The only way to win is not to play
Why Should I Start a Startup?
71–80 of 304 posts
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#72This is nothing but a pitch by YCombinator to get rubes to work for pitiful amounts of money and likely fail, so that YCombinator can capture the vast profits from the few that succeed. It's YCombinator's business model.
I'm not sure you are in the right place. Is 4chan down?
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#73This is nothing but a pitch by YCombinator to get rubes to work for pitiful amounts of money and likely fail, so that YCombinator can capture the vast profits from the few that succeed. It's YCombinator's business model.
I'm not sure you are in the right place. Is 4chan down?
I'm serious. It's literally YCombinator's business model. Based on rapid upvotes, quite a few others agree.
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you leverage a mentor to get started on running something on the side? If so, where did you find one?
I never had an official mentor, but plenty of people helped and nudged me in the right direction and answered questions. You can find most of them on the internets. It all boils down to this: Make things. Add "Pay For Thing" button. Tell people. I started with following Ramit Sethi's emails for a few years (he's great to drive home the point that yes you do deserve to get paid), then Brennan Dunn's emails and content…
Thanks for taking the time to write this up. Plenty to look into.
I get the sinking feeling that achieving many of these things requires being charismatic and/or attractive and/or extroverted, of which I am none. Of course my marketable skill is not in communication but rather in engineering, so hopefully that won't matter.
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure. When you're financially secure, it isn't a big deal to live out of your car and climb a few mountains for shits and giggles. But what does that have to do, prescriptively, with the reverse situation, when you aren't financially secure? Very little.
Person in question wasn't exactly financially secure...I think he had about a grand or two in the bank, if that. I think what commenters here are trying to drive home is that people have different "set points" about what acceptable risk tolerance is, and that we build up these ideas in our head of "I could never do X or live through X". But then if X happens, and we are experiencing it in the moment, suddenly the hum…
>Person in question wasn't exactly financially secure...I think he had about a grand or two in the bank, if that.
That's quite a bit more than the average person has. Especially if you're a coder and can land a 175k/yr job by sneezing at linkedin.
I understand what commentators are trying to do, but the attempt is misguided. I'm replying to a post regarding a dichotomy between being and doing as the foundation of entrepreneurship, and I've stated that this simply isn't the case. The risk-tolerance of a prospective entrepreneur has nothing to do with how their self-perception of reward is set up.
It has to do with how robust they are against the chance of ruin. When ruin isn't in your calculations because your parents or friends have a spare couch to crash on and you don't have a sick newborn to take care of, you discount its importance in dissuading people from having your same risk appetite.
Very seductive mindset, too, as it lets you ascribe a prescriptive virtue to your choices: "If only people were as daring as me!"
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#76I like this post. I wish I really started a startup in college or right after. A regular corporate job turns you into a zombie and you become out of touch with reality especially if you're well paid and well fed. A lot of people are unprepared for the hard life.
If anything, you'll learn more about life in 6 months than you will in decades. It's not just the technical stuff. You'll learn who your real friends are. Being broke and thinking you might go homeless will make you sympathize with the homeless. Co-founders will try to screw you. If you're married, you'll soon find out if your spouse really loves you or just the regular income. Fake people pop up everywhere trying to take credit for your hard work.
I think a startup is akin to the street life without the street creds.
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#77I do find it rather hilarious that he dropped interest in yale for being too academic, but during my (failed) interview as a web developer at Twitch about 5 years ago, the questioning had to do with only academic subjects like graph traversal algorithms - they proudly stated when I applied that 90% of their employees come from an Ivy league background.
Here's who I think should start a startup:
- People with the backing of their families and resources to get into Yale and every other college other than Harvard (thank god!), and have the means that failure is not so much of a risk.
- People who really need to do this thing, and can maintain their passion and drive and make it the largest part of their lives. And if that thing requires a lot of money to do, the ability to raise money, or already have money.
Both of the above need to be able to physically and mentally handle the 90% failure chance. The author clearly could.
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#78This is nothing but a pitch by YCombinator to get rubes to work for pitiful amounts of money and likely fail, so that YCombinator can capture the vast profits from the few that succeed. It's YCombinator's business model.
I'm not sure you actually read this because it's pretty obvious that it actually tells many people not to do a startup and makes it clear that 'getting rich' or 'succeeding' isn't a very good reason for doing one. It gives three pretty clear criteria for starting a startup that most people won't meet- those that do might be worth considering it.
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#79The startup starts up because of money is often time uninspiring. It is a good thing that we have fewer startups like that. If you don't have a good problem, plz don't make a startup for it.
Why so? What if I have an okay solution to a okay problem but see an opportunity to monetize the market gap and band together some folks to create a business around it? Does it have be "inspiring"?
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#80This is nothing but a pitch by YCombinator to get rubes to work for pitiful amounts of money and likely fail, so that YCombinator can capture the vast profits from the few that succeed. It's YCombinator's business model.
YC doesn't capture "the vast profits", they take ballpark 6%. That leaves the founders with the vast majority of the windfall, depending on how much outside money you need to make your idea work.