Why Not To Do A Startup

Re:Why Not To Do A Startup by pg on Wednesday March 19, 2008 @12:27PM (#140909)

While this is mostly true, it's really the case against doing anything especially ambitious, not just starting startups. You could make an almost identical case against trying to write a great novel. The novelists you hear about in the press are the successful ones. Most people who try fail. It sucks up huge amounts of time regardless. The community is littered with sad, failed novelists. And are the ones who succeed satisfied? No; they just start another novel.

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Re:Why Not To Do A Startup by menloparkbum on Thursday March 20, 2008 @02:16PM (#141805)

I don't think it is "mostly" true. This is a romanticized view of both startup failure and what your non-startup peers may or may not be doing by choosing the "safe" employee path.

- startup founders and employees are often complete freaks. they wouldn't get hired at Google in the first place, and are definitely not interested in pee-wee softball and 2.2 Volvos in the garage. Statistically, the type-A Ivy League wunderkinds are taking those stable jobs. The bulk of startup founders I meet dropped out of no-name schools or even high school.

- if you are an early employee at a VC funded startup you make close to market rate salary... that's the whole point of the VC funding... to hire key employees.

- the most successful startups I know of were founded by people who still had jobs, were in graduate school, or saved up a bunch of money at a previous job.

- Another unspoken story about startup founders is that a significant percentage of them come from wealthy families or have parents with serious connections in the industry. It is easier to take "risks" when you have a trust fund.

- The valley is filled with MORE sad, "failed" people who toiled as an employee at Yahoo or Apple or Adobe for 7 years, then freaked out or got laid off.

I'm also not sure the novelist community is littered with sad failures, either. Most novelists have day jobs. It is unlikely many failed or successful novelists passed over a lucrative corporate marketing career to suffer for their craft.

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Re:Why Not To Do A Startup by davidw on Wednesday March 19, 2008 @02:24PM (#141010)

Sounds like "Extremistan" and "Mediocristan" from the Black Swan - as do most fields where there are a few people who win really, really big, and lots of failures.

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Re:Why Not To Do A Startup by Mistone on Wednesday March 19, 2008 @03:29PM (#141054)

ever been to LA? a few big stars and producers up in the hills, every other person in the "biz" scattered across miles and miles of flatlands.

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Re:Why Not To Do A Startup by jedberg on Wednesday March 19, 2008 @04:16PM (#141102)

There are plenty of middle class folks in the "biz". These are the makeup artists, sound designers, animators, model makers and so on. They all make a good living pursuing their dream.

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Re:Why Not To Do A Startup by nickb on Wednesday March 19, 2008 @04:30PM (#141110)

The point he's making is that not that many actors make their living through acting. Also, not many people go to Hollywood with a dream of being a gaffer. When you get a union job, you usually live month-to-month since living in Cali can be expensive.

Like with many other "scalable jobs", you have few winners and many, many losers. Acting, singing, startups, CEOs, traders... they all fall into this category.

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Re:Why Not To Do A Startup by andreyf on Wednesday March 19, 2008 @02:32PM (#141016)

> The community is littered with sad, failed novelists.

Why the pessimism? What about the happy, failed novelists? Just because most failed <X>'s are sad doesn't mean you are destined to be...

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Re:Why Not To Do A Startup by pg on Wednesday March 19, 2008 @06:12PM (#141186)

I was just substituting one variable in Matt's.

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