Hsu claims DoorDash is the only major startup built from landing-page testing
David Hsu · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · Dec 17, 2020 · at 7:06
David Hsu is the founder and CEO of Retool. He discusses startup origin stories, arguing that top tech companies succeed through founder conviction rather than quantitative ad testing.
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“The only case where I know this might potentially have worked was I think it was paloaltodelivery.com or something, which then became DoorDash. I think it's the only sort of recorded case of this ever actually working, but if you look at all the other sort of major companies like Airbnb, Stripe, etc., I think all of them were sort of very conviction-based.”
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Hsu argues founder conviction beats testing landing pages for startup ideas
“Yeah, so I think conviction is very important, and so I think when choosing ideas, I think conviction probably is sort of highest order you have to care about, basically, is do you actually get convicted about the idea? I have a bunch of friends now, and I'm s…”