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Hire Family People

37signals.com

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Re: Hire Family People

#91

Post by Alex3917 »

tptacek wrote: post #69
pg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pg has been specifically keeping the definition of "startup" narrow Argh. I haven't been doing anything to the definition of the word. I'm just using it as everyone does. Think about newspaper headlines, for example. Wouldn't you be surprised if a company described in a headline as a "startup" turned out to be a shoe repair shop, or Exxon?

Would you be surprised to see Threadless described as a startup? What was American Apparel in 1997? A small business?

A startup exists to make extraordinary profits by arbitraging a temporary economic disequilibrium by doing more than anyone thought possible with less than anyone thought possible; the industry is irrelevant.

Re: Hire Family People

#92

Post by tptacek »

Alex3917 wrote: post #91
tptacek wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be surprised to see Threadless described as a startup? What was American Apparel in 1997? A small business?

A startup exists to make extraordinary profits by arbitraging a temporary economic disequilibrium by doing more than anyone thought possible with less than anyone thought possible; the industry is irrelevant.

I don't think that had anything whatsoever to do with my point. Is Threadless a startup?

Re: Hire Family People

#94

Post by ivankirigin »

joshwa wrote: post #90
pg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. We don't ask on the application form if people have kids, nor as far as I can recall have we asked anyone in an interview. The reason most of the people we fund don't have kids is simply that most of the people who apply don't have kids.

It's also a selection bias-- $5000+5000n effectively rules out most people who are farther along in life.

No it doesn't. Further along also means financial resources or contacts that can make up the difference.

Re: Hire Family People

#95

Post by michaelneale »

mosburger wrote: post #23

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…

YCombinator startups are startups - it seems that most of them are built to be sold - with a quick (ish) payoff for the founders and investors who sacrificed a lot.

37s viewpoint is more about a sustainable "small" business. Both are valid.

PS I am 33 w. kids as well, and know what it is like. In some ways, you can have a lot more time to think/hack, as you tend to spend more time at home (and quiet time is spent at home, not out at the pub).

Re: Hire Family People

#96

Post by michaelneale »

ivankirigin wrote: post #94
joshwa wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a selection bias-- $5000+5000n effectively rules out most people who are farther along in life.

No it doesn't. Further along also means financial resources or contacts that can make up the difference.

If you have financial resources - I guess you would only go to YC for the publicity ? The money would mean nothing.

Re: Hire Family People

#97

Post by pg »

michaelneale wrote: post #96
ivankirigin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't. Further along also means financial resources or contacts that can make up the difference.

If you have financial resources - I guess you would only go to YC for the publicity ? The money would mean nothing.

http://ycombinator.com/about.html

Re: Hire Family People

#98

Post by andreyf »

pg wrote: post #13

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.

that's not enough in a real startup

What else is there to being successful other than productivity?

I'd suggest this: DHH mentions "an amazing ability to get stuff done when the objectives are reasonably clear", but in a startup, often there is no "objective" - reasonably clear or not. Instead, there is something more like a search heuristic based on "the view form here". With time, the heuristic changes, and the objective changes, and the strategy changes, and the product changes. If I remember correctly, Flickr started as a Flash-based chat website. To get from there to what Flickr was acquired as required the notorious "startup hours". Basecamp went through no such life-changing make-overs, and so didn't require those kinds of hours.

Re: Hire Family People

#99

Post by sabat »

mosburger wrote: post #23

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…

I don't mind the message -- no, you don't have to live in SF (your loss! :-) and no, you don't have to be single.

It's the delivery I have a problem with. More and more, it seems like DHH and his sidekick are deliberately looking for fights. Like they have something they need to prove.

Therapy?

Re: Hire Family People

#100

Post by sabat »

dhh wrote: post #30
thaumaturgy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think that's a hijacking of the word that's not helpful at all. And I don't think that pg would argue that you can only call yourself a startup if you're going for VC funding and a sale or IPO. 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 bein…

So it's gotten this far now? DHH loves to start fights so much that he had to come over to PG's forum and start them?

PG, who is always civil here, dragged into a stupid semantic fight?

I boggle.

"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?"

No, man. You're just playing semantic games, and you know it . The company would have been a startup if its founders had the intentions of being large or becoming part of something large.

Really, you have nothing better to do than to come to this nice place and crap all over it?

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