Ask HN: Why do we fail? We were sure it would work.

Take electric cars. Its a great idea, some of them are really cool and could save the planet, etc. However, drivers aren't ready to give up 400 miles on a tank of gas that can be refilled in 5 mins vs. 90 miles on a charge that takes 8 hours to recharge.

In my opinion, its not that we, you or I are doing anything wrong. We just are not fighting hard enough and getting a passionate core of believers that will carry us to the next iteration of our idea. Eventually electric cars will become as useful as gas powered cars... but it will be entirely due to the belief of a small core of people that want to see that happen.

Your ideas aren't bad or wrong... they are just ill timed.

That's why I think going the route of doing (or at least testing) the things you may believe won't work is better, because you just simply don't know what you don't know.

I also think a lot of successful companies were like this. They were sort of welcomed and blessed by serendipity.

Every time you have an idea, you run it through the "real world simulator" in your head. And as smart as we think we are, this simulator is terrible at predicting the effectiveness of ideas. And worse off all, it's usually biased and leading you to believe your ideas are amazing.

That's why the lean startup movement is so effective. It makes you get out of your internal simulator and run your experiments in the real world as fast as possible.

Really helpful tips for startups