Ask HN: How many entrepreneurs out there are really passionate? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How many entrepreneurs out there are really passionate?

25 pointsfapi197434 comments

I have a confession to make: I've worked on several ideas, and I'm not completely insanely passionate about them. But I love being an entrepreneur! I work on ideas because I think they are good ideas and it is exciting to try and make my vision a reality. I mean, I don't care about enterprise software or online video <i>that</i> much - but is that really so bad? Isn't it enough to like working for yourself in a great group and strive for success, and have your passions not be your job? I also find it strange how many entrepreneurs <i>happen</i> to be passionate about, say, group commerce these days. Really?

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In my experience, business use of the word "passion" is nearly always code for something better said in other ways (if one is to be plain spoken). Some examples:

1) Entrepreneur Joe might have a good idea for a business but "Joe lacks passion" is code for an intuitive hunch that Joe is going to flake out and get distracted.

2) Alice might need something (investment, a business deal, etc.) and "Alice is passionate about this" is code for "Alice is completely screwed without this deal. She is highly motivated to perform. We've got her by the balls, so to speak."

3) Martin might have a great idea and the drive to do the technical work, but "Martin lacks passion" is code for "Martin can't dazzle people into uncritically buying from him." (This is part of the "passion is contagious" bs meme.)

4) Kate might have a start-up idea that looks great on paper, but it would require her to really drive a few initial employees very hard. "Kate lacks passion" is code for the hunch that Kate is not sufficiently sociopathic to abuse employees into a submission that is against their own best interests.

People in tech business circles use the word "passion" with about as much care as they use the word "fantastic". As a first approximation, it means "uh... I thought I was supposed to be making some noise or other just now and that word is what came out of my mouth".

The context in which I find the ambiguity most apparent is when it's related to someone's motivation for being involved in a project. While it's clear that some people are motivated by the subject of their work - I think they are few and lucky.

Hugh MacLeod's legendary "How To Be Creative" article had a great point which is meant mainly for artists, but I think applies to entrepreneurs as well, at least when you talk about passion.

Don’t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.

See no.24 - http://changethis.com/manifesto/6.HowToBeCreative/pdf/6.HowT...

Sorry the blog post seems to have disappeared, all I could find was the PDF.

It is so good, I must quote all of it:

Don’t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.

Inspiration precedes the desire to create, not the other way around.

One of the reasons I got into drawing cartoons on the back of business cards was I could carry them around with me. Living downtown, you spend a lot of time walking around the place. I wanted an art form that was perfect for that.

So if I was walking down the street and I suddenly got hit with the itch to draw something, I could just nip over to the nearest park bench or coffee shop, pull out a blank card from my bag and get busy doing my thing. Seamless. Effortless. No fuss. I like it.

Before, when I was doing larger works, every time I got an idea while walking down the street Iʼd have to quit what I was doing and schlep back to my studio while the inspiration was still buzzing around in my head. Nine times out of ten the inspired moment would have passed by the time I got back, rendering the whole exercise futile. Sure, Iʼd get drawing anyway, but it always seemed I was drawing a memory, not something happening at that very moment.

If youʼre arranging your life in such a way that you need to make a lot of fuss between feeling the itch and getting to work, youʼre putting the cart before the horse. Youʼre probably creating a lot of counterproductive “Me, The Artist, I must create, I must leave something to posterity” melodrama. Not interesting for you or for anyone else.

You have to find a way of working that makes it dead easy to take full advantage of your inspired moments. They never hit at a convenient time, nor do they last long.

Conversely, neither should you fret too much about “writerʼs block,” “artistʼs block,” or whatever. If youʼre looking at a blank piece of paper and nothing comes to you, then go do something else. Writerʼs block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you SHOULD feel the need to say something.

Why? If you have something to say, then say it. If not, enjoy the silence while it lasts. The noise will return soon enough. In the meantime, youʼre better off going out into the big, wide world, having some adventures, and refilling your well. Trying to create when you donʼt feel like it is like making conversation for the sake of making conversation. Itʼs not really connecting, itʼs just droning on like an old, drunken barfly.

Zuckerberg wasn't particularly passionate about Facebook in the early days. Now he seems to be on a possibly life-long mission.

There's no substitute for discipline and hard work, not even passion (though it may make it less painful).

True that he probably wasn't passionate at the beginning. But he must have developed it along the way. You don't continuously work 16-hour days unless you're passionate.

I wonder if the difference is when you look at "one and done" guys vs. serial entrepreneurs. But even then - many seem to change domains in subsequent startups.

Just curious what led you to believe he wasn't passionate about Facebook? He was involved a couple other social networking type stuff like ConnectU and his HotOrNot clone. To me, it seems he was at least interested in exploring the domain space.

Based on what I read in The Facebook Effect mostly. I think he's even said as much.

I'm passionate about making money.

That said, once you identify a sector in which to make money, you need to master it. With mastery almost alway comes at least an appreciation or affection for a subject.

Yes. Funny how people tiptoe around that one. Almost as if among entrepreneurs it isn't legitimate.

Really? That's strikes me in a weird way.

To me, (at least subconsciously) passion means a drive to do something out of love, regardless of whether or not you can make money out of it.

Being "passionate about making money" almost doesn't make any sense.

Better said as "I'm very driven to make money".

Making money is a game, like baseball. If people can be passionate about the latter, why can't I be passionate about the former?

I hear you brother. I do ask myself this sometimes.

I came to conclusion that I'm passionate about the "game"! Not money, not the product but figuring out the game of:

1. how my domain/system works

2. where is money

3. who are players, their motivations

4. how do customers/users function

trying out different hypothesis (gaming) for each of the above and seeing data and learning the GAME!

Once you KNOW THE GAME, you can use it anywhere else.

PS: Wall St 2 reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzPFCKDexok

this is awesome.

Here is a fundamental thing I've learnt about startups that is hugely important and massively over looked:

You need to be passionate about building a company, not an idea.

Because you will change the idea, and if your passion isn't in running a company you're dead. The groupon guy doesn't care about group buying, he cares about building a company with x culture etc.

I was making that argument, somewhat unsuccessfully, with a VC friend last night. His counter was "I have to see that THIS idea is the one, among all the others you could be pursuing..."

It's kind of like picking a college major. Where college students invest their money and long amounts of time in a particular major, entrepreneurs (wantrepreneurs?) invest their minds in particular markets. At some point it becomes part of their identity.

I think it's better to decide on a particular market with some definitive action like starting a company or large side project, and if it fizzles out, avoid identifying with it. Being identified with a market that you don't know about doesn't impress genuine entrepreneurs.

Curiosity is different. It's good to be curious. Surprisingly, trying to be curious has worked for me. So has dealing with some of the many things that can get in the way of natural curiosity.

The problem is not passion but vision. If you don't have a vision about where you want to take something then you will end up burning lots off energy but not really going anywhere.

The rocket needs a destination to aim for even if it never get's there completely.

Exactly - without vision there is no reason to be passionate. I spend all my free time (and my work time) on CouchDB b/c I see a vision of a programming model which is much better than today's web, and I want to make it reality. In this sense, passion may mean that I'm unstoppable, because I'll keep doing it no matter what. But really, it's the power of the vision that drives me.

What is your vision?

Find something about your work that you're passionate about, rather than the work itself (you could call it being indirectly passionate). For me, I'm passionate about creating useful things. So long as I'm creating useful things at work I'm passionate about it.

To me, passion in the context of starting and building a business is about a deep commitment to serve the a source of pain or create a source of delight for a market that you feel a strong connection to.

If what's driving you is an attachment to a particular solution, then if the solution doesn't work, your commitment to the entire endeavor evaporates.

But, if your attachment is to a market, you stay motivated and have a much easier time pivoting as needed and surviving until you find the model and solution that work.

I currently work on a startup together with my friend. We don't do this because we are passionate about starting a company or the problem we solve is exciting. We do it for the money. Why work for some company if you can make much more money selling you services directly? That's what got us started. Not passion.

Now I don't think it's wrong to be passionate but it's definitely a key factor whether your business is successful or not. It all comes down to hard work, execution and a little bit of luck.

I forget where, but i heard someone say somewhere that the best entrepreneurs are ones that solve problems, not the ones that are just trying to make money. Maybe it's just me, but it's much easier to be passionate about a problem because I'm not satisfied until it's fixed. It's a finite conclusion that you can finally reach.

Might try asking yourself - what's one problem that makes you upset/annoyed/frustrated? What can you do to fix it?

It's tough to know what you're really passionate about, though. One way to think about it, that I've found useful, is to say that you're passionate about something if you love coming in to work and doing things, and time goes by so fast that you have no idea how it's late at night already. If you can pull that off consistently, then you're somewhat on the right track.

I get that - the "flow" idea. But I can get "flow" in a pretty mundane task - filing in the office, grinding in a game, etc. And I wouldn't describe myself as passionate about any of those things...

I think you need other people (either a co-founder or ideally, users) to be passionate about an idea in order to stoke your own passion. It's hard to stay passionate about something for very long alone.

I'm truly passionate about making something people actually want to use on a daily basis. Getting the first users to really love the product is what I care about. Money is hopefully a biproduct.

Be passionate about creating value.

translated: love making money.

No. Otherwise open source would not exist.

"Value" is qualitative. "Money" is quantitative.

raises hand

Most deeply passionate are people in manic phase of bipolar disorder (2.6% of USA population).

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