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Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

blogs.nature.com

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Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#61

Post by noobermin »

jondubois wrote: post #13

I didn't go as far as PhD, but when I came out of uni, I knew nothing about life or work. I really wouldn't recommend anyone to try to launch their own startup right out of uni (especially not alone). When I think back to it; if I had succeeded with my first startup right out of uni, I would have had a seriously distorted view of life. My idea of 'hard work' has changed a lot since then. Staying up till 3am a few tim…

>Staying up till 3am a few times a semester to finish an assignment is not hard work.

Finishing assignments is to what a PhD student actually does is as `printf("hello world\n");` is to what a developer does.

Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#62

Post by __mbm__ »

matrix wrote: post #54

While the author does quote the very low odds of success, I think he does readers a disservice by minimizing that risk. Very few people have the right disposition, the right partners, the right idea, and the right skill set to launch a startup. Being a freshly minted PhD doesn't change that. Failing at a startup sucks, and sucks really hard. But of course, its not in a VC's interest to tell you the pain that comes wi…

> Failing at a startup sucks

This. I have a PhD and a failed startup. It felt real bad, and I didn't get that far with it (9 months before calling it quits). Creating a successful startup requires significantly more energy and stress than most science jobs, even for pre-tenure professors.

It requires different skills than science. Few introverts will succeed at founding a company, for example. Moreover, you have to produce actionable results quickly, and you have very different success metrics.

I'm one degree of separation from a PhD startup founder that literally killed himself as his startup imploded, when the company was 5(?) years old. Severe depression, loss of all semblance of a life... these are standard in the world of startup founders. The risk that you destroy your life is real.

Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#63

Post by semi-extrinsic »

pyromine wrote: post #26
amelius wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Writing a 100 page thesis is not hard work either Except if you stubbornly decide to fully understand LaTeX in the process.

Dear lord, I've started writing all of my mathematics homework in LaTeX, it's not even remotely reasonable. Though interestingly, having to be more deliberate in my operations do make me have a much more rigorous understanding of what I'm doing.

I once (only once) live-typed notes from my Quantum Field Theory 2 class in LaTeX. It was on non-Abelian gauge theory IIRC. We had a German professor who was really fast too, and there's so many co(ntra)variant indices it's not even funny.

It took quite some preparation and a shitload of custom \newcommand's, but it was doable, although painful.

Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#64

Post by nsp »

Kenji wrote: post #44
jondubois wrote: post #13

I didn't go as far as PhD, but when I came out of uni, I knew nothing about life or work. I really wouldn't recommend anyone to try to launch their own startup right out of uni (especially not alone). When I think back to it; if I had succeeded with my first startup right out of uni, I would have had a seriously distorted view of life. My idea of 'hard work' has changed a lot since then. Staying up till 3am a few tim…

Staying up till 3am a few times a semester to finish an assignment is not hard work. Writing a 100 page thesis is not hard work either. If you got through uni by doing this, you went to a bad uni. Same goes for your statement about a thesis. I feel like you don't really have an idea how tough academia can be. Your comments are smug and condescending.

I got through uni by doing this at a top 5 research university (Columbia), it may depend on degree but it's definitely doable at 'hard uni's.

That said, definitely keep my gpa off my resume.

Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#65

Post by pb »

__mbm__ wrote: post #62
matrix wrote: post #54

While the author does quote the very low odds of success, I think he does readers a disservice by minimizing that risk. Very few people have the right disposition, the right partners, the right idea, and the right skill set to launch a startup. Being a freshly minted PhD doesn't change that. Failing at a startup sucks, and sucks really hard. But of course, its not in a VC's interest to tell you the pain that comes wi…

> Failing at a startup sucks This. I have a PhD and a failed startup. It felt real bad, and I didn't get that far with it (9 months before calling it quits). Creating a successful startup requires significantly more energy and stress than most science jobs, even for pre-tenure professors. It requires different skills than science. Few introverts will succeed at founding a company, for example. Moreover, you have to p…

Many of the most successful founders are introverts. Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Bill Gates, none of them are very extroverted, but they've started some of the most valuable companies in the world.

Of course if you are so introverted that you are unable to make eye contact or talk to people it will be a problem, but most of us are not that extreme.

Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#66

Post by gohrt »

Putting blogs and "news" on nature.com is continually degrading the quality of the "Nature" brand. It's poor form to mix this editorial and un-reviewed journalistic content under the same banner as peer-reviewed scientific articles of the Nature journal.

Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#67

Post by [deleted] »

vonmoltke wrote: post #53
squeaky-clean wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're both making different points. Yes, a PhD is a lot of work (I'd assume, haven't got one). Maybe more work than a startup. But it's not "hard" work in the sense that you don't have a 90% chance of your thesis being rejected despite you trying your hardest. You don't have to be scared of Google catching wind of your thesis and publishing a better version before you can finish it. Your advisor doesn't take…

> But it's not "hard" work in the sense that you don't have a 90% chance of your thesis being rejected despite you trying your hardest. Nor do you have a 90% chance of failing in your business venture despite you trying your hardest. Going from the statistic "90% of businesses fail" to " you have a 90% chance of failure when starting a business" is an incorrect deduction. The latter only follows from the former if bu…

[deleted]

Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#68

Post by gohrt »

pb wrote: post #65
__mbm__ wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Failing at a startup sucks This. I have a PhD and a failed startup. It felt real bad, and I didn't get that far with it (9 months before calling it quits). Creating a successful startup requires significantly more energy and stress than most science jobs, even for pre-tenure professors. It requires different skills than science. Few introverts will succeed at founding a company, for example. Moreover, you have to p…

Many of the most successful founders are introverts. Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Bill Gates, none of them are very extroverted, but they've started some of the most valuable companies in the world. Of course if you are so introverted that you are unable to make eye contact or talk to people it will be a problem, but most of us are not that extreme.

Why do you think they are not extroverted? Bill Gates was a famously in-your-face person when dealing with employees, partners, and competitors.

Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#69

Post by dnautics »

jondubois wrote: post #13

I didn't go as far as PhD, but when I came out of uni, I knew nothing about life or work. I really wouldn't recommend anyone to try to launch their own startup right out of uni (especially not alone). When I think back to it; if I had succeeded with my first startup right out of uni, I would have had a seriously distorted view of life. My idea of 'hard work' has changed a lot since then. Staying up till 3am a few tim…

writing a 100 page thesis for a contemporary PhD is easy, if you're not an idiot. Do everything in TeX and digitally staple the papers you've written together, and whip up a 10-page introductory statement.

What is hard is the work that you have to go to to get to the 100 page thesis. Try working a 100 hour workweek, including sleeping the lab only to find out that the experiments that you've set up completely go to hell because of a minor detail that you missed at the beginning. Five or six times. (with 75 hour workweeks in between) Over the course of a year. Not taking any vacations. Five years over.

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