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Post YC Depression

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Re: Post YC Depression

#71

Post by Traster »

I think one really important thing people need to be better at is choosing who they listen to. Gary Vaynerchuk is a social media star. He has about as much advice to offer a tech startup as Jake Paul. Now Jake Paul at least has the decently not to claim to be able to offer advice to Tech startups. It's like listening to Ashton Kutcher about how to do Venture Capital, if you want to do VC like Ashton Kutcher then step 1 is be a fucking movie star (it's also how you end up on a sofa next to Adam Neumann being very vague about what your financial interest in WeWork).

It's also true that even real entrepeneurs are speaking publicly for PR and so they're saying what they think they should say rather than actually what they think (or atleast to some extent self-censoring). It's important to really be critical about what you're hearing from these people, especially people you idolize.

Re: Post YC Depression

#72

Post by keiferski »

philprx wrote: post #68
keiferski wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you only own 1% of your company after raising funds, you've made some serious mistakes along the way. Even Bezos, prior to his divorce, still owned 16% of Amazon, and that's after they raised money and went public - he owned 48% prior to the IPO.

Wait a second... Half joke: Isn't being founder and running a company about making mistakes all the time, learning from them and hoping you avoided the really bad mistakes? no joke: I wouldn't criticize someone who 1. Founded a company 2. Had the company under his or other people management go to 100m USD 3. Kept some equity, even 1%

“Mistake” is very clearly referring to the topic of retaining equity, with the assumption that more is better. I’m not criticizing the founder in general; e. g. Microsoft has made many mistakes in its history, but clearly Gates is immensely successful.

Obviously if giving up 99% is what enabled you to get to the 100m, then sure, it could be considered worth it. But if we look at virtually any startup with a high valuation, the founders always manage to maintain more than 1%.

Re: Post YC Depression

#73

Post by DoreenMichele »

In the midst of the business flailing, I loved that I could at least say we were working constantly. It felt like the only "positive" metric that showed we were true "entrepreneurs."

This is the wrong metric to use. It's a metric that's practically guaranteed to lead to unhealthy patterns.

When I worked at Aflac, a lot of my coworkers were enthralled that they were there. It was the biggest thing that had ever happened to them and they had stars in their eyes.

To me, it was just a day job. I was punching a clock for a paycheck.

I had done other things that I felt mattered a whole lot more, were far harder and made more of a difference in the world. My psychological relationship to the job was different from that of many of my coworkers.

Don't use suffering or hours worked as metrics to measure your worth. It won't go good places.

Don't get too starry-eyed about getting accepted to YC. It's a first step, not a last.

I'm glad he wrote this. I hope he gets things sorted out. Best of luck to the man.

Re: Post YC Depression

#74

Post by barry-cotter »

murm wrote: post #61
barry-cotter wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people with a normal need for sleep that’s worse than going two days without sleep. Six hours a night for a week degrades mental performance about that much. Ms Stembel could be far out on the bell curve in terms of her need for sleep. People who are perfectly healthy on four hours sleep a night for decades exist.

>Ms Stembel could be far out on the bell curve in terms of her need for sleep. People who are perfectly healthy on four hours sleep a night for decades exist. Out of curiosity I dug up this article about Ms Stembel and in it she talks about her sleeping habits: "When I do sleep more, I’m like, “Oh, that feels good. I should do that more often.” But I definitely believe in the power of habit. I’ve kind of honed the ha…

If she naturally sleeps eight hours a night and usually sleeps less than five hours she’s basically drunk most of most weeks. I hope she has a driver because she’s not capable of driving safely.

Re: Post YC Depression

#75

Post by jck_mddx »

Great share. I've definitely found the residual effects of pulling a couple of coding all-nighters absolutely ruins my productivity the next few days. I just end up staring at the screen and not knowing what to do.

Also, I love the term "hustle porn". It's so true and destructive.

Re: Post YC Depression

#76

Post by krapp »

fluuuhi wrote: post #50

Reads very very illusional. What is it what people actually want? Change the world or become rich? I have seen enough ideas or things people persue not because they really love that idea or product but because they wanna be 'entrepreneur'. Just wierd to read.

The allure of startup culture has always been the chance to get rich like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos - "changing the world" is just hype. Most startups are just schemes to make the founders as rich as possible as fast as possible, with no real intent of ever delivering a product or service to market that actually makes a profit.

Re: Post YC Depression

#77

Post by hef19898 »

jwr wrote: post #59

Don't let work dominate your life. Work is important, but it should not be a grind, or you will end up with serious mental health issues. I have some observations to contribute (context: I am a solo founder of a bootstrapped business): * Much of the "news" you read will be stacked against you, because it is in the interest of VCs and employers to see you work your butt off for years, with the mythical carrot of a maj…

Why is there only one up-vote to give? Being a Solo-founder myself, you are so right.

My, and as soon as the business can sustain another person our, goal is helathy growth to a sustainable levelwhere we can oneday employ an handfull of people so we don't have to do everything our selves. So one of the most important metrics is cash flow. Success is positive cash flow, profits and happy customers. If you ask me, that might very well be easier to achieve without VC money as you can aim lower with a smaler chance of missing.

Agree on the anxiety and pressure part, it is still there. And since your entire runway depends on yourself maybe even more. But that you don't have a board nd investors pushing you on a course to hypergrowth.

One of the main reasons I started the company was to not have a boss anymore. So I won't replace a boss with an external investor if I can help it.

EDIT: Taking guys like Gary and people considering sleeping on factory floors to be a good idea as role models is a problem. In the first case bacause Gary is making a living of selling his message and merch online. In the second case because it indicates grave mistakes happened a long time ago.

Re: Post YC Depression

#78

Post by trevyn »

StevenWaterman wrote: post #15

This was a good article, but I want to briefly call out that `6X more likely to suffer from ADHD` is not a useful stat when trying to argue that being a founder causes health issues. ADHD is present from birth and cannot develop as the result of trauma. It's still an interesting statistic, but for a different reason. People with ADHD are more likely to become founders, as they're more driven by passion, challenge, an…

>ADHD is present from birth and cannot develop as the result of trauma.

How do you test a newborn for ADHD?

If you can’t, how can you say it is present from birth?

Re: Post YC Depression

#79

Post by fishnchips »

trevyn wrote: post #78
StevenWaterman wrote: post #15

This was a good article, but I want to briefly call out that `6X more likely to suffer from ADHD` is not a useful stat when trying to argue that being a founder causes health issues. ADHD is present from birth and cannot develop as the result of trauma. It's still an interesting statistic, but for a different reason. People with ADHD are more likely to become founders, as they're more driven by passion, challenge, an…

> ADHD is present from birth and cannot develop as the result of trauma. How do you test a newborn for ADHD? If you can’t, how can you say it is present from birth?

I’m not a healthcare professional but from what I’ve been reading clinical ADHD produces rather characteristic patterns in brain MRI scans in response to stimulation. I guess one could check that with a newborn if they found any value in diagnosing it so early?

Re: Post YC Depression

#80

Post by drenginian »

People seem to become really attached to the validation from YC.

Getting into an incubator or getting money from investors is zero measure of business success. Business success is users and growth and revenue.

Whether YC blesses you is also zero reflection on you as a person. Rejection by YC means nothing at all.

I think business is about trying to make money, it’s not about YC and funding and the scene and investment rounds and hyper growth and beers after work and been seen as one of the cool kids.

Head down, work, balanced lifestyle, try to make something small succeed on your own.

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