Should You Really Be A Startup Entrepreneur? | Hacker News Reader

Should You Really Be A Startup Entrepreneur?

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196 pointsazazo81 comments

I know I shouldn't. It may be a terrible thing, but I like to check in at a certain time, work for a predetermined amount of time, and then go home. I work to enjoy the rest of my life, I don't want my work consuming my life. I worked in a startup for a few years, and the way it crept into all the other aspect of my life was disquieting.

While you may be in the minority on HN your definitely in the majority overall. Different people want/ enjoy different things, no real right or wrong here.

There's no shame in wanting to have a life outside work, especially if you have a family to take care of. I think far too many entrepreneurs deceive themselves into thinking 80 hour weeks will pay off so they can be happy later

I think it's less deceiving themselves that that's the likely outcome, and more setting that as a goal and trying not to think about the likelihood of failure.

Many more are probably working the hours because they are enjoying it right now.

That's true, startup work is just too damn enjoyable to quit... However, everything in moderation.

i'd point out that you can be an entrepreneur without working crazy hours. lifestyle businesses are perfectly legitimate, you just probably won't get any of the cashouts that people seem to (somewhat unrealistically) idolize and strive for.

Here's the thing: I don't believe that the second part is true.

I think your chances of getting an enormous cashout are more or less independent of whether you work sixteen-hour days. If you have a great product that people want and the skills to implement it, what's the real difference if you work eighty hours a week instead of forty? Maybe you get the first version written in half (or more likely two thirds) of the time? Big deal.

Sure, there are probably some cases on the margin where speed really matters. But I think that if your product isn't going to take off then working a bit harder won't make it to do, and if your product is going to take off then you can probably get away with eight hour days anyway.

i didn't mean to imply a correlation there between work time and cashing out.

my point was more, you can be an entrepreneur and build a healthy business irrespective of things like raising funds or working 80 hour weeks.

This is true in some cases, but very not true in others. If you have a great product that people want and the skills to implement it, you have a great product that somebody else also has the skills to implement. If they're willing to push theirs on people, they'll take the market. This is especially bad if you're making a product that benefits from a large audience (e.g. anything with social features, things whose production can carry an economy of scale). You could become the Borders to their Amazon.

Sure, as I said there are cases on the margin, and those cases where you just happen to be working against a competitor who just happened to start working on the same problem at roughly the same time are most of 'em. I'm not convinced these sorts of scenarios are all that common, though. Most big success stories involve doing something that nobody else was doing.

According to my numbers derived ex anum I'd say that working twice as hard increases your chance of getting a big payout by... approximately ten percent.

How many big success stories involve people who weren't really working all that hard? Do you really believe that's a common scenario?

Even if they weren't working on it at the same time, as long as somebody's looking when you gain moderate success, you've got a competitor who can use your current work as R&D to catch up — and then they can outpace you if you're giving 30% fueled by pocket change and they're giving 100% with the resources of a millionaire. This might not mean death, but it does mean that falling backward into monumental success is extremely improbable. That's why people say lifestyle businesses are unlikely to yield huge rewards.

What if your software is better architected e:g programmed by people who ruthlessly avoid unnecessary complexity? It may be that a competitor with deep pockets wastes lots on an over-complex or vaguely/fuzzily designed competing product. OTOH, I suppose sadly they've got a lot more to spend on marketing and that is what may kill you.

This is neither here nor there, but I'd love a lifestyle business that could pay me a steady $3k/mo. It would mean I'd be independent enough to do anything I wanted.

I'd like to question the implication that your life is not affected by work as a normal employee of a big company. Sure, it's most probably not going to be as intense as for a start-up, but that's less because of start-up vs big company, but much more about how committed you are to your work in general. I know lots of people working at big companies who have crazy work-hours and whose social life definitely gets affected by that.

Let's face it, if you want to be successful - start-up or not - you'll have to work your butt off.

It's a balancing act. There are plenty of big companies were you can work normal hours and still be a committed worker.

Spending time with my family and enjoying a few hobbies is my definition of success.

I would go one further: Aiming for the top of the corporate ladder can have a bigger impact on your personal life than doing a startup. For example (from my own experience) I work more hours in my startup but the fact that I get to do it when and where I want it (in the middle of the night sometimes) makes it much less demanding than being away from your family because you're out of town.

Of course, it depends on the type of startup versus the type of business and your ambition level inside the business, but in my case the startup "feels" more relaxed than any business I've been in.

There are different different values of "successful."

Not everyone thinks that being successful means becoming an executive. Many people equate success to being able to pay their bills and have fun away from work. And in most cases, that doesn't mean working your butt off.

Thanks for saying it.

I've never worked any other way than as an entrepreneur in one field or another. I'd love to have a chance to try what you describe!

If you're asking yourself this question and currently work on BigCo, you might consider working for a startup first, as opposed to founding one. In the Bay Area, startups pass their series A round provide comparable salary and benefits to BigCo jobs. You won't get as much equity or exposure to as many of the ups-and-downs, but making the transition from BigCo to a 30 person company is a big jump.

I quit my BigCo job 2 weeks before my wedding to join a friend's startup as employee 20-something, quit after 18 months, and then joined my current startup as employee #1. With each move, my risk tolerance increased alongside my confidence that I wouldn't die. It has been almost a 4 year process (and still going), but I feel much more prepared now than I would have been in the summer of 2007

Also, starting anything, whether it's a business or not, will give you exposure to many of the same ups and downs as a startup. You can get much of the experience with essentially zero risk (except to your ego) by starting a social club, student organization, hobby website, or open-source project. Just as long as you make an honest goal of adoption and don't just put it out there with a "whatever happens, happens" attitude.

My first major programming project was a complete rewrite in college of a Harry Potter fansite that grew from 2000 to 100,000 registered users during my time on staff. Relative to my skill level at the time, it was probably the hardest thing I've ever done, and it taught me a lot about the emotional roller coaster and persevering through the lows where I really want to quit.

    You can get much of the experience with 
    essentially zero risk (except to your ego) 
    by starting a social club, student 
    organization, hobby website, or 
    open-source project.

Unless you are supporting a family, where's the big risk in trying to start up your own business?

It's not like you will be reduced to living under a bridge and panhandling if things don't pan out - if you're a good programmer finding a new job isn't that hard.

Silicon valley romanticizes the startup life. We read about Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs and dream of doing 1/10 of what they did.

The reality is that the startup life can be hell, and if you aren't prepared to walk through fire for your startup, then you shouldn't do it.

Yeah, but I actually find the less glamorous startups to be a lot more interesting and inspiring. Bingo Card Creator is one of the best examples of how to keep things simple, and it's working pretty damn well.

While nobody will deny that startup life is hell, it also is very much as good as the Valley makes it sound for the right type of people. Most people aren't the right people though, so it sounds romanticized.

edit: To clarify, "right type of people" doesn't necessarily mean successful people, just people who enjoy this kind of lifestyle. Success is just a bonus.

I would strenuously deny that the startup life is hell. Go pick fruit for a few months, for instance. The amount of assumed privilege in these discussions is shocking.

Well it's assumed that if you're in a position to begin a startup, then you are capable of a comfortable and successful life outside of one. So relative to the alternative for the entrepreneur, startup life could be called hell.

But yes, relative to all the possible situations one could be in, startup life is quite pleasant.

Ah, yes. Everything is relative. :)

For example, I imagine life is Hell right now for Egypt President Mubarak, although this probably only means losing power and living the rest of his life quite comfortably exiled in some other country.

I think he meant hell in terms of stress on your family. Those 90 hour work weeks aren't exactly relationship-building material.

There are many different types of hell.

Picking fruit is hell? Sheesh, in Australia picking fruit is considered a "working holiday" for middle-class European kids.

It depends on the fruit. Mangoes a) only grow in the tropics and b) have acidic sap. Most people who pick mangoes only do it once.

The experience of picking fruit is rather different for middle-class European kids and poor Mexican kids/parents/old folks. Two salient differences, among many: middle-class European kids can at any time stop picking fruit and resume being middle-class Europeans, and there is no outcome to middle-class European fruit picking which reads "fruit picker's family goes hungry."

I was not exactly thrilled with the experience of my old day job, and complained about it frequently, but never at church. Odds are on any given day I would be sitting next to at least one guy who did about as many hours at one third the pay working in a factory for people who treated him as a necessary reagent in an industrial process. Heck if I'm going to say "Waily waily I was in my air conditioned office yesterday at 1:30 AM when I could have been at home playing PS3."

I doubt those guys ever felt like they were walking through fire. Sure, times are tough, but the guys who make it through are the ones who find stuff to enjoy in the lows AND the highs.

Silicon valley romanticizes the startup life. We read about Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs...

Curiously, two of those entrepreneurs didn't create their then-startup in Silicon Valley.

Facebook the best endorsement of The Silicon Valley Way that exists.

The romantic version doesn't appeal to me. The challenges do.

That is still romanticizing the startup life, just in a different direction.

Preach it.

"Not everyone is man enough to do startups. Don't worry, you won't be the first to wuss out." is a string in the Gordion knot of cultural pathologies we have in our industry. (Gendered language not accidental.)

Agreed, startup life and entrepreneurship is hell for all the points Mark outlined. Dave McClure has a slide titled "Why not to do a startup" (http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/dmc500hats/why-not-to-do-a-...) The thing is, if after reading that and hearing about all the failures, if you're still passionate enough to try and change the world then by all means, go for it.

My favorite Mark Suster quote :

"I became an entrepreneur so I could tell people to go f!ck themselves."

And that basically sums it up for me. I've said this to enough bosses that, this is a huge appeal for me. If you check my performance reviews they all list "has a problem with authority".

I've been to a QnA session with Mark and I learned so damn much from him. He's very open about the workings of VC. And I don't think I've laughed so much at any other entrepreneur Meetup. Guy is hilarious.

> I've said this to enough bosses that, this is a huge appeal for me. If you check my performance reviews they all list "has a problem with authority".

I dont understand why you are seeing it as a positive thing? Do you think entrepreneurs dont have to answer to authority?

Entrepreneurs trade having to answer to one particular authority figure for having to answer to many authorities. For many people with authority issues, that's a much better situation. When one person has a problem with you, you don't know whether the problem is with you or with them, but when many people have a problem with you, there's a fairly high likelihood that the the problem lies with you. It's basically more data and less arbitrariness.

Great answer. Also when the people you have to answer to are only customers, then fixing that should lead to profit if you have the right type of customers.

When you have 20 clients (or 20,000), firing one or two has much smaller consequences than quitting a job.

I was especially struck by the point about being willing to give up hobbies. How many programming fans are able to give up playing their favorite computer game while building the start-up? Is that what it takes to build a start-up that really hits the big time?

You don't have to have a start-up that "really hits the big time" to have to give up things in return. Trust me, "hobbies" are easy to give up; it's relationships that are harder yet mandatory (to some extent) to give up.

Quite possibly. Is that a large sacrifice?

I spend way less time playing games, now that I make them.

EDIT> There's this real-time strategy game called Life. The achievements are really cool. Problem is, it's actually hard, since it hasn't been engineered to stroke your cortex.

If you want my advice, don't fucking do it.

If you never asked for advice you will anyway.

Startup life is hell, but some of us have to do it.

One real test to see if you're ready to be an entrepreneur is seeing if you would do a startup for 2 years, working 80+ hours with the emotional roller-coaster while knowing you would certainly fail. Personally, I would. I enjoy it way too much.

If you're certain to fail, why do the startup? Did you mean the uncertainty of success?

Not even the uncertainty of success, but the certainty of failure. The learning experience is the reason. I'm a firm believer of "Fail early to succeed often."

"The certainty of failure". I like that.

Why not at least aim for success so you don't accidentally program yourself for failure?

Well definitely, and I'd hope every entrepreneur has the confidence in their company to think he will be successful. I just meant, given the hypothetical situation where you knew you would fail, would you still do it? Basically, are you doing it just for money, or is it for more than that?

Your argument doesn't make sense because even if you're doing it just to learn, you're learning entrepreneur skills so you can do it for other reasons later.

I think it still applies. You could rephrase it to say, would you work 80+ hours each week, no pay, for 2 years, just to have a powerful experience and greater knowledge (and the company fails)? It's not a failure from every perspective, but I don't think such a thing exists. Failure to make an exit, or failure to sustain the startup is mostly what I mean.

Where's the motivation for pressing on if there's a certainty of failure i.e. a certainty of your startup not making a profit?

If the motivation comes from an innate desire to learn more about your market, your competitors, etc. then working on a startup begins to look more like academic field research and less like executing a viable business model.

Not to collapse into an argument over semantics, but the very core meaning of the startup concept absolutely rests on the will to survive no matter the odds, a strong desire to succeed and sustain itself as an entity that provides something of value to real customers.

If this is true, then the founders of the startup who got into it only to have a "powerful experience and greater knowledge" would, in essence, be going against the very nature and purpose of a startup.

I guess that would depend on the definition of failure. Relishing failure as in the "Charge of the Light Brigade" (ie. marching to certain death) is a little masochist IMO. Not too appealing to me.

But if a almost certain failure served a greater good that mattered to me, I guess that I'd be with you.

Failure is a concept with shades of grey, and largely depends on your definition of success. I've met a few people who from my perspective are amazingly successful who feel that they are failures.

I agree, just as there are many definitions of "success" there are many definitions of failure.

Here, I have an optimistic view of failure, as in the startup has to close doors with a profitable exit. Even if the startup had a positive impact on customers and the world, I'd classify this as a failure (because of failure to sustain).

I've worked 80+ hour weeks on an emotional roller-coaster knowing I would certainly fail. I definitely hated it.

The difference is that this was at BigCo. Does this mean that I'm not cut out for a startup?

(EDIT: Am I a fool for believing that I can escape from 80-hour work weeks and emotional roller coasters by working at a startup?)

I think the big difference is in the outcome. That situation at BigCo won't make you better, I think it only drains you. That type of work at a startup though transforms you for the good. The main reason has to do with ownership.

I think it helps if you've done this once already. Ie death marches at bigco.

The thing that everyone seems to have forgotten is that large part of the 80 hours at a star up as a founder, is self driven. Ie you'll jump out of bed everyday excited to get to work. If you can make sure you don't get burnt out, I think it's sustainable at 40 hours a week.

Michael Wolfe has some great answers on quora about how to run a startup and not get burnt out.

TBH, I don't even think of failure - I just know that I have to build stuff. Even in cases of failure, I never really feel like I've lost anything, and it's especially true when I'm building things for me instead of trying to get rich quick.

Perhaps this quote sums it up:

"I don't build in order to have clients, I have clients in order to build."

The startup is my client.

It seems as though many people on here buy into the myth that entrepreneurship is something that has to be this life-draining all-consuming beast to wrestle. I agree with his list of qualities, but we need to question the assumption that it has to be that way and if it does, why are we not being lazier and more efficient? Maybe I'm being naive, but if we can pinpoint those actions that are driving us forward and have the wisdom to leave the rest alone or to someone better we can work happily and in good measure. Isn't the point of entrepreneurialism to create the kind of life, product and company where we can have the best of all worlds?

A lot of people here seem to think the "Mark Zuckerberg" way of starting a business is the only way to be an entrepreneur.

Perhaps if you want to start something that has no barrier to entry and few qualities that cannot be imitated then yes, execution becomes everything and the only way is to run faster and work harder than everyone else. A lot of startup that get attention here fit that mold.

There are plenty of other opportunities out there though. You don't have to invent a new technology to get an advantage. You can lease patents, you can target niche's, you can become the local representative of a foreign startup, etcetera.

I've started, with success, 4 companies, and I'm invested in about 12 other startups.

I have an easy list you can go by when you are trying to decide whether to call yourself an entrepreneur or not. If you aren't willing to experience the things on this list, then stick with the corporate job:

http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/you-can-call-yourself-a...

I agree with Mystalic. You better be ready to drop your entire life for your startup otherwise you will not succeed. It's easy to say that you're ready but you will know if you actually are by the end of the first week at your startup.

Techcrunch guest posts are often incoherent and largely self-promotional, but I appreciated hearing the perspective of someone who did the startup cycle a few times and then ran off to VC-land where he gets more variety and balance.

"Techcrunch guest posts are often incoherent"

More incoherent than their writers' posts? :-)

Yes. Most definitely. The guest posts on the weekend always seem to be written by execs at startups who are looking to build their reputation and to plant an idea or set of ideas in the media so they can point potential partners and customers to it and say "see, what we're doing is legitimate." As these people aren't trained writers I often find their central points hard to suss out.

Good advice for a lot of people. Odd article for HN though since so many of our discussions deal with doing startups.

I consider myself to be a bit of a "lurker" enjoying hearing about entrepreneurs' experiences in the sense that I have been happy working only part time for almost all of my adult life on many interesting jobs and having lots of time off for family, friends, writing, and hobbies.

That said, I have two childhood friends who have had big payouts doing software startups (one for $20m+ and the other for $300m+) and they seem happy also :-)

Finally a great article saying how it really is. We only see the huge successes and failures in the blog and PR world.

for those that really want it, money comes with the territory. it's not the driving force.

i think mark is spot on with his first bullet-point in particular (not very status-oriented)

i'm not building a startup for the money. i just want to do what i want to do when i want to do it.

I have always felt that deep down you know whether or not you want to be an entrepreneur, even if there are day to day doubts. Mark describes characteristics, but most entrepreneurs just know.

It's both intimidating and exciting to read about what awaits me as an entrepreneur in a very early stage startup in such a straightforward manner.

I'm looking forward to it. :)

I think it can be all summed up to

     "Do you always want more from your life? 
      Or are you content?"

This kind of attitude is just self-serving. There are plenty of experiences you can have at a large company that you won't be able to get from a startup. It boils down to what you want out of your work life.

And if you are wondering if it's for you or not, here is an excerpt that might help you think it through:

I’m sure everybody has their own definition of the attributes of an entrepreneur. Some of the ones I would identify are:

  Not very status-oriented
  Doesn’t follow rules very well and questions authority
  Can handle high degrees of ambiguity or uncertainty
  Can handle rejection, being told “no” often and yet still have the confidence in your idea
  Very decisive.  A bias toward making decisions – even when only right 70% of the time – moving forward & correcting what doesn’t work
  A high level of confidence in your own ideas and ability to execute
  Not highly susceptible to stress
  Have a high risk tolerance
  Not scared or ashamed of failure
  Can handle long hours, travel, lack of sleep and the trade-offs of having less time for hobbies & other stuff

Resonates very well :)

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