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Raising money fucked me up

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Re: Raising money fucked me up

#51

Post by Obscurity4340 »

taurath wrote: post #17
teiferer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you separate "who you are" from that worry? Seems to me it's a part of you and you wouldn't be you without it, for better and worse.

Identities shift over time whether we intend it or not. Who you were at 5, or 10 is not who you are at 20, 30, 40. We all pick up baggage, trinkets, burdens, and experiences. One worries because it was a helpful strategy compared to not worrying, but some (like me very specifically) can get attached to that worry to the detriment of picking up other mechanisms.

Reminds me of Internal Family Systems (IFS)

Re: Raising money fucked me up

#52

Post by Aurornis »

resonious wrote: post #48

This may sound weird but this was a very interesting read for me as a father of 2 small kids. A somewhat common (yet often not followed (because it's hard)) piece of parenting advice is to not praise kids too much. Especially character judgements like "you're so smart" or "you're so creative". Reason being it makes them do things that seem smart or seem creative just to get the praise. Then it comes crashing down whe…

> It kind of looks like this is happening to the author. He became a founder, and started doing things that seem like what a founder would do, then got hit hard when he was unable to fulfill the "founder" role (i.e. didn't grow fast enough).

This happens a lot in the startup world: It’s really common for someone to be among the top in their classes from a young age, be praised by all their family members and friends, and be called the next Bill Gated / Jeff Bezos / Elon Musk (adjust for age) for the first quarter of their life.

So they enter the startup world believing that they were destined for this. They may think success is inevitable, they just need to get that first investment round to hire a couple engineers and then start telling everyone what to do.

I don’t think this author is an extreme example of this because they’re actually talented and successful at many things. However I could see this mindset leading them down a path that seemed like the right thing to do but wasn’t actually a good fit for their personal style. The article talks about how they’re doing better now, but it’s filled with so many admissions that they think a full-time job would have been a better path in general that it’s hard to unsee it. I wish them the best and I appreciate the honesty, but I feel like I’ve seen this movie many times before in the local startup world.

Re: Raising money fucked me up

#53

Post by mcny »

I think time and again, the main thing people should realize is you should never, ever raise venture capital unless you really, really have to™.

Or at least know that your interests as a founder and the interests of those who invest in your company will not always coincide. And they do this a lot more times every single day than you do.

Re: Raising money fucked me up

#54

Post by what »

bruce511 wrote: post #49
Esophagus4 wrote: post #32

> It's much more comfortable to be the person that "could be X" than to be the person that tries to actually do it. Brilliant insight. Reminds of me this, from Theodore Roosevelt's Citizenship in a Republic: > It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose…

I agree, and I'll supplement with this; >> But from now on, I'm either gonna be a successful founder, or I'm not. And if I'm not, I'll have to deal with having broken with the expectations that people had of me. Don't worry, they expected you to fail. They hoped you'd succeed, but expected failure. Statistically most businesses fail, and failure rates are faster when your customers are VCs not users. I say this as en…

Who needs marketing when the VC can get their entire portfolio to buy your product.

Re: Raising money fucked me up

#56

Post by rramadass »

AstroBen wrote: post #5

I think everyone would seriously benefit from learning poker. I used to play professionally and the idea of looking at things as probabilistic bets, and in terms of expected value is so deeply rooted in my mind Investments are bets. Most sane investors aren't putting it all on one thing Startups are bets Applying for jobs. Sales. Dating. Health. Basically everything You risk $X money and time for a payoff of $Y that…

See also The Book of Risk by Dan Borge.

Re: Raising money fucked me up

#57

Post by rramadass »

PlatoIsADisease wrote: post #23
AstroBen wrote: post #5

I think everyone would seriously benefit from learning poker. I used to play professionally and the idea of looking at things as probabilistic bets, and in terms of expected value is so deeply rooted in my mind Investments are bets. Most sane investors aren't putting it all on one thing Startups are bets Applying for jobs. Sales. Dating. Health. Basically everything You risk $X money and time for a payoff of $Y that…

If you want me to ruin this for you, look up Bertrand's Paradox and The Problem Of Priors. I recently had to deal with this, ugh, I just pick a prior or two and see what the outcome looks like. I'm not sure we can calculate probability of success, but rather use probability to find losing ideas that should never be done.

Nice.

What are some good books to build this sort of perspective on Probability/Randomness/Chance?

Re: Raising money fucked me up

#58

Post by sibeliuss »

resonious wrote: post #48

This may sound weird but this was a very interesting read for me as a father of 2 small kids. A somewhat common (yet often not followed (because it's hard)) piece of parenting advice is to not praise kids too much. Especially character judgements like "you're so smart" or "you're so creative". Reason being it makes them do things that seem smart or seem creative just to get the praise. Then it comes crashing down whe…

It's less about praising your children, vs being honest with them! Don't give them false praise, and they'll be fine.

Re: Raising money fucked me up

#59

Post by fc417fc802 »

resonious wrote: post #45
Nition wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard being human. A lot of cognitive ability peaks before age 25[1], physical before 35[2], and to some extent it's an inexorable downward slope from there. Accumulated experience often makes up for it, but only to a point. You still won't be as good as the version of you that started earlier, or learned faster. People reach 40 and finally start exercising and eating properly and miraculously feel 25 again - the…

Honestly if I exercised and ate perfectly from 20-29 I would've had a miserable 20s. Doing high-discipline stuff like that is way easier when you have a material reason (i.e. you've actually felt the consequences of not being fit or healthy) compared to when people just tell you "do it! you'll really thank yourself for it 20 years later!". Being in perfect physical condition at the cost of the psychological stress of…

> forcing myself to do stuff I don't want to do every day

If you make it over the initial hump of developing the habit it just becomes an expected part of your day. The dislike evaporates. Skipping it feels weird.

Re: Raising money fucked me up

#60

Post by taurath »

Nition wrote: post #43
taurath wrote: post #7

Expectations that we hold inside of ourselves can be a really difficult echo of identities we tried fantasizing about when growing up and as an adult. We want to do well, we want the approval, we want the validation. The anxiety over expectations can kill you. It’s self abuse - people (investors, bosses, spouses) don’t invest in you for your anxiety driven productivity, they do it because of who you are outside of th…

It's hard being human. A lot of cognitive ability peaks before age 25[1], physical before 35[2], and to some extent it's an inexorable downward slope from there. Accumulated experience often makes up for it, but only to a point. You still won't be as good as the version of you that started earlier, or learned faster. People reach 40 and finally start exercising and eating properly and miraculously feel 25 again - the…

That’s one way to think about it. For me personally, a single evening with even driven and dedicated 25 year olds makes any claims of a downward slope like you describe laughable. At best, they’ll know one thing sort of well at that age. Most of the interesting stuff happens when you synthesize a lot more experience, and have the appreciation for time and wisdom to utilize it well. Whats the average age of startup founders, like 45? Average age of authors first books like 36-42.

Give me a break with that hustle culture.

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