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A relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place

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Re: A relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place

#101

Post by anileated »

carlosjobim wrote: post #98
anileated wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t because I need money to survive, and this will not provide that money for months until the thing is written, deployed, and has an established enough paying user base… And good luck me not getting seriously ill or get affected by whatever calamity in meantime!

You should never found a business. If you are already thinking about becoming ill, then it's just not the path for you. A business founder has to be prepared and eager to sacrifice his personal well being for the business.

What you are describing seems like hustling and/or privilege. If your goal is to create value long term, the worst way to go about it is to not take care of yourself. For people who were not born into strong safety nets it is usually harder and includes finances.

Becoming ill is a sure way to be unproductive and make bad decisions, going broke and struggling to make ends meet is not going to help you focus on getting things done, dying early is not compatible with seeing your idea to success.

Re: A relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place

#102

Post by timewasterthrow »

bagacrap wrote: post #75
timewasterthrow wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peoples say the odds are ultra low, and talk a lot of young people out of trying. I played freshman football. I was ok. I'm 6'4", smart enough to get into Cal MechE, decently capable physically and grow muscle easily and have never been injured in my life basically even though I ride dirtbikes. My dad got me to give up on football. Later I found out that if you look at all highschool players that play all 4 years, th…

You make it sound as if all you need to do is study, try hard, and roll a 50-sided die. Obviously that is not sufficient. And anyone who's playing in the NFL today was far better than "ok" at all previous levels of competition.

I actually think its better than rolling a 50 sided die. That was me just being nice about it. I think if you actually actively work with the goal of making it to the NFL, your odds are even better than 1 in 50. For example, sprinting times are atleast looked at. How often have you heard of a highschool or college athlete hiring a running and sprinting coach? I assure you its not very often. (my college gf of 7 years that went onto med school worked in medical services for our athletic department).

Also, your comment about the people that make it being obvious standouts during their first year of play is basically more of the type of thinking my dad told me to discourage me from playing. I honestly dont think its true that most professionals were obvious "This kid is going to make it to the nfl one day for sure!" kind of players, atleast not their first year.

Re: A relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place

#103

Post by carlosjobim »

anileated wrote: post #101
carlosjobim wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should never found a business. If you are already thinking about becoming ill, then it's just not the path for you. A business founder has to be prepared and eager to sacrifice his personal well being for the business.

What you are describing seems like hustling and/or privilege. If your goal is to create value long term, the worst way to go about it is to not take care of yourself. For people who were not born into strong safety nets it is usually harder and includes finances. Becoming ill is a sure way to be unproductive and make bad decisions, going broke and struggling to make ends meet is not going to help you focus on getting…

> For people who were not born into strong safety nets

"Hustling" as you call it is pretty much the only way to start a successful business exactly for the people not born into "strong safety nets" and "privilege" as you call it. If you have those you can start your business and coast.

I don't know any business owner - including myself - who didn't have to make sacrifices to his or her well being to push through. That's the thing with having a business, there will be times were you just can't relax or take a day off. You are in fierce competition with the world, and as a founder you should work at a minimum twice as hard as somebody who is hired. It can and it will lead to partial or complete burn out, but one thing that I've noticed among myself and every other business owner is that they push through and simply don't get sick when they can't be sick. After it's over and they've pushed through a project or a season, they will get sick as dogs and disappear for a couple of weeks to lay on the sofa. The overload cannot be constant, you need to have some time to recover in the foreseeable future.

The human mind has an incredible force to resist becoming ill and for those who cannot channel this, starting a business is a bad idea. Being ill is mainly the body's reaction to fight the sickness, so it's somewhat under our control.

Having a business puts incredible pressure from all sides on a person, and you can't be a person who thinks about "tapping out" as an option. Especially in situations when other people's salaries depend on you.

Re: A relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place

#104

Post by imilk »

anileated wrote: post #73
imilk wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have the ability to program you can find time around your day job to make a little progress each day until you have something ready to market. Because it just sounds like you're lazy and are throwing up random excuses.

Nah, no time at all. Can barely keep up. Recognize not everyone’s job is as easy as yours.

Do you also have no time in the evenings or weekends? Spend the hours that you normally watch TV or browse social media/Hacker News working on your project.

But the fact that you're posting on here while complaining that you don't have time tells me you just don't want to do it enough for it to ever be worthwhile.

Re: A relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place

#105

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

anileated wrote: post #87
s1artibartfast wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on what you mean by "having it to drop" . That's less than a median income in San Francisco. If you put 100% of your income into a startup, are you out of touch or do you just have skin in the game? I don't think it's particularly in touch to dismiss someone who works 50 hours a week to make an income and then Works another 50 hours a week on a startup that spends that income

If you put 100% of income—remaining after paying life costs (how much is that? I hope you do not rent!)—into work, it means you: do not travel, do not go to any events that cost money, do not dine out much, do not have any other hobbies that cost money (sports? music? photography? LEGO? DIY?), do not date, do not need to support a family, do not have emergencies for which you pay out of pocket, etc. Are there people…

> Are there people who just do not need any of those things?

Yes. That would have described me very well at one point in my life. Coincidentally, it was at the time I was running my first (unsuccessful) business.

Re: A relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place

#106

Post by cochne »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #99
gonzo41 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to learn the history of Jack Welch at GE. His choices echo through most modern society at the moment.

Can you say more about this? Why Welch specifically, vs other important execs over time?

I can’t say I know the truth, but the sentiment is that Welch divested from R&D, focused on “financialization” I.e. investing in financial instruments over adding real value, made big short term gains, and doomed the future of the company.

Re: A relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place

#107

Post by groby_b »

adrianN wrote: post #85
s1artibartfast wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on what you mean by "having it to drop" . That's less than a median income in San Francisco. If you put 100% of your income into a startup, are you out of touch or do you just have skin in the game? I don't think it's particularly in touch to dismiss someone who works 50 hours a week to make an income and then Works another 50 hours a week on a startup that spends that income

Nobody works 100 hours a week.

Video Games industry survivor here, chuckling at the low number ;)

Yes, people do. It carries potentially huge personal costs, but if people are passionate enough, they absolutely will risk that. (Mind, I'm not saying this is a good idea, at all, but merely that it happens)

At least in the cases I did, it was usually a 9 month gruelling sprint at the end of a ~2.5-3.5 year project. Followed by people lollygagging about for ~3 months before they could do any reasonable work again. We sure got a lot of Age of Empires in during that time, though ;)

Re: A relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place

#108

Post by groby_b »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #71
groby_b wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind reminder that starting a software business still requires you to, you know, live and stuff :) Even if you can build it all by yourself, for most people runway is limited by savings. And that means that with a few exceptions, it's hard to stretch beyond a couple of months (or maybe one-two years) before you need to think about shutting down. If you can get to profit before that, awesome, your business might be a…

You can often found it as you go from a primary job and or a spouse's job. I have a friend who drops about 100K into his startup a year hoping for a big exit. Pretty much all startups or small businesses involve risk. Your other putting in time or money or both. The Only Exception is if you find deep pocket feces that are willing to pay you a good salary to work on your own project, which is especially rare

Sure, but that's still usually limited runway compared to getting funding. Yes, there are cases of spouses supporting a decade of work to get something off the ground. Yes, some people make enough to afford dumping it all into a startup (and a good chunk into a lawyer making sure they don't violate constraints from the existing job). But all these are several std.devs outside the normal "start a business" crowd.

Either way, the risk you can take without VC is limited by your wealth. Large bets without VC require independent wealth. We can quibble about what amount constitutes "independent wealth", but the fact doesn't change - VC allows you to dream bigger. (And I say that as a fierce critic of VC culture, but that is the upside of it)

Re: A relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place

#109

Post by fragmede »

mattlondon wrote: post #37
fragmede wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But by that argument, we'd no doubt still have transistors if the transistor hadn't been invented. The traitorous eight, Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, and Sheldon Roberts shaped our world in a way that no one else could. Same with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. We'd no doubt still have computers, and smartphones, but the landscape would be much different…

The point I was trying to make is that just ordering take out food on a computer or storing files on a computer on the network or sharing URLs and comments on a public website are not ground breaking ideas - these are trivial ideas that I am sure anyone here could have come up with. But the transistor? Or the laser? Are these things that were thought up by the layman independently on a regular basis? (i.e. like the i…

Storing file or sharing URLs aren't, y'know, the transistor but looking at say WeWork, or MoviePass, the companies that have succeeded at that says successful despite naysayers. I think it's overestimating their intelligence and under estimating yours (and mine) to think that you and I couldn't have come up with the transistor given the exact same set of circumstances, and over estimating yours (and mine) to think that our file or urls service cold be as remotely successful. We can agree to disagree, I suppose. The laser was preceeded by the MASER and was deemed to be a niche device, of no interest except maybe to a few. History proved otherwise, and I hope to be able to afford a 4k laser projector in the near future. It could have just sat in the dustbin of history like the memristor but the right set of people found it and brought us to the world today.

Re: A relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place

#110

Post by fragmede »

disqard wrote: post #83
mattlondon wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point I was trying to make is that just ordering take out food on a computer or storing files on a computer on the network or sharing URLs and comments on a public website are not ground breaking ideas - these are trivial ideas that I am sure anyone here could have come up with. But the transistor? Or the laser? Are these things that were thought up by the layman independently on a regular basis? (i.e. like the i…

Thank you for calling this out! I think the cult of pg is strong on this website, but it's important to strive for a bigger perspective.

I don't think. credit card processing is curing cancer either, but the level of adulation some people have for others, and lack of respect for others, is either worth calling out. Have a bigger perspective. I think you could have invented the transistor given the exact same set of circumstances, and I've never met you.
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