Don't be an entrepredouche | Hacker News Reader

Don't be an entrepredouche

entrepredouche.com

32 pointschrnguyen7 comments

So... don't be selfish and egotistical. This website is just as pretentious and judgmental as the people its calling out.

Most of these symptoms are forms of entrepreneurial naiveté -- eventually these people wash out or learn:

1) Your startup is more like a small business you'd like to admit

2) Products (apps) don't make sustainable billion dollar companies in themselves -- production and distribution do

3) An idea has some value, but a business plan with solid market research pointing to a real gap that has potential for short term and long term profit is truly valuable.

4) You need cash, engineers, or a magnetic personality. One of these is good, two of these is great, and three of these is nearly unstoppable.

I've definitely met these people and have learned to avoid them. But is this website (and avoidance in general) the right way to deal with this class of people?

We're smarter than them. We ought to be able to extract some use from them.

Yes! I was hoping first for awareness (step one of the process to rehabilitation) and to catalyze some change. You're right in that perhaps doucheshaming is not the best. However, some don't realize they're doing these things-- they just started out, eager to try something, and sometimes they learn and change from it. I'm pretty optimistic that people will recognize something wrong and try to fix it. I'm not sure what else I can do-- I've tried individually talking to them, learning their perspective and hopefully picking up on mine as well, but the scale is fairly limited.

Find a nugget of inspiration in their terrible ideas and then find a decent business cofounder?

Yeah. And while we're at it, get them to buy you lunch.

I met a guy who I've now nicknamed as "Ideas and Problems guy" when I talk about him. (It's a little more polite-- so I'm not bad mouthing his name, since our community is not that big.) I think that just by talking to him I provided value to him--- I was a cynical sounding board for his ideas. I never wrote a line of code for him, but being a sounding board probably helped him. Oh well, TANSTAAFL reigns.

"We're smarter than them. We ought to be able to extract some use from them."

Who are the pretentious ones again?

Hah, yeah.

That quote or attitude came from a mentor I had at an internship. He noticed that I was annoyed at people who I thought were stupider than me-- so he told me that:

"If you think you're the smarter one, then the onus is on you to have a smooth business relationship with them. You're the more capable one, so it's within your power to do business with these clients despite their shortcomings."

The great thing about this attitude is that it works even if you aren't smarter than them. If anything, this quote can encourage pretentiousness to turn on itself.

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