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Comment by dglassan | Hacker News Reader

I have similar feelings to this guy. I've lived in the bay area my entire life, although I'm only 25 so I was young during the dot com bubble.

My feelings are that Zuckerberg made it "cool" to start a company again. People had such a bad taste after the dot com bust and starting a company was viewed as very risky from around 2000 to 2005. Then Zuckerberg came in with this amazing success story and now everyone wants to start a company again.

Sometimes it bothers me that people throw around the word "startup" so casually now. There's kids that are "doing a startup" but the only thing they're building is a gmail plugin or "a better to-do list that will change the world". We don't need any more of this crap. It seems like some people just want the founder title so they can broadcast to their LinkedIn network and impress people.

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>It seems like some people just want the founder title so they can broadcast to their LinkedIn network and impress people.

Reminds me of this quote from Ronnie Coleman: "Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights."

YEAH BUDDY!

Exactly. I wanted to be a startup CEO for a while until I worked at an 8 person startup and saw just how much effort they put into it. Now I'm not so sure, at least not right now in my life.

Absolutely true. That's a great quote.

And a quote from Peter De Vries - "I love being a writer, but I hate the paperwork."

There are so many variants to this quote I think it's impossible to tell where it originated.

"Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die." - Unkown (at least to me)

"Everybody wants to be Seinfeld, but nobody wants to be Jerry Seinfeld" - Chris Rock

Wow, never thought I'd come across a Ronnie Coleman quote on HN.

Last paragraph reminds me great quote: "I actually think most folks are obsessed with the IDEA of being a startup founder/ceo, rather than wanting to do the ACTUAL hard work.

I also think quite a few just want to be known as Entrepreneurs or talk about startups & how to build a business, rather than doing it."

Source: http://fascinated.fm/post/25657917784/i-actually-think-most-... (it is actually just collection of four tweets)

I remember back then when CEOs were associated with powerful and rich business men. Now every one is a CEO including broke college students with big egos.

>It seems like some people just want the founder title so they can broadcast to their LinkedIn network and impress people.

Unless you have VC? nobody but your mom is impressed by the 'founder' title. If this "start companies to create features and get a really big hiring bonus" phenomena is a problem, it's the fault of the VC (and the companies that hire through acquisition.)

I mean, personally, I think it's a ridiculously inefficient way to hire, but hiring is hard, so maybe it's better than what companies can do on their own? (I think it's a horrible way to hire because the best founders often don't make the best employees, and vis-a-vis.)

Meh, my point of view? things are hot right now, if you are an Engineer. Take advantage of it. Gain experience and/or money. If the highest paying gig you can get is taking money from a VC? who am I to tell you that is the wrong thing to do?

I mean, clearly it's not sustainable... but really, what economic upswing is?

> I think it's a horrible way to hire because the best founders often don't make the best employees, and vis-a-vis.

I wouldn't underestimate the value of someone who knows how to ship product. The half-effort from a solid entrepreneur could still be far more effective than an equally smart but subservient employee who wants to simply be assigned a discrete job and work 9 to 5.

One problem I've seen people encounter when hiring "solid entrepreneurs" is that the "entrepreneur" may be very used to doing everything themselves, and to making all the decisions. Sometimes, this makes it very hard for them to cooperate with a larger team, with priorities that are decided by negotiation between different parts of the team.

Obviously not every entrepreneur has these weaknesses as an employee, but some do.

Or maybe they are glad to leave marketing behind and focus strictly on their core competency. But in any case, yes an entrepreneur might not do well within a larger team, but that's a judgement call for the acquirer to make. Certainly seems like no more risk than a great interviewee becoming dead weight on payroll.

I don't live in the Bay Area, but here in Boulder it's always been "cool" to do a startup, regardless of the environment. The only difference I see since Facebook/Web 2.0 is that it's cool to invest in startups again.

(I've been doing startups since 1995.)

Hey, I'm in Boulder too. Are you working at a startup currently? If so, which one?

At what point is a GMail plugin able to transform itself into a startup like Rapportive? A to-do list probably don't have a very big chance of changing the world, but a better one has the potential to impact a small subset of people who feel the same pain points as the founders. Probably not startup worthy, but the main point of a startup is really to take a problem and find a solution to it, and if these kids are addressing a real problem and making a calculated shot at a solution, then why not?

AznHisoka had a great comment below...unless your plugin is bringing in serious revenue -- perhaps enough money to pay your living costs, it's a project, not a startup

>There's kids that are "doing a startup" but the only thing they're building is a gmail plugin or "a better to-do list that will change the world".

I completely agree. I'm also guilty of it to an extent, though I try to avoid it. Sometimes it is hard because then in a room where you're the one not saying it is a "startup" that changes the game you look like the loser, which is unfortunate, but can be worked around.

Until it starts generating serious revenue, it's just a product, not a startup.

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