The Real Silicon Valley • Hacker News Board

Re: The Real Silicon Valley

#151

Post by fudged71 » Thu, Dec 20, 2012, 8:43 AM UTC

untog wrote: post #51

VexXtreme wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why move to San Francisco? One of the benefits of living in this day and age is that you can start a business from pretty much anywhere in the world. Sure, it is presumably easier to acquire VC, talent and deal with general logistics if you're located in the valley but still... It's pretty obvious that leaving your job, friends, moving to a different city and living off your savings is a high risk move vs staying whe…

I think he answered the question- he was looking for funding. You can do a great many things remotely these days, but investors want face to face meetings, so you have to go to tech hubs to get them.

Seems like a flight would be more appropriate than moving and losing your friends.

Re: The Real Silicon Valley

#152

Post by fudged71 » Thu, Dec 20, 2012, 8:51 AM UTC

zacharyz wrote: post #86

Wilduck wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I read this: > What Hacker News doesn't prepare you for, however, is when a competitor gets acquired for a billion dollars, work-life imbalance, and getting dumped by your World of Warcraft girlfriend. and was pretty interested. It sounds like the start of two pretty interesting stories. Instead of actually telling these stories, however, the post descended into platitudes. I'm beginning to feel that I should…

From his site it sounds like he was a designer working on picplz and app.net. My guess is the competitor he was talking about was instagram.

To me, Instagram (a competitor) being bought by Facebook is a huge opportunity. Just look at all the people "leaving Instagram" right now due to predictable changes in their TOS.

Re: The Real Silicon Valley

#153

Post by devgutt » Sat, Dec 22, 2012, 12:06 AM UTC

cabinguy wrote: post #60

Bah Humbug (please excuse me, it's just a seasonal expression). While I can feel your pain, this story has nothing to do with SV - it's the story of an entrepreneur. The same story exists in every state in the U.S. and every major city (and most small ones) in the world. Entrepreneurship is very hard. I'm 41 y/o and bootstrapped my first internet company at 24. I owned a nice home, a beautiful vacation (lake) home, a…

My reply is a little too late, but I'd like to thank you, such inspiring history...I'd love to hear more about you would do different and what would avoid.

Re: The Real Silicon Valley

#154

Post by jacoblyles » Sun, Dec 23, 2012, 10:24 PM UTC

eric-hu wrote: post #118

jacoblyles wrote: post #56

And nobody will ever advise you that the large cost and huge risk might not be worth it because then they would have to admit the same thing to themselves. Have you ever met anybody that works on the weekend, even when the startup doesn't need them to, just because they don't know what else to do? There are incredibly amazing things happening in Silicon Valley. And also lots of people burning their lives away for lit…

> Be sure that what you are doing is something you truly love, and not just something you want to love or want to portray that you love for the benefit of others. Can you expand on this? How do you ever know? Whether I love what I do has been one of my existential questions for the last decade, and why I didn't immediately follow through with my CS degree out of college. I feel like I can never know whether I'm doing…

It's fine to do something that you don't "love". But you better damn well love it if you're going to sacrifice your financial, emotional, and physical health for it like the typical Silicon Valley founder.