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Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

bbc.com

31–40 of 279 posts

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#31

I started, boostrapped and sold a SaaS business. By most standards, this was a resounding success. I won't have to work again ever if I don't want to. This being my first company, I was obsessed with it. Towards the end, I burnt myself out, I had neglected my wife and kids for years, and I was just so miserable. I used to love programming, but I could not concentrate anymore. I started developing resentment against t…

'I really wonder if it was really all worth it.'

You concede your marriage suffered and suggest the impact on your health was negative, but both of these things could have happened if you were just surviving in a low paid regular job.

Don't be so hard on yourself and enjoy your success.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#32

A cynic would say that the BBC is preparing the public for the Online Safety Bill, where many small online ventures will become unviable.

Yes. It depresses me no end that this comes from the BBC. How predictable. You can argue that the Californian sun-always-shines mentality is unrealistic, but you can't argue with the results it generates. Perhaps the British attitude is just normal and not anything in particular, but compared to the attitude of the people at the top it's a culture of defeatism.

I think it may also be reflective of the culture and mentality at the BBC specifically, though. It's well known their staff is completely dominated by Guardian readers. These are people whose idea of success in life is taking control of a powerful pre-existing institution. The sort of people who make wild bets on unintuitive beliefs and end up disrupting industries are pretty much opposed to that value system and it shines through in all sorts of subtle ways.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#33
Overemployment where you hold multiple jobs simultaneously is the far better goal for those who are ambitious and want to make a lot of money these days. Not entrepreneurship.

As an overemployed worker, you will work less than an entrepreneur but probably start making far more money than them right away. Overemployment is also more friendly to failure. If you fuck up a job and lose it, it takes little effort to just find a new one. You might even have a severance as a bonus. The entrepreneur will probably just drink beer and spiral into depression as they wrestle with the choice of starting yet another business or finding some kind of job they can tolerate.

Overemployment will also force you to have incredible time management, and the high you get from running your day like a well oiled machine delivers far better satisfaction than the terrifying uncertainty that comes with entrepreneurship.

Furthermore, overemployment allows you to truly “turn off” in a way entrepreneurship doesn’t. At the end of the day, since you’re just working for another company, your responsibilities are limited. You can push away from your desk and live life stress free.

You could be grossing around $500k a year easily as an overemployed worker, meaning that with prudent saving and investment you will have amassed millions in the span of a decade, almost guaranteed. The entrepreneur probably has to work a decade just to maybe get the chance at a similar pay day someday, and for many that day never comes.

Entrepreneurship doesn’t carry the same prestige it used to. Nowadays there’s a lot of “entrepreneurs” out there and the term has become a bit derogatory, hence the need for quotes. Indeed, someone is more likely to be a charlatan or just a fucking loser if they call themselves an entrepreneur, rather than an actual successful business owner.

Overemployment on the other hand is gaining prestige. Most people are immediately impressed when you tell them you have two six figure jobs at the same time. Imagine how eyes would nearly pop out of people’s heads if you told them you worked at Facebook and Google, at the same time. You can’t bullshit overemployment the way you can bullshit entrepreneurship: two jobs is two jobs.

So all you young men take this advice: build the most valuable skill set and knowledge base you can, and get multiple six figure jobs with decent tech companies. The world doesn’t really need another shitty business idea, it needs people who want to work.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#34

Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something. Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on. Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good…

I agree, a lot of things you do in life are based on how many times can you absorb the failure and recover from it. This ability is just not financial, it also has physical, mental health, relationships aspect to it.

You could get be the "lucky" person either tomorrow or 10 years from now, question is how long can you afford to continue.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#35
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nice analogy but it doesn't work. There aren't that many entrepreneurs who failed multiple times before succeeding at a business. If you look at the big businesses that dominate the US tech economy, they're all first time founders (Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft etc). There are also very few entrepreneurs bootstrapping their own business. Even rich kids go to VC, they aren't usually risking their own funds. Final…

I think you need to leave tech and VC money. VC’s are happy to throw money behind a bunch of smart college kids. Go try to go a different route and see all the doors shut. Also you don’t get to see all the people who don’t try their hand at entrepreneurship because the gamble is too great for them.

Yes, but the reason it's harder to get money for those sorts of businesses is because they're much less likely to generate large returns. The BBC couldn't / didn't want to find any tech entrepreneurs for this article (it's not like the UK doesn't have them), so they focus on people doing contracting or agency work. Of course it'll be tough to get investment in such a low margin and competitive business, VCs don't invest in tech outsourcing body shops either. There just isn't the possibility of large profits without product development.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#36
Profiling only two people in an article like this seems like a breach of journalistic standards. If they'd interviewed like 4+ people from very different backgrounds, maybe the article could have packed a punch. As it is, I don't feel like I've learned much of anything from this.

I mean, surely it's unsurprising to anyone with some life experience that, as with any career choice, some people regret entrepreneurship, and here are two examples of that, and -- so what... ?

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#37

I started, boostrapped and sold a SaaS business. By most standards, this was a resounding success. I won't have to work again ever if I don't want to. This being my first company, I was obsessed with it. Towards the end, I burnt myself out, I had neglected my wife and kids for years, and I was just so miserable. I used to love programming, but I could not concentrate anymore. I started developing resentment against t…

“ I have definitely lost a few years of life expectancy “ Why? Genuinely curious. Stress can lower life expectancy?

Not OP, but you have to keep in mind that your body is always trying to repair any damages that happen. Be it through actual accidents or molecular mishaps. Stress and other factors can cause the body to go into survival mode, where all resources are allocated to solving only the challenge directly ahead at the expense of repairs. And your body always needs repairs, because there is so much stuff going on at the molecular level that wears down the cells. Our bodies are pretty good at repairs but not perfect.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#38

Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something. Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on. Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good…

Can confirm this as middle class kid.

Co-foudned a startup a few years ago, was good fun, didn't end up going anywhere. Got a decent bit of parental help with childcare. Now childcare has gone up a ton and I'm in a market-rate dev job with no intention to change.

Co-founder came from money, and is definitely under no such constraints in starting another business.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#39

Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something. Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on. Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good…

[flagged]

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#40
post #22

Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something. Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on. Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good…

A nice analogy but it doesn't work. There aren't that many entrepreneurs who failed multiple times before succeeding at a business. If you look at the big businesses that dominate the US tech economy, they're all first time founders (Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft etc). There are also very few entrepreneurs bootstrapping their own business. Even rich kids go to VC, they aren't usually risking their own funds. Final…

> There aren't that many entrepreneurs who failed multiple times before succeeding at a business. If you look at the big businesses that dominate the US tech economy, they're all first time founders (Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft etc).

For this analysis to be complete you'd have to look at all companies, not an arbitrary selection of tech companies.

Furthermore, tech is unique (and so is the list of your companies) in that one couldn't have started a similar company before the ones you listed since modern tech literally had just begun.

A better example would be to look at the new generation of tech companies, such as OpenAI, if you want to focus on tech.

Finally, let's look at your companies:

Microsoft - was not Bill Gates' first company.

Amazon - It's true the name was the same, but the company pre and post 1998 (Amazon as a bookstore, and then Amazon as an ecommerce site, and then the development of what is known as AWS in the early 2000s) was fundamentally different. The only real similarity is the name.

Google - it's true Brin and Page started this company first, but they had effectively done all the work for "free" as part of their PhD (at Stanford, no less). Keeping up with the parent post analogy, there was not much risk here.

Apple - Similar to Amazon in that Apple as a name and company had continuity from now to its beginning, but Steve Jobs started Next which you could argue is the DNA of modern Apple (it merged back with the almost then defunct Apple), as well as Pixar.

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