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

Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

blogs.nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 191 posts

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

#81

Post by brightball »

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.

I hear things like this about Zuckerberg all the time and he did one singular thing that made Facebook take off more than all of the other social networks that were out there at the time (Classmates, High School Alumni, My Space, etc).

He made it exclusive. You had to have a .edu address to sign up so the people ON the network were initially only your peer group. You couldn't get in without that .edu address and therefore you WANTED to get in if you couldn't.

This created a steady user base that didn't have to be EVERYBODY (as long as people at your school were on you didn't care) and a natural spam filter as there were controls on access to those email addresses. Once those people graduated from college they got to stay on the site.

Zuckerberg succeeded specifically because of the exclusivity that Facebook grew from during a time where every other service was just a spam mine.

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

#82

Post by patall »

Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #77

0.5% getting 'professor' positions is just nonsense. Just click the link so see some useful discussion, but it's ridiculous at its face: the average professor is not graduating 200 PhD students. The figure is probably closer to 20 for most fields, which gives a more reasonable 5%. Then you have to consider that many programs offer tenured research positions, but don't take on doctoral students. Finally, consider that…

Might not be in physics or mathematics but in Life Science it certainly almost is. At the institute I am working right now has about 20 PhD students per full professor (every 3 years anew, so a Professor has 10 times that number in 30 years). Its all a question of associates and other types of group leaders and obviously delegation.

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

#83

Post by cderwin »

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…

Out of pure curiosity, what makes you think that someone on hn is more likely to be successful running a startup than anyone else?

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

#84

Post by mattkrause »

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…

In a similar vein, about half of all marriages end in divorce, but half of the people you know are (probably) not divorced.

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

#85

Post by sidlls »

throwaway729 wrote: post #80
sidlls wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "grit" is entirely within an academic context and does not necessarily translate outside of that context. It's also debatable whether a PhD absolutely implies an above average IQ (or even whether that is a meaningful trait). As for correlation with success, I wonder if you could elaborate? What measures "success"? What studies are you referring to? What confounding issues (if any) are accounted for?

> That "grit" is entirely within an academic context and does not necessarily translate outside of that context Do you have any particular reason for stating this? Having been in both environments, I actually think that academic grit translates outside of academia more fluidly than the other way around. Conjectured reason: most academic projects have a horizon of 5-20 years to market and require large amounts of very…

I have nothing other than my personal experience and observations of fellow degree holders. I mostly agree with respect to the fluidity argument, but I think that's different from my point. I've seen PhD holders lack the grit to see a project filled with non-academic tedium through, for example. I've been there myself, even.

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

#86

Post by beachstartup »

cderwin wrote: post #83
vonmoltke wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Out of pure curiosity, what makes you think that someone on hn is more likely to be successful running a startup than anyone else?

because they/we are more likely to have worked at one, and see how it actually works, or doesn't work.

same goes for any high stress, high risk business, like running a restaurant. if you've worked in one for years, you're more likely to succeed in running one yourself.

there is a running joke in the restaurant business about rich semi-retired professionals opening up a restaurant and failing miserably, because they simply don't realize how much work it is. they think because they're great home cooks and can throw an awesome dinner party, they can all of a sudden run a commercial kitchen and dining room. wrong. very, very wrong.

same goes with startups. most people fail because they don't understand how much work it is, and simply give up.

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

#87

Post by throwaway729 »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #48
mikebenfield wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Writing a 100 page thesis is not hard work either. Maybe don't belittle things you've never done? Doing a PhD is not just sitting down and writing a thesis, and it's also not just taking a few classes that occasionally require late nights. A PhD student is typically teaching one or more classes, learning as much as possible about his/her field, reading papers at the forefront of research in his/her field, conductin…

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…

> You don't have to be scared of Google catching wind of your thesis and publishing a better version before you can finish it

It's called "scooping". You do have to worry about other academic groups doing that, depending on the area you're working in.

And you may even also have to worry about Google or MSR scooping you.

In fact, I know of one person who had his thesis basically scooped by a large corporate research lab. Not so much his exact ideas, but they out-performed his would-have-been thesis work in every meaningful way in a sufficiently small sub-problem that he had to pivot.

> Your advisor doesn't take on 10 graduate students and encourage practices that will cause 9 to fail but 1 to succeed beyond anyone's dreams

I guess that depends on your advisor and program and your field of study. These sorts of attrition rates aren't unheard of in Math, for instance.

> Messing it up doesn't mean you don't have to tell 30 people that they need new jobs.

That is certainly true. But the upside is also significantly bounded.

> Maybe I'm interpreting the GP post wrong, but I take their use of "hard" to mean "unfair and stressful", and your use of "hard" to mean "high quantity and quality of work."

80 hr weeks working on something that the academic community might choose to reject for whatever reason all while making 20k/yr could be described as both...

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

#88

Post by biounit »

Interesting perspective. Certainly get a good feel for your potential before striking out on a startup. And have as much savings as possible. I did the PhD and while doing my Postdoc I started a company. I did many years as Research Professor before quitting and focusing on my company.

Comparing the two situations I'd argue the business option is far better for a number of reasons. The most important being freedom. To survive in academics now is an awful game of proposals and nonstop stress. Success rates are very low and there is intense competition. And all for very little (no) payoff. And it is a sales job. At the end, before I finally pulled the plug I often likened academics to a situation where you're selling something that people may like, but they don't want to pay for it. If you do it right with a company, people are begging to pay you. And the reality is the business route is much more challenging, just in a different way. Everything is on the line.

I do think promoting a "startup" in the conventional sense where you have VC funding and explosive growth is disingenuous. There are many opportunities where a PhD scientist can carve out a niche where you have a company with 1-10 million in revenue. It affords an excellent situation that, if sustainable, is orders of magnitude better than the academic lifestyle that is so often idolized.

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

#89

Post by skewart »

brightball wrote: post #81
pb wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hear things like this about Zuckerberg all the time and he did one singular thing that made Facebook take off more than all of the other social networks that were out there at the time (Classmates, High School Alumni, My Space, etc). He made it exclusive. You had to have a .edu address to sign up so the people ON the network were initially only your peer group. You couldn't get in without that .edu address and ther…

You're absolutely right. Though I'd argue the real value in that exclusivity was not only exclusivity itself making people want to join (though I'm sure that was part of it), but also in enabling a culture of honesty about names, interests, and life. That honesty was only possible at the time through exclusivity. When FB started there was a long-standing cliche about social interaction on the internet: everyone lied about or exaggerated who they were. Facebook encouraged people to use their real name and share real information. Of course that honesty made it all the more fascinating to look at - you got to see who people really were. The honesty was only possible because it was a small network of more or less peers with a high level of trust.

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

#90

Post by fsloth »

gohrt wrote: post #68
pb wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Introvert vs. extrovert has more to do how much energy being with a crowd gives or takes, or do you prefer your own company over that of others if given the chance. Any social skill, unless natural, can be acquired.
Post reply on HN