Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

Most of your problems sound like they stemmed from VC. Similar story. It's a good, and hard, lesson. Two things one should not touch when it comes to building healthy companies in 2020: crypto and equity sales to VC. They're going to become fossils soon anyhow [1].

Read Rework by Basecamp. Read The Beginning of Infinity by Deutch. Read the Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Hamming. Watch some Bret Victor talks. Ignore the negative memes about tech. They're all wrong, the rules get re-written every 10 years, and that is going to decrease in duration, not increase. You might be the person needed to re-write them.

Release your code. Teach. Share.

If you can, bootstrap. Give more than you take. Don't hire or work with assholes. Grow slowly. Don't over-lever yourself. Make something people not just want, but love. Know thyself. Don't outsource your thinking, build the thing only you can build.

If you are not working on the most important problem in your field, why not?

Most importantly, know that the future is bright and that our best days are not only ahead of us, but always will be.

[1] https://alexdanco.com/2020/02/07/debt-is-coming/

> Most importantly, know that the future is bright and that our best days are not only ahead of us, but always will be.

I've read (and watched) everything on your list of recommendations. Perhaps I should reread Deutch's chapter on optimism, but I don't have the same conviction that you do. Where does your conviction come from?

That we're in the middle of an exponentially growing creation of new knowledge, and that (echoing Deutsch) all problems are soluble. Now, there are exceptions to this, for example, a sudden existential crisis. But I prefer to be an optimist in those scenarios, given humanity's demonstrated ability to achieve great things. There's a lot of negativity in the press about the global response to COVID-19, but I take a contrarian view and expect historians to look back at the heroic deeds of healthcare workers and researchers to overcome this crisis as unprecedented in scale and speed. It has exposed cracks in our institutions, surely, but I see it has a crystalizing moment to remind us all how much we can achieve.

What you're looking for is probably not conviction.

Conviction comes from seeing the state of things not being right and seeing a vision of what the state of things being right looks like.

If you don't have conviction, you probably don't have a vision of the state of things being right. That's why most of the world doesn't have conviction - either they lack vision on how the world should be, or their vision of how the world should be lacks the element of being visionary.

I would ascribe 3 things for you to consider:

1) You sound similar to someone who got cheated on and can't date again. You probably need some help handling emotions like betrayal.

2) Betrayal is really difficult to get over and (sorry to say) but you may never really get back to normal. This is the inner psychologist talking, sometimes wounds leave scars that don't fade.

3) If you can't survive an environment with politics and betrayal (which is good, it means you have a simple and pure heart), you will have to live with the fact that your mission is probably not found in the business world.

4) There are many missions out there. Find the one that resonates with your personal values. OR, surround yourself with people that resonate with your values, and take on their mission.

I don't think it's good to go back to what killed your inner child. That reminds me of being in an abusive relationship.

Thank you for this viewpoint (and its underlying optimism). 100% agree with what you're saying here.

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