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How Not to Die (2007)

paulgraham.com

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Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#101

Post by DoreenMichele »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #99
exolymph wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did this comment get downvoted? (It's currently somewhat greyed out.) Can someone who downvoted say what they found objectionable?

Wild guess but I'd be remiss not to express this saturnine suspicion: probably because it's Doreen. She posts a lot, mostly solid content like the above post, some of which hard hitting. Some people take offense, she's often greyed out for no reason and regularly gets pretty harsh criticism. I would be shocked if she doesn't have some auto downvotes for every post. Unfortunately. I recognise it's not constructive to…

There's probably an element of truth to that, but it's also a large forum that gets about 5 million unique visitors per month and I'm a demographic outlier on multiple axes, so I simply express myself differently from the way most people here do. (I also focus on things that would never occur to most people here, which can easily be perceived as irrelevant.)

I suspect a high percentage of the downvotes I get -- and I do get quite a lot of them, but I have no data on what's "normal" -- are simply people who have no idea I'm a woman, don't think the way I do, don't have the background knowledge I have, can't see how it's pertinent and are unaware of me being someone with any particular expertise that anyone "should" respect or be interested in. (Edit: In fact, I fairly often get feedback that the person I'm arguing with assumed I was male simply because it is HN and HN is overwhelmingly male, which lefthandedly implies "Doreen blends and does not read as girly.")

In this case, the downvotes occurred after I added the qualifier that I don't have startup experience, so a very good guess is that it was downvoted by someone who thinks my knowledge of how people work doesn't apply and I'm just some blowhard and armchair politician who shouldn't have added "low value content" to HN. The degree to which I have formally studied people topics (negotiation, social psychology, etc) is something alien to a lot of STEM folks who see that as a soft science and not something you can really understand with any confidence.

There is a lot of hand-wavy BS in areas like psychology. I'm quite critical of such things myself, though it often doesn't go over well for me to do that either because the degree to which I think I understand a more bright line standard for how to study social phenomenon is also not seen by most people as anything believable.

On the upside, my latest parenting blog is something some people have expressed real interest in. That's an area of social expertise and it might eventually get real traction, unlike so many of my projects.

(Hopefully, the mods will come along and hide this entire discussion of why my comment was temporarily greyed out before being upvoted. Discussion of downvotes is something the guidelines ask people to not engage in. I'm not redacting this comment cuz reasons. But this is all off topic.)

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#102

Post by draw_down »

peruvian wrote: post #95
philwelch wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point where you stop trying to pivot into higher and higher growth opportunities and accept your fate as a sustainable but small business could be classified as a form of “death” (perhaps “undead”) if your original goal really was to get rich.

Imagine how much better the tech industry would be (in countless ways) if more business owners were content with "small but sustainable".

You think the main problem is that founders are too greedy, then?

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#103

Post by hef19898 »

jpindar wrote: post #100
hef19898 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am starting a bootstrapped business along the lines now. My take is that sellzong a solution won't work. You have to compete with Excel, and all the reasons you just stated, and SAP (or any other ERP-System they might use if any). Selling a service is different story so. If you can show them that you as a subcontractor, in my case as a 4PL, can deliver better performance or solve some of their pain points you can u…

BOMs as a service! I like it, but I'm not quite sure how it would work. A lot of the errors that creep into these documents are things only someone very familiar with the company and the product design would spot. You'd almost have to be onsite.

Ah, I won't touch BOMs or production for the time being! More the logistics side of things. But I remember a discussion I had back the day regarding config management and BOMs. And yeah, there definitely is a market for good BOM / Config Management solution as a service. The trick would be to figure out which BOM to use so. But especially in the aerospace and defense sector there should he money to be made.

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#104

Post by jimbokun »

elmar wrote: post #68

Personally I Think Paul Graham is very under appreciated, his legacy on the Startup ecosystem and zeitgeist will probably only be recognised many years on the future. It's a great pity that he doesn't write these wonderful essays for some time now.

I am sure he can console himself with the Scrooge McDuck like vault of money to swim in he must be able to build at this point, with all of the successful YC exits. Which the essays did a lot to create. He became tech world famous through his essays, which then gave him the clout to launch YCombinator.

(Are there public estimates of his current net worth?)

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#105

Post by pbecotte »

diego wrote: post #22

I don't think "If you can just avoid dying, you get rich" has proven true. I've invested in startups (including YC ones) that followed this to a tee. They never found product-market fit, they could have been going forever, investors forgot about them. Some are still going, some managed to get acquired, some closed shop. It's really a false dichotomy, only a small fraction of the companies that avoid dying manage to e…

If you have taken enough VC that the only way to get any value at all is through a huge exit, this statement is true. If you run a normal business, it is not true :)

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#106

Post by a13n »

peruvian wrote: post #95
philwelch wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point where you stop trying to pivot into higher and higher growth opportunities and accept your fate as a sustainable but small business could be classified as a form of “death” (perhaps “undead”) if your original goal really was to get rich.

Imagine how much better the tech industry would be (in countless ways) if more business owners were content with "small but sustainable".

Underrated comment.

A lot of the reason business owners aren't more content with "small but sustainable" is because it isn't compatible with the venture capital model. It doesn't "return the fund".

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#107

Post by shawnz »

tlb wrote: post #81
shawnz wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way, but apparently there's some research to the contrary: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21080132

The conclusion there is that "People who talk about their intentions are less likely to make them happen." But that's not a claim about causality. It can be explained by there being two kinds of people in the world: doers and blowhards.

True, but still, I think there's an important point in that talking more won't necessarily make someone more of a doer. It could just make them more of a blowhard.

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#108

Post by excalibur »

bumblebee4 wrote: post #82
excalibur wrote: post #60

> When we were visiting Yahoo to talk about being acquired, we had to interrupt everything and borrow one of their conference rooms to talk down an investor who was about to back out of a new funding round we needed to stay alive. So even in the middle of getting rich we were fighting off the grim reaper. This sounds like it was pulled directly from an episode of Silicon Valley .

As an investor, won't you pull this move just to get better conditions? The founders are fixated on closing the deal so they will put up with almost any condition that you throw at them?

The investors in the series would.

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#109

Post by [deleted] »

hef19898 wrote: post #103
jpindar wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BOMs as a service! I like it, but I'm not quite sure how it would work. A lot of the errors that creep into these documents are things only someone very familiar with the company and the product design would spot. You'd almost have to be onsite.

Ah, I won't touch BOMs or production for the time being! More the logistics side of things. But I remember a discussion I had back the day regarding config management and BOMs. And yeah, there definitely is a market for good BOM / Config Management solution as a service. The trick would be to figure out which BOM to use so. But especially in the aerospace and defense sector there should he money to be made.

[deleted]

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#110

Post by [deleted] »

tpmx wrote: post #78
hef19898 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, sounds a lot like the solar sector. Chinese manufacturers, close to now ERP-usage, inefficient processes. And being a b2b market doesn't hurt neither if you ask me. Also, the MVP when compared to excel shouldn't be the hardest thing in the world. I only expect the sales cycle to be rather long.

I think the solar sector may be different. The component sector has a vast number of components in use (like 500k+ different parts, I dunno), and like 100+ component suppliers.

[deleted]
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