41–50 of 85 posts
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Do you think that is a marker for success in life? A photo sharing app 'geared for massive growth'?
That's essentially what Facebook is. I'm not sure what you mean by "a marker for success in life," but most people consider Mark Zuckerberg to be successful.
Nice to see the other side of the pond is not really a "different planet" :)
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And how would one know they are orders of magnitude more likely to succeed than others?
I've talked about this in several essays. Someday soon I'll write one specifically about that topic. Curiously enough, one of the best ways would be to apply to YC. We have a huge amount of data about which founders succeed, and we work very hard to identify the probable successes among the applicants.
Slightly off topic, but how does YC feel about applicants that are currently employed by YC-backed companies? Somewhat conflicting, no?
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Posts like this always essentially boil down to one statement: "The startup (in the pg sense of the term) lifestyle is not for me." And that's ok. For most people, making a dent in the universe is not an existential need.
OR, most people realize that building a wildly successful photo app / car sharing service / daily deal site does not 'make a dent in the universe.'
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So, profitable business, totally bootstrapped, growing at 20% a month. I guess you could call that "taking it easy." If you think my argument is not well-reasoned, then you should refute it, not just insult me. Lastly, and I don't think the crowd on HN really gets this, I was using the absolute most conservative assumptions possible to prove my argument. Which is, 'even just working 30 hours a week, you still have a…
The problem with your argument it that it rests on a false premise, that you should start the calculation of a $100M exit with the 1% chance you will raise funding. You should actually be multiplying this by the chance that you'll have a 100M exit. And I think far fewer bootstrapped companies have that outcome than VC funded companies. FWIW I don't think being VC funding is success, but adding fuel can certainly help…
This is almost certainly true. But you're also likely to hold a fraction of the equity you'd hold in the case where you bootstrapped.
I find the 'raise nothing, hold all the equity, exit for >$1mm' (or don't exit and live a happy, very comfortable life) far more enticing than 'raise money, hold a fraction of the equity, exit for $100mm', especially when you factor in the lifestyle differences between the two scenarios.
That said, I recognize that other people hold different opinions. More power to you folks, but—at least for now—I'm sick of the rat race.
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Do you think that is a marker for success in life? A photo sharing app 'geared for massive growth'?
That's essentially what Facebook is. I'm not sure what you mean by "a marker for success in life," but most people consider Mark Zuckerberg to be successful.
The expected value is wrong here, because it imagines a distribution where you either go big or you go home with bubkis. The truth is that there are a lot of things in between. Owning 33% of a company that is making millions, and is funded, but not sold for $100M, gives you a nice income and you work on something you like. And all this time you were hiring great people and receiving a good income. If you compare that…
Odds are that your VC isn't going to see eye-to-eye with this approach.
The critical mistake here is a misunderstanding of how probability works. If we know that x% of startups succeed, that doesn't mean that each group of founders starting a startup have x% chance of succeeding. Some people are orders of magnitude more likely to succeed than others. For those it's a good idea to start a startup. For the rest (a much larger group) it's a bad idea.
100% of people who start businesses believe they can succeed, otherwise they wouldn't start one.
Clearly given that such a high percentage of businesses fail, you are not qualified to judge your own chance at success. Therefore the only time you can know that your percentage chance is higher than the average is when you have a 3rd party that is skilled at evaluating such things that tells you so.
In the absence of such, your chances just fall back to the raw figures that the article gives and so the analysis stands up.
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So, under this reasoning, you are saying all bootstrapped entrepreneurs are average and a waste of life, simply because they choose to go it alone, and not take funding. Hmm, what was that? Something about man, made of out straw...
I'm saying the value will begin to go up as soon as the mindset isn't "30 hours and a good salary". "Expected value" of startups is all about how much money an exit gets you, not the salary you get along the way. I think its awesome you are self-employed, but as far I am concerned it isn't a startup in the sense I think of them, geared for massive growth.
I don't have a problem with growth, or with exits, but I'm not a fan of what I'll call the house-of-cards startup model.
The critical mistake here is a misunderstanding of how probability works. If we know that x% of startups succeed, that doesn't mean that each group of founders starting a startup have x% chance of succeeding. Some people are orders of magnitude more likely to succeed than others. For those it's a good idea to start a startup. For the rest (a much larger group) it's a bad idea.
There is no misunderstanding of how probability works here. 100% of people who start businesses believe they can succeed, otherwise they wouldn't start one. Clearly given that such a high percentage of businesses fail, you are not qualified to judge your own chance at success. Therefore the only time you can know that your percentage chance is higher than the average is when you have a 3rd party that is skilled at ev…
I also don't think 100% of people who start businesses believe they can succeed. I'm sure a large percantage are trying to wing it and hope they get lucky.