Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 180 posts

Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#151

Post by jschulenklopper »

quanticle wrote: post #64
onion2k wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the situation were really "take the money and do 70+ hours a week for a year" versus "shut down the business" then I'd agree, but that's a false dichotomy. You can run a startup putting in far less time than that; putting in long hours is a choice. You can bring in a team or outsource the parts you don't like. It makes it harder to succee but it's an option. You could (depending on lots of caveats) simply hand the…

but that's a false dichotomy It's a false dichotomy for self-funded/bootstrapped businesses. But if you consider yourself a startup, you have to deliver growth . It's that pressure that leads to the 70+ hour weeks. It's entirely possible to own and run a business while still putting in reasonable hours. But it's unlikely that business is a startup , by Paul Graham's definition of the word. For reference, Paul Graham…

There's another definition (or interpretation) of the word "startup" by Steve Blank that I like even better:

"A startup is a temporary organization used to search for a repeatable and scalable business model."

The temporary phase ends when the startup evolves into a normal organization that executes on a proven business model (or pivots, or stops).

Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#152

Post by crzwdjk »

timoth3y wrote: post #49

Hi. Tim here. I'm delighted that this article struck such a chord. I'll try to answer the most common questions here. I wish I could answer everyone directly. 1) I called it off before anyone sent money or quit their jobs. The only one who lost money or a job because of ContractBeast was me. If the money was in the bank and the team on board we would have gone ahead. That's why I had to make that decision when I did.…

Nice article. I just had a similar experience: after a bunch of work building a product, I came to the realization that the problem I was trying to solve just wasn't urgent enough, and the organizations I was trying to sell to just didn't have it together enough to decide to buy. So ultimately I decided to shut things down, though I did manage to salvage some of the code for reuse in later projects. Ultimately, entrepreneurship is an experiment, and sometimes what an experiment teaches you is that your hypothesis was wrong and you should try something else instead.

Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#153

Post by conductr »

timoth3y wrote: post #49

Hi. Tim here. I'm delighted that this article struck such a chord. I'll try to answer the most common questions here. I wish I could answer everyone directly. 1) I called it off before anyone sent money or quit their jobs. The only one who lost money or a job because of ContractBeast was me. If the money was in the bank and the team on board we would have gone ahead. That's why I had to make that decision when I did.…

If team & investors wanted to move forward, did you discuss letting them (without you)? Basically just walking away, with no/low strings attached. I'm just curious, because sometimes I pick up on an "if I can't have it, nobody can" type attitude. If you made that offer and they refused, it's not on you.

I think you made the right choice, I would have done the same and don't think you should be judge worse for it. The whole thing was an experiment, your reason seems like a good reason to cut your losses personally. Before investment, that's Ok.

Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#154

Post by mjolk »

onion2k wrote: post #59
capkutay wrote: post #38

"I was deciding whether this venture was worth committing to another year of 70+ hour weeks. I need a higher level of certainty than investors do because my time is more valuable to me than their money is to them. Investors place bets in a portfolio of companies, but I only have one life." That's the key quote in the article. It's a fair decision from his standpoint but I wonder if saying that will lead investors to…

If the situation were really "take the money and do 70+ hours a week for a year" versus "shut down the business" then I'd agree, but that's a false dichotomy. You can run a startup putting in far less time than that; putting in long hours is a choice. You can bring in a team or outsource the parts you don't like. It makes it harder to succee but it's an option. You could (depending on lots of caveats) simply hand the…

I'm building a startup and I wish I could accomplish everything I need in 70 hours a week -- it would give me so much more time to work on the other parts of the startup that I currently don't have time to build out.

Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#155

Post by exclusiv »

spupy wrote: post #146

"I’ve started four companies in the past with a mixture of exits and bankruptcies, so I understand that this is what startups are supposed to do, [...]." As someone completely unfamiliar with the world of startups, this sentence baffles me. If this describes your track record, how do you even get funding? Obviously I'm not an investor, but this sentence alone is a massive red flag.

If you've done more than a few startups - you'll have some failures.

Think of the success rate of startups as a whole. It's like 10%. So if you are at 50%, that's a reasonable bet.

Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#156

Post by dang »

getgoingnow wrote: post #77

Why is Paul Graham defining a word that's already well defined and understood? Go to Google and type in "define startup" and you will see that: startup = a newly established business I think the reason he wants to redefine the term is so that people associate starting a business with rapid growth, which will benefit him personally. How do you achieve growth in almost all cases? By taking VC money. What happens when y…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11867810 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#158

Post by dang »

throwanem wrote: post #120
camillomiller wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Quoting Paul Graham as you would quote the Gospel? I agree with the comment above, that's the definition of startup according to PG, not THE definition. Especially not a definition carved in stone you can quote to justify a false dichotomy. What about innovation? It's not true that innovation comes only from growth. Geez I don't even think it's true all other startup features come from growth. This is what a…

> Quoting Paul Graham as you would quote the Gospel? Welcome to Hacker News.

Please don't make snide generalizations about this community, especially when they're self-refuting. It's a genre of unsubstantive comment we can do without.

Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#159

Post by [deleted] »

quanticle wrote: post #64
onion2k wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the situation were really "take the money and do 70+ hours a week for a year" versus "shut down the business" then I'd agree, but that's a false dichotomy. You can run a startup putting in far less time than that; putting in long hours is a choice. You can bring in a team or outsource the parts you don't like. It makes it harder to succee but it's an option. You could (depending on lots of caveats) simply hand the…

but that's a false dichotomy It's a false dichotomy for self-funded/bootstrapped businesses. But if you consider yourself a startup, you have to deliver growth . It's that pressure that leads to the 70+ hour weeks. It's entirely possible to own and run a business while still putting in reasonable hours. But it's unlikely that business is a startup , by Paul Graham's definition of the word. For reference, Paul Graham…

[deleted]

Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#160

Post by mark-r »

getgoingnow wrote: post #77

Why is Paul Graham defining a word that's already well defined and understood? Go to Google and type in "define startup" and you will see that: startup = a newly established business I think the reason he wants to redefine the term is so that people associate starting a business with rapid growth, which will benefit him personally. How do you achieve growth in almost all cases? By taking VC money. What happens when y…

It seems to me that "startup" has connotations that are missing from the Google definition, and if Paul Graham isn't correct he's a lot closer to it.
Post reply on HN