21–30 of 157 posts
Even if people with kids were more productive per hour, that's not enough in a real startup. The empirical evidence is pretty clear on that. I can't think of a successful startup whose founders didn't, in addition to being smart and determined etc, also work long hours.
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I believe he has decided to take the opposite position to pg on every point about how to start a business and see how well he can argue it. Which is a healthy thing for Hacker News, I think, getting other perspectives.
Actually there wasn't anything in DHH's talk that I really disagreed with, except the use of the word "startup" for the kind of company he was describing. There's already a word for companies like Italian restaurants: businesses. A startup is a very specific kind of business: one that starts small but could grow very large. Only a fraction of the 30 million businesses in the US are startups. I think what made people…
Say like foot locker or Zappos for a "shoe store" (both big business) and say McDonald's or Olive Garden for a restaurant.
By the same measure, we're building 37signals to grow as well. Grow revenues, grow customers, grow influence. We're just not that hooked on growing head count or office space (which are often the most visible indicators of growth for a private company and thus often mistaken as the only indicators).
To me a startup simply means a new business that's getting off the ground. That business may well end up big one day and it may not, which is okay too.
I generally don't think that you can become a star by trying to be a star. I think you just try to be the best at what you do and if you are, hopefully the star part will take care of itself.
I've always found pg's essays to be motivational and inspring, but there are two things that always turn me off; 1.) I don't live in San Fransisco, and probably never will, and 2.) I have a family. I often feel dismissed by PG and his disciples. DHH's stuff gives me hope that there's still a chance for "fogeys" (cripes, I'm only 33!) like me.
I have a feeling that, if I ever applied to YCombinator, my application would end up in the wastebasket the moment they caught a whiff of the fact that I have a wife and kids. Is that fair?
I stay up late into the night hacking after the kids go to bed, and I'm in the office hours before other people are there so I can do some extra hacking. Am I not motivated enough? Can I not be passionate? Perhaps DHH is onto something. Perhaps balancing the challenges of work and family five you a healthy dosage of time management and prioritization skills.
There are some interesting comments on DHH's site - several presumably young, single kids are crabby and crying "discrimination!" (e.g., "Wow, that’s actually offensive. And illegal in BC, Canada and I hope other enlightened jurisdictions.", or the more eloquent "I’m single and you can kiss my ..."). I wonder if these people have ever noticed that the discrimination often goes the other way, against the thirty-something parent crowd, too.
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But it does apply to founders. Nearly everyone interviewed in Founders at Work remarked that constraints breed creativity. That focus is one reason startups can kick the ass of big corporations. It's just that it's possible to overconstrain the solution as much as underconstrain it. In the early stages, there's so much work to do that if you try to add kids to the mix, you don't even attempt it. As the startup gets m…
Nearly everyone interviewed in Founders at Work remarked that constraints breed creativity. That doesn't mean that they make you net better, though. If they did, you could prove by induction that the ideal strategy in a startup would be to work an arbitrarily small amount of time per day.
For a given startup, a particular limit on startup time might actually be optimal. But I think it's pretty likely that different startups are going to find different sets of constraints (regarding time, budget, or other areas) optimal.
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I believe he has decided to take the opposite position to pg on every point about how to start a business and see how well he can argue it. Which is a healthy thing for Hacker News, I think, getting other perspectives.
Actually there wasn't anything in DHH's talk that I really disagreed with, except the use of the word "startup" for the kind of company he was describing. There's already a word for companies like Italian restaurants: businesses. A startup is a very specific kind of business: one that starts small but could grow very large. Only a fraction of the 30 million businesses in the US are startups. I think what made people…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually there wasn't anything in DHH's talk that I really disagreed with, except the use of the word "startup" for the kind of company he was describing. There's already a word for companies like Italian restaurants: businesses. A startup is a very specific kind of business: one that starts small but could grow very large. Only a fraction of the 30 million businesses in the US are startups. I think what made people…
I think that's a pretty narrow definition of a startup. Also, there are plenty of businesses that start out small and then grow very large over time. Actually, most large businesses took a long time to get there. Say like foot locker or Zappos for a "shoe store" (both big business) and say McDonald's or Olive Garden for a restaurant. By the same measure, we're building 37signals to grow as well. Grow revenues, grow c…
Shiny.
That said, the things you describe closely match what I've wanted to pursue. For me, and many others, it's the more rewarding, long-term way of doing things. Your talk at SS08 was a huge breath of fresh air.
But, I don't think it's all that fair to dilute someone else's definition of a startup with your own idea of what a startup is. It might be time to come up with a different term, and let startup mean the thing that pg and the vc guys and others want it to mean.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually there wasn't anything in DHH's talk that I really disagreed with, except the use of the word "startup" for the kind of company he was describing. There's already a word for companies like Italian restaurants: businesses. A startup is a very specific kind of business: one that starts small but could grow very large. Only a fraction of the 30 million businesses in the US are startups. I think what made people…
I think that's a pretty narrow definition of a startup. Also, there are plenty of businesses that start out small and then grow very large over time. Actually, most large businesses took a long time to get there. Say like foot locker or Zappos for a "shoe store" (both big business) and say McDonald's or Olive Garden for a restaurant. By the same measure, we're building 37signals to grow as well. Grow revenues, grow c…
Maybe, but I didn't invent it. It's just the definition in current use. As most people use the word, it's more specific than a business that's merely new. As most people use the word, it doesn't include barber shops, gas stations, shoe repair stores, etc. There are structural differences between that kind of company and a startup. McDonald's and Olive Garden aren't restaurants, but restaurant chains. They do things very differently from your local Italian restaurant.
Thank you so much, 37signals guys. I've always found pg's essays to be motivational and inspring, but there are two things that always turn me off; 1.) I don't live in San Fransisco, and probably never will, and 2.) I have a family. I often feel dismissed by PG and his disciples. DHH's stuff gives me hope that there's still a chance for "fogeys" (cripes, I'm only 33!) like me. I have a feeling that, if I ever applied…
Thank you so much, 37signals guys. I've always found pg's essays to be motivational and inspring, but there are two things that always turn me off; 1.) I don't live in San Fransisco, and probably never will, and 2.) I have a family. I often feel dismissed by PG and his disciples. DHH's stuff gives me hope that there's still a chance for "fogeys" (cripes, I'm only 33!) like me. I have a feeling that, if I ever applied…
Plus, I don't know about you, but I have real world experience about a boatload of pitfalls that I know to avoid that I wasn't aware of 10 years ago. That is a potential source of significant efficiency.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that's a pretty narrow definition of a startup. Also, there are plenty of businesses that start out small and then grow very large over time. Actually, most large businesses took a long time to get there. Say like foot locker or Zappos for a "shoe store" (both big business) and say McDonald's or Olive Garden for a restaurant. By the same measure, we're building 37signals to grow as well. Grow revenues, grow c…
pg has been specifically keeping the definition of "startup" narrow, to describe only the businesses that go through the two-guys-plus-vc-plus-sleepless-nights-equals-fast-megabucks pattern that we saw in 2000. I think that's the model he's most interested in, that he sees as the most dynamic and rewarding. Shiny. That said, the things you describe closely match what I've wanted to pursue. For me, and many others, it…
If so, there's an awful lot of tech companies that have been wrongfully labeled as startups under this narrow definition. And you'd only be able to call yourself a startup in retrospect once you saw whether you ended up being a megabucks exit.
So 37signals would have been a startup if we sold to Google tomorrow, but not if we kept on as an independent company just making money?