Don't you think there's something of an opportunity cost, though? If someone like Linus had dedicated all his time to a startup (he did spend some time at Transmeta, but still had time for Linux), perhaps he would have never accomplished what he did. Perhaps similar arguments could be made about people like Guido van Rossum. Obviously there are various paths to success, but how many people made their cash, and then went on to do a seriously successful open source project? I'm sure there are one or two out there, but I think mostly it's a one or the other situation.
I wrote an essay about this:
http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html
The relevant section is called "Two Routes." Linus seems to have taken organic route, gradually arranging his life so he could spend more time on Linux. Startups are usually an instance of the other strategy, the two-job route, of which they are the most extreme form.
(For a few very lucky people, a startup can also be one's life's work. But it's usually all one can do to make a startup succeed without also satisfying that constraint.)
Yes, I've read that essay, and liked it. What I'm getting at, though, is that isn't it possible that by taking the startup route, by the time you 'get there', yes, you have time to do whatever you want, but you've blown your chance to do something else?
Re:"Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand
by kirubakaran on Monday March 02, 2009 @04:18PM
(#500635)
No matter what you do, you are blowing your chance to do everything else.
You could say that those guys went straight to step 2: Work on something they find interesting, ignoring money. It probably is a one or the other situation, but the results end up being the same -- living life as one sees fit.
Bill Joy founded both Sun and Vi.
Both making a lot of money and doing a "seriously successful" open source project are pretty rare, so even if the two are independent, you shouldn't expect many people to succeed at both of them.
But I've been very explicit about this question:
"Great programmers are sometimes said to be indifferent to money. This isn't quite true. It is true that all they really care about is doing interesting work. But if you make enough money, you get to work on whatever you want, and for that reason hackers are attracted by the idea of making really large amounts of money. But as long as they still have to show up for work every day, they care more about what they do there than how much they get paid for it."
(http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html)
"So no, there's nothing particularly grand about making money. That's not what makes startups worth the trouble. What's important about startups is the speed. By compressing the dull but necessary task of making a living into the smallest possible time, you show respect for life, and there is something grand about that."
(http://www.paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html)