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Comment by veyron | Hacker News Reader

What he's criticizing is doing a startup specifically so that it could be flipped later. If you are in it to build a real company, you actually go through the hard work that Jobs is talking about.

Did you start viaweb to sell it to someone else later, or did you start it to build an actual sustainable business?

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We started it to sell. We were not interested in online stores. Some of the problems were kind of interesting, but neither I nor Robert nor Trevor thought of Viaweb as our life's work.

Incidentally, building a business to sell doesn't mean it can't be sustainable. Viaweb made Yahoo lots of money.

You attacked that sort of thinking a couple of times at Startup School events. In certain ways, it was troublesome, because I like to think that's the sort of person I am, or the business that I want to start. But now hearing you say again (paraphrase) "we did it this way, and we liked some of the problems, but really we thought it was just a great opportunity" is promising. Is what you're trying to say, that the 'best' startups are usually founded by people who have deep emotional ties about the problems they're solving? (say, anybots, facebook, google) but that it can still work with the right people and the right ideas/timing (viaweb, slide, FriendFeed(?)).

IF YCs stance is to pick the former as much as possible (or all the time). What can a valley outsider do to get the later started?

Sorry, this is the type of question I would have loved to ask at startup school, it just took a couple of days to formulate.

I'm not sure what sort of thinking you think I attacked, but I'm not against people starting startups to sell them. I think it's a mistake when people come up with startup ideas by trying to think of startup ideas, instead of looking for real problems that need solving. But you can be working on real problems and still intend to sell the company.

What was in my mind is more like what you describe as "Doodling" in [http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html]. NOT the type thinking that gets you with the next social geofenced daily deal. There is some differentiator between the two that I think instinctively I understand, but quantitatively I haven't been able to describe.

EDIT: First crack at a description: You want an idea that solves a problem, not starts a startup, and sometimes a startup is a decent vehicle for the solution.

One way of looking at it was that the problem Paul was trying to solve was: "How can I stop spending the majority of my waking hours working on things that I don't care about in languages and working environments that are soul-killing? Eureka! I'll condense that uncomfortable period by using the most powerful tools and techniques at my disposal (which I happen to love) and be done with it."

> We were not interested in online stores. Some of the problems were kind of interesting, but neither me nor Robert nor Trevor thought of Viaweb as our life's work.

'How to find your "life's work"' might make a great essay. I think the majority of founders find themselves a few years in working on ideas they aren't crazy about.

In a sense founders get married to ideas too young, realize it's not a perfect fit, and then an "acquisition" is basically a divorce between them and the idea.

http://paulgraham.com/love.html

http://paulgraham.com/hs.html

Well you obviously weren't doing what you love with viaweb if your entire goal was to sell it to turn a profit so that you'd never have to deal with it again. And Steve's assertion is not about work ethic, it's about building a "real company". I don't think Steve would consider you to be a real entrepreneur. In his biography, it's stated several times how he doesn't want to make things just because people want them, which is directly against your beliefs in pandering to the masses.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that I believe in "pandering to the masses," but maybe this will cure that misconception: http://paulgraham.com/usa.html.

"But the just-do-it model does have advantages. It seems the clear winner for generating wealth and technical innovations (which are practically the same thing)."

Today, wealth and technical innovations have separated quite a lot. A great programming language will make less money than the programs built upon it. I don't think this is entirely valid in the world of today, where open-source software is often some of the most innovative.

By wealth I don't mean money. You don't have to get paid for creating wealth: http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html (search for "open source").

Well viaweb would be one example of pandering that you seem to have just admitted.

I don't think Steve Jobs would ever say anything of sorts. Jobs did the exact same thing with NeXT. Does that mean that he didn't consider himself an entrepreneur? Human emotion plays a big role in our decision making and you can't have the same feelings for every project you start.

He didn't start NeXT with the intention of selling it. He was trying re-create Apple from scratch. Instead he ended up parlaying it into a take-over of Apple and re-created it from within.

I'm not weighing in on the definition of "entrepreneur" here, just pointing out why NeXT isn't a counter example.

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Steve Jobs did not just get a job at Apple and go back to gruntwork or managing a subsidiary. No, he took back the company and reshaped it.

If he had been unable to direct Apple in the direction he wanted after the reverse takeover, I doubt he would have accepted it.

Awesome.

I think you are successful partly because you got the right people together to make viaweb and sold it. Now you are able to do much more with your life. It's interesting that when one dreams big (as I do), that sometimes gets in the way of making your first startup have a successful exit. We are working on a huge thing and partly creating a new market, and unfortunately had no time to follow my own advice and flip a company first. Wish I did, I think I would have been ahead of where I am today.

What exactly do people view as "wrong" about building a company to sell? Companies are sold because it's in the interest of both parties involved in the transaction, so it must serve some legitimate function in the economy. Perhaps it's a little different if they're bought by a larger company only to eliminate the smaller competitor, but I doubt that's why buyouts usually happen.

It seems really silly to me to criticize someone for wanting a high payoff to labor ratio or not wanting to dedicate their life to everything they do, but I don't know - what's the reasoning?

Would it be less or more worthy of criticism if pg had specifically planned to sell viaweb and start ycombinator?

I would say no, it can be the necessary stepping stone to something else. In that case it can be a stepping stone for both the sellers and the buyers whom did not have the "right" people for the job yet, but by selling got the people who could do it.

I too mostly "hate it when people call THEMSELVES entrepreneurs". But I do love it when people say and prove that they are looking to change the world. If that involves building and selling a company, then why not? By selling Viaweb and then growing YC, pg has done more to change the world than he could have done by staying put.

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