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Comment by toast76 | Hacker News Reader

Wow. The Thanksgiving parade was last week Mr. Raincloud.

Here's some positive thoughts for you!

- Running your own business is quite simply the most rewarding thing you can ever do (professionally at least). - Succeed or fail, you'll come out of it better off than you started. - Don't measure your success by whether TechCrunch writes about you. Measure it by being proud of what you achieve. - Even your biggest failures are at worst just one learning step to your first success. - If nobody has heard of you in 10 years time, but you're happy, enjoying your work, have a happy and healthy family and you're still your own boss...then you've succeeded. Congratulations.

Most importantly - Ignore "minimum viability", "traction", "iteration", "deadline" and all the other things a dozen different "5 steps to success" books might tell you.... if you have the confidence to go it alone, then do what works for you, YOUR product and YOUR dream.

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"Succeed or fail, you'll come out of it better off than you started."

About half of the comments I read so far have said something to this effect so far, there's only so much a man can take before he needs to speak up ;) : this is bullshit. I know many (as in, 10+) people who started a company and got utterly fucked for the next decade, maybe two, because of its failure; and all they have to show for it is a period on their CV that they have to make excuses for at any interview they go to.

Sometimes, failing can bring you valuable experiences that you can apply afterward, and only if you go into a specific direction as an employee after your business has failed. This hippy bullshit 'all is great, even if your wife leaves you, you're 100k in debt and you've spend the best decade of your life not even in an office but in a spare bedroom hunched over a desk made of an old door' needs to go and be replaced with realism: spending 5 to 10 years in abject poverty, rebuilding a life at an age where most of your peers are living a happy life with their families sucks.

The potential upside is huge, and yes if you just manage to sustain your company you've been successful, but don't make it sound like it's going to be great no matter what the outcome, because it's not.

Part of being an entrepreneur is knowing when to change directions or abandon an idea all together. Spending a decade on an idea that is not working and won't possibly work is not all that smart.

This type of life is definitely not for everybody.

The fact that you know people who have failed also doesn't mean anything. I know a lot of people who haven't even tried and that, to me, is a lot worse.

Spending 10 years chasing one pipe dream after the next isn't smart, either. My point is that 'doing it' or 'not doing it' are not inherently smart, brave or whatever. "It Depends"(TM) on the circumstances. The sweeping generalizations about how great the entrepreneurial life is that are made here are unwarranted.

"The fact that you know people who have failed also doesn't mean anything."

Of course not, it's just anecdotal. But it does disprove the notion (your notion even, maybe) that no matter what happens, if you start your own business you're always going to be better off.

"I know a lot of people who haven't even tried and that, to me, is a lot worse."

Depends. If whatever they'd like to try (assuming they'd even like to) is not going to work, they're better off not doing it. Obviously there's no way to knowing up front if something is going to work or not. Still, being realistic about your prospects and deciding that objectively and realistically you're better off not trying, then that's a valid and honorable decision.

  I know many (as in, 10+) people who started a company and 
  got utterly fucked for the next decade, maybe two, 
  because of its failure; and all they have to show for it 
  is a period on their CV that they have to make excuses 
  for at any interview they go to.

Why make excuses? Talking about that experience opens the door to discussing just how well suited you are for the job you're interviewing for.

Q: I see on your resume you spent ten years at example.com which does not seem to exist any more. Tell me about that.

A: Starting up example.com was an amazing experience. After ___ years at ______ company I decided that I really wanted to try starting and running my own company. [Overview of the main ideas and pivots of the various things he tried].

Unfortunately I learned that I just not strong at some critical business skills like ______ and _____ though I did hone my ______ and _____ skillset [where these two are relevant to the job you're interviewing for].

Could backfire you. There's no guarantee that this is a home-run to get a job. Keep that in mind that the world is not "ideal".

At least they know you're not likely to leave to start your own business ...

The point of my comment was not to say, "hey everything's going to be great! Throw your money away, you CAN'T lose"

The point was to counter the negativity of the GP with some positive thoughts.

Being positive doesn't mean to ignore risks, or to turn a blind eye to consequences, it means starting off with the belief that you can succeed.

> I know many (as in, 10+) people who started a company and got utterly fucked for the next decade, maybe two, because of its failure

Really? That's odd.

Sounds like they didn't know what they were doing.

Did they by any chance spend a lot of money in a field they didn't know anything about and just hoped somehow it will magically work?

Yea, if you're non-technical and you think you can build a product by hiring 10 developers and 4 product managers at 100k/year each, of course you will get utterly fucked.

Maybe I should've been more explicit since on here it's reasonable to think of 'tech startup' when one mentions 'business', but I meant in all sorts of businesses - actually the tech scene is very small here, and even then it's mostly IT services or web development (i.e., mo product development); I don't know anyone who had a failed business in that field and was seriously affected by it.

When you start for example a plumbing company or whatever and you buy 25k worth of tools and a lease contract on a van, and it fails and you need to take a job afterwards, on a employee plumber's salary that 25k is huge, enough to make your and your families life miserable.

I agree that for tech companies, the situation is usually not as precarious - if you have the skills to start a company like this, or even if you don't but almost do, you can get a fairly well-paying job and not be as affected. In those cases you would presumably get proper legal and accounting advise and shield personal money from the business liabilities but many businesses start as sole proprietorships and are very vulnerable to even small setbacks.

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