ASK PG: What were your first thoughts knowing for sure Viaweb would be acquired? | Hacker News Reader

ASK PG: What were your first thoughts knowing for sure Viaweb would be acquired?

70 pointseprogrrrr1130 comments

Just finished reading Founders At Work. Amazing book! I am curious, Paul, what were the first feelings you had when you knew for sure the Yahoo acquisition was for real? What did it feel like? Was it a big relief? Becoming rich? What were you first immediate thoughts?

Thank you for sharing with us.

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The main thing I felt at first was relief. For the whole three years we'd endured one disaster after another. There was literally some new mortal threat every few months. When the deal finally closed, the feeling of finally being able to relax was so strong (and so unfamiliar) that I was practically high for several months on it.

When I was in grad school I once had a kidney stone so bad that I ended up in an emergency room on Thanksgiving Day. They gave me some fairly strong opiate intravenously. If you've ever had something like this, you understand the appeal of heroin. Especially coming after a week of being curled up into a ball with pain. The feeling when we sold was a less intense but longer lasting version of this.

In retrospect, we could have made Viaweb a lot less painful by spending/raising less money. That was what made it so stressful. But startups were more expensive then. Or at least, everyone thought they had to be.

One day I would love to hear about these disasters. In my own experience I have literally faced utter failure in the face only to somehow manage to bounce back stronger than before.

I've told people that running your own business is a lot like playing one of those racing games where you get 30 seconds to get to the next checkpoint at which point you'll earn yourself more time. On several occasions it has felt like I have literally ran out of time only to coast through a checkpoint and be gifted more time.

My favorite description of entrepreneurship is jumping out of a plane and trying to build a parachute before you hit the ground.

Note: I know it's not a perfect analogy. I'm comfortable with that.

I think that's a better analogy for launching a new startup. The racing one more closely matches the on-going experience of running one.

"One day I would love to hear about these disasters." - Have you read F@W?

I had to guess what F@W means.

The book "Founders at Work": http://www.foundersatwork.com/

I haven't managed to sell a business, yet, but when I decided to give up and get a job last year, I got a less intense (and probably less long lasting, though it's still going on to some extent now) version of this. The lack of stress after 7 years of never knowing if there was going to be enough money next month was palpable.

I don't think it's necessarily a money thing, because I experienced the same effect when I folded up my startup and got a job. And I still had enough cash in the bank to do one, maybe two more startups, and was never in any danger of running out of money.

I think it comes from the sudden lack of responsibility. When you're in a startup, everything you do matters: if you succeed, it's because you rocked, and if you fail, it's because you screwed up. This makes you feel incredibly alive, but it's also incredibly stressful. When you go back to collecting a paycheck and have to grotesquely screw up to get fired, all that stress just evaporates, and it's like coming down off a massive high.

I still wanna try it again, and hopefully end up with a success instead of a failure next time. But I felt like I'd reached the end of my endurance when I gave up: I'd given it my 110% and it still wasn't enough given my current experience level. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything though.

I agree that it's not just the money; it's just that the money was what was on my mind all the time, because I was losing/borrowing money rather regularly for 2/3 of that seven years. :) I also plan to try it again, fairly soon, even. It's one reason why I'm working contracts now instead of full-time.

"When I was in grad school I once had a kidney stone so bad that I ended up in an emergency room on Thanksgiving Day. They gave me some fairly strong opiate intravenously. If you've ever had something like this, you understand the appeal of heroin. Especially coming after a week of being curled up into a ball with pain."

How weird to use that metaphor. I passed a stone during college, and simply being rid of the pain was an amazing high, without the need for drugs. For a week afterward, I felt as though I had just been born. (Coincidentally, the next time I felt anything close to that euphoria was when I turned in the final draft of my dissertation.)

I suppose that once you've grown accustomed to severe pain, having it removed is a revolution.

Thank you.

I am wondering that it must have been such a magical moment

- suddenly knowing that the "stress" is gone forever...

I am sure it must change everybody.

Also, I really liked a lot your essay about stuff - this is probably one of my favorites. Also explains why you used to keep using your old powerbook :-)

Hamburger... I hate Ramen.

At first when cutting over to The Cheap Founder Life I found that I ate worse -- cheap frozen stuff, canned stuff and so on. Now I'm pretty sure that I eat better than before since I've gotten even cheaper and started cooking everything.

Fried rice (with veggies and egg), vegetarian jambalaya, pasta with a bunch of stuff added to generic sauce (beans, carrots, peppers), chicken noodle soup or gumbo (you can make enough to eat for 3 days in one go). It's seriously pretty easy to get your food costs south of $3 a day and to eat actual good food. You get fast at it too -- I can do most of the kitchen time on those things in about 20-ish minutes.

When both I and my wife were working full-time, we routinely ate frozen dinners not wanting to spend our precious free time cooking. Since I've been laid-off, I started cooking dinners for us soon afterward and haven't looked back. I don't know how much money we are saving, if any, but the quality is just so much better (at least I think so). This just feels closer to the way life ought to be.

Is this an allusion to the Ramen-profitable thread or just non-sense? I want to be in on the joke :)

As in, "No more Ramen, I can now afford a Hamburger." (Which totally makes it not funny... oh well.)

Our ramen was rice and beans. In fact the rice and beans I used to make during Viaweb became the basis of the dishes we make for founders at YC dinners. (I say we because we now have a cook make the dinners, but I made them for the first 7 cycles.)

Rice & Beans For 2n

   olive oil or butter
   n yellow onions
   3n cloves garlic
   n 12-oz cans Goya white beans
   n cubes Knorr beef bouillon
   n teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
   3n teaspoons cumin
   n cups rice, preferably sushi rice

Put rice in rice cooker. Add water as specified on rice package. (Default: 2 cups water per cup of rice.) Turn on rice cooker and forget about it.

Chop onions and fry in oil, over fairly low heat, till glassy. Put in chopped garlic, pepper, cumin, and a little more fat, and stir. Keep heat low. Cook another 2 or 3 minutes, then add beans (don't drain the beans), and stir. Throw in the bouillon cube(s), cover, and cook on lowish heat for at least 10 minutes more. Stir vigilantly to avoid sticking.

While not only delicious, one reason Rice & beans is preferable to Ramen is that it is a complete protein[1], "a source of protein that contains an adequate proportion of all of the essential amino acids for the dietary needs of humans" [2].

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_protein [2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_and_beans

You probably want a little more fat than this diet provides alone. Also be sure to watch out for Vitamin B12 deficiency :-)

That's where the donuts come in:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=511085

"How to eat like a startup: A Cookbook by Paul Graham"

In the works?

I remember reading about a startup that produced a cookbook for startups out of their experience. Unfortunately I couldn't find the reference, but I wouldn't mind hearing what others have come up with.

Maybe consider cutting back on the bouillon cubes.

Beef bouillon cube ingredients:

Salt, Monosodium Glutamate, Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oil, Beef Fat, Hydrolyzed Protein (Corn, Soy, Wheat), Caramel Color, Yeast Extract, Onion Powder, Water, Beef Extract, Disodium Inosinate, Disodium Guanylate, Spice and Coloring, Dried Carrots, Parsley.

Per your serving size:

1340 mg sodium = 56% RDA

The Knorr vegetable cube trades off MSG for partially hydrogenated oil so doesn't seem much more appealing.

24 ounces of beans for one person? Do you mean for 2n, not for n/2?

Oops! Fixed; thanks.

Too many ingredients for Heyzap's taste. I am going to try that out without the garlic and bouillon.

Though I did find a Chinese supermarket in Mission with cheap pre-chopped garlic.

If you aren't going to use bullion, sprinkle some MSG on, umami is essential here.

Stir vigilantly to avoid sticking.

Or allow a little bit of sticking at the end and add some white wine to unstick (deglaze) the sticky stuff. Cook away at least half of the wine you added. This little flourish always adds good flavors.

for n/2 weeks, right?

If you happen to be in Thailand, try the street food - satay skewers, spicy soup, deep fried fish cakes...

[ The crispy grasshopper beer snacks are mainly there to shock ]

geek culinary bliss on a budget

also LOLcats and Homer Simpson. I usually go for 3 allusions per joke.

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