by barretts on 4/21/14, 4:15 PM with 94 comments
by fishtoaster on 4/21/14, 5:37 PM
I stopped reading right there* . I've worked for a few big companies, a small lifestyle company, and a few startups, and I'm invariably happiest at a small company.
Financially, the book may be right: I'm not going to get rich as a startup employee, and I'll probably fail if I start my own. However, the thing I do for more than half my waking hours for the duration of my working life is something I enjoy. I get up reasonably interested in going to work, and go home feeling like I'm building something.
You can phrase it cynically if you want. You can say I'm deluded; that I'm building someone else's dream; that I could be making more money doing something else.
But I enjoy what I do, and I make enough money to support myself, so don't tell me I'd invariably be happier at a big company. I've been down that road, and it's the only time since middle school I ever considered not being a programmer.
* Ok, so I actually continued reading, but you get the point.
by diego on 4/21/14, 6:03 PM
I practice a form of rock climbing called bouldering. It's about walking up to a big boulder and climbing it along the hardest possible line you can. Hikers sometimes point out that "you could have just walked up on the other side."
Yes, doing a startup is hard. It can also be fun (probably type II or type III fun if you ask me). A climber named Kevin Jorgeson explained it quite well during a talk he gave at Google:
by pyrrhotech on 4/21/14, 5:31 PM
For those who say that doesn't work, my Grandad started his first company at age 58 with an excess million dollars out of 5 million he had saved from working a normal job until that point. He's never worked more than 40 hours per week in his life, and 25 years later, his company is a great success, turning 1 million into 60MM and having a lot of fun doing it.
by srlake on 4/21/14, 5:46 PM
Is the pressure high, and the chance of success low? Certainly.
Was the expected value of taking a Google salary rather than the risk-weighted value of starting a company higher? Again, yes.
But the missing piece here is that sometimes it's not about the money, the perks, the hours. I love doing what I'm doing today, regardless of all of the above. My two co-founders here would say the same. We get to choose exactly who we want to work with, what we want to work on, and get a real shot at having an impact on people's lives all over the world, through the products we create.
If we didn't have entrepreneurs taking this irrational leap, we wouldn't have the Google's of the world to employ those who choose the other path.
by gpcz on 4/21/14, 5:27 PM
If you still believe your startup idea is a slam-dunk after seeing how horrible things can get if there's any hiccup in the process, then you're ready to take an investor's time to give a proposal.
by NhanH on 4/21/14, 5:36 PM
As one of those young kids who've seen a lot of articles (and even HN's comments) in similar vein of this one, I'd love to see a rebuttal for those types of articles.
I know that everyone is supposed to have their own reasons, but not all of us is eloquent enough to put it into words. And some great writing to set our mind straight (in one way or another) would be great :-)
by barce on 4/21/14, 6:12 PM
Let's say you pony up rent for your YCombinator startup and are paying about $2400 / month + utilities for 3 months. Let's say you get your food & other necessities costs to $80 / week.
That's an $8160 investment.
What you get back are the weekly dinners with great speakers. The connections you make should be worth at least $150k if your startup fails and you have to use that connection to get a job. I'm assuming a markup in your value as an employee for just getting into YCombinator.
$8160 and you can make 20% - 35% more than your peers if it fails.
$8160 in lottery tickets will pretty much get you zero if you fail.
by _Adam on 4/21/14, 5:29 PM
Any book that tries to tell me how I'm supposed to be happy is automatically placed in the same category as religious texts.
by tunesmith on 4/21/14, 5:39 PM
by cousin_it on 4/21/14, 6:30 PM
The Silicon Valley trade is also pretty close to being zero-sum. Even on a purely financial basis, if you add up all the profits from successful investments, they barely cover the losses on all the unsuccessful ones. A few big-name angels and VCs can do OK for themselves, but in aggregate the industry of investing in startups does not make money.
If it's true, that will strongly influence my opinion of the startup scene.
by edj on 4/21/14, 6:33 PM
But it looks like that may not be so far from the truth: "About three-quarters of venture-backed firms in the U.S. don't return investors' capital, according to recent research by Shikhar Ghosh, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School."[1]
1: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/04/21/the-most-ex...
by JonoBB on 4/21/14, 6:22 PM
There are many many many startups (or whatever term you want to give them) that create a good living for the founder, and perhaps a few employees as well. Not all startups have to (read: the vat majority don't) get VP funding et-al in order to be enjoyable and provide an viable level of income.
by soup10 on 4/21/14, 7:58 PM
Also, give up early! When you don't think something isn't worth pursuing anymore, figure out why, and don't be afraid to give up and try something else. Not every project is going to be successful and there is no shame in failing unless you have badly/unrealistically set expectations to the people you work with, in which case they are going to be rightly pissed.
by gms on 4/21/14, 5:33 PM
by beat on 4/21/14, 5:36 PM
Founders are a breed apart from programmers. If someone has that drive to create their own business from scratch, telling them that it's economically foolish to do so is like telling Van Gogh that he'd be better off painting houses - technically true, but irrelevant to the motives of the artist.
by tomblomfield on 4/21/14, 8:52 PM
That's a very strange definition of "zero sum". The fact that VC investment is barely profitable does not mean the industry is zero-sum. There is the potential for huge value creation - the very opposite of zero-sum
by iddav on 4/21/14, 6:27 PM
I think the big question the author fails to address is: Do these deluded engineers end up regretting their decisions in the long-term?
I think most people in the startup community understand that failure-- and the misery that comes with it-- comes with the territory, and the key is whether you can learn with each failure. And I would argue that there's no better to place to learn than an environment where your income depends directly on whether you're genuinely solving a problem for people (the people who "run the lottery" are your target customers, not the VCs, by the way). In my case, I've failed at over a dozen projects (some prior to my time at Google) while finding a few moderately successful ones along the way, and I'm continuing to fail, learn, and grow.
And I like to think that this better understanding of harsh realities of how the world actually works gained from doing a startup-- whether you succeed or fail, whether you end up at a small company or a large company-- is a return on your investment that continues to serve you for the rest of your career.
by zmitri on 4/21/14, 9:39 PM
There's money-driven people everywhere, but if you want to get rich, your best bet isn't to start a company. Work at a hedge fund and work your way up. People makes millions a year. Way easier than starting something. That being said it's also soul sucking and absolutely mindless. Provides little value.
Perhaps there's more to starting company than ecosystem?
Starting company allows you to address a problem directly. Whether that addresses a real problem, or is a cash grab, depends on founders.
Most "good founders" do it because they want to make it real. That articles propagates some kind of wannabe culture as being the real value of starting a company. Which is so lame.
Life is short and starting your own company is way better than being an employee at a big company in my opinion. If you are young you are undervalued.
Obviously it's more nuanced then this comment and not everyone is in a position to start a company or work at a small company, and hell no is it a meritocracy, lots of problems, but damn, do your own thing.
by rwmj on 4/21/14, 6:32 PM
by funkyy on 4/21/14, 6:43 PM
by Futurebot on 4/21/14, 8:19 PM
1) If you're after personal autonomy, no amount of working at a great company can give you that.
2) Not everyone has the skills to work at the Googles of the world. A mediocre engineer can still make a great business owner, though.
3) Not everyone has the right demeanor to work for other people.
4) Some people have worked for other companies, and decided it simply wasn't for them. Maybe they realized they were not paid anywhere close to enough for the value they created, or they simply couldn't take the politics.
5) The chance to make your bones (largely) on your own is a powerful thing.
It is often irrational from a short-to-medium-term financial perspective, and the Lottery Effect is sometimes at play, no question. The reasons above won't just go away, though.
by conradev on 4/21/14, 6:13 PM
I feel that entrepreneurship is fundamentally about controlling one's own future.
by ZenPro on 4/21/14, 5:51 PM
In the UK, angels can claim 50% tax relief on any investment followed by claiming back up to 100% of any losses (minus the tax relief). Investing is almost risk free.
Just find yourself some entrepreneurs, sell them the dream, supply ramen noodles and repeat x 10 until one of them hits.
by chrisbennet on 4/21/14, 6:55 PM
by barretts on 4/21/14, 5:55 PM
by josephschmoe on 4/21/14, 5:41 PM
by clamprecht on 4/21/14, 5:39 PM
Even more, having startup experience on your resume is usually a good thing, even if the startup failed.
by cpks on 4/22/14, 11:39 AM
by marshray on 4/21/14, 8:50 PM
by lexcorvus on 4/22/14, 12:07 AM
by lutusp on 4/21/14, 5:27 PM
The reviewer says the book gives the required substance behind the punch line, of that I have no doubt, but this reminds me of the "War Games" (1983) punch line, almost word for word.
by 001sky on 4/21/14, 5:29 PM
by pjkundert on 4/21/14, 5:32 PM
...
Ok, sorry if that was subtle. If only a minority of the population values risky behavior such as software/hardware R&D highly, and someone in the vast majority who cannot understand how anyone with the requisite skill-set wouldn't be happier earning a high, stable salary at Google writes an article implying that the group in question must be delusional or maybe insane, don't you think a bit of sarcasm is in order?
-- someone who turned down a Google offer to do R&D