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Comment by richcollins | Hacker News Reader

Anyone else sick of drawn out human interest stories at the beginning of news articles?

WRT to the article:

Most E.I.R.’s receive a monthly stipend of up to $15,000 to sit and think for about six months.

That is a horrible way to create successful products. Good entrepreneurs take action as much as they deeply ponder ideas.

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Maybe that gives them time to develop an idea into homerun for the VC firm, whereas bootstrap entrepreneurs have to hit singles and doubles at first to survive.

Any anecdotal evidence of this? Most home runs that I know about are from scrappy, resourceful founders that discovered something simple through experimentation that scaled into a huge company.

No. I'm speculating and conjecturing on the intent of a six month EIR tenure.

Doesn't the article give the anecdotal evidence? Data domain and Zimbra are some big number acquisitions. Also, consider the number of companies that VC's are pitched via non-EIR's vs pitched by EIR's, and I would say the numbers are favorable if not equal that an EIR is as good as a scrappy and resourceful founder.

I like to think that hunger and need help drive people to success. If you're making 15K a month, you probably aren't waking up nights struggling with the desperate urge to figure out something profitable.

I know a lawyer who was probably the most driven person I'd ever known, until she graduated law school. Hasn't taken an upwardly-mobile action since she got the job 16 years ago.

My reaction to success is to aim higher, and fire again.

I was going to say that my efforts are uncorrelated to my wallet, but I don't think that's true; I think they're inversely correlated.

I hate to cite a second anecdote as rebuttal, but I don't have any controlled studies available :-)

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