pg, this is all your fault.
At least it isn't a 10 year old kid or something :P
OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.
11–20 of 78 posts
Re: OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.
#12Now YOU are the inspiration. Good luck!
Re: OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.
#13You'll probably fail, make sure you prepare for that. You definitely put to shame the very young single guys who don't want to give up their cozy cube jobs. Good luck!
Re: OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.
#14pg, this is all your fault.
#9. Family to support
Re: OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.
#15Good luck. Make sure you build something users want and something that has a business model.
Kids get cranky if you don't feed them :-)
Re: OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.
#16way to go man... What is a blurb programmer?
Re: OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.
#17Age has nothing to do with it.
Marital status has nothing to do with it.
Smarts has little to do with it.
Don't do it because you're moving away from a job you don't like; that's a bad formula.
Do it because you want it that badly. That's what matters most.
The decision has been made. Good. Don't hestitate. Don't wonder. Don't look back. Don't ever quit.
Use us for encouragement.
Looking forward to hearing about your success.
Re: OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.
#18If you can get something together by Oct 11 for YC's deadline, you can be demoing to investors in March. http://ycombinator.com/w2008.html
Regardless of YC involvement, you can still be demoing to investors in March. It takes a little more effort--and you'll have to do the demo about 30 times to reach the same number of investors--but you can actually start a company without YC. ;-)
Why don't you tell us how you did it?
*cough* Virtualmin -- YC Winter 2007 *cough*
Re: OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless of YC involvement, you can still be demoing to investors in March. It takes a little more effort--and you'll have to do the demo about 30 times to reach the same number of investors--but you can actually start a company without YC. ;-)
Why don't you tell us how you did it? *cough* Virtualmin -- YC Winter 2007 *cough* Are you suggesting in retrospect that you'd have preferred a different strategy?
I think he's trying to be helpful and encouraging, which I'm sure many appreciate.
Re: OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.
#20pg, this is all your fault.
#9. Family to support http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html
Though he did say "I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I'm saying that I don't want to take responsibility for advising it."
PG is wrong when he says "You'll never found the next Google this way", though. IBM was founded by someone who had a wife and kid to support, and had just been convicted of antitrust violations, fired, and had a 1-year jail sentence hanging over his head (later reversed on appeal).
You do need to be hungrier for profits and less willing to trade growth for money. The strategy I'm using (try lots of stuff until I build something useful, then try to get lots of users, then figure out how to monetize it) won't work for someone with a family to support. But the strategy my boss is using (go to your industry contacts, talk to them about their problems, get them to pay you up-front for development while you solve them, reinvest the profits for growth) could work very well.