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The last day

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Re: The last day

#31

Post by jasonshen »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #23
jasonshen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profit is every bit as fictional of an ideal as a pageview or user signup. Most business activity do not take into account the externalities (corn is "profitable" but heavily subsidized by the government and most manufactured goods end up in a landfill that's not paid for by the company) that are created but not accounted for in the "Profit and Loss Statement"

You can't pay your employees with page views. Profits (or revenue, to be a bit more precise), on the other hand, are directly exchangeable for rent, food, payroll, keeping the lights on, and other such necessities. The dollars a farmer uses to make payroll are fungible. It doesn't matter if they came from a stupid government subsidy or a sale at a farmer's market.

You pay your employees with capital, which can come from customers, the government, banks, credit card companies or investors.

Most tech startups do not generate a lot of cash in their early stages, which is why they raise capital from investors who purchase equity stake in the company because they believe the company will be valuable down the road. Page views (and more so user signups/engagement) are one metric by which investors make the decision to invest capital.

Guys, this is what modern capitalism is all about.

Re: The last day

#32

Post by Udo »

ForrestN wrote: post #26
Udo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not that you're negative, it's that you're unwilling to see the potential of learning from other people's mistakes. Just shutting yourself off from the prospect and consequences of failure does not automatically make you immune to those mistakes. Smart people fail every day, and sometimes those failures are personal disasters. It's a good idea to remind yourself what's at stake sometimes. Winning the s…

This isn't about anyone's mistakes, it's about the emotional scenery surrounding some generic failure. What is there to learn? That completely devoting one's self to a single project requires sacrifice? That betting your emotional life on that project means, uh, risking your emotional life? If the point of this is to remind me that catastrophic failure is catastrophic then it can easily be edited to a single sentence…

It's not generic failure, it's very specific - it's an accurate description of a failure scenario that affects many startup founders. In a lot of cases, these sacrifices happen creepingly and gradually. The lesson in this case is recognizing the signs of overcommitment and a preview of what failure can look like. Apparently, you didn't need this lesson, and that's totally fine. I for my part would have considered myself very fortunate if somebody had given me this kind of preview before everything actually turned to shit.

You complain about banality, and maybe that's an accurate label. Anything that doesn't concern or engage you could be considered banal. Maybe life is largely banal, in hindsight at least.

Re: The last day

#33

Post by hnriot »

Udo wrote: post #32
ForrestN wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't about anyone's mistakes, it's about the emotional scenery surrounding some generic failure. What is there to learn? That completely devoting one's self to a single project requires sacrifice? That betting your emotional life on that project means, uh, risking your emotional life? If the point of this is to remind me that catastrophic failure is catastrophic then it can easily be edited to a single sentence…

It's not generic failure, it's very specific - it's an accurate description of a failure scenario that affects many startup founders. In a lot of cases, these sacrifices happen creepingly and gradually. The lesson in this case is recognizing the signs of overcommitment and a preview of what failure can look like. Apparently, you didn't need this lesson, and that's totally fine. I for my part would have considered mys…

>It's not generic failure, it's very specific - it's an accurate description of a failure scenario that affects many startup founders.

You just described "generic failure". If it happens to many startups, its generic to startups, which was the point. There's nothing here to learn except it sucks to fail. Which anyone that's ever done anything in life is already aware of.

Re: The last day

#34

Post by CamperBob2 »

NathanKP wrote: post #8
rhizome wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One lesson that can be learned is to give less of yourself to a startup until they prove their worth, and that they're worth it.

The argument could be made that giving as much of yourself as possible is a crucial ingredient to making the startup worth it. After all if you are holding back the product and business isn't building itself. Of course it probably isn't healthy to make a business the center of your life, but people who do will likely have a higher chance of success in that business because they are willing to put forth a lot more eff…

Of course it probably isn't healthy to make a business the center of your life

If you don't, though, you will likely be outcompeted by those who do.

It's a simple, obvious truth, not a value judgement.

Re: The last day

#35

Post by jmmcd »

Two bizarre comments on that page. One is (paraphrasing) "we don't do maudlin stuff like this -- that's for people across the pond" and the other "here in the US we don't go to debtors' prison".

From this end of the pond, I would've guessed that Europeans were the jaded cynical ones and USians the heart-on-sleeve maudlin primary-colour-emotions ones. If I had to choose, that is. And startup founders don't go to prison here either.

Re: The last day

#36

Post by slaven »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #23
jasonshen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profit is every bit as fictional of an ideal as a pageview or user signup. Most business activity do not take into account the externalities (corn is "profitable" but heavily subsidized by the government and most manufactured goods end up in a landfill that's not paid for by the company) that are created but not accounted for in the "Profit and Loss Statement"

You can't pay your employees with page views. Profits (or revenue, to be a bit more precise), on the other hand, are directly exchangeable for rent, food, payroll, keeping the lights on, and other such necessities. The dollars a farmer uses to make payroll are fungible. It doesn't matter if they came from a stupid government subsidy or a sale at a farmer's market.

Unless you're one of the many Instagram-like startups that have higher burn than revenue and still get paid handsomely.

Re: The last day

#37

Post by SoftwareMaven »

Permit wrote: post #24
courtewing wrote: post #16

I find this story extremely tragic -- not because this man's company, his dreams, failed so tremendously, but that he allowed two fundamental aspects of his adult life to fail with it. Is it the prevailing opinion in the startup community these days that building up personal debt and letting your relationships fail are worthwhile parts of starting a company, or is this, as I suspect, just a sad story about misaligned…

>Is it the prevailing opinion in the startup community these days that building up personal debt and letting your relationships fail are worthwhile parts of starting a company, or is this, as I suspect, just a sad story about misaligned priorities? Ultimately, whether or not it was "worth it" will always be decided based on the final outcome of the company coupled with a large dose of hindsight bias. A startup founde…

Regardless of whether my business succeeds or fails, if my personal relationships with my wife and kids fail, I am a failure.

Personally, I don't care if everybody in the world thinks I succeeded, if those relationships fail, I am a failure. Priorities are important.

Re: The last day

#38

Post by fatbird »

Udo wrote: post #5

This story mirrors my startup experience exactly , including the moment where I had to lay off my friends, took a last long look at "our place" before turning the lights off, remembering that this was what I had sacrificed my relationship for, including the ending where I thought of nothing but the crushing mountain of personal debt. In some ways, this is the archetypical founder's nightmare, and it's happening every…

What it should do is motivate founders to 1) read the 'sunk cost fallacy' article on Wikipedia, and 2) set clear lines well before 'mountain of personal debt' and 'ruined relationships', where you call it over.

I walked away from a startup when it ran out of money. The founders were floating a proposal to guarantee a business loan with their houses. That, to me, was a bridge too far, an inability to recognize too much sacrifice in the making.

Yes, there's such a thing as 'too much sacrifice'. Businesses are ultimately, as said in the linked article, run by the math, not the CEO. Overcoming the math with a foolhardy level of commitment is a mistake. It's gambling, not math. You'll learn the same lessons about commitment and failure before maxing out every credit card you can get your hands on.

Re: The last day

#39

Post by knowtheory »

> Someone with dreams untainted by failure.

This sentiment is frustrating to hear because of it's misconception about what success is.

Those who have never faced failure are not good, they are just lucky. Replicable success requires contact with failure.

Re: The last day

#40

Post by robryan »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #37
Permit wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is it the prevailing opinion in the startup community these days that building up personal debt and letting your relationships fail are worthwhile parts of starting a company, or is this, as I suspect, just a sad story about misaligned priorities? Ultimately, whether or not it was "worth it" will always be decided based on the final outcome of the company coupled with a large dose of hindsight bias. A startup founde…

Regardless of whether my business succeeds or fails, if my personal relationships with my wife and kids fail, I am a failure. Personally, I don't care if everybody in the world thinks I succeeded, if those relationships fail, I am a failure. Priorities are important.

They are, they are also different for different people. There is no right answer to whether sacrificing person relationships for company success is worth it.
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