Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twice exceptional people often appear to be "average" but find an "average" or normal life enormously frustrating Like all correlation to causation misconceptions, most people read this and imply the converse. I find the normal life exceptionally frustrating, so I must be exceptional, hence I must do a startup. I am questioning if this is indeed true. I believe that this is a misconception, being frustrated with day…
> I find the normal life exceptionally frustrating, so I must be exceptional Isn't this just the mantra of the millennial?
Why Should I Start a Startup?
211–220 of 304 posts
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#212I'd like to fill out the "maybe" part of his "If you answer yes three times, then maybe starting a startup is for you" bit. I answer a very strong yes to all three of those. Always have. But a startup, despite my always having worked in them and run one of my own for three years, was resolutely not a good idea for me. It took a lot of self-discovery to see myself not as an entrepreneur, but as an artist, and it's fru…
I feel the same way (though I never ran my own startup). On the surface it would make sense for me to start companies. I tick most of the boxes, but at heart I'm more of an artist. Maybe 10 years ago I'd be interested in spending five years of my life for a 1% chance of getting better returns than working for a regular salary. Also I'm no longer in my 20s, not independently wealthy, and most importantly I don't want…
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#213I 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. Be…
When everybody is betraying you and being false, it might be that you are the a-hole
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#214Okay! Let's do it! I want to start a start-up. What do I do?
You need to do the boring stuff, plan and research your products/services, identify trends which you can be one of the first to surf, or find new ways to offer the same for less in existing markets. Not everything is about cost, (think rich people buying bespoke or low production run highly innovative products or services), but mass market is about doing the most with less, economies of scale & efficiency. Some of it is also about building a relationship with the customer, you might be the best rock star hacker around but if you have no ability to be nice to customers with all that being nice entails, who will put up with you for long, so presentation and reputation can also be key if its not essential like choosing your electricity provider. If you plan on getting into mass market, look at your competitors, find out if the market share is dominated by a few key players with huge profits and see if you can undercut them by taking less profit, even when some global companies can offshore profits putting the country & country restricted business rivals at a disadvantage. If you come up with something innovative, novelty can also draw in new customers (think kids crazes like these fidget spinners currently, or yoyo's in the past) so look at ways to lock them in, either contractually or with reward schemes if you can even lock in a trend or craze! Look at ways you can get customers to market you where possible (brand awareness, bragging rights, trends & crazes), but some companies wont want to give away what they see as a competitive advantage which can make breaking into a market harder, things like trademarks, patents, manufacturing processes, but some patents can also be misdirection to hide what the real trick is.
Some business adventures do not need a lot of money to get going with, think window cleaning business, but others do, like building an electric car or developing a new drug for some specific illness like a specific Cancer.
You will also find, no company will ever admit liability which is what courts are for, but being able to recognise when a business is wrong and putting it right in the most cost effective manner to damage limit is also key. This is where some companies can and do fail, its usually ignorance of sorts which causes this, so recognising your strengths and weaknesses is also useful. What you dont know but need, can you bring in from outside the company at the right price?
So hopefully you can see that there is a lot of work involved in starting up a business, and whilst you might be lucky and wing it on an "event driven" basis, tackling problems when they arise, you still need to be sure you dont get caught up firefighting all the time. If you do, bring someone in to do the problem solving for you whilst you concentrate on bringing the money in. At the end of the day its about getting the balance right, your time & effort for the money you get back. Get that wrong and your startup will fail quickly, get it right when considering all the other variables that exist which the above has just scraped the surface of, and you could go on to be quite successful, but its all about the balance between money & quality of life. Some people value security for their family over riches, which can be useful for choosing employees, so identifying who you may also choose to work with as an employee or contractor can also help.
And finally, just remember everyone has an opinion, and they might not be right all of the time. Dont get your confirmation bias from family and friends, get it from those who hand the money over to you, but find the best way to put yourself in front of those people because it is just a numbers game.
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#215Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't intended as snarky but after listening to the "You Are No So Smart" podcast [1] for a few months now, seeing these sort of examples my mind immediately goes to Confirmation Bias [2] and that use of inductive reasoning like this cannot be trusted. [1] https://youarenotsosmart.com/podcast/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
I didn't see the comment as snarky :) I'd argue however that those examples were just examples of others succeeding even though they had a limiting factor, not evidence to say that a reduced learning capacity is going to guarantee success haha.
You'd also have to adjust for other factors such as parents trying harder to find areas (other than academia) where dyslexic children can consider themselves successful. It's almost intractable to think of a study that could remove these correlations from any statistically relevant top level study...
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
The odds of there being an exit worth anything to anyone other than a founder are small enough to not even worth considering. So if you go to work for a startup, you should demand substantially more money than with an established company. It didn't used to be that way. It used to be that the first dozen or so employees of a successful startup did very well, and the first hundred or so did OK.
> So if you go to work for a startup, you should demand substantially more money than with an established company. The problem is that most startups can't match, much less beat, established companies on salary, and they'll just turn you down. It's not even malice or greed on their part, it's just that they have a finite runway and a few tens of thousands of dollars a year on a single person can mean the difference be…
Eh, lots of people say exactly this out loud. People who accept that gamble jsut like to pretend their chances are higher than they are and/or it's worth it for the work experience.
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#218I 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. Be…
It seems like you started a telenovela, more than a startup... When everybody is betraying you and being false, it might be that you are the a-hole
Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#219Re: Why Should I Start a Startup?
#220I 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. Be…
As a counterpoint: My spouse's ongoing education is currently dependent on my regular income. Once she graduates it'll effectively double our collective income and hopefully give her her first good career. I'm not sure how I could sell gambling all of that on a 90% chance of failure even if I wanted to. Sounds like the act of a gambling addict. Also, if you need to gamble your family's livelihood to find out if your…
I had never shipped any code more than college assignments, there were some classes on entrepreneurship and business but they were so shallow, I had no professional experience and little knowledge outside of academia, I had no network or audience, I didn't know how to run a team which consisted of my college buddies.
After working in a big corporation, big startup, bootstrapped startup and more environments I feel way more prepared and motivated, I know now how to do most of the things I didn't, I have a much bigger network and I know how an actual workplace functions and I feel confident enough I can do it myself.