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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

You feel indebted to the professional investors who picked you along with 5-10 other companies to place bets on with the clear expectation that most of those bets would lose? Why?

This is like the guy a few years ago who felt social pressure to pay back corporate debts for his C corporation because nobody was telling him that the debts applied to his company and not to him personally. But the risk of the company vanishing was priced into all those contracts! The same is true for investments. Anybody who invests professionally in startups has a valuation function of some sort that captures the fact that you --- even if you're Jack Dorsey or Elon Musk --- are more likely than not to fail before your company becomes liquid.

(I am also a founder; this time of a bootstrapped company, but I was one of three founders of a VC-capitalized company a few years prior to starting this one, and the two other startups I worked at were both VC companies.)

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No, it's not like that.

I agree that the financial and legal situation is as you say. (Having written financial trading software, I know how to price a deal.) But that's the skeleton. The flesh is the human relationships. I personally feel more responsible to the people I hire than to the investors, in that their commitment is larger and the failure hits harder. But my sense of obligation also extends to the investors, and in all cases it extends beyond the legal minimums.

I think there are practical reasons one might behave that way: Silicon Valley is a small place, and one's reputation has a lot of value. But for me it's deeper than that: collaborative projects come with a sense of obligation to one's collaborators.

I think we're in a silly place now, where we're both vociferously arguing a point we probably agree on. You have to do a good job, yes. You can't phone it in. But you don't have to work routine 70 hour weeks. You don't owe that to anyone.

You're right... but start-up culture glorifies the long hours and epic all-nighters[1], that to do otherwise would have you tarred a slacker[2].

[1] "One of the most pervasive myths of startup life is that it has to be all consuming. That unless you can give your business all your thoughts and hours, you don’t deserve success. You are unworthy of the startup call. This myth neatly identifies those fit for mission: Young, without obligations, and few if any extra-curricular interests. The perfect cannon fodder for 10:1 VC long shots." http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3106-all-or-something

[2] "Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining" http://uncrunched.com/2011/11/27/startups-are-hard-so-work-m...

Yep. I'm not sure how I got people riled up, but I don't think I'm saying anything particularly controversial.

I agree strongly on the 70-hour weeks. I'm working on a book about startup misconceptions, and one of the chapters is titled, "Working lots of hours means you're making progress." Interested in being interviewed for it? Stories from actual founders are what will really persuade people.

Details here: https://www.quora.com/William-Pietri/Startup-Misconceptions-...

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