101–110 of 131 posts
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It's not that cautionary. If you went to jwz right now and asked him "If you went back in time and, knowing everything you know now about how much pain would be involved, would you sign up with Netscape again?" I bet you he'd say yes. "But who said everything has to be fun? Pain builds character. (Sometimes it builds products, too.)"
I asked him, here's his response. http://twitter.com/#!/jwz/status/141017942639902720
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Sleeping 2 hours a night is a sprint. Unless you are a superhuman, you can't sleep 2 hours a night for more than a week and still be more productive than someone on a normal schedule. The point being, you can sprint in a crunch. You can sprint to meet a deadline next week. But unless you expect your company to be bought a week after you found it, you should probably be pacing yourself at least a little. Go ahead and…
Ok, that sounds fair. Two hours is indeed not sustainable except in sprints. Though I've known spooky people who seem to be able to get by with not much more than that on a sustained basis.
On the other hand, don't completely discount the possibility that some of the people you know have access to amphetamine. Careful use can sustain performance for weeks before tolerance sets in.
Amphetamine abuse shows up a lot in all the places you'd expect -- athletes, military personnel, emergency services and hospital workers, even lawyers. With the pressure to perform, it wouldn't surprise me if it's a quiet problem in startups, too, especially since drug testing is pretty much anathema to the culture.
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I asked him, here's his response. http://twitter.com/#!/jwz/status/141017942639902720
No reply? Show's a blank screen for me.
I will instead answer the question you should be asking. A: "No." Q: "Should I believe to VCs who tell me what's good for me?"
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Lacy cites companies like Twitter and Zynga as success stories. Neither of these were created by newbies. Evan Williams spent five years at Blogger. Marc Pincus had already sold one company and has a Wharton MBA. I've seen startups created by people who haven't even seen functional companies exist. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence in VCs, employees, or customers.
If you don't have experience and connections, partner with someone who does, whether it be an incubator, a co-founder, or an angel investor. Suck it up and give them a cut disproportionate to their efforts on your project. Just make sure they have valid advice and connections, and that they actually answer your emails. This is the model YC companies take as well as what fueled Facebook (Zuck/Parker).
If there is no decision maker in or closely tied to your company with relevant experience, you will most likely have to work this hard to get anything off the ground. You will cry. You will suffer exhaustion. Why? Because you are competing against experienced people who have a vested interest in your failure. Even if you are in a different space entirely, you still compete with them for funding, mindshare and talent.
You can work yourself to death. If your model is flawed because you've never actually seen a functional company work, much of the work you do is spent simply spinning your wheels to find traction.
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There is always, repeat always who is going to do more work than you. That's fundamentally how competition works. And the one who does more work than you do, will always have an edge over you. Both on the shorter and the longer run. There are rewards to do that extra. And that motivation will always drive a person to do more work than you do. And trust me inevitable he will end up being successful someday. You may do…
Your basing your argument on the idea that everyone is in some linear race and we will all do an assessment of ourselves and everyone else at the age of 40 to see who is ahead. Unfortunately many of the typically unhappiest people do this and they base their assessment on money and job titles. Success is not just about money and job titles. We all (well atleast some of us) have our own versions. One person who goes h…
As a I CEO I will have all the money in the world to chase any hobby/fun activity I will ever want. Also my kids and family are enjoying luxury and privileges which other families aren't so even they are happy.
Also I have time and patience only for one hobby. Most of the time even with a touch schedule I manage to work on my hobby.
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It's not that cautionary. If you went to jwz right now and asked him "If you went back in time and, knowing everything you know now about how much pain would be involved, would you sign up with Netscape again?" I bet you he'd say yes. "But who said everything has to be fun? Pain builds character. (Sometimes it builds products, too.)"
I asked him, here's his response. http://twitter.com/#!/jwz/status/141017942639902720
There's work. Then there's productive work. What pisses me off is having to pull an all-nighter doing ultimately meaningless work. In startups there can be a lot of meaningless work unless you have all your ducks lined up both strategically and tactically. The older I get, the more I realize that having your ducks lined up requires presence of mind, clarity, and focus, all characteristics that are fleeting when you'r…
Work more, cry less, and quite all the whining... is this SV or Full Metal Jacket? That's not advice. It's ignorance. If you cannot get your work done in eight hours a day there is probably something that's off. Maybe you're underestimating the work. Maybe you're being optimistic about your deadlines. Maybe you're not being honest with yourself about how efficiently you're using your time in the day. After eight hour…
There is always, repeat always who is going to do more work than you. That's fundamentally how competition works. And the one who does more work than you do, will always have an edge over you. Both on the shorter and the longer run. There are rewards to do that extra. And that motivation will always drive a person to do more work than you do. And trust me inevitable he will end up being successful someday. You may do…
What a stupid asshole I was.
The truth was I just felt like I was getting more done. Maybe on the first night or two of this I would. But after hour ten and eleven go by it started taking me longer to form sentences and get my ideas out. And it seemed that despite my best efforts writing unit tests and all that, my code would somehow still come out buggy. After a few weeks of this I wasn't being effective; I was just feeding the fire and making more work for myself.
Now I find ways to get more done in a day before I just shrug and throw in more over time. This has lead me to become very disciplined in how I approach my day. Sometimes it feels a little routine, but I have more energy for my work and am ready to relax when I'm done. I show to the office 30-40 minutes early and get some code kata time in to warm up. Then I get a coffee, review team updates, and get down to hacking. When my editor is open I'm just coding. If it's not open, I'm at my whiteboard jotting down notes and making plans on how to solve the problem so that when my editor is open I'm just coding. Social interaction happens at specific points in the day and I keep it short and sweet. The afternoon is when I get the most work done. When five o'clock comes around I've usually gotten everything done that I wanted to do that day so I leave.
Now that I'm a little older I see the young guys in the office doing what I used to. They throw themselves at the work. They work late for weeks at a time. They come to the stand ups all grizzled looking and swaying like an exhausted frond of seaweed. And sometimes they still manage to slip their stories for the sprint.
You know what changed my mind? Death. We're all just getting older. There are no do-overs in life. Once your youth is gone it's gone for good. I don't have any kids myself yet so the center of my life is my career but that doesn't stop me from doing the things I want to do. I like to go camping, rock climbing, spending time with my wife and our friends. I like to spend lazy afternoons reading and occasionally stay up late writing. The worst thing I can imagine is wishing you had enjoyed your time on this earth more when you had the chance.
I'm so glad I was pushing 30 before I really became aware of this startup scene. The general impression that comes off, to me at least, is work hard, stop moaning, accept pennies and one day you'll be rich - assuming that unlikely outcome happens and we don't use of the thousand ways possible to screw you out of any riches. To me at least, and as an outsider, I'd say things like this may hold up for founders, but as…
I'm in my early 20s. Startups seem to be the only way out of 40 years of mediocrity in TPS-land for me, so I don't really think I have much of a choice. It's startups or nothing for me. Or maybe I am being myopic? Are there more options to be had in life than mediocrity/wageslavery vs glory/startups?
A startup will likely have stupid ideas about work ethic and they'll probably want to push your compensation into equity. For any startup you join, be realistic, it will not be the next google/facebook. You'll be doing well if it doesn't end up failing. If it does survive, the equity you got will probably be devaluated somehow.
There may be some lottery-level chance of becoming financially independent, but you'll save yourself effort by just working a TPS-land job and buying actual lottery tickets.
A much more consistent approach would be to contract (or consult if you have the chance) and live frugally. With this, you should be able to save up enough money to take a year off every few years.