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I am done. I give up

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: I am done. I give up

#291

Post by MLH6ft1 »

Dude at least tell us what you were working on? I mean there is zero context to this post. How am I to process the fact your product got zero sign ups when you haven't even mentioned what it is. "Don't make the same mistakes I did", what mistakes have you even highlighted here (and I mean mistakes related to your product and not the fact that you fell for the honey trap posts' of social media influencers)????

257 comments to this post submitted by user whose account was only created 2-3 hours ago!! I feel this is a post that someone may have generated using ChatGPT.

Re: I am done. I give up

#292

Post by jliptzin »

koobe wrote: post #230
pavlov wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail. Unfortunately it's rarely discussed in society as such. The political parties that built these welfare states have traditionally been associated with worker unions, and entrepreneurship isn't high on their agenda. The Nordic right-wing parties got ideologically married to Thatcher-style neoliberalism and pref…

Flip side of the welfare state is the heavy tax burden. Heavily progressive income tax makes it harder for individuals to accumulate capital for enterprenial endeavours, be it their own or investing in others'. This limits early stage investments and growth. Also, there are limited incentives in investing in careers and productivity as net income is surprisingly similar in lowest 10% and highest 10% income earners.

Their tax rates are only a few percentage points different from ours. I think the difference is that we funnel 20% of it to the military (2% for Norway) and their tax code probably has fewer loopholes for the rich to exploit.

Re: I am done. I give up

#293

Post by Tycho »

kubb wrote: post #133
jurmous wrote: post #10

A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing. The basic fact is that most startups and most entrepreneurial dreams fail or get consumed by another for their talent/clients. And as an entrepreneur you fight against all odds. Most will fail…

One of the privileges people don't often think about is being able to afford to fail. If you don't risk destitution after your startup fails, you can try and fail many times, learn and try again. It's like continuously rolling two dice, and you only need to get double sixes once, and after that it's private jets until you die. One of the many reasons the rich get richer and the poor, well you know how it goes.

This is why societies should strive for more “inequality” (as in, more families with large fortunes). The rich have a safety net that allows them to take risks that ultimately benefit all of society. Let’s say with the best execution, a startup still only has 10% chance of success - so then the only thing to do is have more and more people “roll the dice.” And no, a strong welfare state is not a substitute - the danger is not starvation, but loss of your life savings or comfortable lifestyle provided by a decent career. Welfare does nothing to mitigate that risk (except maybe for the people with no wealth or good employment prospects, but they are probably not the primary talent pool for startup founders).

Re: I am done. I give up

#296

Post by nier »

I gave up as well. Fell on hard times. Needed to take a job. Everything turned out great. My personal solution was to take all the humiliation and frustration, let it ripe and turn it into gratitude.

So I’m grateful for not having the responsibility of running the business and finding customers. I gladly take the pay cut that comes with that.

At this point of my life, I far more appreciate the positive feedback of „only“ a dozen colleagues coming my way and the success we share as a group.

…and as it turns out Steve also has something nice to say about us „not destitute” people. :D

https://twitter.com/nier/status/1606268364371869697

Re: I am done. I give up

#297

Post by rahoulb »

fsloth wrote: post #226
drstewart wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Name a big UK startup? Nordic countries have the safety net countered with a mentality that is borderline entrepreneur-hostile and the law of Jante on top of that so safety nets may be the few pro-entrepreneurship things they have. Finland of the lot is also capital poor so no huge investor funds or such.

Off the top of my head; UK startups that have grown and been successful (although many have now been bought out - which I guess is the exit plan for many founders anyway)

Just Eat, Deliveroo and The Hut Group; Monzo, Starling and Revolut, from another era, there's ARM.

I'm sure there's fintech ones (not a sector I know much about) and the guy who sits near me in the office, who has an AI-healthcare startup, says the Britain is very good at those too.

Re: I am done. I give up

#298

Post by pavlov »

ETH_start wrote: post #219
pavlov wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail. Unfortunately it's rarely discussed in society as such. The political parties that built these welfare states have traditionally been associated with worker unions, and entrepreneurship isn't high on their agenda. The Nordic right-wing parties got ideologically married to Thatcher-style neoliberalism and pref…

My intuition is that effective entrepreneurs generally have a strong conviction that they won't fail, and in any case wouldn't want to fall back on taxpayers if they did. They will also disproportionately be averse to paying social democratic tax rates once they, in their mind, inevitably succeed.

Is "my intuition" a euphemism for "I've read an Ayn Rand novel"?

Re: I am done. I give up

#299

Post by abhagsain »

MLH6ft1 wrote: post #291

Dude at least tell us what you were working on? I mean there is zero context to this post. How am I to process the fact your product got zero sign ups when you haven't even mentioned what it is. "Don't make the same mistakes I did", what mistakes have you even highlighted here (and I mean mistakes related to your product and not the fact that you fell for the honey trap posts' of social media influencers)???? 257 com…

Exactly how I felt after reading the post lol.

Re: I am done. I give up

#300

Post by IronIvan »

xvector wrote: post #260
KptMarchewa wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norway, not Finland. >The people you rob (the ones paying the bulk of taxes) have a lower incentive to produce. Sure, the thought of being worth only 150 billion dollars rather than 300 would stop Bezos from starting Amazon.

Bezos would not have kept Amazon in the US if it adopted Nordic welfare levels of taxation. The fact of the matter is that the EU has a staggeringly low output when it comes to tech innovation compared to the US. Their policies and regulations shape this.

Can confirm. Lived a very frugal early retirement lifestyle in Austria because it was practically impossible to build wealth (high taxes, comparatively very low tech salaries, little entrepreneurial support/incentives).

Moving to the US I was able to 5-6x my income (from what I could have realistically made) , while reducing my tax burden by 15 percentage points, and so I've been happily living a workaholics' lifestyle since.

Looking back, it really boggles my mind how much engineering potential is squandered in Europe. You'd have to be an idiot to want to work hard given how raw of a deal you are getting (work for almost 2 decades as an engineer just so you can afford the average one family home - what a joke!) and people understand that intuitively (hence pushing for ever fewer work hours or even days because what else is there if your salary is essentially capped and you quickly hit a 50 % tax rate (when combining income tax and social security) for every additional hour worked).

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