This is powerful stuff!
Entrepreneurshit
11–20 of 70 posts
Re: Entrepreneurshit
#12A few (dissenting) points:
If you want to eat healthy at O'Hare, you can find a salad or sandwich in any terminal. If you really want to blow your calorie budget, go find one of the Goose Island bars in terminal 1 or 3. Have a Matilda. It's fantastic.
Next point: I really dislike working for bosses with a misplaced sense of paternalism. If there are risks or uncertainties facing the business, don't hide them from your employees. Transparency breeds trust, which you'll need if you expect your engineers to put in the kind of hard work that's required when a company is starting up.
Last point: look, if a life of flying around the country and working long hours is your idea of a tortured life only a special breed of men known as "entrepreneurs" can bear, then you need to pull your head out of your ass. That life is stressful and that it takes hard work to get ahead are universal truths. The rest of us aren't just coasting along in a risk-free world.
Double secret bonus last point: why all the cussing?
Re: Entrepreneurshit
#13This sort of post is why I read HN, in my opinion posts like this should get more upvotes than Steve's death. For some reason I find it very reassuring to read articles that tell about all the downsides of being an entrepreneur. It makes me feel like I know about all the obstacles that are coming my way, but also confident that I could handle/deal with them. Ofcourse this might be terribly naieve. But then comes the…
The thing I wonder about is how the knowledgeable and experienced can write articles like this, explicitly recognizing that an adrenaline/stress high is a necessary component, and not think that we need to find a better way to encourage entrepreneurship than the current "ten set out and nine don't make it" method.
Re: Entrepreneurshit
#14in other words this life sometimes sucks but it way better than working for somebody else.
I'd rather have some deep lows, some very steep highs and a constant background noise saying "you're going to fail", than sitting there, watching out of the window and knowing I am not testing my full potential.
Because when you try to reach your limits you always fall, that's when you know them.
Then you stand up again and go for the next limit.
Once you tasted that, there's no way back.
Re: Entrepreneurshit
#15A few (dissenting) points: If you want to eat healthy at O'Hare, you can find a salad or sandwich in any terminal. If you really want to blow your calorie budget, go find one of the Goose Island bars in terminal 1 or 3. Have a Matilda. It's fantastic. Next point: I really dislike working for bosses with a misplaced sense of paternalism. If there are risks or uncertainties facing the business, don't hide them from you…
Your first point is dead on, although I'm lazy and just go to XOCO in terminal 1 most of the time ...
I think, perhaps, you interpreted him differently than I did on your other points:
2. I don't think he's talking about paternalism, I think he's talking about dealing with very intense, private insecurity about the state of a company. There is something not quite unlike doom facing company nearly every day, and it's incredibly hard to filter actual uncertainties that companies should account for. It's important to be both transparent and conservative with negativity, but not for paternalistic reasons.
3. There's not a special type of person that handles stress better, exactly, there's a special type of stress that comes with trying to start/run a company. And it's not really worth it if you're thinking in pure outcome based terms. As an example, I picked my family up (we have 4 kids) and moved them cross country in August because it seemed like the best decision for my company. It was an excruciating choice in a way that a normal, career based moves haven't been. I suspect anyone could have handled that flavor of stress since I'm not uniquely stress resilient.
x. I think intense word choice can occasionally reflect the intensity of what you're talking about in a way that forced mildness undermines. So why not?
Re: Entrepreneurshit
#16There are many types of entrepreneurs but we could define a two major groups - those who are seeking a niche to make money by what they produce and love to do, and those who are seeking a niche to become a middle-men, a parasite, a cheater, a wise-guy, a "manager" of others.
It seems that in every kind of business, including criminal, those who are capable to produce have very few troubles, while the second group, the wast majority, have much more suffering, just because, well, no one really need them.
So, before thinking about entrepreneurship, become good at something first. Then you will be able to create and notice opportunities. It doesn't not work in opposite direction - one cannot create an opportunity being of no good in any other field.
Re: Entrepreneurshit
#17I don't know about the article but this is one of the best HN headlines I had seen in a long time :)
Re: Entrepreneurshit
#18After coming off a failure I think the part that really resonated with me talking about the fear of disappointment. I've been so afraid of disappointing others that believed in me and thought they wouldn't look at me with the same amount of respect. What I've found is that they saw it as much more of accomplishment then I almost did. The other part is "You’re unemployable. You’re an entrepreneur." I am now in the pro…
You mean that you hear from companies that they don't want to hire you because you have been an entrepreneur? That can't be right, it's the kind of person everyone seeks. Hack, I've paid millions in the past buying companies mostly to hire such people.
It means that once you've been in that position, you can't stomach being an underling any more, you're too impertinent and used to making decisions rather than following them. That's my take on it at least.
Re: Entrepreneurshit
#19A few (dissenting) points: If you want to eat healthy at O'Hare, you can find a salad or sandwich in any terminal. If you really want to blow your calorie budget, go find one of the Goose Island bars in terminal 1 or 3. Have a Matilda. It's fantastic. Next point: I really dislike working for bosses with a misplaced sense of paternalism. If there are risks or uncertainties facing the business, don't hide them from you…
Your first point is dead on, although I'm lazy and just go to XOCO in terminal 1 most of the time ... I think, perhaps, you interpreted him differently than I did on your other points: 2. I don't think he's talking about paternalism, I think he's talking about dealing with very intense, private insecurity about the state of a company. There is something not quite unlike doom facing company nearly every day, and it's…
2. I was thinking in particular about this particular paragraph from the OP:
"Early on in my first company I had an employee ask if it was a good time to buy a home. We had less than 6 months’ cash in the bank. I was pretty sure we were going to raise another round of capital. But not sure, sure. I mean you never know if your investors are REALLY going to keep backing you. And you can’t go around telling all of your employees your deepest insecurities about it or you’ll soon have no more of said employees."
He never actually completes the thought (what did he actually tell the guy?), but this isn't some vague insecurity we're talking about. If the runway ends in 6 months without more funding, you owe it to your employees to be honest about it. It sounds to me like he witheld the information because he was worried his employees would leave if he didn't.
3. I think there's a lot of substance and humility in what you've said and I appreciate that. What I meant is more that the OP just smacks of self-congratulations. "Look at me. Look at all this bullshit I put up with. Be like me... if you dare."
x. I think it makes him sound childish rather than intense.
Re: Entrepreneurshit
#20This sort of post is why I read HN, in my opinion posts like this should get more upvotes than Steve's death. For some reason I find it very reassuring to read articles that tell about all the downsides of being an entrepreneur. It makes me feel like I know about all the obstacles that are coming my way, but also confident that I could handle/deal with them. Ofcourse this might be terribly naieve. But then comes the…
The OP, Mark Suster, is frequently on the front page of HN[1]. But many of his insights don't get this far. For those, you have RSS[2] and Youtube subscriptions[3], as he is also the host of "This week in Venture Capital".
HN is great for finding some gems. For others, you can use the referrals as good start digging spots.
[1] http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=bot...