Hacker News Reader

Comment by webwright | Hacker News Reader

WHY do you want to do a startup? Because it's fashionable?

Working at a startup is a good goal-- it's a fun work environment with a small tight-knit team.

STARTING a startup should be fueled by either a missionary zeal or a desire to gamble with 2+ years of your life to make a big pile of money (the average time to liquidity for VC backed startups is ~7 years). If you don't have one of those two, I can all but promise you'll burn out and/or get bored.

My advice: wait for an idea/market that you love to pop into your head that you can't ignore. In the meantime, work at a startup for a decent salary (don't sacrifice much salary for options-- it's a sucker's bet).

View on HN

These are good questions...

I want to start a startup because I: - Want to do something I care about, slash it's meaningful to me. I'm tired of realizing other people's ideas. - I want to make important decisions and have responsibility for their repercussions. - I want to create a lifestyle that I'd enjoy more for myself, including not having to be tied to a specific location. - I want to do something 'important' (a relative term, I know). I'm tired of wasting my time and talent on silly projects and bug fixes. - Money is important but not everything. Ideally I'd be earning as much as I do now from my corporate gig but that's not even necessary.

I'm willing to gamble a couple of years of my life, but as I said, I'm not sure what to do/make. I agree that working for options is a sucker's bet, hence leaving a previous startup after working there a year.

Thanks for getting me to clarify this. ~Henry

If you don't have any ideas of your own you should be happy to help others with their ideas until you get yours!

check this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=playe...

Don't "do what you love"... "Love what you do". Aim at something rewarding in autonomy and mastery rather than holding out for a "cause" (if you want to maximize happiness). If you find a cause ("something important") anytime during this process, you can chase that too. But if you look at 100 people who really love what they do with their lives, I think it's surprising how few of those jobs fall into the "something important" bucket.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com