That could be because we prefer startups whose founders include hackers. On the other hand, we don't just prefer that type because they're more fun to hang around with, but because in our opinion they're more likely to succeed.
It sounds charming to be a vintner, writer, film producer, or my personal favorite, travel the world care-free once you have enough money but I'm honestly not sure there's more to it than the charm of it. Time and resources aren't that short that we cannot do what we want to (even if it means in a limited manner) in the present. I have a friend who wants to become a writer (he writes very well, too) but in the mean time wants to make a lot of money by being a Fx Quant so he can "retire" to write full-time. I can't help but think that he is mistaking what it means to be a writer to the idyllic charm of the idea.
My field of view might be limited but I don't know of even half a dozen people who went on to do drastically different things after getting rich, so to speak. They continued doing what they did before, the only difference being that they now had the means that afforded them more diverse experiences. In fact, just recently one of the ten richest men in my city came back to my division to run it after a hiatus of ten years. He is past 60, owns a vineyard, and enough money to outlast five generations. At this age, he comes back to the challenge but grind of trying to turn around a division's fortunes.
The purpose I think comes from industriousness, not in bumming around from one fleeting interest to another because you have money.
I think this is true for those folks who are putting these things off... if you don't enjoy it enough to do it today, there's a good chance that you only find it "charming" in the abstract.
I'm not a vintner or a writer... but I brew beer and I write software for fun, and I garden and cook and all of these things... on top of my day job and my startup. They aren't just charming to me, these are things I love, and I'm excited about replacing my day job with more of that stuff as my startup starts to earn a profit.
A friend of mine's private dream is to quit the IT business entirely and go raise sheep in NZ. He may truly be a country boy at heart, but there's little stopping him from doing it now… it's just an escapist fantasy.
I always wonder if people who claim to want to travel the world have ever actually done enough travel to know how brutal it can be to, in fact, travel the world. I spent 9.5 weeks traveling around the world last year and it just about killed me.
Most people can't separate "feeling an impulse to do something" and "knowing it's the real deal for the rest of your life." My husband is one of those types who always wants to move to wherever we're vacationing, but since they're usually backwaters, I know for a fact he'd end up miserable. It's just that they feel good because they're away from obligations. (The real thing is that he doesn't enjoy the work he's doing but he's not ready to admit it to himself yet!)
The travel is even more so. I'd taken vacations before, but always came back wishing I had 1 or 2 more weeks more. With a day job, it was hell asking for 5 weeks or so. Now, I just go. And I no longer come back wishing I had another 2 week. The indignity of having to ask for permission always annoyed me, but I didn't realize how annoying it was until I didn't have to ask.
Ultimately, I think you have to ask what it is that drives you. Some people like being bosses and being able to lord it over their underlings. Those people will never retire, and they shouldn't. Their self-worth is dependent entirely on other people being subservient to them and their goals. But many INTJ types (especially engineers) don't have self-worth tied to the opinions of other people. Such people historically do very well in retirement, and retirement is not a bad goal for them: http://retireearlyhomepage.com/mbti.html
Why not just take the direct route?
and how do you suppose we do that?
Freedom to me means:
1) not having to work for anyone 2) having enough time to do what I want 3) traveling around the world
You need money to do all of these. To get money, you need to create something that people are willing to pay for, which takes some sacrifices.
You are sacrificing some time and freedom now for complete freedom later.
I suppose I could live in a cardboard box on the side of the road and quit my job, but I don't think it would be a very nice existence.
Having enough money to quit your job, buy a nice house, support a family, and travel is the ultimate freedom. You don't have to answer to anyone.
You may be happy with much less, and that's your choice. This is my definition of freedom. It's also why I am working on my own company.
The money isn't even the point. If I could get all of the above for free, I would do it (who wouldn't?). It's what the money provides.
Ahh, but there's the rub. What good is a nice house and a family if you live at the office and devote every waking moment to your startup?
I think those things are nice too. My point is that there are a lot of people who have a house, a loving family, and travel, who are not rich. If that is really your goal, sacrificing your happiness, health and sanity in pursuit of FU startup money is a pretty circuitous way of attaining it.
You don't need to devote every waking moment to a startup to be successful. I devote lots of my time right now only because I am also working a day job. Once I am making enough money and I quit my job, I could easily run it during the day.
I value my free time more than anything. If I was just going to trade in one office slave job for another, I wouldn't even bother.
I would also rather spend my life working on my own projects than be forced to make someone else rich. Have you ever had to implement ridiculous features or work until 10 o'clock (unpaid) because your manager or boss decided at the last minute that something needed to be changed?
"I think those things are nice too. My point is that there are a lot of people who have a house, a loving family, and travel, who are not rich."
What is "rich" to you? It's a relative term.
"If that is really your goal, sacrificing your happiness, health and sanity in pursuit of FU startup money is a pretty circuitous way of attaining it."
When did sanity come into the discussion? I love working on my business. Programming is a passion of mine. I am also pretty healthy. I exercise every day (biking, jogging, and/or lifting weights). I also sleep around 8 hours a night and try to eat a healthy diet.
It's also not a permanent sacrifice. It's only until things get to a level where I can hire other people and or quit my job. School is a 4+ year sacrifice. What's the difference?
Negative freedom, freedom from having to do things you don't want, can be had by quitting your job and living in a cardboard box. Don't want to go to work? That's cool, you can just sit in your box, or go for a walk, or whatever.
Positive freedom, on the other hand, can really only be had in this society by accumulating money. If you want to buy a house, support a family and travel, then you need to have the cash to do so.
Of course, if you get enough money, then you can have both. The converse isn't true. But that's difficult to do, and it certainly is a gamble. I think you and the OP just have a different idea of where it's desirable to be on the continuum from -ve to +ve.
I'm halfway through Harry Browne's "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World" (recommended by someone on HN) and he has an interesting definition of freedom. Freedom is spending more time seeking pleasure than avoiding pain.
I'm paraphrasing, but I think that's the gist of his definition. Good book.
Very interesting definition. Thanks for sharing that.
It vaguely reminds me of Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom, in which he explores how the right to certain opportunities may be as essential to freedom as the right to property.
The connection may only be superficial, but that was a good book too. (Sen was a Nobel Prize winner.)
When has it ever not been? In pre-modern society people still used some for of currency to obtain things. You could technically live a "free" life without money, but your existence would be even worse than it is now.
Apparently, when asked how he does it, the brother quipped, "Most people are too stupid to be poor."
No, for the chance of complete freedom later.
3. Living on the road is no more expensive than living anywhere else. Less usually, since there's no rent or car payment involved. I can live large in Thailand for $500/month.
2. Living on the beach, I once calculated that I needed to bill one day per month to break even. Anything above that went into savings. That leaves 29 days a month to do whatever you like.
1. During those 29 days per month, I work for either a.) myself or b.) nobody. Maybe once a year I'll take a short contract, pull in 20k or whatever, and repeat for another year.
And that's just the level of effort needed for subsistence. Any money earned above that goes straight in to the "retirement" fund, in quotes because frankly I consider myself retired today.
When I say "travel", I mean living in other countries for extended periods of time, which as you pointed out, is cheaper than living in many cities in the US.
" Any money earned above that goes straight in to the "retirement" fund, in quotes because frankly I consider myself retired today."
so..are you wealthy or not? It sounds like you are agreeing with me.
When you return "home", wherever that may be, do you find yourself treated distantly by friends and family? My sister did the world traveling thing for years and though she did send postcards - we found it hard to share the same feeling of excitement for her travels as she did. She is back home now and starting her own family.
What is it like when you return home?
It sounds interesting for someone in your kind of situation, but there's a lot of assumptions that are not universals: being fairly rich (or having skills worth a lot) off the start, being limited to cheap countries (the parent poster talked about going around the world, which sounds a lot more expensive than and quite different from staying on a beach in Thailand), having skills that can be applied via teleworking and short contracts, etc.
Being free and being broke is what I think his direct route is. You can say that the pan handlers have more or less freedom than a business owner, depends on how you define the words.
In many ways intellectual freedom can only be found once material mastery has been achieved. There are a few famous examples from history that say otherwise, like Diogenes, but I doubt you're at his level. I also doubt you really believe in what you're saying, otherwise you would go straight to "abandoning" instead of posting on Hacker News.
I would argue that there is a threshold for this material mastery. I don't think is necessary for it to be exorbitantly rich. I can look at researchers who enjoy their work, and are working on problems interesting to them. They usually don't have a big monetary profit. Just a thought
How remote the chances are of making money from a startup depend on the person. The probability ranges from a snowball's chance in hell to maybe 90% in the case of someone like Bill Gates. (He was not necessarily going to be the richest man of all, but the likelihood of him not even making enough to be independently wealthy was pretty small.) I can't tell what the chances would be in your case without meeting you, but certainly there are some people for whom starting a startup is a reasonable gamble.
It definitely wouldn't take decades to find out. When startups fail they usually fail in less than 2 years.
At the expense of what family? The hypothetical one which I am purposely not creating? I'm glad that it's worked out well for you (really), but you need to recognize that, contrary to what people want to believe, parenthood and happiness are not synonymous. You look at my life and see empty houses (nevermind that I live with a bunch of fun, like-minded people); I look at yours and see sleep deprivation, debt, stress, loss of the ability to travel and develop myself personally--basically the end of everything I enjoy. Other than conventional wisdom, is there anything to suggest that your life is "immense and awesome", while mine must be empty and sad? For my part, I see a litany of studies suggesting that people like me are, on average, actually a lot happier (http://nymag.com/news/features/67024/).
I would never be so smug as to insinuate that you made the wrong choice. But it's not your place to make face_plains at me, either.
If you were to marry and have kids, you would likely argue the same points about it being the greatest experience of your life. However, you would only feel that way because your memory of your past bachelor life would be distorted by the joy that your new settled life has brought you.
So I think you're both right. :)
Live frugally and work on projects we love.
Develop an idea into a valuable tech business and get rich.
Or work at a regular job and make modest but secure income.
Our level of happiness will be relative to our current life, warping our history to match.
I can see many potential life threads for myself going forward. Most include a family because I'm married and both of us wish to have children. All of them include struggling to build a valuable tech company by solving a pressing need. Making enough money to survive in the meantime is a given (part time work), I can't imagine not paying the bills.
I take comfort in the fact that my personal success is independent of the happiness I can bring to and receive from my family, as long as my restless ambition doesn't become a burden on them. Life feels so short and ephemeral, 36 years have come and gone in the blink of an eye. At other times I feel ancient and have forgotten more than I'll ever learn from here on out.
You can have a very happy life with or without children. My wife and I waited until our late 30's to have our daughter. We were happy before and we're happy now. If we decided not to have a child we would have been happy. Your list of downsides to having a family are accurate with the exception of "develop myself personally". It depends on what you mean by developing yourself. If you mean being able to study interesting subjects, e.g. take foreign language classes/study cooking/etc., then there's some truth to it. With a child, you have to pick and choose what you study based on having a less flexible schedule. But, developing oneself isn't limited to that. My daughter causes me to learn patience, empathy, and selflessness far beyond what I could have learned without her. It's a matter of not having a choice to do otherwise.
As for the other side of developing oneself, she and I will be studying martial arts and piano together. Not bad.
Enjoy your life whatever your choice. You're the only one in control of your happiness.
It's not impossible, it's just adding another degree of difficulty. I did exactly this in the second half of my twenties. Working on my projects, doing consulting when I had to to support myself and my family. I believe the impetus that drives "family men" to seek shelter in a "normal" job can also drive you to be relentless in making your startup work. More skin in the game.
Also, team comes into play here. Personally. I know that if I wouldn't have had such a wonderful and supporting partner at home, the startup issue would have been a non-starter.
Team first =)
Was the Mexican fisherman toiling away on a fishing boat so he could become rich so he could have the freedom to spend his days fishing?
http://pitchfevermusicacademy.blogspot.com/2008/06/great-sto...
Basically, a businessman runs into a fisherman by the beach and is telling him how he should get a boat, a fleet, put in hard work to make a lot of money and then he can retire, take it easy, go fishing for a couple hours each day, etc. Then the fisherman says "Isn't that what I'm doing now?"
Being successful is vague. If your goal is to be happy rather than rich, your requirements are much simpler.
If the fisherman is already fishing and selling his fish to earn a living..isn't he already in business for himself? If he can save enough for retirement, than I see his point. If not, it's going to be pretty rough for him when he gets to an age when he wants to quit. If he had enough money, he could also move onto something else if he ever got bored of fishing.
Fishing for fun is also different than fishing for a living.
Money doesn't make you happy. It opens many more doors that can lead to happiness.
The moral of the story is to pursue happiness over extreme financial success at the expense of happiness.
The story also acts against the deferred life plan. Many people endure things they hate in order to make a lot of money. In most cases, this is probably a bad thing... especially when there are better alternatives.
I put it up on my domain a while ago because I liked it a lot. Maybe it will be useful for once.
We are human being living in a commercial society. Money is essential for us to survive. And for most people, a modest level of success is essential for happiness.
I think the right approach is to strike for goals which have dual rewards: material and spiritual. Do things you love. If money doesn't come, also do things bringing in money.
http://www.brefigroup.co.uk/resources/view_product.do?produc...
The main flaw is that it ignores the massive amount of wealth created by scaling up the fishing operation. The fisherman could've made a much greater contribution to the world by listening to the investment banker. We are all morally obligated to make enough money to buy a yacht with a flag saying, "Chillin' the most" and to subsequently rock that bitch up and down the coast.
1.) We are hardwired to want things to attract mates. 2.) Power, Success, Prestige, Freedom, etc. are attractive. 3.) We want things that are derivative of such things, even if we consciously believe we want to benefit humanity, think it's, fun etc.
Conclusion: The mind has a way of aligning our conscious interests with our subconscious procreative ones. We need to recognize this, but we don't need to embrace the appetitive.
A peacock my really feel that it has passion for dance this need to "express itself"( immediate causation )..but to an outside human observer all it is doing is attracting peahens ( ultimate causation)
These base needs make us want to gain advantage in mating, but also in things like independence - which give us a higher likelihood of survival (i.e. controlling how to fulfill our base needs, reproduce, not be killed by others, etc.).
There are many things for which the evolutionary cause is not obvious to us, but it doesn't make sense that there would just be lots of random truly superfluous aspects to us.
Sure it does. Look at our appendix. Look at all the diseases out there--almost every person has at least one almost-certainly non-advantageous yet obvious ailment. One can speculate that it would be advantageous in scenario A or situation B, but that's all it is, is speculation. Maybe something we have now was advantageous 5000 years ago, but we don't necessarily know why, nor is it useful to describe modern behavior in such terms.
While certainly not a panecea, such strong drives as success, power, etc. that we're discussing are in no way accidental such as optical illusions and the like. To make an argument like this is to misunderstand evolution entirely.
First you say this. Then you say this:
> Random mutations are [...]
See, you're arguing semantics. Yes, evolutionary pressures force natural selection, extracting order out of the fundamental randomness, but the mutations of evolution are random. My point is we don't know which pressures forced which particular traits, so to draw specific conclusions about modern behavior based on evolutionary psychology is more in the realm of speculation than actual science. It's all so much guessing and assumption.
On the other hand I fear that I'm underestimating how much I need. Because the macroeconomy will be more challenging in the future than it has been in the past. And because we're often competing financially with our closest peers. If more people have successful startups in the bay area the price of housing and everything else will go up. National inflation matters less than regional inflation.
We know the rewards of living in a big city. But the cost of living in a big city grows over time, and faster than one thinks. Like the red queen, you end up having to run at some speed just to stay in the same place.
The only time I think about the money is when I read someone on here mentioning it, but it quickly fades.
Otherwise, all I think about is being able to work on anything I want and starting my own company. Nothing seems cooler than that in my opinion. Besides, if you want bragging rights, how many people can say they started their own company?
Isn't the whole point of doing a startup, to be able to work on what you want? Surely creating a profitable startup gives you that freedom to do what you like?
Then again, it's probably not considered a startup anymore at that point.
The actual act of founding a company can result in you working for it or running it, sometimes one after the other. This transition is as key as the work itself. The traditional method is to sell, taking a lump sum buyout and outsourcing the entire operation to someone else forever. That gives you the base from which you can take a month or more to build robot spiders.
Other methods also exist, most popular being to outsource a lot of operation functions and automate others, but still retain control. This happens a lot in many organizations, not just tech startups.
This provides enough freedom to build robot spiders and work on your company at the same time; retaining the investment for the long term, presumably because it is something you actually enjoy doing. Tim Ferris is the extreme example here, 37Signals a more realistic one.
If you are slaving away "working" for your own company as a long term solution, you are doing it wrong. You may as well go find a corporate job and pile up the pension.
I thought I'd need 10m+ to do this, but over time I'm gradually acquiring everything I need due to places like sparkfun, ebay and alibaba for little more than the cost of an average car.
I'm inventing every day (5-6days software, weekends building random projects), learning more than I ever thought possible and loving every minute.
My point is that if this is anything like your dream, it's readily doable now as the cost of doing science is extremely cheap these days. And I've found that productivity increases when I take a break from software in the weekends and do some wet/hard projects.
That's why I'm forcing myself to finish a book before my next startup. It's matter of self-respect.
She is saying that ideas are powerful, and internalizing the wrong ones can cause damage.
I recently saw pg give an interview wherein he discussed how much more Y Combinator focuses on who the founders are rather than what the idea is. This is a great start, and I think there is a lot of fertile ground that can really be developed into a powerful message that will reach many young people.
When I dream of 'winning the lottery', I don't dream of laying on sandy beaches. I dream of starting a new start up, knowing that I can have enough FU money to take risks and make it great.
But if I ever become extraordinarily wealthy, my first purchase will be a private jet, and I will explore as much as I possibly can before I die.
EDIT: didn't mean -in style- in a negative manner. There are probably only a few thousand people in this world who own private jets - ridiculously low odds. So why put it off? That was my only point.
If you live in the western world with a modest living, you can afford to take a few vacations here and there to neat places. But I would have to be rich to telecommute during the week from Venice, Peru, Japan, New Zealand, Lebanon, France, and and on alternating weekends see my little brother's Piano recitals in Boston, and visit my girlfriend in India.
Maybe I would discover that that life isn't so great, but I would like to see first hand. And I think you made some unfair assumptions about my point.
If you want to just travel and see the world, though, you can do it considerably more cheaply, and no, not just as "take a few vacations". You can travel through Europe for 6 months on Airbnb and train/bus tickets for a few tens of $k, not millions. You can drive around the United States (which has tons of amazing things most people have not seen, especially if you like nature) for even less money. You can spend a year in India for very little money, especially if you meet a few locals to help out making arrangements. Etc. It doesn't even have to be bohemian backpacker style: all you have to do is get slightly off the tourist/resort circuit and costs go down hugely in many parts of the world.
I guess it might depend on what kind of trips you find appealing. To me, flying to Paris for a weekend is a really terrible way to travel, but if that's your ideal sort of vacationing, then I can see the considerations would be different. For me, time rather than money is by far the bottleneck in why I don't do more of the traveling I'd like to do. Of course, that implies money a bit (one reason for not having time is working), but a different magnitude of money than "private jet" type of money.
You are of course absolutely right - if what you're after is the resort hotel experience, jet-setting around the world, fine-dining and boutique shopping then yes, you do need to be exceedingly wealthy.
But IMHO travel is so much more meaningful than that, and in fact I don't see much of a point to the jet-set lifestyle at all. A trendy nightclub in Shanghai is going to be largely similar to a trendy nightclub in NYC; you will many of the same boutiques on a chic street in Paris as you would in London.
IMHO the point of travel is to experience the uniqueness a place has to offer - and to do so you cannot ignore the people who inhabit such a space. Largely, they are not rich and wealthy, and living the rich and wealthy jet-set lifestyle is essentially a barrier to meeting, interacting with, and getting to know them.
It is consistently surprising and disappointing to me that the upper classes in our society try so very hard to emulate the bohemian way of life, when it is so very easily in reach for just about everyone.
As you travel, you slowly get friends around the world who are doing amazing things you'd like to see. I wish I could see my grandmother back in Boston right now, go to my best friend's birthday party in Los Angeles, visit Beijing to catch up with a couple old friends and talk business, and also be here in Vietnam for a couple weeks, also doing some business and adventuring with great people.
I have traveled the world slumming it. It's great, it's awesome. But as you do it, actually, the jet-setting lifestyle becomes more appealing, not less. I wish I had the freedom of action and mobility to be where I want without regard to money. Well, I'm working on that right now, actually. Well, not right now, I'm screwing off on HN right now, so umm, back to work for me :)
That, and the jet-setting lifestyle would alienate me from friends and family: if I were the type of person who flew in to Greece for a 3-day weekend, I would no longer be one of them.
I think that's part of the point - "real" traveling involves seeing the unique aspects of the place you're in. The nouveau riche jet-set lifestyle isn't really optimal for that (or maybe it's just sour grapes from me) :P
To your point, I would love to visit my family in India a few times a year, if it was within my means. At times, I've wanted to just take off to exotic locations for the weekend. But oh well. I still travel internationally to my heart's content once or twice a year.
http://earlyretirementextreme.com/travel-is-not-worth-it.htm...
There's no way I would give up travel. If you think travel sucks, you're doing it wrong.
The Gates Foundation, worthy as it is, was something he only realized he wanted after he had achieved everything he'd thought he wanted, matured, and realized it wasn't really important.
Honestly, that's probably a better description of Zuck than it is Gates. If Bill Gates' goal was to get rich and fuck women, I doubt he'd have settled down so quickly with another coder who worked in his company.
You know, more like supermodels and actresses and such.
Gates founded Micro-Soft in 1976. He married Melinda French in 1994, 18 years later. She was a manager, not a technical lead, and she was primarily working on "information products" like Encarta, not software products.
However, I agree that it's unlikely that getting a date was his motive.
I can't say for sure what Gates had in mind, but I can extrapolate from the few cases I do know about (myself and other entreprenurial-minded friends). The reasons vary, but I for one am definitely in this to make money for the power to do more important work later.
I honestly don't understand this. To me, this is no different than the arguments elsewhere in this discussion about needing money to "travel". Why do you need money "to make a difference"? I don't have money but I run a website that makes a difference. The number of people it reaches is currently small. I have thought about it and I don't think throwing money at the problem would do any real good. If I thought throwing money at the problem would work, I would be trying to start a foundation and raise the money to throw it at the problem. But I really think the current model of throwing money at the problem is part of the problem, not likely part of the solution.
Gates said something once like "Automating an efficient system multiplies the efficiencies and automating an inefficient system multiplies the inefficiencies." I think throwing money at a problem does the same thing. If the solution you have isn't really that good, more of it may make a bigger "difference" but not of the sort I want to see in the world.
You "make a difference" every day of your life. What kind of difference are you making today? And if it is not something you think is worthwhile, why put off "making a difference" until some mythical time when you have more money?
Sincere questions, not in any way intended to bust you.
Peace.