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Comment by Aromasin | Hacker News Reader

I wasn't the one to downvote you for reference, but to be clear, moving out and abandoning my partner and country so I can put together a half-baked MVP and give away equity for that hard work isn't what I, nor anyone else on this forum I suspect, would consider a good trade. I assume others are downvoting you because your comment sounds like you're running a scam operation.

If you want to conflate running away from responsibilities and joining a frat house as something that helps entrepreneurs, then you do. I would suggest looking at actual start-up incubators' work (Entrepreneur First and the like). Paying salaries and covering start-up costs, not just providing basic living expenses. What you're describing might as well be indentured servitude.

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I think i overdid the hypothetical , I’ll agree with you on that. Certainly the need to move is extreme for many people. It’s never been much of an issue for Me so I think I failed to adjust that to most peoples attitudes about travel.

It still reflects a bit though, and in my limited experience it holds true that the successes I have been either involved with or adjacent to have been accomplished by either money in the bank, credit cards, or shedding “normal” expenses by moving to somewhere that the cost of living was maybe twenty percent of normal.

Obviously you’re not going to do any of those things unless you are really sold on the value proposition of your product, and you think it can scale to bring 100x plus rewards on your time.

But if it’s a 10 percent chance of success on a 100x gain, that’s a bet I’ll take all day, every day.

But I don’t criticize anyone for not being willing to drop everything only to probably fail, and repeat that 10 times to get one solid win. That’s not for everyone, to be sure.

But I think that’s really what I mean anyway, if you’re going to try for anything but the low hanging fruit, you’ll have to be willing to do what most people will not.

That doesn’t make it the “right” thing for everyone though, and it sure doesn’t lead to a Healthy work-life balance, at least in the beginning.

Edit: Now that you've got me introspecting a bit, I think I realized my own ideas about these things are probably fundamentally unworkable for most people's dominant paradigm.

I haven't held a job in 40 years, I'm comfortable now but wasn't always. Even when I was young I refused to do anything for money I wouldn't do for free. That is a very expensive attitude to have, and unless you are willing to live in a very primitive way as I was, it is a very hard line to tow.

But I am happy with that decision, it has served me well, and made me very very comfortable and happy in life.

It honestly never occurred to me that anyone would think of starting a business that they weren't just dying to do anyway lol, but now I can see that that's an edge case, and your sincere if unenthusiastic words about your business made that click.

That said, I really don't think anyone should launch a startup or any business that they wouldn't do without compensation if they had the free time. Not that there aren't plenty of opportunities to make money for money's sake, but I just cant see that as being a wise way to spend the very finite hours we have in this life.

Thanks for being sincere, It has helped me to understand others a little better. Ive often seen a lack of total commitment as an insincere interest, but I now think maybe its more nuanced than that for many people. Still, I don't think I would fund or be involved in any project where i felt that the key people could be dissuaded from trying to complete their goal.

i kind of understand your perspective. i could never hold a job where i didn't enjoy working either. however over the years i have mellowed quite a bit, and learned to compromise because i realized there is more to life than only doing work i enjoy. also, there are more dimensions to enjoying work. in particular, there are always some aspects of work that are not fun and you have to find a balance.

from your proposal the main problem was living in an isolated area. i have lived in many places around the globe, but the key feature of every place was that it was not isolated. i just moved my whole family to get away from a place that ended up being to isolated. and for a startup i would move to a place where it is easy to find and hire new talent to grow the company. and the funding would have to be enough to pay for my whole family too.

i was part of a startup before, but i simply could not afford to stay because of the lack of funding. i totally would have continued if i could have funded myself.

in fact that's what i am doing now. using my savings to build a new business. it's a struggle though. the usual problem of a tech person failing to find customers. but i'll continue until i run out of money.

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