You shouldn't .
Why Should I Start a Startup?
11–20 of 304 posts
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#12[deleted]
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#13Is the desire to transform as a person a good enough reason? Very few endeavors are as challenging as solving a problem by building a profitable business around it, and having the pleasure of meeting and working with a variety of people.
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#14[deleted]
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#15Hey folks - happy to answer questions here
Great post. Thanks. As CEO of the company how did you deal with the extreme stress during the most difficult days of Justin.TV/Twitch while at the same time keeping the team motivated?
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#16Hey folks - happy to answer questions here
It wasn't totally clear to me in the post: did Yale take you back after your stint at UPenn? If so, how did that work? If not, how did you become friends with Justin Kan (who IIRC was at Yale) if you were at UPenn?
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#17> 1. The vast majority of startups are not successful This alone is why 90% of people will not choose to work at a startup. You will work long hours, for crap pay, and you'll be waiting in line if there is an exit. The odds of there being an exit worth anything to anyone other than a founder are small enough to not even worth considering. If you are a founder you're gambling on your chances. There are ways to mitigat…
If you have the entrepreneurial itch and don't have the financial security to back it up, becoming a bootstrapped micropreneur is a great first choice. Start your business on the side, when it revenue is high enough to live on, make the jump. It's slower than a funded startup, but a lot less risky. Does come with a high social opportunity cost due to lack of time, however. But so does starting a startup. If your side…
Thanks for sharing. I find stories like yours more inspiring and motivating than the "ramen to unicorn" ones. I have little interest in scaling a business to IPO, but I'm very interested in building something that holds my interest and lets me support my family and an enjoyable lifestyle.
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#18So, does "personal responsibility for [...] failure" really apply when there is a 90% failure rate? Seems like short of failing to execute, it's more a game of chance than something you can influence.
That is, it's seems like its a lot like video poker: you can cause yourself to lose, but you can't make yourself win.
I would also think that getting into an industry with such a high failure rate would be terrible for someone who takes such personal responsibility for the outcome: most of the time they're going to consider themselves a failure. In the worst case, serial failures.
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#19Loved this post, thanks! You mentioned the 3 constraints under which you (and many founders) thrive in: * Being the underdog * Hard challenges most people shy away from * Personal responsibility for outcomes Why are some people best under those conditions? Is it something trainable, or inherent?
I'd say most people would be. If you don't take responsibility and if you're not challenged, you can hardly expect to excel at anything.
Many people either are too comfortable with their lives or are in too precarious a situation to ever get to try.
That's probably also why we so rarely hear about rich kids with large trust funds accomplishing anything meaningful.
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#20Hey folks - happy to answer questions here
Did anyone ever question your academic background/track record. Did anyone deny you funding and/or not work for you upon inquiring about your track record?
In absolute honesty, do you think achieving good grades makes sizable a difference to people wanting to work for you or investing in your company?