oohhhhhhhhhhh 100th comment :)
Why to Not Not Start a Startup
101–110 of 142 posts
Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup
#102Very impressive essay. I'm a founder of a startup and agree with most things here. Great job.
Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup
#103Hypothesis: "I'd rather work on hard AI problems at Google than create a startup and bitch about how Safari is not rendering my site properly." What do you think? I haven't tried either, but working on cool problems ought to be worth something. Most startup work seems rather mundane.
Well you can just start a startup that works on hard problems, instead of one which revolves around your ajax code rendering correctly on various browsers. You can solve a hard AI problem with a couple of good hacker friends, just as you could do that at Google. True that it'll probably take you more time than building another website around social networking.
I think that it's unrealistic to build a startup around an unsolved fundamentally hard problem. Can anyone think of a counter-example that succeeded? Typically, the problem is solved first, and then the startup is built to implement the solution.
Solving hard problems depends too much on creativity and research. I'm not sure I could do that under the pressure associated with a startup. The Google environment doesn't seem ideal either, come to think of it, but at least, I'm not the one absorbing the huge risk of failure.
Anybots is a startup that solved a hard problem, but it was self-funded, right? Would YC have funded them if it had been proposed by a 25-year-old Trevor Blackwell?
Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup
#104I think this is a great essay, but it's missing one very important factor which keeps me from starting a startup (successfully so far) - networking. I don't know the right people, and knowing people is so much of the battle (as I've found recently).... I guess that's not much of a problem if you are Paul Graham, or know Paul Graham. But, it's a problem for average joes like me. Spend all your time hacking on a proble…
Yes, I'd have more or less the same view; I don't know enough people, and I doubt I have the social skills to court VCs or similar. I've worked for a couple of startups/ex-startups, and in each case there was at least one person there from the beginning who was very good at things like that.
I hear ya. For me, I don't have a problem with the social skills. I have a networking problem of "the right people." Some people meet the right people earlier than others. Unfortunately, I've never been privy to that, so I hack really hard. :)
Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup
#105Excellent!! Like so many current narratives - You assume that only the young are concerned with start-ups! My partner is in his middle 50's and I'm 61 going on "28". You made quite a point to inform us what and why 18 was such an important age - how about telling me something about the other end of the scale. As a boomer - there are more of us coming back from the corporate wars battered, bruised and ready for a life we can love. I say send the "kids" to work and let those of us that still have the fire do the creating.
Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup
#106Here's my big question for Paul, and for everyone. How does one afford to start a startup? Does everyone do it by eating Ramen and maxing out their credit cards? Wouldn't you hear about more people who had their life left in ruins with $50k in debt when their website went under? I'm not talking about the cost of running and developing your business. I'm merely worried about rent, food, and Health Insurance! I work a…
Someone's already mentioned Y Combinator. But YC isn't the only place you could go for funding. There are angel investors and VC groups all over the map. What you have to do is put together something that convinces these people that not investing in you now is leaving money on the table. Don't worry about failure to get financing at this stage; there's always more people out there looking for the next hot startup to invest in. All you have to do is convince first yourself and then these other people that you can do this.
I would caution you against using college loans to fund your startup. For one thing, it's probably foolish to borrow money for this when there are people who will invest if you spend the time to get them interested. But for another thing, it may be a violation of federal law, with serious consequences if you get caught. A CPA or lawyer may be able to advise you about your options here.
Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
We often think about that. We could hire assistants, so we didn't have to do everything ourselves. Or we could make YC work more peer-to-peer. Or we could build a robot that would walk around telling everyone "don't make users register," "delete half the text on your frontpage," "face the audience when you're presenting," etc, and I could just hang out in the next room with a book and a cup of tea.
"don't make users register" Funny that I had to register to post here :)
However, I noticed that YC did not ask for my email address, so it was not a painful way of registering. Also, you can read the news without an account.
Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you kidding me? You have to make things the people on your thesis committee want. There's only 4 of them, but you have to have 100% satisfaction.
That may be true, but you can work for 5+ years at a problem, fully supported by your university, without having to worry about pleasing anyone in the short term. There is no need to worry about releases or fickle customers. And in the end, success is virtually guaranteed. So I would have to agree that grad school is more "friendly" than starting a startup, where you have to start worrying about the viability of your…
In the end though, is it not all about money? As far as I am concerned, grad school is something you do for fun, and which costs a lot of money. Even if you receive a minimum paycheck, you have to take the opportunity costs into consideratiosn, so five years of grad school cost several 100000$, or am I mistaken? Why then do you worry so much more about starting a startup? The differences in maximum loss seem marginal, except that for grad school the losses are guaranteed, and for startups they are not.
It does not depend on being in grad school or not whether you can do what you want, it depends on having the money - either to pay for grad school, or for toying around with your startup.
I realize I made some oversimplifications, but still...
Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup
#109I think this is a great essay, but it's missing one very important factor which keeps me from starting a startup (successfully so far) - networking. I don't know the right people, and knowing people is so much of the battle (as I've found recently).... I guess that's not much of a problem if you are Paul Graham, or know Paul Graham. But, it's a problem for average joes like me. Spend all your time hacking on a proble…
I expect that once you start dedicating yourself to one thing, you will quickly meet the right people.
Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup
#110I love the comment about telling an adult from a kid. I'm 25 and many a times I just feel my peers are clueless, or should be more mature than they should. Maybe I'm just thinking too far ahead, but the same goes for dates that I go on. Dumb clueless girls actually turn me off (even if pretty). My friends think I am kidding when I say I am attracted to women a little older than me because they assume I am a gold-digger. But I'm not, I just like their maturity over girls my age.
Anyway, for the longest time, I couldn't really describe, I didn't have any solid metrics on how to explain to a friend, why I think a girl is mature/inmature. It's not about the age.
I think your point about pulling the "I'm just a kid" card totally makes sense. Kids tend to wait for something to happen (reactive) -- wait for their mom/dad/boss to tell them to do something, they need to be prodded, at which they will say "do I really need to brush my teeth now?" and groan. Adults are they ones who anticipate the next move, planning the strategy of where to go next, looking out for potential pitfalls and coming up with ideas of mitigating (proactive).
I guess I just am attracted to driven people, and dislike pessimists. I've seen plenty of people in college and in corporate who pessimists/downers like that, because they can't come up with new ideas/strategies. So by shooting at ideas of their peers, and bringing their peers down to their level -- they get to maintain the status-quo.