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Ask HN: What has been your biggest mistake?

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Re: Ask HN: What has been your biggest mistake?

#61

Post by menloparkbum »

Alex3917 wrote: post #20
menloparkbum wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Football meaning soccer or american gridiron? I played the latter and the injuries I took affect me to this day. Back in the day, nobody mentioned the 100% injury rate - i.e. anyone who plays football will eventually get hurt bad enough they can't play. Thus, as I type this from bed, because one of my slipped discs has acted up, I have the opposite opinion - playing football was one of the biggest mistakes I've ever…

Almost every sport has a 100% injury rate where you eventually get hurt bad enough you can't play anymore. The trick is choosing a sport where the most common injuries prevent you from playing the sport but don't prevent you from walking. A good percentage of swimmers eventually develop shoulder injuries, but (AFAIK) that doesn't prevent you from doing anything except swimming.

That isn't true. It is rare that you would break a leg playing basketball or any bone at all playing baseball. It happens all the time in gridiron football. I wish I could find the chart where I got this information. The strange thing was, if I remember correctly, that the 2nd worst sport was women's soccer, because so many people tore their ACL.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your biggest mistake?

#62

Post by pavelludiq »

nostrademons wrote: post #60
cubix wrote: post #39

Spending the first half of my twenties working my guts out for a big corporation where my efforts went largely unnoticed outside of my immediate sphere. I'm certain that if I put that time into a start-up I would be much better off today -- even if it failed.

I'm kinda curious - is there anyone who doesn't regret their twenties? We've got three posts regretting working for the wrong startup (mine, menloparkbum, and gscott), one working for a big company (yours), one going to grad school (timcederman), one getting a degree (jobeyonekenobi), and one doing nothing (johnyzee). So apparently working for a small company is bad, working for a big company is bad, not working is b…

start a band, buy a bike and travel, get arrested for something stupid, have fun.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your biggest mistake?

#63

Post by msg »

I was a National Merit Finalist, honors student, and such. I didn't go out and get scholarships for college. I stayed in-state instead of going out for my own adventure. When I got to college, I didn't know what I was doing with myself and bombed pretty badly. I wasted a lot of time and effort. I didn't drop out to figure things out though. I took out a lot of student loans, and didn't even finish undergrad first time around.

I think a lot of my problem was not biting the bullet and making the hard choices after that first mistake. Instead, I dug myself deeper every time. I'm still paying the loans, but once I figured out what I really wanted, it was not so hard to work to get it.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your biggest mistake?

#65

Post by mynameishere »

nostrademons wrote: post #7

1. Not majoring in computer science the first time I quit my physics major. If you like something, don't stay away from it for silly reasons (like thinking that school will make you un-like it). 2. Not knowing the difference between profitability and traction when I was looking at startups to work for. I spent 2 years at a relatively low-growth startup because I thought that its profits meant it was successful, when…

In the meantime, http://nowdothis.com/ launched, and now they have all the momentum.

Wow, momentum for what? A textbox that echoes. Woot. They've got the echoing textbox racket nailed down.

Shit, I'll just bookmark this comment link and use ynews as a to-do list.

Nowdothis:

1. Buy gun.

2. Shoot self for not releasing my todo list app soon enough.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your biggest mistake?

#66

Post by charlesju »

mattmaroon wrote: post #22
icey wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your #1 item is dangerously wrong. If you're not making money you can still be sued for personal assets (house, car, etc); and if you don't have those, you can be sued for debt.

I'm baffled as to how he could actually believe that. Also, the cost of forming an LLC to insulate yourself against that is trivial.

You cannot get sued for having a site that isnt charging anything because youre not giving any legal consideration. Without legal consideration, there is no contract between you and your user base. Thus, while you technically can still be sued, having that case go anywhere is very unlikely.

Of course if youre doing something legally grey like youtube or file sharing, then perhaps you should incorporate. But without any assets in the company, the corporate liability will most likely be pierced in court.

As for a LLC. Its nice but you should really do a ccorp if youre serious about business, and changing from a LLC to a ccorp is a pain in the butt. Or so I hear.

To go further, I challenge you to show me a single case of a company being sued that wasnt doing something legally grey and not making any money.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your biggest mistake?

#67

Post by Alex3917 »

menloparkbum wrote: post #61
Alex3917 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every sport has a 100% injury rate where you eventually get hurt bad enough you can't play anymore. The trick is choosing a sport where the most common injuries prevent you from playing the sport but don't prevent you from walking. A good percentage of swimmers eventually develop shoulder injuries, but (AFAIK) that doesn't prevent you from doing anything except swimming.

That isn't true. It is rare that you would break a leg playing basketball or any bone at all playing baseball. It happens all the time in gridiron football. I wish I could find the chart where I got this information. The strange thing was, if I remember correctly, that the 2nd worst sport was women's soccer, because so many people tore their ACL.

"It is rare that you would break a leg playing basketball or any bone at all playing baseball."

I read somewhere that a lot of baseball players will just call a cab if they have to walk more than a block or two because their ankles are so shot. Not sure if this is true or not though.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your biggest mistake?

#69

Post by icey »

charlesju wrote: post #66
mattmaroon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm baffled as to how he could actually believe that. Also, the cost of forming an LLC to insulate yourself against that is trivial.

You cannot get sued for having a site that isnt charging anything because youre not giving any legal consideration. Without legal consideration, there is no contract between you and your user base. Thus, while you technically can still be sued, having that case go anywhere is very unlikely. Of course if youre doing something legally grey like youtube or file sharing, then perhaps you should incorporate. But without a…

Applying your litmus test means that no OSS company has ever been (or will ever be) sued for patent infringement.

It is difficult to have a corporate veil pierced on the basis of assets held alone, and there are specific conditions in place in every state that must be met in order to pierce the corporate veil. Which you've actually argued for yourself in your claim that a C Corp is the entity that you want to use in order to protect yourself from liability, because that is the basis of most of the corporate law in the US.

I just think you're advocating gambling with your personal assets when you could just as easily spend $1000 to $1500 to have a professional set up your corporation and have some level of protection. Additionally, you could throw in a few hundred bucks and insure the new corporation against liabilities. The last time I purchased a policy, it cost me something like $300 a year to carry a $2,000,000 liability policy.

I bet most people starting a startup have spent more than that on the laptop they use.

[Edit: Maybe there is a lawyer who reads YC who can clarify all this stuff for us]

Re: Ask HN: What has been your biggest mistake?

#70

Post by nostrademons »

pavelludiq wrote: post #62
nostrademons wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kinda curious - is there anyone who doesn't regret their twenties? We've got three posts regretting working for the wrong startup (mine, menloparkbum, and gscott), one working for a big company (yours), one going to grad school (timcederman), one getting a degree (jobeyonekenobi), and one doing nothing (johnyzee). So apparently working for a small company is bad, working for a big company is bad, not working is b…

start a band, buy a bike and travel, get arrested for something stupid, have fun.

I know some folks that did that and regretted it. Well, maybe not the travel part, but I've got various friends that have started bands/gotten arrested/had fun and kinda wish they hadn't.
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