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I Don't Want to Be a Founder

carolchen.me

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Re: I Don't Want to Be a Founder

#181

Post by jedimastert »

gkoberger wrote: post #21

I remember as I was starting my company, I reached out to a founder of a company you've likely heard of for advice. We grabbed drinks, and he practically begged me to not start a company, for my own sake. I thought he was a dick. But he wasn't wrong. Write down a list of why you want to start a company. I bet the list involves things like "building something nobody else has," "getting to program and design and do a b…

> you'll feel guilty because there's something more important you should be doing. (Me? I'm currently procrastinating on an investor update, an H1B application and two performance reviews.) You'll spend more time writing emails than writing code. You end up bogged down in organizational issues...

Somewhere out there in the world is someone incredibly excited to do just that. They aren't necessarily an "ideas" person but wrangling org just get's the heart racing. It's a shame that they're as hard to find as good ideas are

Re: I Don't Want to Be a Founder

#182

Post by Axsuul »

depthroiler wrote: post #179
senojretep356 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an article on HN about extremely successful Mormon startups. Interesting that they all manage to leave the office at 5pm (because they all have 6 kids) and build multi-billion dollar businesses.

Would you mind linking? I'd love to read that article. I've anecdotally begin to notice more and more B2B startups from Utah make it onto the map that fit just that profile.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23882224

Re: I Don't Want to Be a Founder

#183

Post by flr03 »

jarsbe wrote: post #14

Why is it that starting a tech start up is seen as an uber difficult task often resulting in burnout while starting a business in a technical occupation such as electrical or refrigeration is (seemingly) less risque? Surely there are a plenty of opportunities where rather boring software can be applied to business problems. Does it always need to be a monumental technical accomplishment to create a success?

Startup are (almost) never profitable when they "start up". Hence they need to raise money through investors until they grow enough to develop a mature, profitable product. Delivering this product can take years and require a large workforce. In the meantime the company still needs to pay the employees and creditors.

Traditional businesses like electricians start with a typical business plan. They might need to borrow some cash at the beginning but if the business plan is spot on, they'll start making money quickly, enough to cover the costs and make profit.

Re: I Don't Want to Be a Founder

#184

Post by jcims »

gkoberger wrote: post #21

I remember as I was starting my company, I reached out to a founder of a company you've likely heard of for advice. We grabbed drinks, and he practically begged me to not start a company, for my own sake. I thought he was a dick. But he wasn't wrong. Write down a list of why you want to start a company. I bet the list involves things like "building something nobody else has," "getting to program and design and do a b…

This excerpt from Lex Fridman's podcast with Stephen Schwarzman provides a fairly good assessment of the situation...it's a rough ride. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdt4PPY09rQ

Some folks can handle many things at once and have a structured mind for progressing them all forward simultaneously. My wife had that kind of mind. I do not. I struggled mightily managing a company and ultimately tapped out.

Re: I Don't Want to Be a Founder

#185

Post by eloff »

jasonkester wrote: post #105
gkoberger wrote: post #21

I remember as I was starting my company, I reached out to a founder of a company you've likely heard of for advice. We grabbed drinks, and he practically begged me to not start a company, for my own sake. I thought he was a dick. But he wasn't wrong. Write down a list of why you want to start a company. I bet the list involves things like "building something nobody else has," "getting to program and design and do a b…

Yeah, that's how I've always expected the VC-Backed-Startup world to work. It's fascinating to me to watch people going into that, expecting it to work out for them. It's like watching somebody take up smoking. You can watch the history of people doing this activity as far back as you like, and just hardly ever come up with an outcome that seems to make your life genuinely better . But with lots of examples of it mak…

I'm surprised this isn't talked about more. Trading your job for a VC-backed startup is just changing one master for another, with a more uncertain outcome and better upside.

I came to the conclusion I'd much rather own 100% of something small than 10% of a Unicorn. So I changed to part-time work to cover the bills and I'm bootstrapping. I think if I'm ever successful enough to need an HR department, I'll sell the business and move onto the next thing. I don't ever want to spend less than 50% of my day knee-deep in the actual code.

Re: I Don't Want to Be a Founder

#186

Post by flr03 »

bjornsing wrote: post #85

I’m a former VC-backed founder and I liked the post, but this part made me cringe: > To be ambitious often means things like wanting to do a Ph.D, become a medical doctor or an astronaut. Why should it be considered ambitious to do a PhD or become a medical doctor. Those are just slogs that most people can get through if they stick it out... Something is very wrong with our cultural preconceptions around ambition. It…

So you basically say that becoming a doctor or an astronaut is easy and doesn't require "ambition".

I'm sorry I can't agree with that. Maybe as a former VC-backed founder you'd like to have the monopoly of ambition but there are many many ways to be ambitious. For some it's just be able to run 5km after being overweight for decades, for others it's changing the world with a vaccine.

Re: I Don't Want to Be a Founder

#187

Post by cambalache »

christiansakai wrote: post #147

Is software startup by solo founders still viable anymore? Today the age of apps/SaaS seems ending. It is oversaturated, and the low hanging (low technical complexity) fruits are already taken left and right.

You could have written the same comment 5/10/15/20 years ago. The markets always will be saturated, the low-hanging fruit will always be taken (almost by definition), but then somehow, a new group of kids(and not so-kids) will come up with new solutions.

Re: I Don't Want to Be a Founder

#188

Post by hef19898 »

eloff wrote: post #185
jasonkester wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's how I've always expected the VC-Backed-Startup world to work. It's fascinating to me to watch people going into that, expecting it to work out for them. It's like watching somebody take up smoking. You can watch the history of people doing this activity as far back as you like, and just hardly ever come up with an outcome that seems to make your life genuinely better . But with lots of examples of it mak…

I'm surprised this isn't talked about more. Trading your job for a VC-backed startup is just changing one master for another, with a more uncertain outcome and better upside. I came to the conclusion I'd much rather own 100% of something small than 10% of a Unicorn. So I changed to part-time work to cover the bills and I'm bootstrapping. I think if I'm ever successful enough to need an HR department, I'll sell the bu…

The biggest reason that so pushes me away from VC funding. One Pre-Seed fund reached out, so, and I will most likely pitch the guys. Because VC money allows you to speed things up in ways you can't by relying on free cash flow.

That being said, I'd still prefer the latter becaus I don't want another boss (or multiple ones). Gess it depends on the conditions, so.

And good point about the HR-department moment, that's the thing I fear the most in getting to many customers!

Re: I Don't Want to Be a Founder

#190

Post by adwn »

Axsuul wrote: post #180
adwn wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “You get paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of problems you solve” No, you really don't. Your "pay" is a function of the market size, your market share, the budget of your customers, the amount of perceived value you create for them, your ability to sell, your costs, and probably some other minor factors. The difficulty of the problems you solve is – if at all – only indirectly related to some of those fac…

All those functions all lead back to how difficult of a problem you are solving for them. A difficult problem means there are less competitors and more market share for you, with a high chance that the competition's solution doesn't even deliver on its promises. Less competition naturally leads to a higher premium you can charge. Businesses typically set aside a static budget for software that solves a "low-hanging f…

> All those functions all lead back to how difficult of a problem you are solving for them.

No. 1) The market size is independent of the hardness of the problem. 2) The hardness of the problem is independent of the customer's pressure to solve the problem [1]. 3) Even if a customer has a pressing problem, their budget for your product has a hard upper bound: their revenue. In reality it's nearly always several orders of magnitude lower than that. 4) Good marketing and sales has a strong influence on the perceived value your product creates for the customer, which in turn is the primary factor to determine the price you can ask from a specific customer; the perceived hardness of solving that problem is irrelevant to them.

[1] For example, solving the Travelling Salesman Problem in polynomial time is generally incredibly hard, probably even impossible, and yet solving it would be pretty inconsequential for logistics companies, because they have heuristic algorithms which are good enough.

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