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How Not to Die (2007)

paulgraham.com

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Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#131

Post by imhoguy »

randall wrote: post #11

My version of this story: I almost quit a year ago, exactly today, then my company got acquired. A story (with pictures! only on Twitter though, link at the bottom.) This is what I looked like last March 27. [horrible pic] One month prior... My dad passed away. I wasn't having a good month. But that wasn't what happened on March 27. I took a photo on March 27 because it was probably the worst I had felt in the last 5…

> "Performing Under Pressure"[...]: Act like you're not under pressure and you'll do your best work.

This lands into my list of valuable quotes. Thanks.

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#132

Post by golergka »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #84
andygcook wrote: post #26

For us the main indication of impending doom is when we don't hear from you. When we haven't heard from, or about, a startup for a couple months, that's a bad sign. If we send them an email asking what's up, and they don't reply, that's a really bad sign. So far that is a 100% accurate predictor of death. Can someone at YC comment on if this is still a good proxy for startup failure? From a personal perspective, we'v…

The updates around that time were the hardest ones send out The people who don't want to have those hard discussions are the ones that have their startup die. People who don't reply to emails are often people who are having negative feelings they don't want to deal with. Maybe they don't have answers and are afraid to give a status report that includes an admission that they simply don't know. Maybe they don't want t…

> Avoidance tactics are usually about emotional reactions.

Sometimes it's not really tactics, it's often just a complete mental breakdown. I have founded a startup when I was 22, and completely not ready for something that would be so emotionally hard; it ended up in a a few months long depressive episode, during which I completely ghosted almost every person I knew.

Suffice to say, being emotionally and psychologically stable is one of the main traits for a CEO, and avoidance is often a very good "smell" of problems in that department.

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#133

Post by masonic »

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…

  She posts a lot, mostly solid content
Actually, a majority of it is tweets, reddits, or her own blogs:

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=DoreenMichele

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#134

Post by Xelbair »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #114
DoreenMichele wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. I have to say, I don't have an issue with downvote discussions when they are initiated by someone other than the original poster. S…

>> I sometimes come across fully grayed out comments that I simply cannot imagine why anyone would ever downvote. I upvote these, but I'd very much like to know why they were downvoted in the first place. Did the author get their facts wrong? Is there an angle I'm missing? Could the comment be construed as offensive?

Even here people confuse downvotes with "i don't like it"s.

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#135

Post by cyborgx7 »

azinman2 wrote: post #48

> “In fact, it's kind of weird when you think about it, because our definition of success is that the founders get rich.“ Does this not appear to be really terrible to others? That the metric of success is just founders getting rich? At minimum, what about employees? But really, shouldn’t we be aiming higher where the companies are creating useful impact on the world and improving it? I understand he’s saying this as…

You noticed how evil that sentence is, same as me. And you are getting downvoted, also like me. Start-up culture has no soul. They think having soul is a weakness. They are interested in getting rich, and nothing else. It's an empty, greedy culture.

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#136

Post by DoreenMichele »

masonic wrote: post #133
nothrabannosir wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

She posts a lot, mostly solid content Actually, a majority of it is tweets, reddits, or her own blogs: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=DoreenMichele

If you sort by most upvoted instead of most recent, you get a better idea of why I have been averaging about 1000k/mo with this handle for nearly two years straight:

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=DoreenMichele

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#137

Post by azinman2 »

cyborgx7 wrote: post #135
azinman2 wrote: post #48

> “In fact, it's kind of weird when you think about it, because our definition of success is that the founders get rich.“ Does this not appear to be really terrible to others? That the metric of success is just founders getting rich? At minimum, what about employees? But really, shouldn’t we be aiming higher where the companies are creating useful impact on the world and improving it? I understand he’s saying this as…

You noticed how evil that sentence is, same as me. And you are getting downvoted, also like me. Start-up culture has no soul. They think having soul is a weakness. They are interested in getting rich, and nothing else. It's an empty, greedy culture.

Thank you. I was surprised at my downvotes with no comments, reread what I wrote, and still agree with it. Sad that apparently this isn’t a common sentiment. Life is about so much more than just money, and given we have such a limited time on earth, we should strive to have some positive impact on the world.

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#138

Post by tabtab »

I can build a flowchart out of this article, but realized it has no end: it's an infinite loop. There has to be a point where you give up after get-user-feedback-tweak-and-try-again happens too many times. It's almost like a genetic algorithm where somebody forgot to put an upper limit on the regeneration loop count.

Sure, tweak-and-try-again can keep going on until you eventually stumble on the right formula, since you'll eventually exhaust all possible related ideas, but it may be 2 years or 2 centuries until you hit it.

Somebody may have to put a time limit on how long they'll try. For example, "I'll try for 4 years, and if nothing looks viable after 4 years, I'll get a real job or go to grad school."

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#139

Post by ncmncm »

Graham essays are, as a rule, good. But for each mention of Lisp, they are half as good. Half as good can still be pretty good, but one mentioned Lisp more than two dozen times. There was very little good left.

This one doesn't mention Lisp at all. It's pretty good.

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#140

Post by markstos »

jacquesm wrote: post #64
markstos wrote: post #43

Since Paul Graham is a vegetarian, I presumed the title was referring to a review of the book "How Not to Die". https://nutritionfacts.org/book/

Funny, I've invested in a start-up that makes food packs based on that book. They're doing very well, can just about manage their growth.

Link?
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