Why work 40 hours a week for someone else and sleep at night, when you can work 16 hours/day 7 days a week for 10 years for yourself, and age a lot in the process?
Err. Why do you need to work 112 hours a week for 10 years?
To get to the other side.
Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path
151–160 of 191 posts
Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hear things like this about Zuckerberg all the time and he did one singular thing that made Facebook take off more than all of the other social networks that were out there at the time (Classmates, High School Alumni, My Space, etc). He made it exclusive. You had to have a .edu address to sign up so the people ON the network were initially only your peer group. You couldn't get in without that .edu address and ther…
You don't give him enough credit. From an engineering pov alone, Friendster, myspace and twitter were often down or terribly slow. Also, the foresight to launch a platform. Launching news feed despite howling criticism. Taking the company public with little investor surplus, taking heat on CNBC for a year until the market caught up to what they were doing. Not putting ads on the site in numbers that turned off users…
Let's add: clean, simple theme and layout that doesn't allow users to customize how other people see their page.
MySpace was a trainwreck. The default layout was horrendous, and each user had their own themes, many of which were unreadable (I remember having to select text just to read it).
Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path
#153Well sometimes you still need that Ph.D, though. I recently enquired about a possible career at a small ( BUT! They pretty much only hire Ph.Ds. Why? It's mostly a reputation thing. When they send you to help out a client they don't want to send somebody who "only" obtained a masters. The firm was started by two Ph.Ds out of school and could essentially be considered a startup. Barely 10 years old I believe.
There is distinction between consulting company, new business and startups.
Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Failing at a startup sucks This. I have a PhD and a failed startup. It felt real bad, and I didn't get that far with it (9 months before calling it quits). Creating a successful startup requires significantly more energy and stress than most science jobs, even for pre-tenure professors. It requires different skills than science. Few introverts will succeed at founding a company, for example. Moreover, you have to p…
Many of the most successful founders are introverts. Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Bill Gates, none of them are very extroverted, but they've started some of the most valuable companies in the world. Of course if you are so introverted that you are unable to make eye contact or talk to people it will be a problem, but most of us are not that extreme.
>Many of the most successful founders are introverts. Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Bill Gates, none of them are very extroverted, but they've started some of the most valuable companies in the world.
And none of them were/are phds
Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many of the most successful founders are introverts. Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Bill Gates, none of them are very extroverted, but they've started some of the most valuable companies in the world. Of course if you are so introverted that you are unable to make eye contact or talk to people it will be a problem, but most of us are not that extreme.
>Many of the most successful founders are introverts. Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Bill Gates, none of them are very extroverted, but they've started some of the most valuable companies in the world. And none of them were/are phds
pg has a PhD but is not an introvert.
Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't give him enough credit. From an engineering pov alone, Friendster, myspace and twitter were often down or terribly slow. Also, the foresight to launch a platform. Launching news feed despite howling criticism. Taking the company public with little investor surplus, taking heat on CNBC for a year until the market caught up to what they were doing. Not putting ads on the site in numbers that turned off users…
Let's add: clean, simple theme and layout that doesn't allow users to customize how other people see their page. MySpace was a trainwreck. The default layout was horrendous, and each user had their own themes, many of which were unreadable (I remember having to select text just to read it).
Not that they didn't want it, Myspace glits moved onto tumblr, although it is "cleaner" there I suppose.
Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Many of the most successful founders are introverts. Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Bill Gates, none of them are very extroverted, but they've started some of the most valuable companies in the world. And none of them were/are phds
pg has a PhD but is not an introvert.
I stand corrected :)
Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked on some pretty big projects and did a lot of research. That was easy. Part of the reason why it was easy was because I knew that if I put in the effort, I would almost certainly pass the course. At uni, if you're smart, the odds are always stacked firmly in your favor. Failing a PhD thesis during the defence is apparently a 'rare occurrence' in most universities. By contrast, the odds of your startup not fai…
are you confusing the terms 'study' and 'research'?
Almost certainly, or his defense of the earlier claim would include some description of what new knowledge or novel techniques he developed with this research.
Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path
#159I'm not sure the headline is warranted as natural science career paths that involve R&D departments of established companies are a very good choice (as is academia in these fields). Taking slow and steady wins is actually a good choice in these fields (imo) as is access to "veterans". But I could be wrong, I only see natural scientists' lives from the outside.
But the overall point is interesting. I feel there's a slight bias against academics from "the startup scene" or maybe I'm just imagining it being a mediocre scientist thinking about starting by own business every now and then (so not the super duper elite MIT guy). I've always felt that some of the stuff you learn by practicing science is fairly valuable even in a web based startup. Depending on the field you're more or less forced to get a better understanding of statistics and rigorous testing (with all the pitfalls involved) and the general hypothesis/test-it cycle is really helpful for startup life as well. For me the sad trade of is that my programming skills (mostly the secondary skills like architecture, being up to date on databases, refining the vcs workflow, testing etc.) erode slowly. I also have a lot less time for side projects these days which kind of sucks. [I haven't taken the traditional academia career path and actually worked at a software company before so I feel like I have a decent grasp on both fields]
Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does a startup have? Proposals and Stress = Check low success rates and intense competition = Check Need for sales = Check I can't help but think you essentially have the same situation in academia as one has in a startup, only "it's different." The difference to me is the illusion of control. One may think that they are in control of the startup vs. the bureaucracy of government/academia/established business. I posi…
Chance of extremely high returns = Check (not so much in academia)
I would disagree. Just read the list of nobel prize winners and how many of them are academics. These are often actual paradigm shifts in how you think of the world that lasts generations, not decades.
Compare this with the impact a successful startup has and it does not quite compare. A successful startup creates new jobs. Novel science that can be applied creates entire industries.