191–200 of 273 posts
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I am based in Sydney. I am not running what could be called a startup since my tech business has been running since 1999, but I do have a lot of experience with the the whole startup process. Is there a meetup of startup founders in Sydney?
Almost daily. All over the place. Meetup.com is flooded with them.
The crazy thing is that people go through this experience and want to do it again. A failed startup leaves you burned out, emotionally wrecked, and financially crippled. Why take another ride on that roller coaster? Pride? Status? Money?
I really did not realize that you were a women right away when reading the article, but I noticed the emotional vibe of your decisions and lack of cool headed logic almost immediately.
Hats off to you because you have more ambition and guts than I do. Sorry for being an critic and an armchair quarterback, but though I haven't been through the ringer like you and am far more risk-adverse. I can certainly identify problems a mile away.
Don't feel too bad or give up. Even Steve Jobs had many of the same flaws as you his first time around. Good luck. you'll only do better next time.
It struck me when she glossed over how/why her two co-founders left. There's got to be a deeper story to why two "co-founders" would leave right when 1.2M is secured. She said they decided to tell me they were leaving the company without even a hint of warning - my guess is there was no agreement in the first place or a lot of unnoticed warnings. To conclude she's just too trustful is almost certainly a flawed conclu…
Hey Andrew, I actually glossed over that out of respect for the 2 guys. My purpose was not to bitch about them, and many people who will read this post in my network will know who I'm talking about. There were mistakes made on both sides, but in the end I bent over backwards to accomodate them and as soon as YC was over and they could say they were YC founders they bailed. I'm not saying its entirely their fault - I…
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nikkidurkin
created: 1000 days ago
I met Nikki while I lived at a Hacker House in Mountain View for a few weeks in January 2012, having recently moved to the Bay Area. I remember being impressed at the time by her intensity, and by the fact that she actually had a real product with real users that solved a real problem. An audible "oh no" came out of my lips when I clicked this link and realized I was reading about someone I had shared a few dinners w…
These things are easy to say for a very rich guy.
Reading this, it confirmed an important lesson that I learned in a completely different setting (grad school). It's much, much better to do an impossible project with an excellent mentor and fantastic coworkers, than an easy project full of low hanging fruits with colleagues you can't stand.
People who were in the former condition all flourished, even if it meant pivoting to a completely different project after having invested 2 years in a dead end idea. People in the latter camp burnt out completely and almost uniformly dropped out of grad school. The few that stayed were basically running on spite the entire time.
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I'd recommend the author substitute it with "let down", even though it doesn't as accurately describe how she likely feels.
Political correctness is bullshit. They stabbed her in the back at the worst possible moment, its called stabbed in the back because had they not lied to her about their motivations she could have gotten real co-founders and not be left out without a team at the worst possible moment. They are lucky they got the treatment that they did on this post-mortem. They deserve to get outed publicly. If not only as a service…
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I experienced a co-founder split not too long ago and I can definitely tell you from my personal introspection that you may need to look deeper than "it was my fault for not seeing the warning signs". It always takes two to tango and you're right to not bitch about them but then saying you were stabbed in the back is silly. Being a founder is tough, having co-founder problems is tougher, clearly understanding what yo…
Just a few points: 1. Even though I'd already spent 2 years on the startup, the first co-founder I bought on had the same equity as me. He wanted it, and I wanted someone fully committed. 2. I was off fundraising for 2 months, and my mistake was not communicating that really well with them. I wasn't a great leader at that time. However, I did notice something was off but I just thought it was post-yc depression (whic…
I met Nikki while I lived at a Hacker House in Mountain View for a few weeks in January 2012, having recently moved to the Bay Area. I remember being impressed at the time by her intensity, and by the fact that she actually had a real product with real users that solved a real problem. An audible "oh no" came out of my lips when I clicked this link and realized I was reading about someone I had shared a few dinners w…
> "... but it's important to remember that it's all just a game. What's most important is that we are good too each other, and ourselves." These things are easy to say for a very rich guy.