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Entrepreneur porn is a dangerous fantasy

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Re: Entrepreneur porn is a dangerous fantasy

#51

Post by helpfulanon »

amorphid wrote: post #2

Can confirm. Tried startup. Worked hard. Ran out of money. Ended up homeless. It sucked.

Same here.

Also would add a compounding series of negative results including depression, being almost shadow-banned from the business due to lack of optimism (no joke), then alcohol problems etc

I'd take a bet there are many many others on HN that can attest to this outcome, but lurk due to shame or emotional pain. Losing everything because of misjudgment is not an easy thing to admit to publicly, especially in a community so warped with the cult of survivor bias

Re: Entrepreneur porn is a dangerous fantasy

#52

Post by ska »

padobson wrote: post #9

2. You don’t need to be Facebook This should be number one - or even just the whole article. Any startup, or a career in general, should not be an end unto itself, but a vehicle to A) fulfill your basic needs and B) get you what you want. While I believe entrepreneurship is often the best way to get both of these, shooting to be the next Facebook is unnecessary. You could keep that corporate job, build your credit, a…

   9 out of 10 startups fail. While these odds are better than many other paths to wealth ...
That presupposes that a successful startup results in (the founders at least) becoming wealthy. That's a real stretch - unless you define it as "success". In that case, 10% is way, way too high.

If wealth is what you primarily want, you're probably in the wrong game anyway - and much more likely to fail than someone who wants to solve a problem.

Re: Entrepreneur porn is a dangerous fantasy

#53

Post by mercurial »

ralmeida wrote: post #35
borplk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you elaborate on that?

I believe he meant that in France, being a civil servant is kind of a common "dream job" - high pay, little work, near 100% job security, plenty of benefits. Brazil has a similar culture with the "concurseiros" too.

High pay? Not for most jobs, really.

Re: Entrepreneur porn is a dangerous fantasy

#54

Post by nickpinkston »

chubot wrote: post #36
epalmer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how do we know if it is in our blood? That is probably the hardest part.

Probably when you have to try NOT to do something...? Like at this point, I would have to try not to play guitar. Or try not to program and experiment with designs for systems software. But I am trying TO start a business as well. It doesn't come as naturally. I like the idea of making money independently... and I actually DO like satisfying customers. But so far not enough to give it a real concerted effort. (I have…

"when you have to try NOT to do something" - I think that's a nice litmus test for it

Re: Entrepreneur porn is a dangerous fantasy

#55

Post by fulafel »

rcarrigan87 wrote: post #45
jgeada wrote: post #32

To me, the worst part of the fantasy is that we then consider the people that actually do make it to the "money shot" as if they were management geniuses, instead of lottery winners. Mostly the success has more to do with luck, timing and personal connections than the individual technical merits of the management team, but that is never what you read afterwards. And so you end up with all sorts of ridiculous manageme…

In terms of building a fortune 500 company, yes a lot of luck is involved. For mid-sized businesses there are guys who do it over and over again.

It is still consistent with the luck & connections theory if you allow that you gain a lot of experience and connections from the first successful round.

Re: Entrepreneur porn is a dangerous fantasy

#56

Post by Cthulhu_ »

logingone wrote: post #49
SFjulie1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not alone Made my startup worked hard. Got contracts. Customers forgot to pay. It sucked. And in my country it was normal. It was not Africa. It was France. Big corporations do whatever the fuck want even if it is illegal. Trades dispute are regulated by "peers" tribunal dating from middle age that are crooked. And newspapers, teachers and politics that never had a job were pointing fingers randomly at problems.

There's been something related in the UK recently - Tesco not paying their suppliers. "...dating from middle age..." I've been noticing increasingly, while technology is buzzing ahead, just how many mechanisms and interactions in society are unbelievably outdated. Is this what sociologists are supposed to be advancing? What are they doing?

That's different though - Tesco needs those suppliers, and the suppliers can boycott Tesco for not paying up, which would cause them to go down very quickly.

Re: Entrepreneur porn is a dangerous fantasy

#57

Post by padobson »

hawkice wrote: post #21
padobson wrote: post #9

2. You don’t need to be Facebook This should be number one - or even just the whole article. Any startup, or a career in general, should not be an end unto itself, but a vehicle to A) fulfill your basic needs and B) get you what you want. While I believe entrepreneurship is often the best way to get both of these, shooting to be the next Facebook is unnecessary. You could keep that corporate job, build your credit, a…

>You could keep that corporate job, build your credit, and then buy a McDonald's or a gas station or an apartment building. There's no reason to make a dent in the universe if all you want to do is put your kids through college and travel abroad once a year. This phrasing I think minimizes the positive impact you can have with those endeavors. Displacing temperamental landlords with professional landlords makes the w…

This phrasing I think minimizes the positive impact you can have with those endeavors.

This is well put. It's almost as if I'm saying you don't need to make a dent in the universe if you want to make a dent in the universe.

Ultimately I'm saying there's no need to build a massive company for the side effects - material wealth, political influence, financial independence. Don't spend all of your time and energy working on something for its side effects.

Re: Entrepreneur porn is a dangerous fantasy

#59

Post by lordCarbonFiber »

ideonexus wrote: post #12

> 1. It’s almost never rags to riches This is the point that has really started to become clear to me in recent years, and not just for startups but for artists, authors, athletes, and all the other dream jobs we idolize: so many of these people are either (1) not really making that much money or (2) already had a trust-fund or come from a wealthy background so they can spend all of their time writing, painting, or e…

I am reminded of the often repeated saying "It takes three generations to make a gentleman". The gradual compounding of wealth opens up a lot of opportunity to safely take risk.

Re: Entrepreneur porn is a dangerous fantasy

#60

Post by helpfulanon »

I'd add that the industry really does not celebrate nor embrace failure the way that we're told it does. For those of us without the cushion of prior success or financial runway, repeating attempts to "get back on the horse" is an embarrassing exercise in futility.

With a failed enterprise, you lower your value in the eyes of many gatekeepers and peers, especially those who never tried running their own business.

But after repeatedly attempting to jumpstart businesses without capital, and subsequent failures, eventually you are more or less cast as foolish.

And god forbid you start to become pragmatic or slightly cynical in the world of tech startups! Because the moment your idealistic optimism comes into question, your "cultural fit" is permanently deemed negative. And bonus catch-22, having led startups also puts "cultural fit" into question for big cos as well.

Basically the personality changes that result from repeated business failure can begin to taint and poison your business relationships, and that can follow you around forever like a little dark cloud you just can't shake.

Psychological stamina is something nobody tells you about needing as a prerequisite for being an entrepreneur, but most of us don't learn that lesson until it's far too late...

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