All or something (2009) | Hacker News Reader

All or something (2009)

37signals.com

202 pointsllambda64 comments

"One of the most pervasive myths of startup life is that it has to be all consuming."

This supposed myth long precedes startups. If you look at the outliers in any field, you'll find many if not most are by ordinary people's standards excessively dedicated to their work. Isaac Newton and Michelangelo (to name just two of thousands of examples) were notorious for neglecting everything except their work. The fact that this pattern is so old and so widespread suggests that it is not a myth.

A startup is simply a company designed to grow at an exceptionally high rate, and Occam's razor implies that to succeed at this takes the same level of dedication as exceptional performance in any other field.

I think you and David have different definitions of a "startup," or at least different ideas of how fast and how big they need to grow. I think he just means something like "a small, young company with some ambitions of growth."

Your definition is certainly the usual one, especially in Silicon Valley, but I think David just wants to remind people that that isn't the only option if you have entrepreneurial ambitions, so he's using a less common but broader sense of the word. He even says as much at the end: "It’s almost like we need another word. Startup is a great one, but I feel like it’s been forever hijacked for this narrow style."

Part of it is a terminology problem. It's now common for any small business in the software industry to claim to be a "startup", even if it's actually a glorified consulting agency or contract software shop.

Part of it is an integrity problem. In addition to describing your small business as a startup for marketing purposes, you might also call yourself a startup in order to make other claims - such as telling employees that their stock options are extraordinarily valuable, or making a rule that everyone must work 80 hours "just like the other startups".

The flip side of the principle that exceptional businesses require exceptional effort is that almost all businesses are not exceptional.

  A startup is simply a company designed to grow at an exceptionally high rate

Imo, most startups grow organically. Only a few grow at an exceptionally high rate.

> A startup is simply a company designed to grow at an exceptionally high rate

From the perspective of a VC, I can certainly understand why you believe that. However, not all new businesses are geared toward VCs. I was never interested in outside funding. I am now running my second profitable business. I never once considered rapid growth as something that is even desirable, nevermind something I designed the business around. My goals have always been sustainability and profitability.

There are many, many types of ventures out there, with a very disparate set of goals.

Not all new businesses are called "startups" either...

I think "startup" has a pretty well established meaning at this point. Whether or not the meaning was hijacked, as claimed, I agree with the article - it would be useful to have a new name for businesses that are not designed to grow as quickly as a VC-funded startup.

Paul,

Now that you're a parent, I'm curious if your opinion has changed (or will change in the coming years).

For example, do you think you could have built ViaWeb if you had had children at that time?

Is it possible to "neglect everything except your work AND your family", and still have the same probability of success a your childless doppleganger, who neglects everything except work?

Before I had kids, I knew that having kids made it harder to do great work. What I didn't understand was the way it happens. Before I had kids, I thought of kids as a distracting responsibility. Now I realize that the reason kids take up so much of your time is that you enjoy spending time with them.

So for me at least the answer is not merely that I can't focus on work to the degree I used to, but that I wouldn't want to.

That much is true. I guess you're lucky with your son. My daughter sleeps so badly I've discovered a new side of my wife called "apocalyptic night mommy".

I _love_ that I'm not the only one! We need a hacker parents support group.

"The fact that this pattern is so old and so widespread suggests that it is not a myth."

Or, I suppose, it could suggest just the opposite -- that it makes it all the more likely to be a myth... At the minimum it suggests that it is something which is worth a good ol' look at the empirical evidence to determine it's truthiness.

I mean, DHH isn't making an empirically testable claim either, but this seems like the kind of thing that in this day and age there ought to be studies about...

I would agree that to be counted among your "thousands of examples" of outliers, one would have to be obsessively dedicated. Not everyone wants to be a Newton or a Da Vinci though. And there is nothing wrong with that. FogCreek and 37signals are certainly nowhere near as publicly visible as many SV startups, but they are successful and they became that way without the extreme levels of energy that SV startups seem to demand.

Now those firms and their ilk may not fit your definition of "startup", but they are still ex nihilo undertakings that have been able to supply some very demanding consumers. They'll never be as sexy as the Valley kids, but their continued existence serves as ample evidence of their validity. And in that sense, it is a myth that startups must be all-consuming.

Now those firms and their ilk may not fit your definition of "startup"...

This whole debate seems to hinge on the definition of "startup". I'd be interested in historical evidence to back-up or refute the claim 37signals makes: Has the meaning of "startup" actually been hijacked? Or has it always meant what pg (and wikipedia) say it does?

Startup companies can come in all forms, but the phrase "startup company" is often associated with high growth, technology oriented companies. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_company

This seems to be a reasonably good description of what the word means and what it is commonly associated with. You can call practically any young firm a startup, but it does most commonly refer to PG's definition. Like DHH said in the post, "starting a business" just does not have the near-mythical connotations "startup" has, but those connotations are result of the stories that typical startup culture provides. I don't think there's a way to make "starting a sustainable business" sound sexy because it's not a very sexy idea. And perhaps people with a spouse and kids shouldn't worry too much about how sexy an idea is, but rather how valuable it is.

This is the old "working harder vs. smarter" dilemma. When you're looking who to fund/hire, or what kind of culture to build, you can either attract people who work smarter or work harder, or both.

Working smarter is like finding an algorithm with a better time complexity. I was recently on a project where we could do it using The Architecture Going Forward That Is Always The Right Answer To Every Question, or the pragmatic way. I argued for the pragmatic way, but lost. February is the 1 year anniversary of this project. It has fallen far short of our goals, and we're now undoing the Grand Architecture way and implementing the pragmatic way, which is almost done and would have only taken 3-4 months, to achieve better software performance.

Working harder is like improving the constant: if you spend 80 hours instead of 40 hours, maybe you can get 20-40% more done.

Of course, it's great if you can get both. Working harder AND smarter. And there are a handful of people who do that. But not many, and you can't build a company full of them. Also, once people have had a lot more experience, and gained the ability to see the pitfalls before they step in them, they tend to want different things out of life, like, not working crazy hours. So you really have to choose.

My favourite movie of all time is Kurasawa's The Seven Samurai. In the movie, a very experienced Samurai has to put together a team quickly, so the "job interview" starts with the candidate walking to a room where someone tries to hit him with a pole. The first candidate is inexperienced but very talented. He parries the blow. The second candidate, as he's walking up to the room and before he could possibly see the assailant, somehow senses him and avoids the situation entirely.

I'd pick the second guy over the first guy any day.

This supposed myth long precedes startups.

The myth he talks about is specifically startup life, so it can't possibly precede it. It is perhaps a bit aggrandizing to compare, for instance, the general day to day operation of Stack Exchange or Reddit or any other "startup" style site with two of the greatest in human history.

There are a lot of very successful organizations and individuals who don't commit themselves to the demonstration of heroic effort. You don't hear about them because heroics is a nice narrative, and the lack of heroics is seldom worthy of mention.

In my personal opinion, I think "all consuming" just lacks optimization.

Isaac Newton and Michelangelo didn't know any better. At their time, their process was the only one.

At this moment, we have learned to work smarter, not harder. You can definitely have kids and do a great work. Hell you can have multiple companies and do a great job.

Our time is more focused on having a full life, not only focusing on one thing but also being able to hustle between all the aspects of life.

Myth or not myth doesn't mean that it is the only way. And even if geniuses like Newton and Michelangelo followed a way of doing things, doesn't mean it is the only way.

Besides even if you kill yourself working, doesn't mean you'll be successful. If you stay focused and work smart, you have better odds at success.

Isaac Newton and Michelangelo didn't know any better. At their time, their process was the only one.

Come on! Newton invented calculus before he turned 26, I'd like to see someone invent calculus today before they turn 26. (Most people have trouble understanding it, and this includes me).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=danYFxGnFxQ

I agree. I'm not trying to take away their contribution. But I do believe we ha learned a lot more to improve process, from their time to ours.

A lot of people of that stature were also miserable, abusive, and self-centered. It almost seems to come with the territory. For most of us shooting for a better life balance is probably much more likely to make us happy.

Einstein had a day job as a patent clerk when working on relativity. Leibniz did manage to invent calculus, including the notation used to this day, even though he picked up mathematics relatively late in life and even though he also had a job and lots of other occupations in philosophy, engineering, politics etc. You can do a lot if you dedicate to a problem 10 quality hours a week for 10 years. It still takes a lot of dedication and focus, but stating as some kind of law that unless you work obsessively all the time you can not succeed is rather simplistic for something as vague and at the same time as complex as "success". Hard work isn't a virtue by itself, the capability to do work is a precious resource, that should be used wisely where it will make the most impact.

Yes, but how long did it take relativity and calculus, respectively, to gain traction?

I've implemented a great idea myself in my spare time, but it won't change the world until it spreads. I'm not sure how successful I can be continuing it as a part-time project.

stating as some kind of law that unless you work obsessively all the time you can not succeed is rather simplistic for something as vague and at the same time as complex as "success"

Did I do that? It seems to me that what I said was:

"you'll find many if not most are by ordinary people's standards excessively dedicated to their work."

Mental work isn't like physical work. Throwing more hours at it doesn't mean you'll get an increase, at least not for long.

Unfortunately, the entrepreneurial success story tends to get corrupted by the noisy example set by tech blogs, and pundits glorifying the investment cycle represented by companies like Groupon, Yelp, etc, rather than the quiet success stories of much more common but less high profile businesses that simply create things that people want and are willing to pay for.

What results is confusion in the minds of young entrepreneurs between what it means to build a business and what it means to swing for the fences. Big ideas start can start small, and that does not preclude the possibility of swinging for the fences, but building the business should be the motivation and the priority, not visa versa. In fact, starting small, cultivating a product, and staying relentlessly focused on customer happiness is the right way to sart a business regardless of how big your ultimate ambitions are.

This, to me, is the best counterpoint I've read to Michael Arrington's rant from a few months back on how startup folk need to work harder and stop crying.

http://uncrunched.com/2011/11/27/startups-are-hard-so-work-m...

Arrington is a romantic, and he believes passionately in the romantic mythos of the startup world. That's what drew him to the valley to start TechCrunch in the first place. And that view of the world is warped as hell.

The key is you've just got to match the level of effort you're willing to give to the level of effort required to achieve the goal you've set out for yourself. Not all goals -- including entrepreneurial goals -- require a 120 hour a week personal commitment to succeed.

To me, the best counterpoint to Arrington's remarks is to understand where he's coming from. He's a blogger/journalist & VC. The biggest dreamers and swing-for-the-fencers make the best stories / investments.

Of course, the journalist has it even better: He gets good copy when the home-run hitter swings and misses. :)

The missing part here is that dhh is talented enough that he can date models and drive racecars while running both a multimillion dollar business and one of the world's most important open source projects. Many, perhaps most, aren't talented to that extent or can't context switch to that extent. They can get a lot done, but they have to have singleminded (dareisay "24/7") focus.

Moreover, 37Signals is like the boutique software shop that developers respect, while Facebook is a goliath that doth bestride the world. Zuck is at G8 summits and truly playing for world domination. If that's your goal, as long as you know it's a once a decade phenomenon...go for it! The worst thing that can happen is that you fail and take the huge hit to your ego.

I think there are a lot worse messages out there to our young than "work really hard on a business". The vacation culture of Europe and the leveraged culture of the US are about to lose out to the thrifty workaholics of China. dhh notwithstanding, there have to be some lessons in that.

"The vacation culture of Europe and the leveraged culture of the US are about to lose out to the thrifty workaholics of China"

Whether the Chinese have a better work ethic than Americans, I don't know. I'm also unclear what you mean by "lose out to." China has a billion more citizens than the U.S. They should be producing more than we are, but at around $5k per capita GDP, they are way behind our $48k per capita GDP. They may work hard, but they produce less, likely because they use manual labor for many of the things we automate.

If they're outcompeting us in the price of exported goods, it's because they're willing to work dirt cheap (by our standards). As they get wealthier, they will have higher standards of living and their production costs will rise. Perhaps ours will have to go lower as well. But I hardly think we want the average American worker to strive for the life of the average Chinese worker today.

You do have a point regarding borrowing vs saving. We westerners tend to live beyond our means, and that is biting us in the butt now.

But again, are we "losing out" to the Chinese because we take more vacation? Exactly what do you think success looks like?

A lot of people would say that working 24/7 to get a yacht but missing your children growing up IS losing out. The reward is not worth the sacrifice. And that's really what the post is about.

I'll upvote this if only because I'm not that young, I have obligations, and I would prefer to have extracurricular activities. I am easily discouraged by the constant stream of wunderkind success stories, and the relative dearth of more "normal" people succeeding. By now I think I've realized that this is because of what sells in terms of news.

I find that in tech culture--startups, coders, hackers alike--there is an attitude that if you don't live, breath, sleep your profession that you will fail. And I wonder if this idea that for a startup to succeed you have to give 24/7 comes from that attitude.

One ruby conference, there were two talks by startup founders, the one presenter stated that the only way to succeed was to work 24/7 while the other presenter stated that success only came through working smart and taking time off to recharge and do other things. Both were successful. Personally, I have other things that I want to do and the sooner we can abolish this startup myth the better.

I think there's a general myth that you can't have your cake and eat it. Startup - work 24/7 or it'll tank. Work for a corporate - work 24/7 or you won't get noticed and be in the typing pool your entire life. Work in finance - work 24/7 or you'll miss the deal that makes you millions.

The irony is, most people (but by no means all) actually realise that balance is important at a certain point and scale back willingly. The startup boom is no different from people starting small home businesses like they've done for years. We've slapped on a sexy name, told people you can become one of the world's richest people but fundamentally, it's the same as making pies in your kitchen. Some people will be happy making pies for the local market, others will want a deal to get them into a supermarket.

There's space for everyone, you just need to find the level that makes you happy. In my opinion ;)

CH blog post comment is so true (can't hard link to it):

    There is a fundamental difference in philosophy here.

    Some startups work 24/7 because they are “swinging for
    the fences” (to use a baseball analogy).

    Where other startups, like yourself [37signals] back in
    the day, are content with simply hitting “singles”.

    ....

    Here’s the philosophical difference, you can live a good
    life on hitting singles, but you’ll never become filthy
    rich unless you swing for the fences.

DHH seems to have gotten plenty "filthy rich" hitting singles: http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/racing

People who swing for the fences generally fly out to shallow center. You can score lots of runs hitting single after single after single.

Having a sports car fits into the "you can live a good life on hitting singles".

Having your own private jet, is when you're filthy rich.

This is well beyond your neighbour owning a Ferrari. It takes serious money to race in those leagues.

And if I recall correctly I remember seeing a video of him racing one of my personal favourites, an Aston Martin V12 Vantage (Could have been a DB9/DBS, can't recall exactly).

I would personally consider anyone who can drop six figures annually on a hobby filthy rich. The one's "living a good life" did the kind of racing I used to do, and the wealthy guys there only dropped 20-30k/ year racing around in parking lots.

Well the sports car in question is a one-off custom-build, purely for him, and rumoured to have cost a few millions of dollars. Not quite a private jet, but I would put that into "filthy rich"

UPDATE: Link - http://www.luxist.com/2010/09/06/one-of-a-kind-pagani-zonda-...

I always find it interesting that Babe Ruth was, at the same time, the home run leader and the strike out leader. If you swing for the fences, chances are, you will fail more than you win. Hitting singles, consistently, is actually far more beneficial for both you and the team that you work with.

A sports-geek quibble:

Babe Ruth also had the second-best career on-base-percentage in the history of baseball. He hit a ton of singles in addition to his home runs. He was an incredible athlete and defied the current mindset to try for home runs when he thought the time was right. Sometimes he got fooled and ended up striking out, but he wasn't a pure swing-for-the-fences hitter.

(You should look to somebody like Rob Deer if you're looking for someone who swung for the fences almost all the time.)

To further your point, the very highest on base % player ever was none other than Barry Bonds, the greatest HR hitter ever. The mere threat of him connecting was enough to convince record numbers of opponents let him walk for free... much like moves by Zuck now or billg back in the day sent everyone else in the tech world scrambling.

Singles are nice. I'd love to have an Ichiro on my team. But I'd take top notch slugger over him any day.

See, for example, the 2002 Angels.

Does commissioning a custom supercar not count as filthy rich? What can Mark Zuckerberg buy that Jason Fried and DHH cannot? The big difference is that 37signals didn't make a bunch of VCs filthy rich, just themselves.

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/09/07/pagani-zonda-hh-commissio...

a 747. all joking aside, Zuckerberg is in a different league monetarily. if you aspire to have that type of wealth, then good for you. if you're content w/ 'hitting singles' and hopefully bringing in enough to live the kind of lifestyle you'd like, then more power to you.

This presumes that all 24/7 startups are working 24/7 because of the "swinging for the fences" idea - because they need to rush to build something before someone else does - and that they aren't doing so because they think it's the only way to work.

While some 24/7 startups are 24/7 because of a true need, surely some amount must also think they need to work in perpetual crunch mode because "that's just how startups work"

From my response to this comment on the blog:

If "swinging for the fences" requires 24/7 work, chances are you're not focused enough, not validating your ideas fast enough, and from my experience, you're probably wasting a huge amount of your time doing on inefficient work or unnecessary stuff that will be scrapped entirely. That being said, starting small and focused does not eliminate the possibility of building something big.

To build on your baseball analogy-- who wins more games, the team with the most homeruns or the team with the most hits? 37 Signals proves the analogy-- a series of simple, focused, products, that started small and have achieved massive success.

> who wins more games, the team with the most homeruns or the team with the most hits?

Actually, it doesn't look like either is much more indicative than the other:

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/batting/sort/homeRu...

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/batting/sort/hits/o...

http://espn.go.com/mlb/standings

Can you give examples of some of these companies "swinging for the fences"?

Often it comes down to execution competence. I've seen self-titled startups put in incredible effort...and then come out with something that should have been a weekend project. I've seen casual weekend projects turn into brilliance.

I would offer up that many of those who have to work "24/7" do so as a poor alternative to competence/ability. Some of them, on the flipside, barely put in fulltime hours of real work, but maintain so little self-control and discipline, so focused on the display of heroics, that they seemingly always need to work.

Perhaps that's cynical, but I've never read a story where people legitimately put in an incredible effort and yielded a corresponding output.

My experience has taught me that it can be all or nothing at during a startup's inception. At my last startup, we had to work incredibly hard to keep our first customers happy. I do, however, think 37s is right when they say that you can turn a startup into a sustainable, quieter business much earlier than most people would assume.

I'm not sure there is one way to do it. The world needs companies pushing like the yc startup and it needs companies like 37signals. There is lots of room for both sides of the coin and the world is not so black and white as DHH or pg like to make it. :)

Cause and effect switched?

Lots of work probably won't make a failing startup succeed (you are probably going in the wrong direction or wasting time on the wrong things). However, a rapidly growing startup requires a lot of time, when it takes off, simply to scale business (hires, offices, VCs, server maintenance etc).

It is true that are probably many niche markets that pay respectable income to people who are willing to invest 10-20 hours per week. It's just like how many people become successful at their weekend hobbies and sports.

But many things these days resemble a game of winner takes all(social products, App Store leaderboard, etc...) If you are striving for a top spot in one of these areas, chances are you are facing competitors who are working both "hard" AND "smart". The claim that you can work 10-20 hours a week and stay competitive in these situations just seems overly optimistic to me.

You can work relaxed hours while testing hypotheses, building MVPs, interviewing prospective customers.

Once you've got to product-market fit, it becomes drug-like addiction. It's too much fun to give it up for something else.

"Most people will look at that and say that’s not me. I don’t have 110% to give. I have a family, I have a mortgage, I have other interests. Where’s my place in the startup world if all I have to give is 60%? What can putting in part-time give?"

If you work full time for a software company, you will probably not be legally allowed to give 60% depending on your contract. I know a lot of my friends tend not to read them before signing. Of course this doesn't apply if you don't do a software start up while working for a software company.

Please fix the title, this is not from 2009, it's from Feb 09, 2012.

Oh, I thought startups actually were like that, since I've never worked at one because being in perpetual crunch-mode sounds terrible. Plus I feel like any promise of some payoff in the future is really a setup to get fucked by someone who understands finance better than me. I'm not going to grind my life into dust so someone else can have 4 vacation homes instead of 3, then turn around and give me a $5k "attaboy".

DHH calls the all-consuming startup lifestyle a "pervasive myth". I really don't know how much of a myth it is, but if a myth becomes pervasive enough, it's as good as reality in many scenarios. If enough people believe a dollar has zero value, then it does.

I've been critical of seeing so many 37Signals posts around here lately but this one really is a true gem! He's right, there's this idea that you just have to work 24/7 and have no life to be a success. Businesses aren't cool but startups are. What's the difference? These days the difference is one is cool and the other isn't. One makes you think of the 20-something hipster genius loner hacker and the other makes you picture a boring mediocre person who didn't have the balls to do a startup so he starts a "business" (eww, gross, right?).

Business => J-O-B

Job seems to be a four letter word in some circles...

I never thought of it that way. At first I didn't know what the hell you we're talking about because of the whole 25 hour a day work schedule people seem to think is necessary for startups but then I realized a lot of people, in some circles like you say, do a startup to avoid real work. I'm not saying a statup isnt real work, just that there is a group of people I've seen who go into some half baked startup idea because they seem to think if you call it a startup it's an excuse to play all day with personal projects that have no business model and hope to god the magic VC fairy will come to visit them one day.

I blame books like "The 4 hour work week".

It's all based on the misconception that if you work for yourself, you don't have a boss. In reality, you have a lot of bosses at that point it's just that they are called customers.

Doing a statup now.

There is a LOT of work and a LOT of learning. I don't see how I can get to launch without working my tail off.

I think this kind of crap us peddled by startups which happened to succeed because they hit profitability quickly and have cash cows that throw off a lot of cash.

In a startup your going to be doing a lot of stuff you have no clue about - your going to gave to work your ass off in the beginning.

But yes, starting a business is different from "startup". Lots of entrepreneurs dont get that.

What is the difference? A startup is a business by definition.

Every business is not a startup. A startup is a business which doesnt have guaranteed or well known cashflows. Or rather its trying to figure out its chashflows.

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