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

How Not to Die (2007)

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 140 posts

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#31

Post by rolltiide »

nexuist wrote: post #29

>A variant is to stay in touch with other YC-funded startups. There is now a whole neighborhood of them in San Francisco. If you move there, the peer pressure that made you work harder all summer will continue to operate. Funny how much that single sentence changed what life was like on the West Coast. Now we are witnessing mini-Valleys springing up in other cities desperate to replicate what San Francisco did for st…

> Now we are witnessing mini-Valleys springing up in other cities desperate to replicate what San Francisco did for startups.

Without the culture to support it.

A bunch of broke ideas people sitting in a wework or coffee shop with no angel investor in sight, no diversity in VC portfolios. There is a reason that interest rates are negative, because nobody wants to “stimulate the economy“ by giving broke entrepreneurs their money

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#33

Post by badestrand »

ErikAugust wrote: post #16
buzzkillington wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't know. Ideas are overrated. A good idea doesn't mean you won't fail. A bad idea does mean you will fail.

I still don't even believe that. A bad idea, as long as it produces an asset of value, is okay. You can move your asset to a more viable market. That is what a real pivot is. Pivoting is not "we have nothing but an idea, so we change our idea."

> A bad idea, as long as it produces an asset of value, is okay. You can move your asset to a more viable market.

Sorry but it sounds to me that you are not speaking from experience but just from reading many "startup culture" posts. In reality there just are many startups that have ideas and build products that never get to profitability. Most even have users that love the product but that doesn't help you if you can't get enough money.

And ideas matter a lot. Some are just almost impossible to execute to profitability while others are a relatively easy win. I have seen both and no, you can not just "move the asset to a more viable market".

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#34

Post by nexuist »

perfunctory wrote: post #21

> One of the most interesting things we've discovered from working on Y Combinator is that founders are more motivated by the fear of looking bad than by the hope of getting millions of dollars. So if you want to get millions of dollars, put yourself in a position where failure will be public and humiliating. Oh, boy. Why can't we have a world where I can pursue my interests without the fear of loosing something. I g…

>Oh, boy. Why can't we have a world where I can pursue my interests without the fear of loosing something

A startup is not about "pursuing interests," that's a side project. A startup is about making money by eating market share. Every product or service that comes out of it is intrinsically connected to that goal.

You are free to pursue whatever interest you want on your own time, especially in this field. Every cloud provider gives you a free tier; most major database server software are free; all the major Git providers give you free private repos; every major library is free and open source; as is every major operating system and IDE, compiler, linker, interpreter, syntax checker...

In fact, as an individual, you will be hard pressed to actually find paywalls stopping you from using new technologies.

Of course it would be nicer if we all got free stuff without having to work for it. But this isn't about that, this is about business.

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#35

Post by throwaway35784 »

graeme wrote: post #28
perfunctory wrote: post #21

> One of the most interesting things we've discovered from working on Y Combinator is that founders are more motivated by the fear of looking bad than by the hope of getting millions of dollars. So if you want to get millions of dollars, put yourself in a position where failure will be public and humiliating. Oh, boy. Why can't we have a world where I can pursue my interests without the fear of loosing something. I g…

This is a bad faith read. He was specifically talking about startup founders. The cliche idea is that one of startup startup founders’ main motives is getting rich. PG said this wasn’t the case in practice, and that fear of failure was more important. This has no bearing on what motivates people to do things generally in their spare time.

Or startups in general, rather those who survive the yc interview.

Perhaps he selects for those who prepare well to not fail to get his approval.

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#36

Post by tim333 »

perfunctory wrote: post #21

> One of the most interesting things we've discovered from working on Y Combinator is that founders are more motivated by the fear of looking bad than by the hope of getting millions of dollars. So if you want to get millions of dollars, put yourself in a position where failure will be public and humiliating. Oh, boy. Why can't we have a world where I can pursue my interests without the fear of loosing something. I g…

I'm guessing your interests you want to pursue without fear are not the "if you want to get millions of dollars" mentioned? I don't think "In Praise of Idleness" would help much with that one.

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#37

Post by tlb »

perfunctory wrote: post #21

> One of the most interesting things we've discovered from working on Y Combinator is that founders are more motivated by the fear of looking bad than by the hope of getting millions of dollars. So if you want to get millions of dollars, put yourself in a position where failure will be public and humiliating. Oh, boy. Why can't we have a world where I can pursue my interests without the fear of loosing something. I g…

I find that when pursuing purely personal interests, publicly committing to a deliverable helps me get it done. I say I'm going do something by a given date as a way of putting myself in a position where failure will be public and humiliating.

People's motivation systems vary a lot, but it works for me.

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#38

Post by throwaway35784 »

> If you can just avoid dying, you get rich.

Or end up a zombie startup. I'm not buying this stuff. It sounds more like an exploration of what works than a recommendation. Signs of success rather than suggestions for how to succeed.

> keep typing

Telling you about our progress leads to success? I believe you have your cause and effect out of order.

> 90% of those who get into Newsweek would survive.

Source? I see no evidence to support this is the survival factor. Why did those who got into Newsweek get there? It's comorbidity at best.

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#39

Post by mtgx »

diego wrote: post #22

I don't think "If you can just avoid dying, you get rich" has proven true. I've invested in startups (including YC ones) that followed this to a tee. They never found product-market fit, they could have been going forever, investors forgot about them. Some are still going, some managed to get acquired, some closed shop. It's really a false dichotomy, only a small fraction of the companies that avoid dying manage to e…

I guess the idea is not to just "hang in there (but keep doing what you're doing)" but rather "hang in there (while innovating around your problem/change course, etc, until you get it right)".

Re: How Not to Die (2007)

#40

Post by compiler-guy »

nexuist wrote: post #29

>A variant is to stay in touch with other YC-funded startups. There is now a whole neighborhood of them in San Francisco. If you move there, the peer pressure that made you work harder all summer will continue to operate. Funny how much that single sentence changed what life was like on the West Coast. Now we are witnessing mini-Valleys springing up in other cities desperate to replicate what San Francisco did for st…

There have been mini Silicon Valley attempts for much longer than there has been a ycombinator. If this sentence changed anything, it is something very small.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_technology_centers

Scroll down to "Places with 'Silicon' names"

Post reply on HN