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Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

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Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#41

Post by chiefalchemist »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #8

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…

> Rich kids can afford many throws.

True. But the advantage is broader than that. They also have more able networks. Their parents more likely to know someone who can help who might know someone else who can help. The (support) network matters.

But that's not the difference marker. It's WHAT they throw those darts at that matters. True story...

A few years ago I attended (as a spectator) a hackathon at Princeton Univ. It was mostly PU teams but there were a handful of outsiders.

On day one each team presented their ideas. The team from Rutgers' idea had to do with drinking. An app that figured out the amount of alcohol in your glass or something like that. I honestly don't recall the PU ideas but I know they didn't center around partying.

It was then I realized the difference between those two schools. It's not the quality of the education per se. It's WHAT you think about and HOW you think about it.

Rich kids are exposed to a way of thinking (and role models) that is 100x more rare in the middle class or below. Sure you can claw up from the middle/bottom but it's 100x easier from the top.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#42

Post by hu3 »

jwr wrote: post #30

I can see a number of data points in the comments, let me add another one. I started a self-funded SaaS business fairly late (in my 40s). I was tired of being dependent on others, especially as others mostly failed me in the past. I wanted to be independent: no investors, no bosses, no employees. Just me. It took five years of slow growth to get to a stage where I didn't have to worry about revenue. Do I regret it? H…

Thank you for sharing your experience. It's the style of life I want to pursue.

I'm starting a B2B SAAS business (the dream) on the side where I also plan to work on my own (no investors, no employees) and maybe be helped by my wife.

My question to you is: Do you have experience with free tiers?

I'm thinking about having a free tier to lure in customers and allow them to play around with the app without having to commit their credit-card right away.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#43

Post by irjustin »

revelio wrote: post #22
FlyingSnake wrote: post #8

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…

> A nice analogy but it doesn't work.

Your analogies don't refute his claims the way you think they do.

When you look at the FAANGs you're implicitly viewing from $$'s of the overall pie (top 99.99999%??) where as the parent comment is looking at it from they're just 5 founders amongst a sea of them (top 0.000001%?). Also, the founders of those companies aren't rags to riches they came from upper middle to upper class families.

His quoted analogy stands well and yours generally helps it.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#45

Post by reedf1 »

throwaway8456 wrote: post #10

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…

> a start up is a scam that only benefits the founders

I've worked for a few start-ups now from early-stages to IPO and it definitely feels like this. Most opportunities for any amount of valuable equity is complete lies. I have been personally responsible for creating quite a few millionaires - without being one myself.

> I started developing resentment against the entitlement of the software engineers I would hire

You probably know this already - but you are nothing without your engineers and they usually know it. I recently worked for a financial start-up which completely imploded just pre-IPO because the founder thought that they were beyond the point of needing an engineering team (!).

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#47

Post by sshine »

strangescript wrote: post #23

You always here about the 5% that make it, not the 95% that don't. Even when you do its easy to brush off why they failed. "Oh their idea was bad", or "they didn't know what they were doing". This is only amplified further by those 5%'ers running around encouraging everyone to start a business. Writing books about their success. Giving motivational speeches, etc.

There's a lot of timing, luck, market fit, retrying.

The whole story is never a sample-size of one.

Hacker News is pretty good at portraying those who failed five times in a row, those who give up after trying for years, those who seem to get it, and those who persevere.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#48

Post by reedf1 »

saliagato wrote: post #16
throwaway8456 wrote: post #10

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?

I worked myself into the dirt for 2 years for a start-up that ended up failing. It felt like I aged 10 years. My hairline receded an inch - my hair started going grey - and I gained 15kg.

I'm undoing the damage now - but I can tell I've been physically aged by the process.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#49

Post by makeitdouble »

revelio wrote: post #22
FlyingSnake wrote: post #8

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.

That seems counter-intuitive. You are looking at incredibly large corporations that came full form in a few decades only, and I'd wager their founder succeeding at the first try might be part of the whole miracle. Companies that mildly succeed could come from less miraculous founders who needed a few more tries.

> Even rich kids go to VC

It's more on whether they can effort to "waste" a few years in a startup instead of trying to build a career in a more stable company.

They also don't need social branding: if you're trying to get a loan for your mortgage, working at IBM will help a lot compared to some random stealth startup.

It's the same reason you'll find more well-off kids trying to make it as actors. It's just a risk most poor kids won't take.

> due to the skills you developed and not mere luck

It doesn't have to be a dichotomy of one or another. Just don't publish a book to tell the world "look at me: just work hard enough and everything is possible"

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#50

Post by slavoingilizov »

davidn20 wrote: post #18

My guess is running a startup is like running a marathon. The idea of it is great to many people, but as people start to train they realize all the work it takes and drop out. People get into things without fully understanding it all the time. The few that really love it or enjoy the process makes it to the starting line.

Understanding everything before you get into it is overrated. Belief is a necessary requirement to move the world forward. And that in itself requires some naivety. Otherwise those people who can actually see it through wouldn't even start - most of them didn't "understand" it before they started.
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