You Don't Have What It Takes | Hacker News Reader

You Don't Have What It Takes

calacanis.com

9 pointssiddg16 comments

Giving up after reading an article telling to quit. Definitely is a sign you ain't got what it takes.

I think you figured out the post :-)

Ugh.

Don't listen to a puffed up experts or self-assigned gate-keepers rehashing generic fluff (click-baity title included!) to get out another tired blogpost.

The only takeaway from this post should be: find mentors so you can accelerate your learning.

Now, whether you want to accelerate learning how to be an employee or to be a founder is up to you.

Because ain't nothing to it, but to do it.

I didn't see it that way at all. In the current environment (especially somewhere like HN), there's a constant chorus saying that A Startup Is What You Should Do. Pointing out that it comes with the real possibility of destroying your personal finances is in fact a valuable service to those thinking of doing a startup.

It's not all rainbows and unicorns out there.

How big a deal really, in the grand scheme of things, is the destruction of personal finances in your early 20s to 30s? If it helps, compare starting a startup to getting a PhD or MBA etcs. In most other skilled professions, people start actually having a career in their 30s anyway.

When you think about loss, consider things you can recoup vs things you can't.

You can recoup money. You can't recoup ... well .. pretty much anything else.

Considering most on average do fail, most people will never recover from this financial damage before they die, particularly later in life when the differences are most pronounced and the marginal dollar is much more valuable due to rising health-care cost and dwindling income. So finance says you're wrong on that one.

You really can't recoup the money. $1,000 invested at 23 is worth $37,165 at 75, assuming 7.2% historical equity risk premium. $1,000 invested at 30 is worth $22,844 at 75 with the same 7.2% growth.

Your comment seems to imply that people can strike it rich if they just pull the level enough times, but your comment is actually false for the majority of people that read your post.

Yeah, I know about compound interest. Truly.

What I was trying to say is money can mostly be made up even if you don't strike it rich. Same amount of money? Maybe not. But enough to have the same order lifestyle as you would otherwise? Definitely. I was trying to allude to this by referencing other professions where they don't really start until their 30s.

Consider also that you seem you think of money as something that you accrue strictly as a function of time. If you are doing retirement planning strictly based on your 401k, then you probably aren't planning that well. Lots of things that worked for our parents won't pan out well for us. Ask non-STEM majors looking for jobs in the past decade.

Anyway, starting a startup solely to get in the game/get rich is a losing proposition modulo how connected you are.

My point was the negatives, as a founder, are probably constrained to monetary ones. Which at the end of the day isn't that bad of a deal. It's just money. Which makes it a very well leveraged bet IMO.

I think that's a great point. The time to do this is before you have huge commitments to things like... ummm.... babies... and mortgages.... and spouses....

If you go broke and you know how to code, sell or build product you can recover quickly by parking yourself at Google or Facebook for a year or two.

There is little downside to trying in your 20s UNLESS you go into massive debt (defined as 1-2x your expected yearly salary)

That you for reading the full article and understand my point. I meet with 15-25 founders a week typically, and I can tell you many of the folks I'm meeting with in 2015 are nothing like the folks in the down markets for 2009-2011 and 2001-2005.

In the up market I see all these people rush in "to do a startup," but they are doing it because it's hip or a quick way to make money. They really haven't considered the personal, emotional and professional toll these businesses take on a person. They really think it's going to be funding round after funding round....

Even though I am not keen of the arrogant tone this article carries I have to agree with its message.

I find the space rocket analogy useful: If a rocket goes into the wrong orbit it will never reach its goal.

Most people can't reach what they aspire to no matter what. By the time you are 18, probably even earlier, your potential is fixed. I am not saying you can't start programming in your 30s and become really good at it or that you can't pick up Chinese when you've retired and become fluent in it even though you haven't learnt a foreign language before. But whether or not you can do that is determined way earlier. Be it genes, the social surroundings of your childhood or the quality of the elementary school you went to.

The only way to avoid disappointment on a tremendous scale is figuring out as early as possible what you're good at and then spend most of your time honing your talent.

The funny thing is: people who are talented in a certain way succeed even when they do everything "wrong" according to the "experts" who are revered by all the people who will always suck at what they aspire to. For example, I know an established electronic music producer who constantly bought new gear that he didn't know how to operate. So he sold those items as they (surprise) didn't give him the "pro-sound" and bought some more. Now most experts probably said: "The instrument isn't the important factor. Don't buy any more gear until you've mastered what you've already got." Now, people who don't make it probably would have taken this advice to their heart and 5 years later they'd still not put out a record that somebody would buy. Instead they became some sort of experts themselves who have ridiculous discussion on minor technical details and flame wars in web forums.

People who archive something great possess the right tacit knowledge that others lack in their "ROM", i.e. the stuff you got during the time before your birth and before you leave school.

Sometimes this is true.

And many people are smart and strategic enough to be able to launch successful startups while sacrificing very little personally.

Persistence matters more than personal sacrifice, in my mind.

I'm really not a fan of the "you have to sell your house!" rhetoric. Why is it that in startups, people who do unethical/obviously stupid things in pursuit of a rare chance at possible money are considered desirable?

Is there data that suggests that such people actually found and lead successful startups?

I don't think you have to sell your house. But in a startup, with at least 80% probability, you are going to be faced with a choice along the lines of "Do I sell my house to keep this thing running for another month, and hope it takes off? Or do I kill it now, and write off the last year and all the money I've already lost?"

Note: the 80% probability claim is based on my understanding of the probability of a startup failing.

If your self funding you can do things how ever you want. If you want other people's money you need something special. They need to believe your bullshit is worth more than the money in their pocket. Which means you need to believe in your bullshit more than that. And if it is why wouldn't you be working 90 hours a week to make it happen.

Wow, that was amazingly condescending. "Too many students, not enough teachers" is real, and likely applicable here, but that could have been said in 40 words. And it sure as hell didn't need the air of "I'm God's gift to Silicon Valley."

I don't actually believe I'm God's gift to anyone.... I put my words out there to start conversations with folks. My goal really is to learn every day, which is why I invest in 30-40 startups a year: handing out with folks who are trying to "fix" what's broken in the world makes you really, really smart -- even if you're a C student like myself. :-)

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