos;t Copy 37signals or Fog Creek</title><url>http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/8354//Why-Your-Startup-Shouldn-t-Copy-37signals-or-Fog-Creek.aspx</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>TomOfTTB</author><text>This seems unrelated but I think it actually is a very good counterpoint so go with me for a sec.  When Hitler was invading Europe at the beginning of World War II Ghandi gave the citizens of Europe this advice...&lt;p&gt;I want you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island with your many beautiful buildings... If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman and child to be slaughtered 
Now, I&apos;m not as famous as Ghandi.  But I think I&apos;m qualified enough to say the above was stupid advice.&lt;p&gt;Mahatma Ghandi did a great thing for the world in that he popularized a very powerful tool: Non-violent resistance.  But where he failed was in realizing his one tool didn&apos;t apply universally (in this case it only works if the person you are resisting is decent enough not to throw you in a gas chamber and kill you en masse)&lt;p&gt;The same thing is true with the author of this blog.&lt;p&gt;If I have any advice for him it&apos;s to see each &quot;startup success story&quot; as a tool that can create success in some situations.  The responsibility of someone wanting to use that tool is to determine which situations that tool applies to.&lt;p&gt;So when contradictory advice comes along he should ask himself &quot;why did that tool work for company X and not for company Y?&quot;  Then decide whether you are closer to company X or company Y.</text></comment>