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Raising money fucked me up

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Re: Raising money fucked me up

#101

Post by mlrtime »

roenxi wrote: post #86
pjc50 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) wrong Roosevelt B) there's no way for the US to not get involved in WW2 other than pre emptive handover of the Philippines to Japan.

There is a lovely synthesis of A and B though - looking at the Wikipedia page for the right Roosevelt, he was involved in the Philippine–American War where they occupied the Philippines in the first place (or pacified, if you prefer, I suppose they'd probably already occupied the place in advance of the war). So if you're complaining about the Japanese conquering the Philippines you'd have to agree that Teddy Rooseve…

The thing with critics is that anyone can be one, it's easy, especially with hindsight.

What is difficult is being in the position of ultimate responsibility over the lives of many people, making a decision and living with it. Everyone thinks they know what is best or what they would do, I don't think so.

Criticism (IMO) should always have a response on what should have been done instead, given the information at the time. Otherwise it's just playing Monday morning quarterback.

Re: Raising money fucked me up

#102

Post by MonkeyClub »

trwhite wrote: post #92
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…

> It's much more comfortable to be the person that "could be X" than to be the person that tries to actually do it. It’s much more impressive to say you have done something than to say you’re going to do it. A friend of mine has all these failed hobbies he tells everyone he’s going to do, then gives up on. I wait a few months before telling people I’m doing something so I’m fairly confident it’s something I will carr…

> A friend of mine has all these failed hobbies he tells everyone he’s going to do

IME over years, when you're talking about doing something your actually doing it is thwarted. I've noticed that that both with myself and with others.

Keeping mum and going about it privately, then sharing it when done, seems to have much higher success rates.

I've tried to reason through it in many different ways: talking about it satisfies you and you don't seek satisfaction from the actual implementation of the idea; talking about it "dissipates the energy"; and a number of other attempts at explanation.

But beyond explanations, the anecdata seems to suggest that doing much precede talking about. Even when you're developing something (say, software) in public, first you do then you talk about it in the commit message.

This seems to parallel the old dictum that ideas are easy, while working to realize them is the actually hard part. Who'd have thought.

Re: Raising money fucked me up

#103

Post by yakkomajuri »

saint-evan wrote: post #80

This is absurd! The author raised money without a concrete execution plan, treating capital as permission to “think,” and then panicked when thinking alone didn’t magically turn into value. The post implies there was no wedge, no market insight, not even a search strategy... just the weird hypothesis that people say 'I fit the founder profile, therefore I should found something' It frames the absence of structure as…

Hey, author here. I was working part-time for months, we had a live product with customers, a thesis, and an execution plan. This part was maybe lost in the post.

We raised, continued down the same path, and only then realized it didn't make sense. I was being honest about my motivations in hindsight here, realizing after the fact that the product we had at the time wasn't the idea of my life and that I really wanted to go out on my own (and took the chance that appeared).

Re: Raising money fucked me up

#104

Post by stephenlf »

The author felt pressure to build an explosive startup with tons of early funding. For those feeling similar pressure, look into the concept of “slow burn startups.” These are startups that stick around and make long-term impact.

Re: Raising money fucked me up

#105

Post by rjzzleep »

trwhite wrote: post #92
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…

> It's much more comfortable to be the person that "could be X" than to be the person that tries to actually do it. It’s much more impressive to say you have done something than to say you’re going to do it. A friend of mine has all these failed hobbies he tells everyone he’s going to do, then gives up on. I wait a few months before telling people I’m doing something so I’m fairly confident it’s something I will carr…

> It’s much more impressive to say you have done something than to say you’re going to do it.

From my experience, you have to do both otherwise someone else takes what you do, markets as his own and you get scraps. It keeps happening to me, since I don't generally like to talk about what I do. And I think fundamentally it's a big difference between European and American culture.

Re: Raising money fucked me up

#106

Post by away271828 »

trwhite wrote: post #92
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…

> It's much more comfortable to be the person that "could be X" than to be the person that tries to actually do it. It’s much more impressive to say you have done something than to say you’re going to do it. A friend of mine has all these failed hobbies he tells everyone he’s going to do, then gives up on. I wait a few months before telling people I’m doing something so I’m fairly confident it’s something I will carr…

I wrote a (shortish) book with someone once who was obviously much more attracted to the idea of being an author than actually writing a book.

Re: Raising money fucked me up

#107

Post by x_may »

sibeliuss wrote: post #58
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.

I believe the what the parent comment was referring to is the advice not to praise character, but instead praise hard work.

“You’re so smart” leaves room for failure when they encounter something that challenges their image of being smart. Praising the amount of effort they put in is not something that is taken away or challenged regardless of the outcome.

Re: Raising money fucked me up

#108

Post by toss1 »

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…

This!

That exact line in the OP's article reminded me of that exact quote from T.R. and it's great to see another mind had exactly the same thought to post it.

Re: Raising money fucked me up

#109

Post by jolmg »

rjzzleep wrote: post #105
trwhite wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's much more comfortable to be the person that "could be X" than to be the person that tries to actually do it. It’s much more impressive to say you have done something than to say you’re going to do it. A friend of mine has all these failed hobbies he tells everyone he’s going to do, then gives up on. I wait a few months before telling people I’m doing something so I’m fairly confident it’s something I will carr…

> It’s much more impressive to say you have done something than to say you’re going to do it. From my experience, you have to do both otherwise someone else takes what you do, markets as his own and you get scraps. It keeps happening to me, since I don't generally like to talk about what I do. And I think fundamentally it's a big difference between European and American culture.

Might be more of a difference between what to do in your working (employee) life vs in your private life. In your private life, you can't get scraps because it's generally work on things you own, like a business, personal fitness, skills, etc. In your employee life, you're generally working on things that you don't own for recognition to get a promotion or raise. There the recognition is the entire point and people may not look too deeply into who did what, so you may need to be more overt about things.

Re: Raising money fucked me up

#110

Post by tucnak »

adrianmsmith wrote: post #87

> As I dug deeper into these feelings, I realized I was feeling pressured. Except they're not saying this, I am. That's a great insight. Once you've realized that, I think the best thing to do is to talk to the person whose pressure you imagine. Then you can find out what they're really thinking. Perhaps they really are thinking that (in which case the pressure is real and you can act on it) or they aren't (hearing t…

What did they say they disliked about your work?
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