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Comment by noelwelsh | Hacker News Reader

Very honest analysis. It did make me wonder if the author really wants to be an entrepreneur. For me, starting a business is something I feel compelled to do -- I don't think I can be happy if I'm not in control. I'm certainly happier in my current job than I have ever been in any job where I worked for anyone else. Knowing that if I don't make the business work the kids don't eat and the mortgage doesn't get paid is pretty motivating as well. The author says he's happy in his current job -- so why not stick with it?

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It did make me wonder if the author really wants to be an entrepreneur

It's a question I've asked myself and one of the reasons I wrote it was to try and figure out the answer to that question. I think the answer is that I'm not a natural born entrepreneur, who couldn't have it any other way. I see it as a strategy for achieving a goal and as long as it fits with my life, I'm game. Most of my conclusions were about how to approach it to fit within my personal limitations. But my job right now is too great to leave regardless of how my side projects go.

> For me, starting a business is something I feel compelled to do -- I don't think I can be happy if I'm not in control.

Weird - I think I would be very unhappy as an enterpreneur. You see it as being in control - I see it as being controlled by outside forces (investors, angels, customers, contractors, employees.)

That's actually a good point.

But you can say that about all things.

It's pretty depressing to feel like I am not in control of my life, though I know at any second the will of the Universe can dictate what it wants to me ; I'm hardly in control.

For me, believing in free-will, even if we don't really have it, is necessary for a happy existence.

Only if you really need outside capital. Then yes. But small businesses are set up all the time with just the owner's resources. Bootstrapped entrepreneurs who build lifestyle businesses rarely make the headlines but they do enjoy an enviable amount of control over their own lives.

That only eliminates the first two outside forces (investors, angels) in the list. You still have to deal with customers and employees - in other words, the market.

Well, that remains true regardless of whether you're an entrepreneur, a freelancer or a salaryman. Anyone you do work for is a client of sorts and, even as a salaryman, you can end up in charge of other people. Plus, as an entrepreneur you do have a degree of control over the course to take when engaging the market and hiring people.

As long as we're talking about control, I can't see how it's possible to trump a bootstrapped entrepreneur who has a minimal team or none at all.

"It did make me wonder if the author really wants to be an entrepreneur."

As someone who relates to the post [i.e., been spinning my wheel's studying for a while], I totally understand the author.

I would say that what makes someone an entrepreneur is a diferent mind set: the people who want to, feel a need to do so. A need to, when you enter a cab and see something not right, start thinking "How would I solve this business issue?".

But, like everything in life, there's the funcional entrepreneur and the dysfuncional one [hope the Author doesn't take it as an insult]. Dysfuncional one's have a passion and a great want to be entrepreneurs, but have a nasty and unhealthy dose of "I want to get this absolutly perfect" syndrome. At the first try. So, we study. And research. And keep researching. And try to forsee every problem we could maybe/possibly encounter, and solve it, mentally. And, times goes by, and little is actually done (though we have a clear "vision" in our minds. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.)

The post doesn't make me wonder if the author really wants to be an entrepreneur. If he didn't he wouldn't even have started. It makes me wonder how to get out of this dysfuncional "wheel-spinning" pattern of entrepreneurship.

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