Startups, Role Models, Risk, and Y Combinator

Re:Startups, Role Models, Risk, and Y Combinator by 7Figures2Commas on Tuesday March 25, 2014 @05:14PM (#7469008)

Unfortunately you're focused too much on the investor, and not on the entrepreneur.

Investors have the luxury of spraying and praying because they primarily invest capital; founders, whose investment consists of time and opportunity cost, don't have this luxury. In simple terms, your investors have n lottery tickets, and you have one.

Statistically, as a founder, you are not likely to build a billion dollar business. That is worth repeating, often. Pretending that your odds are better than they really are and working yourself into the ground because Silicon Valley culture has convinced you that it's the only way is foolish.

Which leads to my final point: if you're an entrepreneur, it's worth thinking long and hard about the path you take. If you're convinced that your ambitions should be measured in 9 and 10 figures and you are enticed by the funding game, you're often not just unnecessarily sacrificing your quality of life, you may be sacrificing the potential to build a successful 7 or 8 figure business.

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Re:Startups, Role Models, Risk, and Y Combinator by zaidf on Tuesday March 25, 2014 @05:31PM (#7469099)

Finally, in response to your edit that attempting to build billion-dollar businesses is the norm: you can only come to such a belief if you have firmly ensconced yourself in the Silicon Valley startup scene.

You misunderstood me. I never said shooting for billion dollar businesses is the norm across the country but rather in the context of startups, particularly those that YC is most interested in funding.

I'm not debating or necessarily even disagree with what you are saying about founders and their chances of success. But that is not what we are debating here.

The primary debate here is whether Sam Altman's post to his audience makes the right point about his message. I think it does.

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Re:Startups, Role Models, Risk, and Y Combinator by 7Figures2Commas on Tuesday March 25, 2014 @06:12PM (#7469550)

I think I get it. What you're saying is that YCombinator's target audience is highly intelligent individuals, savvy enough to spot untapped market opportunities and capable enough to have a chance at exploiting them, but who are either too lazy to look at the IPO and M&A data or aren't very good at statistics?

Personally, I find it hard to believe that every YCombinator-backed founder believes he's chasing a billion-dollar opportunity, but maybe I'm delusional.

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Re:Startups, Role Models, Risk, and Y Combinator by 001sky on Tuesday March 25, 2014 @07:27PM (#7470098)

You can spray n pray capital...

Its a bad strategy for your life, tho

The 'tortured artist' is a romantic notion

It's that meme that is being co-opted by VCs here

The 'entrepreneur as tortured artiste'

Since the 'starving artist' basically sums up

the ideal sucker for a major label record deal

(ie, weak negotiating leverage)

Its worth being critical of over-adopting the analogy.

(at least, if your the starving artist).

That being said, nothing clears the mind

like no food on the plate.

And a clear mind is what you need to succeed.

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