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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

Maybe not news to anyone who has been around for a while, but I’ve been pitched by a lot of naive entrepreneurs who think doing a startup is as simple as asking investors for money and then using that money to pay engineers to build your product.

It’s very common for graduates of our local MBA school who often form teams of 3-6 co-founders who want to split the equity among themselves, take C-level titles, and then hope they can find some technical people to get the work done. I try to have some honest discussions with those who will listen to advice, but many don’t want to hear anything that doesn’t make their journey sound easy

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Fuck those people. When I was starting out, I had to work with a company like that. No questions for me, no resources or backup, minimal direction; I was never once relied on for direction or advice despite being the one most qualified to give it, which I did on many occasions, none of it taken.

In fact, after I left, I came to the realization that the leadership team had first licensed the initial product, then basically contracted out all the changes they could do to patent it separately, essentially doing none of the actual developmental work themselves.

Unsurprisingly, it was a shitshow.

I used to be one of them. I got money, but failed. The process and failure took me hard, both mentally and bodily.

Before my startup, I read a lot about startup. I knew that it would be hard. But knowing is so different from experiencing.

On hindsight, all the stories have successful ending, or the author of the book are successful. Among all the hardship described in the book, the overall tone is optimism.

We should read more about failure, than success.

Now I am on my second startup journey, fulling understand what is awaiting me.

>Now I am on my second startup journey, fulling understand what is awaiting me.

I'd be genuinely curious if your response to the same impending hardship makes a difference in the outcome.

Like, does KNOWING about suffering make it easier to go through it?

Can't say anything about entrepreneurship but when I learned to ski between ages 28 and 32, then yes it helps a lot. I could categorise the type of painful falls I'd make and how serious they were. I had whole failure models built on not breaking but falling into the snow.

It took 5 years to ski, especially the first 3 years were a painful process.

(on avg. 1 week per year)

Not sure how much this resembles entrepreneurship.

The second time is much easier because you can put the hardship in perspective. The first time around there is a lot of uncertainty and self-doubt -- you've never had to deal with the issues before -- and you tend to imagine the bad parts being far worse than they actually are. While it is still hard, the certainty of "been there, done that" greatly reduces the psychological stress in my experience.

Also, being able to anticipate the hardship in concrete terms also allows you to get in front of it and mitigate the adverse effects. You make fewer mistakes, so less of the hardship is self-inflicted.

Entrepreneurship is very difficult even in the best of circumstances, but it is also a skill and experience makes the job significantly easier.

Yes it is easier.

Some setbacks may hurt my confidence in my first startup journey. Now I would just drink a cup of coffee and keep working.

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