Sounds like you've been going it alone. Have you tried teaming up with someone else? Many successful projects wouldn't be successful if they were done alone, having another person can help sanity check and motivate you.
I am done. I give up
481–490 of 1001 posts
Re: I am done. I give up
#482Succeeding in the startup world reminds me of the funfair analogy: The rich kid will have a go at throwing the dart at the balloon, and miss. But, because they're a rich kid, they just take out their wallet (or parents' wallet), get more stubs, and try again (and again) until they hit the balloon. The middle class kid will have a go at throwing the dart at the balloon, and also miss. Then they will walk away, saying…
I don't think this way of looking at it is helpful either. Sometimes the rich kid was abused by his dad and it ate him up inside and he turned to drugs and died of an overdose at 25 years old. Sometimes the middle class kid came from a father that survived as a child in WW2 with undiagnosed metal scars to prove it. Sometimes the poor kid learns plumbing from his dad then starts and scales a business up to millions in…
undiagnosed metal scars
What are undiagnosed metal scars ?
Re: I am done. I give up
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're high trust societies in general, partially because they're small monocultures. As Robert Putnam's research shows, in multicultural societies, especially large ones, trust rapidly declines, surprisingly even within cultural groups. Trust in government falls even more rapidly as each group starts to perceive those in power as being more favorable to one group or another, even if those in power are from their ow…
"High trust" seems entirely contradictory to Danish society. Universal skepticism and a universal dislike for every other human in existence are the core ideologies here. Maybe a tendency to not interfere with tasks assigned to others to avoid having to deal with people is being misinterpreted as trust?
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Re: I am done. I give up
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
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' lifesty…
> (work for almost 2 decades as an engineer just so you can afford the average one family home - what a joke!) I really don't understand this take. Why so many engineers feel entitled to have more than the average working Joe? If you are employed, our work is not risky, doesn't consume all your energy or your time, and so on. I fully understand the _economics_ behind our salaries, but I am more than happy to give 45%…
> I really cannot grasp the individualism about "I know how to write code, I deserve a better life than 95% of the population".
You're missing something here. You can omit the first sentence. People already believe they deserve a better life than 95% of the population, even without being able to code specifically.
Re: I am done. I give up
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, the rich have more advantages than the poor. Always been that way and always will. In our culture there is an immense preoccupation with the unfairness of this but the reality is that if you don't come from wealth and privilege, you need a different playbook. Dwelling on the inequity neuters you. If you want to win you need to figure out what the playbook is and then do the right things. I found a playbook that…
>* move to a country …* I understand and agree with your overall point, but the fact that this an option underpins a certain amount of privilege.
How much privilege does it take to move to Guatemala or Pakistan?
Re: I am done. I give up
#486Earlier quoted context omitted.
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' lifesty…
> (work for almost 2 decades as an engineer just so you can afford the average one family home - what a joke!) I really don't understand this take. Why so many engineers feel entitled to have more than the average working Joe? If you are employed, our work is not risky, doesn't consume all your energy or your time, and so on. I fully understand the _economics_ behind our salaries, but I am more than happy to give 45%…
Because we are the gateway to exponential free work. Program once, run on x machines, supply all 8 billions with a service, for defacto nothing. From these hands flows cornucopia..
Just because the nano machinery is invisible, doesent mean it cant spin great things from nothing. Half the giants you see today, were nothing one generation ago.
Re: I am done. I give up
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 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…
Interestingly, the US still ranks #1 in the world in Entrepreneurship and Switzerland is #2.
Source: https://thegedi.org/global-entrepreneurship-and-development-...
I think the reason why welfare is irrelevant here is because the people going into entrepreneurship tend to be skilled enough to find a good-paying job even if their startup fails. Suppose that you're a good product manager or a good developer that's going into the startup world and you don't get lucky with your startup, you'd still be able to find a good job as soon as you're done... in fact, you might even get a higher-paying job because of this experience you've had.
Re: I am done. I give up
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
I looked up taxation in Norway, it looks very similar to ours. Personal marginal tax rates cap at 48% and corporate taxes are 23%. What am I missing? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Norway
It has nothing to do with taxation - or else the Arab Gulf or Cayman Islands would be entrepreneurial hubs, not California or the Toronto area. It’s all about the price of quality labour. It’s about access to long-term risk capital (aka venture funds) + high quality labour at affordable prices. As in, entrepreneurs having cash to fund projects and being able to actually hire people that will help build them. Try hiri…
>" Try hiring a hundred software engineers in Norway"
They're not particularly cheap in the US either. Toronto might be better but hi-tech salaries are going up as well.
Re: I am done. I give up
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seconded. I personally try to never use the phrase 'lifestyle business'. Instead I use the phrase 'bootstrapped business', because that is what it is. You have bootstrapped the business yourself organically over time instead of at a fast pace of growth with VC money.
My understanding is that bootstrapped and lifestyle are different things. A lifestyle business should be able to run on autopilot with minimal involvement from the founder (hence they can focus on living their life, rather than working). A bootstrapped business is one built with your own capital - it doesn’t necessarily have to become a lifestyle business.
This seems mostly correct to me. We wouldn't call 37signals a "lifestyle business" but a bootstrapped business.
I wouldn't say that a "able to run on autopilot" is necessarily the defining feature, but rather the attitude towards growth. The simply, the goal in starting and running the business is to support a work-life balance that is more strongly weighted towards life. As such, growing a lifestyle business beyond a certain point is counter productive since that leads to a more responsibility and less time for other stuff.
A bootstrapped business does still have growth as a primary goal and there is intention to reach a larger size and complexity.
While I'm not sure that I like the term "lifestyle" to describe it, I'm not sure what a better one is since "bootstrapped" means something different in this context.
Re: I am done. I give up
#490Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
When my wife started her business, we lived on my income for 5 years while she continually reinvested in growing it. It was hard but worth it.
Congratulations (I mean it. No /s).
I understand that to mean that your income was enough to keep (at least) both of you fed, housed and clothed.
Maybe you also had some savings/family support to use as a Kickstarter for her business and possibly to help pay the bills but maybe you didn't.
If both of you had to work 40+ hours a week and there is still too much month left at the end of the money, it's really hard to afford so much as a car repair not to speak of starting a business.
Is it possible to be an entrepreneur in that case? Yes but it's an enormous gamble and needs for all the stars to align just right. The consequences of failure are immediate (there are no 5 years to get started) and dire (homelessness/ no ability to get to work).
It's a much worse bet than for someone from the middle class who might have to move in with their parents again. Not pleasant but endurable.
Someone well off suffers not even that and is, at worst, a little bit embarrassed in front of their family. They can also try again and again.