[pors]

Skills are highly overrated I think, it needs persistence above all to succeed with your startup. E.g. when I read this http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/22/post-mortem-for-plancast/ my first thought was: he gives up too fast (very interesting comment by Scoble also). I don't say you don't need skills at all, but if you never give up you will pick up the skills along the way.

[swombat]

That is a very common "tech startup world" meme, and very damaging, in my opinion. Persistence is in fact utterly useless unless you're persisting at the right things.

My experience, on the contrary, is that, at least outside the Valley, many founders persist years past the point where they should have given up and done something else instead. And the reason they fail is not that they didn't persist long enough, but that they lack the skills to implement their ideas (usually on the customer development / marketing side). I've seen examples of both skilled founders pulling off apparently boring ideas, and unskilled ones failing at apparently good ideas despite persisting for years.

If anything, my observation is that the most reliably successful people I know are not persistent at all - or rather, they're persistent at the overall game of entrepreneurship, rather than at doggedly following a dead startup into the grave. Skilled and experienced entrepreneurs have the guts to recognise that what seemed like a brilliant genius idea 3 months ago is in fact a total waste of time, and do something else instead. The biggest differentiator, though, is skill.

Moreover, whereas "being persistent" or "having great ideas" is a character trait that is quite difficult to change, anyone can learn skills and improve their chances this way.

Finally, looking at the example which you picked, Plancast persisted for 2 years - a year and a half after, in the founder's words, "things began to stall". That seems reasonably persistent to me. Of course, it's easy to stand on the sidelines and say "they should have kept trying for longer" - because it's not your life that's elapsing while they work on that dud startup idea.

[pors]

I don't say "persist without looking where you are going", of course, pursuing a bad idea for 20 years won't work out. I can't back it up here on the spot, but if you study a bit you'll find that most success stories were no instant success. It became a meme for a reason, same thing about having a good idea. Just a good idea is not enough, but it certainly helps.

Plancast: Two years is way to short to draw conclusions IMO. Why don't they address the user feedback? If they want to reach the broader audience, why not change the definition of "Event" into something we do more often? Etc.

[loceng]

Indeed, you need persistance to learn where you are going, to learn how to execute and what it means to execute. :)

[SemanticFog]

If you're working on a big idea that is slightly ahead of its time, then persistence can pay big dividends -- check out the story of Pandora (http://www.businessinsider.com/pandora-story-2011-6).

If you're working on a smaller, highly tactical idea then persistence is often a waste of time. Anyone who meets a lot of startups will see many ideas that just aren't going to work. The sooner the founders realize it and move on, the better off they are.

[loceng]

"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." — Calvin Coolidge