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Comment by amorphid | Hacker News Reader

Can confirm. Tried startup. Worked hard. Ran out of money. Ended up homeless. It sucked.

Same here.

Also would add a compounding series of negative results including depression, being almost shadow-banned from the business due to lack of optimism (no joke), then alcohol problems etc

I'd take a bet there are many many others on HN that can attest to this outcome, but lurk due to shame or emotional pain. Losing everything because of misjudgment is not an easy thing to admit to publicly, especially in a community so warped with the cult of survivor bias

Yeah, the downward spiral towards being on the rocks was just as bad, if not worse, than being homeless. Watching your bank account dry up is not fun. Coming to the realization that your friends and family can't, or won't, be able to catch you when you hit bottom is pretty sobering. Not having the skills necessary to negotiate not having a place to live is terrifying. It's weird getting to the point where you might not even be able to pay for your cell phone bill. And being depressed is, well, depressing. I have no intention of ever reliving that experience.

I've worked for two failed early startups. Gained a lot of knowledge in a short period of time, wore a lot of hats, did work I was passionate about, but also stressed out about making the right decisions or the company could shut down (the final decisions were made by the management, but I had influence over their decisions), extremely long hours, no social life, rapidly deteriorating health, screwed up my finances, etc.

But I'm a few years away from it now, and I don't mind admitting it. The startups failed for reasons outside of me for the most part (although it feels a little funny knowing you're at least partially responsible for a company losing two million dollars), and I don't regret having that experience.

If anything, working for a corporation again and working on stuff I'm not too passionate about makes me itch for going back to a small company again, but I still need the stability to get my finances back in order and start losing the weight I put on during that time, plus I have a social life now, which is hard to give all that up for someone else's 'grand vision'.

As for misjudgment, from my experience, a lot of the "bad decisions" made in those startups actually made sense at the time and with the information available at the time of the decision. It was only with the benefit of hindsight and perspective that you can see why ultimately they were bad decisions.

Really sorry to hear that. I didn't wind up homeless (thankfully) when I did it, but I burned through a good portion of my life savings (20+ years worth.) I'm going to write about it at some point, but the short version is that if you don't have any family or anything similar to fall back on other than your savings, you'd better be very sure your idea is a winner in advance (not exactly trivial.) We all know about the magical exceptions, but most of us aren't in a position to take risks like that without losing most or all of what we have, and that fact sucks. People (especially younger ones) are more risk averse for good reason:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-slow-death-of-americ...

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/05/29/chart-of-the-day-m...

Not alone

Made my startup worked hard. Got contracts. Customers forgot to pay. It sucked.

And in my country it was normal. It was not Africa. It was France.

Big corporations do whatever the fuck want even if it is illegal. Trades dispute are regulated by "peers" tribunal dating from middle age that are crooked.

And newspapers, teachers and politics that never had a job were pointing fingers randomly at problems.

This is why I don't like B2B much; a monolith company can randomly decide to pay 5-10 months late and no one bats an eye because that's the normal thing to do for a company of that size, small entrepreneurs that are barely making it be damned.

Small startups can leverage a factoring company to handle A/R and do risk assessment for lines of credit with customers before doing work. Definitely a worthwhile service to leverage if you do B2B.

Oh yes.

The short list/affacturation scam. Software can only support safely at most 10 providers ... for RA.. facturing ... limitations.

Thus I had between 1 and 4 mans in the middle for the purpose of "factoring, risks assessments" and shits.

I usually was paid 300€ to 400€ / days when customers were billed between 1000€ and more. Each companies adding delays and free to use and recycle my specs, my codes, my works to compete against me next time. Added value : negative.

Have you ever been 38 yo, back at your mum's place, honoring a contract and eating ramen while waiting 18 months for the magic of "affacturation" to work and discovering that the men in the middle are now making money from YOUR creation ?

Fuck rotten so called capitalism.

Only the kids born rich gets the money and they scam people like me to have the job done.

This business is very close to both scam and extortion.

B2B is fine so long as you retain some leveragee.

A common form of leverage is a contractual "switch" with SaaS. If your service if valuable, they pay on time, otherwise you turn off their service (after suitable warning procedures).

There's been something related in the UK recently - Tesco not paying their suppliers.

"...dating from middle age..."

I've been noticing increasingly, while technology is buzzing ahead, just how many mechanisms and interactions in society are unbelievably outdated. Is this what sociologists are supposed to be advancing? What are they doing?

That's different though - Tesco needs those suppliers, and the suppliers can boycott Tesco for not paying up, which would cause them to go down very quickly.

No, Tesco can just buy it from someone else (or even import it at a loss) and good luck staying afloat when 80% of your business just went elsewhere.

They are too busy with the low hanging fruit of demanding political correctness.

I know this will look like SciFi dystopia. But it is real:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribunal_de_commerce_%28France...

Basically it is the most influential traders from your vicinity that decides how to settle your dispute.

Being judge and stake holder, what a nice idea of the independence of the justice. Bankruptcy in our country is being fed to vultures stripping you down to the core and making money out of your misery. Business in France requires way more bigger balls than in USA.

This joke is around untouched since 500 years. 2 times older than USA constitution. And socialist and liberal alike don't want to touch that.

EDIT: France is traditionally built on big corporations. Consular justice favors the most influential companies, that are often "represented" at the national assembly or founding politics. Not all "national" companies are equal. My great great grandfather was was shamed publicly in 1900 for having one of his employee presenting himself and him giving 5francs to the "société pour l'amitié franco allemande" and considered a dirty "fritz" working for the schleues. Big corporations are dynasty built (like Gates fortune and other US big corporations) but the catholic french long lineage dynasties are a tad more equal than the others.

Irony part of my family was protestant and being sacked from france in 1750. They tried to come back after some persecutions, and they almost all fled to the USA after 1900. Basically my family is consistently emigrating since 350 years.

So I am too like my family before a refugee of some kind and we have a tradition to build back our fortune. But actual immigration laws are a pain in the ass in every countries for business men with nothing but "know how" and no capitals. Emigrants are more and more second rank citizens nowadays in every countries.

Sorry to hear it. Have you written about your experience anywhere?

I haven't written about it in detail, no. It's been long enough that it doesn't hurt when I think about it anymore. Maybe I'll jot some words down and share with them y'all.

I would also be interested about your story, what was it about ?

The short version is that I got hit pretty hard in 2008 when the economy melted down. I was working as a tech recruiter for startups, and I was being referred around by a few venture capitalists. When the VCs stopped investing, their portfolio companies stopped hiring, and my income dried up pretty quickly.

Being a savvy and sensible business person, and thinking that I had a surefire idea that was guaranteed to work, I took the money I'd set aside for taxes and seed funded my startup. I learned along the way that building software is hard, expensive, and that my idea wasn't something I could easily execute on.

I did bounce back, and now I'm a full time developer with a healthy appreciation for what it actually takes to get a company off the ground :)

take it easy, my friend. startup life isn't for everyone. do something that makes you happy.

Your comment makes it sound like "this wasn't a good fit" for him, or he did something wrong.

I'd posit that running out of money and being homeless is not just not for everyone, it's not for anyone.

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