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I am done. I give up

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Re: I am done. I give up

#361

Post by wikfwikf »

saalweachter wrote: post #60
jacquesm wrote: post #24

It's not defeat, it is the expected outcome. Out of 20 or so of my projects two have been break-out successes and the rest (commercially) complete failures, and I'm very lucky to have two out of those 20, with very small variations in timing it would have been a big fat zero. So don't beat yourself up about it, some people win the lottery and the majority don't. There is absolutely no recipe that will work every time…

I was an engineer at a successful startup. We grew, we went bankrupt, we laid off most the company, the founders kicked in enough to keep us going and we restructured to give the remaining people larger shares. We became profitable and finally sold to another company. My payday was about $70k, which was a nice bonus, I was happy to get it. I moved on to big tech. The company withered away, the company that bought it…

It seems insane to me that the happy path involves you getting $70k. Working in finance, I would expect that amount as a bonus in any year where I perform well and the business isn't unprofitable.

When I've spoken to people about the finance/big tech/startup trade-offs, we've often talked about the upside from startup success (outside of the Google or Instagram case) being around an order of magnitude bigger than that - in the 'pay off your mortgage' ballpark. Is this unrealistic?

Re: I am done. I give up

#362

Post by uffndnjfncnc »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #346
uffndnjfncnc wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU is a large market too but startup founders aren't going there.

EU has a market on legislative base, however in language, culture, ... it is split. It is very hard to build a company serving larger parts of Europe.

Many American companies have done it. Instagram is very popular across the EU.

Re: I am done. I give up

#363

Post by EGreg »

drstewart wrote: post #216
pavlov wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail. Unfortunately it's rarely discussed in society as such. The political parties that built these welfare states have traditionally been associated with worker unions, and entrepreneurship isn't high on their agenda. The Nordic right-wing parties got ideologically married to Thatcher-style neoliberalism and pref…

[flagged]

It is because USA actually has very strong Limited Liability and Bankruptcy protections for companies and even people.

In Europe, I heard that you have personao liability to your employees, libertarian-style.

Re: I am done. I give up

#364

Post by worldsavior »

You know how many people tried to build start-ups and failed? Many then you can imagine, and they're heartbroken has you are, it's not necessarily personal. Sometimes business needs some luck, or maybe you product just was...bad, which is ok, that's how you progress. Life is a hit and miss, but you need to learn from mistakes. Because if you aren't, you will never succeed. At least you gathered experience, and if you still have some motivation and a good idea for a start-up, go for it!

Re: I am done. I give up

#365

Post by [deleted] »

jurmous wrote: post #10

A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing. The basic fact is that most startups and most entrepreneurial dreams fail or get consumed by another for their talent/clients. And as an entrepreneur you fight against all odds. Most will fail…

[deleted]

Re: I am done. I give up

#366

Post by bumby »

pavlov wrote: post #200
kubb wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the privileges people don't often think about is being able to afford to fail. If you don't risk destitution after your startup fails, you can try and fail many times, learn and try again. It's like continuously rolling two dice, and you only need to get double sixes once, and after that it's private jets until you die. One of the many reasons the rich get richer and the poor, well you know how it goes.

This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail. Unfortunately it's rarely discussed in society as such. The political parties that built these welfare states have traditionally been associated with worker unions, and entrepreneurship isn't high on their agenda. The Nordic right-wing parties got ideologically married to Thatcher-style neoliberalism and pref…

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/welfare...

Re: I am done. I give up

#367

Post by brightball »

9/10 small businesses and startups fail. Most don’t make money in the first 5 years.

It’s a slog. It’s exhausting. Once you do it, your perspective about a lot of things changes. A full time job with a steady paycheck seems like vacation.

https://www.brightball.com/articles/what-exactly-happened-to...

Re: I am done. I give up

#368

Post by sebzim4500 »

rahoulb wrote: post #297
fsloth wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name a big UK startup? Nordic countries have the safety net countered with a mentality that is borderline entrepreneur-hostile and the law of Jante on top of that so safety nets may be the few pro-entrepreneurship things they have. Finland of the lot is also capital poor so no huge investor funds or such.

Off the top of my head; UK startups that have grown and been successful (although many have now been bought out - which I guess is the exit plan for many founders anyway) Just Eat, Deliveroo and The Hut Group; Monzo, Starling and Revolut, from another era, there's ARM. I'm sure there's fintech ones (not a sector I know much about) and the guy who sits near me in the office, who has an AI-healthcare startup, says the…

>I'm sure there's fintech ones (not a sector I know much about) and the guy who sits near me in the office, who has an AI-healthcare startup, says the Britain is very good at those too.

The UK has an advantage here over the US in that the tech and finance sectors are both based in London whereas in the US they are split between California and New York.

Re: I am done. I give up

#369

Post by jll29 »

IronIvan wrote: post #300
xvector wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bezos would not have kept Amazon in the US if it adopted Nordic welfare levels of taxation. The fact of the matter is that the EU has a staggeringly low output when it comes to tech innovation compared to the US. Their policies and regulations shape this.

Can confirm. Lived a very frugal early retirement lifestyle in Austria because it was practically impossible to build wealth (high taxes, comparatively very low tech salaries, little entrepreneurial support/incentives). Moving to the US I was able to 5-6x my income (from what I could have realistically made) , while reducing my tax burden by 15 percentage points, and so I've been happily living a workaholics' lifesty…

I agree with your point about Europe squandering engineering talent.

Overall, it's a trade-off, though. You are right about the US opportunities, but there are downsides, too:

- crime (you get crime everywhere, but the US has a particularly and unnecessarily high level of serious crime like gun crime - e.g. school shootings happen pretty regularly);

- not everyone has good healthcare & social services (I am aware you will not personally be exposed to that, as you will have private healthcare; but it even bothers me if people around me are ill and cannot afford to get cured. I don't want to live somewhere where I can get a regular check at the Mayo clinic and my neighbor cannot afford their emergency dentist);

- low average education level (people generally don't know much of the world, history, literature).

- cultural life (theater, classical music etc.) is very uneven distributed.

Also, US taxation isn't that low in general, it dramatically depends on the state you live in (TX 0% state tax versus NY, MN etc. >40%).

There are places in Europe that have small tax rates (CH, LU), but they are not the best places to live for everybody. Everyone needs to weigh their priorities and match with the overall "package" (e.g. Canada is a good compromise: near-US salaries but Europe-like education of the general public) - and in any case, not everyone is free to leave where they currently reside.

Austria in particular has rather low salaries (but also low rents) - but places like Vienna have a magic feel to it that just doesn't exist on other continents. In comparison, in neighboring Switzerland are very high (anyone with a tech Master's degree would be on a six digits salary), but with a huge salary gap between locals and expats for doing the same job.

(I have lived in the UK, US, CH and DE.)

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