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Comment by Jun8 | Hacker News Reader

"What if one of the founders doesn't work full time on the company? Then they're not a founder. In my book nobody who is not working full time counts as a founder."

This point, which I fully agree, seems to generate a lot of comments. When he landed on Gibraltar in 71, Tariq ibn Ziyad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariq_ibn_Ziyad) immediately burned his ships and gave a speech to his men starting with: "Oh my warriors, whither would you flee? Behind you is the sea, before you, the enemy. You have left now only the hope of your courage and your constancy." The point is, if you don't have this sort of desperate courage, most probably your startup won't succeed. And you cannot do that while holding on to your day job and salary.

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There are plenty of examples to counter your argument in the startup community. FriendFeed is an easy one. It was built while each of its founders had day jobs until they had a viable product to shop around.

I take issue with these kind of quotes because, to be quite frank, they are completely out of context and make no sense in the myriad of ways people try to make them apply to unrelated contexts. It sounds like nothing more than marketing hype, as opposed to a message of substance.

This isn't a counter-example if the FriendFeed guys all worked part-time on the startup.

The point isn't that only full-timers can be founders, but rather that all founders should share a roughly equal level of commitment. If some of the founders are full-time, and some are part-time, then you've got a really severe imbalance in terms of contributions to the company, not to mention risk.

This will cause huge bitterness later on, so it's totally reasonable to say "We're all going in full-time, so if you want to be a founder, you are too. If not, that's fine, and we'll make you hire number one when we can afford to pay you a salary, plus back-pay for hours worked as an IOU."

I think the counter-example was to the idea that you have to "burn the ships" in order to motivate people to succeed.

Ah, that is certainly true -- some people are motivated by the threat of total failure, others work better if they've got a sensible fallback.

But how about all the other examples of people leaving work to work full-time on their startups. Remember that YC expects to not leave work but relocate to SV for three months.

The quote is, of course, over the top, after all we're not fighting for our lives in a foreign land. But I don't think it's that out of context: I'm 42, have a child, pay a high rent and support my larger family. For me to quit my daily high-paying job to pursue what mat turn out to be a dream does require a huge amount of courage. If the company doesn't succeed, say, after 2-3 years, I may not be able to find another job like this. That's why quotes like that resonate with me.

Please understand that not all would-be founders are 25 year-olds with little to lose.

Wait, so do you agree that co-founders with day jobs should be treated as first employees equity-wise or not? Your original comment seemed like you did, but this comment makes it seem like you don't.

Personally, I believe that having a day job while working on a startup should not be held against you. If everyone agrees that you're a co-founder, then you deserve co-founder equity.

Do you have less work to do because you have a day job? No, not necessarily. Were you there from the beginning? Yes. Are you involved in founder-like meetings and decisions? If yes, that should be qualification enough.

I co-founded my first company @ 30. It was pretty scary, but me and my co-founder kept working on our day jobs until we felt like we had the momentum to go raise some money. As soon as we did, we both quit and went to work full-time.

It was scary, but we did specifically did not burn our bridges. We kept in touch with all the people we could so that if we needed to have some bridge funding via consulting work, it was always on the table for us.

The strongest counter-argument I can make for saying "You need to be doing X,Y,Z to succeed" is that the failure rate for startups is over 90%, so no-one knows what really works or doesn't. There's a combination of execution, luck, and recognizing good timing that comes into play. I've seen companies/individuals hit it big with the most laid back attitude toward the product because they found the right thing at the right time (PlentyOfFish), and people who work insanely hard who just disappear (the list is huge here...).

"The point is, if you don't have this sort of desperate courage, most probably your startup won't succeed. And you cannot do that while holding on to your day job and salary."

Yeah, remember those guys who had that computer fruit company. Pear was it? Or Apple? something like that.

They had some good ideas, but because one of the founders kept working at his HP day job while designing the new company's first computer they never amounted to anything.

But at some point Woz did quit HP, and you could just as easily argue that Apple would have failed if he hadn't.

> When he landed on Gibraltar in 71, Tariq ibn Ziyad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariq_ibn_Ziyad) immediately burned his ships...

As someone with two kids and plenty of bills, I'm fine with taking the British at Dunkirk approach - live to fight another day.

This is for alphadogg (I can't reply directly to his post).

You've been hellbanned, for this post bagging Edward Tufte: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2991211

Which doesn't seem worth a hellban, and you seem a reasonable guy, so I thought I'd let you know. Hopefully you'll read this and be able to talk to someone at HN and sort it out.

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