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Comment by quaquaqua1 | Hacker News Reader

>What if you quit your job to start a startup that fails, and you can't find another? That could be a problem if you work in sales or marketing. In those fields it can take months to find a new job in a bad economy. But hackers seem to be more liquid. Good hackers can always get some kind of job. It might not be your dream job, but you're not going to starve.

Probably true but I think I would prefer the safe bet over the risky one. Why would I pass up on a 100% chance to make 100k when someone is offering a 0.01% chance to make a few million?

If the job was remote, maybe my mind would change. But VCs are asking us to cram into cities with $4000 rent for reasons they can't explain.

And most startup interviews these days are theater.

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"Why would I pass up on a 100% chance to make 100k when someone is offering a 0.01% chance to make a few million?"

You don't have to start a startup. And if this is your attitude towards risk, you probably shouldn't.

Well said.

If money is the only motivation, maybe you shouldn't neither.

I’d definitely take 100% * $100k = $100k over 0.01% * $10M = $1000, especially since money has diminishing returns to happiness. Now perhaps you think your odds are better than 1/10000 or that you’d make 10 billion instead of 10 million, but assuming the given odds and valuation, there’s no way I’m going with the risky offer.

To first order, successful startup founders are the people who don't do these calculations. Any early stage software business has countless plausible reasons why it's likely to fail; if you're thinking about risk-benefit analysis beyond the basic sanity check of "will my life be ruined if this doesn't work", you're sapping energy you need to actually make it successful.

(I'm not saying this to look down on you! I'm absolutely the kind of person who does these calculations, and thus shouldn't found a startup, even if it sometimes sounds cool to me.)

I think founders do those same calculations, Since you can't be successful if you can't accurately judge risk, but I think the utility function is different in how founders value non-monetary rewards and the mission of the company etc, and I think founders might also see themselves as in positions to influence those payoff numbers to increase the probability of success or the venture or the payoff as t the end.

> for reasons they can't explain

Well I think they know why (vc funding, concentration of talent, etc), they just can't explain why you as an individual would want that.

The title's "Start a Startup", not "Join a Startup"!

Good point, that sounds way less risky.

As someone else said to another poster if your risk tolerance is low you probably shouldn't start a company anyway.

I'm not saying it's not risky. It just sounds like the OP misread it about applying for jobs at startups. I'm not going to guess where the better risk/reward lies.

>And most startup interviews these days are theater.

They have been for years. I remember meeting a few wannabe VC types a few years ago to get advice on bureaucratic procedures to start a business and all of them subjected me to cross-examination using the standard VC question-bank, when all I wanted was the ABCs of starting a business.

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