Yeah, startupping is a hard path to take. If you have a nice job - stick to it and live below your means.
Raising money fucked me up
141–147 of 147 posts
Re: Raising money fucked me up
#142This is absurd! The author raised money without a concrete execution plan, treating capital as permission to “think,” and then panicked when thinking alone didn’t magically turn into value. The post implies there was no wedge, no market insight, not even a search strategy... just the weird hypothesis that people say 'I fit the founder profile, therefore I should found something' It frames the absence of structure as…
I dont want to dump on the founder here. I appreciate their guts for saying the uncomfy part out loud and being so honest, open and aware of their own thoughts. Major kudos in my book. But dont quit without a quit criteria - a problem, customer conversations, recurring problem insight. Fuck the VCs that say just do it, its advice for rich kids not people who worry about finances running out. Given that this author wo…
What's wrong to stay in the middle class? Furthermore in the UK - you cannot "promote" yourself to upper class, have to be born in it.
Re: Raising money fucked me up
#143Thank-you! It is great to read a honest and self-aware journal covering this. As someone who fantasizes about running my own thing, working for a few start-ups have made me very stringent on what my requirements are for starting something (co-founders, investment, location, market). And also that these requirements have become so very risk-averse that I probably am not the personality profile to run a business! Never…
I’ve made my career in startups (early employee of a success startup, founder of a failed startup, and now CTO of an early stage startup). Seems like the “cost” of starting something new is basically zero these days. You can “start” 5 different companies in an afternoon. The big differentiator is audience - if no one knows who you are, it’s so much harder to reach potential customers. I’d focus on building an audience first (LinkedIn/twitter), which will make things so much easier for you. You also don’t really need cofounders, it’s much faster building alone when you’re starting from zero.
Re: Raising money fucked me up
#144you might be early to market with something like Skald
Re: Raising money fucked me up
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you thinking of FDR? Theodore Roosevelt was long before nukes.
Oh yes, sorry. I was thinking FDR when I wrote the comment - but happily I can leave it unchanged since the same complaint applies to Theodore Roosevelt as well with only some minor tweaks. They weren't as bad as the Europeans, but the quality of the US leadership was not good given what they teed up in the early 20th century. It is similar to the Bush family, but from an era where the internet wasn't around to let p…
There's a lot of evidence to suggest FDR set up Truman, it's well documented he kept Truman in the dark until he died.
Re: Raising money fucked me up
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
I dont want to dump on the founder here. I appreciate their guts for saying the uncomfy part out loud and being so honest, open and aware of their own thoughts. Major kudos in my book. But dont quit without a quit criteria - a problem, customer conversations, recurring problem insight. Fuck the VCs that say just do it, its advice for rich kids not people who worry about finances running out. Given that this author wo…
What's wrong to stay in the middle class? Furthermore in the UK - you cannot "promote" yourself to upper class, have to be born in it.
I mean it was more about wanting to better your financial condition. Thats what I meant. By upper class I meant financially not like aristocracy.
Re: Raising money fucked me up
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a lovely synthesis of A and B though - looking at the Wikipedia page for the right Roosevelt, he was involved in the Philippine–American War where they occupied the Philippines in the first place (or pacified, if you prefer, I suppose they'd probably already occupied the place in advance of the war). So if you're complaining about the Japanese conquering the Philippines you'd have to agree that Teddy Rooseve…
The thing with critics is that anyone can be one, it's easy, especially with hindsight. What is difficult is being in the position of ultimate responsibility over the lives of many people, making a decision and living with it. Everyone thinks they know what is best or what they would do, I don't think so. Criticism (IMO) should always have a response on what should have been done instead, given the information at the…
Is supporting Philippine control of the Philippines a hard position to argue to? It is really easy to propose better strategies than almost anyone was going with in the early-mid 20th century, it is hard to overstate how badly the leadership of that era got it wrong. The US system did an amazing job of outperforming the Europeans and Asians, but it wasn't because the quality of its people was higher. The US presidents didn't suddenly become incompetent with Trump and Biden - they've consistently been not up to the task and it is just the visibility in the modern era is a lot better.
The only reason the US managed to look good coming out of the 1900s is because they were doing a much better job of limiting the government than the Europeans or Asians. Both of whom had significant authoritarian factions that managed to get embedded in the official power structures and refused to see sense for an embarrassing number of decades. Very much critics-don't-count people, the authoritarians. It is amazing looking back at the trials Europe had to go through to see out the monarchies.
"It is not the critic who counts..." was a great speech and there is a kernel of truth there, but it just so happens that there is a reason it is a US president who gave it. The reason the US does so well is it makes it as hard as possible for the president to do anything because the critics are shooting fish in a barrel when they start making legitimate, accurate and important criticisms of US president that certainly do count. It is a dream of the US presidents that the critics would stop reminding everyone that there are better options that said president should be choosing.