Don’t accelerate your startup

Though it's a thinly veiled jibe at YC, I think it's worth talking about the not so glamorous side of doing startups. This is something that is not given enough attention and a lot of first time founders don't fully understand the risks involved.

Most common reasons people cite for doing a startup (mostly myths):

* Work on hard technical problems. Founders rarely get to do this beyond the infancy of their startup. If this is the goal, you're better off working at Google, FB.

* Have impact on the world. True for a very small number of startups. This is easier to do with an established company with an already existing user base. Eg- Paul Bucheit, who started Gmail at Google.

* Make money. Easier to make a comfortable living working 9-5 for an established co or a startup and hope to cash out. The risk with taking equity in a startup is the liquidity might never come to pass. There is also a new direction that startups are taking : stay private for as long as possible. Big cos like Google, FB offer much better liquidity.

Quoting Dustin Moskovitz : "The only reason to do a startup is because you can't not do it". The quote along with the myths I listed are from Dustin's lecture in How to start a startup.

Downsides of doing a startup:

* Stress. It's universally acknowledged that starting a startup is soul crushing.

* Money. You don't have the luxury of paying yourself handsomely.

* All consuming. You are on call 24/7.

* Best years of your life. Arguably 20s are the prime years of ones life and it sucks to spend it all on a startup that fails.

* Social life. The all consuming nature of startups negatively affects ones social life.

I'm also curious to hear of people's experience post a failed startup. How easy is it to get a job (especially outside the Bay area)? I imagine recruiters won't look at a failed startup experience and a 4-5 year gap from the workplace too positively.

If these are risks you are aware of and are willing to deal with, then startups can be very rewarding.

There is also this myth that the best startups are only from college students or people who just graduated. IIRC even YC mentioned that the average age of a founder is 29-30. The media narrative of startups really needs to take into account the reality, and acknowledge the downsides of startups. Life is almost never like the one shown in "The Social Network".