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Why Should I Start a Startup?

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?

#131

Post by mindcrime »

graveThrow56 wrote: post #120
jasode wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if was genuine, he would suggest another option: starting a small/medium business in tech. It's an essay relating his personal experience. (Notice that Seibel wrote: "Here is how I learned this about myself. [... rest of text ...]" He didn't cofound a small-medium-lifestyle business so he wrote what he was familiar with: justin.tv/twitch. Lastly, I didn't see any advice that didn't also apply to small-medium busines…

Paul Graham goes to extra lengths to differentiate startups vs other type of business: it's all about growth. So this essay talks about startups under the YC brand, I assume we're talking about hi-growth business, not small and medium ones that have no goals to grow double digits every month. Finally, we should stop adding a condescending "lifestyle" qualififier to businesses that are not trying to become a unicorn.…

@pg has the right to try and define things however he wants, but he isn't the final arbiter of meanings of words in the English language. I see no reason to suggest that a company isn't a "startup" just because they aren't pursuing "double digit growth every month". There are plenty of ways to get big, and "slow and steady" is still one.

It's also important to realize that a company's growth rate will vary at times throughout its lifetime. You might start out as completely self-funded, bootstrapping, and work very slowly for some period of time, only to reach a certain point and say "OK, now its time to turn on the afterburners and go seek VC / PE money". And as a company matures (hello, Microsoft, IBM, CA, HP, etc.) its pretty close to inevitable that the growth rate will slow down.

The important thing is just to do what makes sense for where you are and what your goals are.

Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?

#132

Post by koolkatkool »

nostrademons wrote: post #123
vabmit wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's some truth to the family support part of this. I was just racking my brain trying to think of any founder I knew (and I know a ton of them) that was in the position of "success or potentially homeless". But, I can't. I think there's some variable confounding going on when YC and others talk about people in their early 20's being better positioned to do startups because they're less risk averse due to…

There are a few examples of startup founders who were potentially homeless if it failed (AirBnB is the obvious one...they started it because they were literally a month away from being homeless), but you're right, this is the exception rather than the rule. I think what's frequently overlooked in the "how do I get the resources to found a startup without risking everything?" is that you don't do it in one shot . If y…

Was airbnb a month away from being evicted or a month away from asking their parents for another deposit?

Lots of rich kids play at being poor all the while knowing they can call home at any point.

Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?

#133

Post by jansho »

Mz wrote: post #62

He sounds twice exceptional -- gifted, but with some sort of learning disability or handicap of some sort. Twice exceptional people often appear to be "average" but find an "average" or normal life enormously frustrating. Because of having some sort of handicap, it can take a lot to get them going. Once they get going, they often outperform others. Life is vastly better for them when they can create their own niche b…

Your posts always resonate with me, thank you, but I particularly need to hear this one. I will not call myself exceptional, but I often find fitting in almost impossible. Finding a niche and owning it is then survival! Although I'm very aware of the high failure rate with startups, I can't help but keep believing that I can do this thing. Sometimes though I am torn by guilt, that I'm such a snowflake, but I don't know, one thing I know for sure is that if I don't give it a shot, I will regret for the rest of my life. And that is much more unbearable.

Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?

#134

Post by anth1988 »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #86
taurath wrote: post #77

I 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 back…

You don't need money to start a startup. It is only startup culture which emphasizes it. When you've got nothing, you don't have anything to risk, so those people without resources but with drive are as good a place as any. My friends and I are working on something in the garage. It might not turn into anything, but when you only make 40k a year, it doesn't take much to be really successful. The thought of making an…

When you've actually got nothing you spend your days fighting to survive. See every homeless person ever.

Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?

#135

Post by jondubois »

guimarin wrote: post #121
vabmit wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's some truth to the family support part of this. I was just racking my brain trying to think of any founder I knew (and I know a ton of them) that was in the position of "success or potentially homeless". But, I can't. I think there's some variable confounding going on when YC and others talk about people in their early 20's being better positioned to do startups because they're less risk averse due to…

My dad was not a successful founder. He quit his job at 40 or so to start a company. He failed miserably, and despite us being fairly well off, went into a downward spiral. He is divorced, alone, and living in a trailer park. Every time I visit him in his doublewide in Campbell, still same furniture as person who died in it had, I expect him to be hanging from the rafters. He was a serial startup employee with over 2…

Tech startups are completely random. When you're starting out, it's like playing the lottery.

The more you win, the easier it becomes to win; this keeps you playing... Until you suddenly lose everything.

Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?

#136

Post by Mz »

jansho wrote: post #133
Mz wrote: post #62

He sounds twice exceptional -- gifted, but with some sort of learning disability or handicap of some sort. Twice exceptional people often appear to be "average" but find an "average" or normal life enormously frustrating. Because of having some sort of handicap, it can take a lot to get them going. Once they get going, they often outperform others. Life is vastly better for them when they can create their own niche b…

Your posts always resonate with me, thank you, but I particularly need to hear this one. I will not call myself exceptional, but I often find fitting in almost impossible. Finding a niche and owning it is then survival! Although I'm very aware of the high failure rate with startups, I can't help but keep believing that I can do this thing. Sometimes though I am torn by guilt, that I'm such a snowflake, but I don't kn…

It might help to think of yourself as enriching the diverse ecosystem of humans in order to enhance life for all. In nature, monocultures are horribly vulnerable to disease and other problems. In contrast, diverse ecosystems mean that one creature's wastes are another's nutrients and many creatures can co-exist because they aren't direct competitors. They need inherently different things.

Taking up some niche no one else wants means you aren't in competition with others and you add life to spaces that would otherwise be dead. There is zero reason humans should all strive to fit the same mold and many reasons to be horrified by the idea.

Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?

#137

Post by seddona »

"there is a certain type of person who only works at their peak capacity when there is no predictable path to follow, the odds of success are low, and they have to take personal responsibility for failure (the opposite of most jobs at a large company)."

I have never really stopped to consider my own motivations for doing a startup but this sums it up. Do a startup because you have to, not because you want to.

Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?

#138

Post by nostrademons »

koolkatkool wrote: post #132
nostrademons wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few examples of startup founders who were potentially homeless if it failed (AirBnB is the obvious one...they started it because they were literally a month away from being homeless), but you're right, this is the exception rather than the rule. I think what's frequently overlooked in the "how do I get the resources to found a startup without risking everything?" is that you don't do it in one shot . If y…

Was airbnb a month away from being evicted or a month away from asking their parents for another deposit? Lots of rich kids play at being poor all the while knowing they can call home at any point.

I don't know the family situation of the AirBnB founders personally, but Wikipedia says both of them were social workers, which isn't exactly what most people would consider a rich kid background.

I'm always a bit perplexed by the people who come out of the woodwork to say that startups are a rich kid's game, though. What's the family background of folks on this site? I understand that there's a wide variety of socioeconomic statuses on the Internet, and that wealth is relative and 50% of Americans have zero in savings. But is there actually a huge HN population whose families are worse-off than social workers (Brian Chesky), seed & clothing factory workers (Marc Andreesen), mechanics (Steve Jobs), engineers (Steve Wozniak), college professors (Larry Page), or refugees (Sergey Brin, Jan Koum)?

I come from a single-earner (elementary school teacher) family, and usually think of myself as smack in the middle of the socioeconomic spectrum. I could and did move back home after college, but then, a lot of children also have that privilege. Do the demographics of HN skew so much poorer that most folks here do not have parental households they could go back to?

Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?

#139

Post by mwseibel »

koolkatkool wrote: post #122
mwseibel wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that being able to move back in with your parents is a huge luxury that many founders have (I did as well). I also believe that there are a lot of people (not everyone of course) who have that safety net.

Yeah something like 1% have wealthy families and something like 99% don't. YC has always been a program by the upper class and for the upper class. There's a reason YC doesn't publish economic diversity stats. It would be an indictment of their systemic bias. You're not better than the all of the 99 other people that didn't go to Yale/YC, you're just lucky that you were granted help instead of them. And yet it never…

I didn't grow up in the 1 percent and the vast majority of people I know in YC didn't either.

Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?

#140

Post by mwseibel »

koolkatkool wrote: post #129
mwseibel wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry you didn't have a better interview experience at Twitch. Also, 90% of our employees didn't come from Ivy League backgrounds. Maybe there was a miscommunication there.

What kind of bias do you need to get 10% Ivy Leaguers, given that they make up like 0.01% of the population? Not a defense so much as an admission that the parent comment is correct.

Sorry was I should have said is the vast majority (over 90%) of our employees didn't come from Ivy's.
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