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Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

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Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#181

Post by ROTMetro »

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…

This doesn't explain the success rates that low wealth immigrants have when it comes to entrepreneurship. It does feel like an analogy someone would write a sudo-intelectual book based on because it 'feels accurate' while being nothing but pop-crap people use to put energy into being resentful or to justify limits they put on themselves.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#182

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Dig1t wrote: post #162
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…

I’ve seen this analogy repeatedly many times and it’s becoming a meme. I think this is wrong and that it trivializes people’s accomplishments and hard work as nothing but random chance. There are tons of examples of entrepreneurs who came from nothing that spent long periods of time living with their parents and eating ramen, grinding until they finally made it.

And for every one of those, there are 10 who did not.

Random chance is a dominant factor in life, in some walks of like it's The Dominant Factor. Look at Olympic champions, they all work hard but for every athlete that succeeds, there are 100 that worked just as hard and did not. If you were not randomly allocated the right genes, your chance of winning the Olympics is 0% no matter how hard you work.

Or look at traders, they work 100 hours a week, consume cocaine, some die of overwork, some die of overdose. And we have research to prove that random chance is the dominant factor in their work. Working hard for them is a necessity to stay in the game, but it does not assure success.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#183

Post by dehrmann »

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 those throws are still expensive, and the prize is worth less than the cost to play. This is what downward mobility looks like. It's a kid who grew up wealthy, but ended up upper middle class because they weren't as lucky/ambitious/talented as their parents. It happens a lot, but it isn't dramatic, and the outcome isn't "bad," so it doesn't get much attention, but downward mobility absolutely happens.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#184

Post by nkotov »

I'm in year five of building companies, three years doing it full-time. I don't have regrets but there have been extreme low point - primarily tied to other people. Firing others. Having investors pull out last second and forcing us to shutdown. Having cofounders quit, or worse, intentional sabotage the team. It takes a certain type of person to want to continue doing this long-term. Most people don't have that.

One thing I wish someone told me early was that being consistent is the key. I spent the first ten years of my tech career looking for hacks to just realize the best hack is to just doing things consistently and speak to new people all the time. Once you have your pace set, just running with it and sticking with it results in things to start happening.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#185

Post by ClumsyPilot »

JamesBarney wrote: post #177
digging wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't get mad at someone else because of your own families path Should I get mad at my family? This part is not clear to me. You are also saying this like it's possible for everyone to become wealthy, if only they were picking one of these three options. Not every family can be wealthy - the wealthy make sure of it. It's a zero-sum game (well, more of a negative-sum game? as wealth becomes more concentrated at the…

If the economy was a zero or negative sum game we'd still have the same food insecurity we did 500 years ago. But we don't, the world has gotten much better in the last 500 years from people working hard on making it better, many getting rich in the process.

Your benchmark was Rich. Rich is a relative term, it means more money that everyone else.

If everyone owns 5 houses, to be rich you have to own 500

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#186

Post by winstonprivacy »

coldtea wrote: post #152
idopmstuff wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of the post you're responding to is that it's not a random outcome; it's an outcome driven by a strategy that is specifically useful for people with $0 in the bank and middle class connections. You're talking about $300k in the bank, but the quote you included literally says "almost no monetary investment."

It's still a random personal anecdote. And the "strategy" is an empty trivial advice. Do you think other poor people trying to start businesses don't try to do it with "almost no monetary investment"? Not only they try that, that's the only way they can afford to try anyway. Still no match for a big monetary investment, and still much much harder for them to get the same outcomes as an enterpreneur coming from privil…

I did something similar, so there you go... now you have three "random" anecdotes.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#187

Post by brianwawok »

dehrmann wrote: post #183
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 those throws are still expensive, and the prize is worth less than the cost to play. This is what downward mobility looks like. It's a kid who grew up wealthy, but ended up upper middle class because they weren't as lucky/ambitious/talented as their parents. It happens a lot, but it isn't dramatic, and the outcome isn't "bad," so it doesn't get much attention, but downwar…

Isn't the trope that the first generation makes the wealth, the second generation maintains it, and the third spends it?

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#188

Post by dumbotron »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #159
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. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. I see this story repeated over and and over again on the internet, but I don't really see it playing out the same way in the real world. I've seen a lot of "rich kids" try to start businesses, but then quickly realize that it's a huge amount of work and not guaranteed…

> I lived near a highly ranked MBA school for a while

This is how elite colleges work. They connect elite kids with talented kids they can take advantage of.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#189

Post by mattgreenrocks »

boplicity wrote: post #74
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…

> Middle class kids can afford one throw. Gotta disagree with this. As someone who grew up middle class, I was fortunate, in a lot of ways, to also learn to be prudent with money. I started bootstrapping microbusinesses with almost no monetary investment. This eventually allowed me to support myself (on a very low budget), and then, later, on a slightly larger budget. Eventually, one of these businesses became succes…

I suspect many people simply want to be seen as a "startup founder," much more than actually being one. They want to play "startup business" the same way young children want to "play house." It is akin to Gen Z's obsession with becoming an influencer, just with more hoodies, misplaced Steve Jobs quotes, and awful Medium thinkpieces.

The label is aspirational by design, and they buy into the whole culture, which explains why everyone thinks a startup has to be an all-or-nothing unicorn taking VC funding for a glorified CRUD app where they're just making up the requirements as they go while praying for product/market fit.

In short, it's about status and pop culture, not solving the problems of real users. Which is a shame, cause actually solving problems for users is really, really interesting even if TechCrunch doesn't get excited about it.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#190

Post by amanj41 »

rsrsrs86 wrote: post #51
onion2k wrote: post #6

One of the things I learned running my first startup was that I really don't enjoy running a business. The mountains of admin work, the never-ending decision making, the constant anxiety of whether or not I made the right call, the pressure to never actually switch off and just work work work , all of the pointless 'networking' with people who're pretending to be interested ... it all adds up to a pretty horrible exp…

I always ask candidates why they want to work at an early stage startup as a developer, and “because it must be fun” is a show stopper. Being a founder is certainly not fun. The good parts are there, like earning money, interacting with your team and seeing them grow, the first round, the first sale. But the job is quite painful itself. Please note that not all startups and founders are / want to be funded with billi…

Similar to the sibling commenter, I would say it's a matter of semantics. I am one of three developers at a small startup and definitely would describe the experience as fun albeit stressful. The two sentiments are not mutually exclusive. If it's not fun / interesting / challenging, the possibility of options being worth something in future would absolutely not justify the stress of working at a startup
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