Why to Not Not Start a Startup • Hacker News Board

Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup

#91

Post by dschwarz » Thu, Mar 29, 2007, 1:38 PM UTC

Terrific essay.

I worked for startups all through my 20s, but now at 37, I, I find myself up against point #9.

9. Family to support

I'd love to found a startup, but having a wife, two wonderful kids, and a $500K mortgage give you a very different perspective on the startup lifestyle.

I imagine a startup incubator where the founders are provided with salary and benefits comparable to working for a corporation, and they are encouraged (forced?) to maintain a reasonable life/work balance, (The latter is probably the hardest to achieve; a startup requires an almost monomaniacal focus).

In return,the incubator would gain access to a pool of talented people who would otherwise not be able to make the leap.

Is this being done now?

Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup

#92

Post by nostrademons » Thu, Mar 29, 2007, 1:57 PM UTC

elad wrote: post #88

pg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We often think about that. We could hire assistants, so we didn't have to do everything ourselves. Or we could make YC work more peer-to-peer. Or we could build a robot that would walk around telling everyone "don't make users register," "delete half the text on your frontpage," "face the audience when you're presenting," etc, and I could just hang out in the next room with a book and a cup of tea.

"don't make users register" Funny that I had to register to post here :)

The alternative is anonymous comments, which usually lead to a significant drop-off in the quality of discussion.

I think "Let the users see what they're getting into before registering" is a more accurate description.

Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup

#93

Post by nostrademons » Thu, Mar 29, 2007, 1:58 PM UTC

dschwarz wrote: post #91

Terrific essay. I worked for startups all through my 20s, but now at 37, I, I find myself up against point #9. 9. Family to support I'd love to found a startup, but having a wife, two wonderful kids, and a $500K mortgage give you a very different perspective on the startup lifestyle. I imagine a startup incubator where the founders are provided with salary and benefits comparable to working for a corporation, and the…

"I imagine a startup incubator where the founders are provided with salary and benefits comparable to working for a corporation, and they are encouraged (forced?) to maintain a reasonable life/work balance,"

Google. Except the work/life balance.

Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup

#94

Post by busterdog » Thu, Mar 29, 2007, 2:44 PM UTC

I think a lot of this stuff applies to starting anything new. I thought about church planters who work for non monetary rewards. Same stuff applies to pioneers in any endeavor.

Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup

#95

Post by mes » Thu, Mar 29, 2007, 3:26 PM UTC

[3] There need to be some number of big companies to acquire the startups, so the number of big companies couldn't decrease to zero.

No there don't. There only needs to be some number of entities with deep pockets and marketing expertise. Those entities could be small companies and individuals, or networks thereof.

While it might turn out that a large black-box structure like today's multinationals is the most efficient organization for accomplishing certain important tasks, it doesn't seem obvious to me that it must be so.

Michael Sullivan

Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup

#96

Post by Readmore » Thu, Mar 29, 2007, 4:24 PM UTC

ced wrote: post #39

Hypothesis: "I'd rather work on hard AI problems at Google than create a startup and bitch about how Safari is not rendering my site properly." What do you think? I haven't tried either, but working on cool problems ought to be worth something. Most startup work seems rather mundane.

Startup work is mundane but still really rewarding because you live and die by your own abilities. Besides, if you make the startup work you can go work on any hard problem you want because you've removed the 'I have to make enough money to pay the bills next month problem. PG did it, they build Viaweb and once they were done he started working on Arc. Nobody pays you to write new programming languages, and I'd bet money the person to make AI real won't be working for Google. The person who solves that problem will do it out of love and determination, not because they wanted to work at the Googleplex.

Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup

#97

Post by mae » Thu, Mar 29, 2007, 8:38 PM UTC

Thank you

Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup

#98

Post by mae » Thu, Mar 29, 2007, 8:38 PM UTC

Thank you

Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup

#99

Post by mae » Thu, Mar 29, 2007, 8:38 PM UTC

Thank you

Re: Why to Not Not Start a Startup

#100

Post by scrollinondubs » Thu, Mar 29, 2007, 8:47 PM UTC

jackpipe wrote: post #80

To the JumpBox guy. Interesting idea. You need to come right out with what you're doing, on the home page, or in the first sentence of the 'about' page. I don't want to read a paragraph of crap about automobiles, before coming to what you're all about. Also, I'm sure LAMP components (ie the various tiers of web server) would be a hit - ie seperate VM images for apache, database, etc.

jackpipe- yea we know that page is admittedly weak right now ;-) we're replacing the about page with a distilled 5-point tour that explains the concept better and more visually. RE: the vanilla preconfigured stacks- the VirtualAppliances.net guys and Spike Source are doing a pretty good job now with putting out lean versions of the basic software stacks so we're targeting the end-to-end apps for now. We'll hit those up down the road though. thanks for the feedback.

sean