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Comment by 0x4d464d48 | Hacker News Reader

"It's perfectly fine to start a company that's only going to grow 10x or 20x best-case. VCs won't be interested in you, but that's fine, you don't necessarily need investment."

I'm not saying this is your fault and I get where you're coming from. But saying 'only' 10x-20x growth is 'fine' as if that's something to be embarrassed about... Yeesh, talk about messed up perspective...

By my reckoning, if you're generating value, have a sustainable business and are giving people gainful employment that in and of itself should be reward enough.

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Definitions help:

Start a company: You + enough business not to go under in X months = covering living expenses for one person or family = $50k / year starting negative of working up to profitable

10x = $500k / year, by the previous measure = competing with the top end of a big tech salary.

So there are people reasonably "unhappy" at 10x because of opportunity costs.

Yep.

Being able to create an honest, profitable business pulling in 'only' 500k$/annum. Must suck to be that guy.

It's real easy to play the 'grass is always greener' game. Everyone has their own aims in life. Some want money, some want to live a life they're proud of and pretty much everyone is some combination of the two. But trying to frame someone establishing a business with 10x-20x growth as a failure, assuming they're able to support themselves and believe in the value of their venture, is absurd.

500k profit a year (which is still good!) often means 5 mil/yr revenue. Considering the years of work, super high stress, lack of support network common to this, and generally bootstrapping from their own funds?

That is decent, but considering all those factors, far from a huge win. If they had put similar work (with the same skill set) into a normal job, they would likely have similar returns with less risk.

Especially since there is large ongoing risk of market shifts or the like making it fail with no warning in the future, and at least working in someone else’s enterprise they wouldn’t have their capital at risk.

Except that you can sell the business and get a windfall.

Very true - if you can get that far.

It’s very, very high risk even getting here though, and not just money.

It's subjective of course but most would call that a very far cry from a huge loss which was the original point.

For some of us there's a lot more to life than whether or not the wealth we accumulate squares up with the amount of risk that we take on compared to others. Being able to contribute to something you believe in while being able to avoid Taleb's silent graveyard doing it is enough.

I happen to agree with you.

There are many others who make different bargains of course, and for their own legitimate reasons.

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