The Hidden Costs of Starting a Company | Hacker News Reader

The Hidden Costs of Starting a Company

boss.blogs.nytimes.com

63 pointsbomatson38 comments

There's something off-putting about these kinds of articles. I think it's because there's an intentional subtext that start-up founders are some kind of rare breed of unwilling knights who have been called to noble action. "We must suffer so the world can experience the glory that is Docstoc." It's disingenuous. Start-up founders aren't being put-upon: They're making a conscious choice.

Most people work harder than they want to and must make trade-offs. People with minimum wage jobs. Doctors, lawyers -- as others have mentioned. Pretty much everyone except the idle wealthy or unemployed.

Pretty much everyone alive thinks they work too hard and wish they could spend more time with friends and family or working on hobbies, travelling, etc. Human condition.

Eeeexactly - I started to write almost exactly this and got distracted and returned to find you'd said it better than I could.

Having a startup is certainly hard work for less pay than you might be making elsewhere. But you get all of the benefits of being your own boss to one degree or another, plus creating something from scratch, and the possible upside.

I knew a guy who opened a lunch restaurant and catering business, and until it was making enough money, he'd work 6 days a week at the restaurant for lunch and catering gigs, and then also waited tables at a friend's restaurant and worked as a bartender at another friend's place. He basically got 4 hours of sleep a night, 7 days a week for three years. There was no brass ring or huge exit at the end of that path, he'd just decided at some point that he wanted to be his own boss.

And then there's all the people out there who work two or three part-time jobs just to make ends meet, who never see their kids, who may not even have health insurance - where's their work/life balance?

I personally feel privileged to have had the opportunity to start a company, make some money, have health insurance, and yes, worked my fair share of 60-hour weeks and all-nighters. I'm way better off than so many people in the US, forget about the rest of the world.

Read half the article - he lost me when he used that hackneyed phrase '110%'

Fairly sure she's a woman ^^;

You would be right. I'm definitely not a dude.

I agree. Building a startup is a privilege. It's not something everyone gets to do. I come from a line of very hard working people. My parents were the ones that showed be that with knowledge and hard work anything can be achieved. That's why I chose to found my startup. As with any occupation there are unique challenges. Those challenges take a harder toll on some. Chatting with friends that lost marriages and have struggled with depression and/ or drugs as a direct consequence of their occupation as a startup founder was part of the reason for the post. Thanks for sharing your perspective.

I think it's because there's an intentional subtext that start-up founders are some kind of rare breed of unwilling knights who have been called to noble action.

I think that sentiment is summed up nicely in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5810546

"The dream we sell to our employees" -- a clear delineation of "the powerful and right founders vs. lowly employees who have to be manipulated." "Join our ranks" -- What? What ranks?

People who live charmed lives can't really understand the real world after a while. It's not their fault, and in a way, the world may be better because of it, but it's annoying when they unknowingly flaunt their "We're successful!" in our faces.

There's no subtext. The article was written to share my experiences, experiences of friends, and the challenges we go through.

Startups are tough. As founders we are responsible for our teams, our customers, our vendors and partners, our advisory boards, our investors, family, friends, significant others, our health, and vision. It's not a compliant. I could go make a ton of money working a 9-5 without any of this type of stress and I choose not to because I love what I do and I love to build.

The reason I mentioned Startups Anonymous is because it's a resource for founders and team members (I don't like the word employees it creates that separation you noted above).

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

There is a subtext. Think of the term "Startups Anonymous." It's a play on "Alcoholics Anonymous." Alcoholism is something people have a very hard time controlling. It's dangerous. It destroys relationships. It destroys lives.

Participating in start-ups (as a founder or employee) is not something that's out of your control, despite your description of yourself as a "type A personality." It's just not. You do it out of passion. You do it out of a desire to build your own thing and make a more profound dent in the universe (and maybe get a little payday in the process). That's great -- and I respect that. You should be doing it with a sober mind and a clear picture of what you're doing and what your goals are.

But when you paint being a start-up founder as being similar to having a drug or alcohol addiction -- as being something that you can't control and that ruins your life. Well, it kind of sounds like whining. Or like you're trying to paint yourself as some kind of martyr to the cause. Like something is being put upon you that's totally out of your control and it's ruining your life. It's not. You are given an option each evening: Stay at work or go visit friends you haven't seen in ages. You think it over and choose the reward that comes from work. Want closer friends? Choose them.

You're in control. It's disingenuous to act otherwise.

I stated I know founders that have drug abuse and addiction problems as a result of a lack of healthy strategies to cope with stress. This is much different than comparing a founder to having a drug or alcohol addiction.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It's great to hear a different perspective. Lots of luck to you and whatever you're working on.

Unfortunately what starts as alcohol overuse, or drug abuse, as a coping mechanism can quickly spiral to full-blown addiction, both for physiological and psychological reasons.

You are over simplifying it.

The pressure (whether self-imposed or not) upon founders (especially those who have raised funds) are not imagined. The expectation and pressure to deliver a result when you've got investors, employees, shareholders etc all looking at you to pull this off are huge.

"You do it out of passion. You do it out of a desire to build your own thing and make a more profound dent in the universe"

No, unfortunately that isn't why a lot of struggling founders are doing it anymore. That's why you started it. Ideally why you started, and why you're continuing should stay the same, but unfortunately, more often than not, the reason you start a startup, and the reason you persist when things get bad (and Startups Anonymous and blog posts like these enter the discussion), are entirely different.

"You think it over and choose the reward that comes from work."

You assume the choice is based on wanting the reward that comes from work. It isn't that calculated. It is survival. Fuck friends, they'll be there tomorrow, tonight I have to work out how to stem the haemorrhage of money so I don't have to let Bob go on Friday; or, we've only got three months of money left, and our revenue is no where near where it should be, lets work these numbers in Excel for another couple of hours, there has to be something I'm missing.

This becomes a viscous cycle, and your ability to execute gets more and more constrained as you get more and more fatigued, stressed, tunnel visioned etc. As your ability to execute decreases your stresses go up, and each compound the other.

Tell me how exactly at that point, an exhausted, stressed, emotional person is supposed to just have a moment of self realisation and go "oh wait, what I'm doing is destructive, is actually making the situation worse, and I should JUST STOP". (Which by the way is what I've heard many people tell alcoholics who don't understand the disease).

The mental health aspects of startup imbalance (whether self imposed or not) are real. The fact that they may be originally self imposed in no way minimises the pain and suffering that a lot of founders go through.

Having a group of people who you can share with, hear other's stories, hear how they turned it around helps you. The word play is apt, well done, and shows a deeper appreciation for the issue than I think you're seeing.

"Tell me how exactly at that point, an exhausted, stressed, emotional person is supposed to just have a moment of self realisation and go "oh wait, what I'm doing is destructive, is actually making the situation worse, and I should JUST STOP". (Which by the way is what I've heard many people tell alcoholics who don't understand the disease)."

This thread's probably dead, but I wanted to add a few more cents, here...

I hear what you're saying, and I have my own business, so trust me -- I understand much of what you describe. Please don't automatically assume I know nothing about this.

At one point, I was an exhausted, stressed, and emotional person. And I had a moment self-realization and I said "stop." I thought deeply about how I worked and why and begin to make changes to create a more sustainable work-life balance. It took some effort, but I enacted most of those changes. Although it's an ongoing process.

I have never been an alcoholic, but I have been close to alcoholics. What they went through is nothing at all like what I went through. Once I made my decision, I had the power to enact change. My understanding is that managing alcoholism is a very hard process that pretty much requires community and accountability to work.

Now, I don't dismiss at all people getting together, talking, and helping one another out. I didn't do anything like "Startups Anonymous," but I did find that I was able to reach out to people I knew and find some help.

What I get frustrated by, though, is a much more subtle tone that I hear when founders and entrepreneurs talk about their problems. It's a little hard to describe, exactly, and I don't want to be either dismissive of rude. But. I feel like I hear too much pained moaning about a loss of friends, relationship difficulties, and loss of pleasures like taking vacations that don't require packing a laptop. Things like that. This bothers me because I actually think that just taking a deep breath and going, "You know what, I've simply got to stop what I'm working on for a day and just go do something else, something different -- just for a day (hour/evening/weekend)" is totally possible, no matter how myopically stressed you may be. In fact, I've found that when I most stressed, taking these breaks and enjoying life -- in the middle of the stressful period -- helps me keep the stresses in context, helps me not let them invade my every neuron and eat my brain out from the inside. It frees my mind to actually think about the stressful thing without falling into a dark hole.

So what I'm saying is, don't blame your company, your co-founders, your investors, your employees, or your customers for these problems. You. Are. In. Control. Act like it. It's not a pity party. Nobody who relies on you wants you to be a friendless basket-case. And suffering isn't a requirement for creating something great.

Cool - you know I think we actually agree on most things to do with this subject.

I guess I was talking about the more serious, and thankfully less common, degree it can get to with some founders (anyone actually, this isn't a special club reserved only for founders, anyone can find themselves in a bad way, feeling trapped).

The 90% (pulling figures out of my arse) of founders who say they have no choice but to take their laptop on every 2 day holiday, and haven't had a decent break for years are probable self inflicted with ample ability to "just change it" - agreed.

Brilliant! What the heck is the point of starting a company if not to improve the lives of others AND yourself?

I may be living in dream land, but I've been building my product without sacrificing my health, my family time, or my lifestyle. I've had to eat into some savings, and I've yet to make it a self-sustaining enterprise, but the idea that you need to sacrifice so severely for a business just seems irresponsible and exaggerated to me.

Am I alone?

Founding a startup is entirely a series of time management decisions. Build vs. buy vs. rent vs. skip. People that say you can't run a startup without sacrificing nearly everything are the same people that say programming on a schedule is impossible - it's only impossible if you don't FIRST focus on managing your time in an effective manner.

I am with you, certainly I have my startup almost always in my mind, and I "work" (reply emails, research stuff, etc..) at strange hours. But I have family and my time with them and with friends is very necessary. In fact I have noticed that certain matters need their time and it doesn´t matter how much you push them, they are not going to take of faster. There is a kind of social tempo that an idea needs to engage, I am learning to relax and wait for those waves in order to ride them (there is still a big proportion of work that needs to be done and that can accumulate very fast if you let the time past).

I agree with you. But it does mean that you need to plan, and maybe wait a year or two while you build up savings, etc.

There's a lot of evidence showing that working more than 40 hours a week is counterproductive for employees, and results in negative productivity after a couple of weeks. I don't know why running a startup should be any different.

I never understand the point of these types of posts, which unfortunately seem way too common.

There are lots of occupations that can be demanding and stressful (doctor, lawyer, investment banker, etc.). Why is it a surprise to anyone that a career requiring a significant commitment of one's time leaves less time for other activities?

There are only 24 hours in a day and if you're ultimately not happy with how you're using them, the solution is to change how you're using them, not to spend time complaining or lamenting what you've chosen to give up.

This highlights the disconnection between motive and work. I think the motive for most people to try the startup game is to free themselves from the constraints of typical work environments.

Success means the freedom to use your time as you prefer, but there's no guarantee of success. The alternative is status-quo drudgery.

If you have no balance in your life, is it because startups are that hard, or because you have no balance? (Yes, it's a tautology, or perhaps recursion) Is the startup just a means of running away from other things by running toward something else? Is it fundamentally different from, say, alcoholism, or serial monogamy, or any other semi-consciously self-destructive behavior?

Of course, there are sacrifices to be made. But ultimately, it's about priorities. If your startup is SO important that you're losing your health or your marriage, then there's something wrong with how you're prioritizing. The startup can still get MOST of your time (like any career), but without ruining you.

Definitely a good point - I would argue to takes time to reach this balance. The lack of work-life balance is a common trap many first-time entrepreneurs fall into. It honestly takes a lot of practice and discipline to get it right

I’ve lost friends because they thought I was crazy to try to build my own company.

Huh? What kind of friend tosses you aside because you decide to start a company? That makes absolutely no sense. I'm trying to imagine this conversation:

You: I'm starting my own company!

Friend: I think that's a crazy idea. You'll probably fail.

You: I'm confident I can do it.

Friend: I disagree, and we're not friends any more.

If anything, friends usually way underestimate the difficulty of running a business and just throw platitudes at you like, "Do it! Follow your dreams! With passion you can't fail!"

Could be she lost friends (or superficial friends) because they were envious of her trying to build her own company, but on the surface they were saying "that will never work" instead of "I hate you for trying".

As a woman I've had friends, male and female, give their opinions of why I shouldn't build my company. Many of the conversations go back to the concept of I should be doing what most women my age do... get a great 9-5 job, meet a guy, and have a family. It's been hard and surprising to have very close friends, many who are very pro women's rights and liberal, express these view points. I would never tell any of these friends they were wrong to...get a job, meet someone, get married, and have a family. So friendships ended because of a lack of common ground.

I like the conversation you created though. It actually would have been easier if your comments were true.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Not every optimization problem has a global optima, but just as importantly, not every problem is a zero sum game with a bajillion shitty Pareto optima.

Variety is good for the brain.

Yes I'm sure you're addicted to the hedonic treadmill of your b2c webapp idea (ok, some folks are b2b, and some folks are doing things that aren't webapp). Recognize it, and manage it. Cognitive variety is healthy.

Ask yourself this: once you're professionally accomplished and have nothing to prove, what will you be focusing on professionally and how will you juggle various priorities.

Now ask yourself: why aren't you doing that already. Go do that. Unless its a bizarre fantasy that isn't possible in reality.

:-)

Choosing 2 of 3 is true for early-stage startups. But once things take off, then you can get 3 out of 3 as you are able to delegate some of the work out to your employees. Then, you can achieve startup, health, significant other/family.

I disagree with the 'you must pick X of Y' absolutism. It appears to validate an oversimplified point, as do 'Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence' and other clever one-liners.

Choices involving time allocation don't have to be binary; each one carries an opportunity cost, the granularity of which we control. Although I can relate to many negatives from the article, it strikes me as equivalent to complaining about a cushy-but-boring day job while not willing to incur the risks of self-employment.

The meat of the issue is to decide what the right balance is, to be aware of the trade-offs, and to not vilify 'startups' and blame them for our failure to make choices consistent with our values.

"You know where you got that shirt!" - Charlie Murphy

I think (now) you can do a startup and still keep your friends, have great health, have fun, etc... You need to stop being reactionary and be visionary.

Firstly you have to start spending quality time, and that means cutting off lots of the things you do at work that are only there to satisfy your need to feel like you are accomplishing things. You aren't. Quality time is true for family, and friend hours as well; just because you are there does not mean you are there. Many people who saw their parents regularly still feel they were very distant from them. If you are at home, be there mentally. If you are working, close that email window, and work.

Secondly make more time by waking up earlier in the day. If you wake up at 6, you can go to bed at 10:45, and that leaves you with 16 hours to do your magic.

Thirdly, stop being reactionary. If you have a plan other than the no-plan plan (translation "i don't know what to do so I am doing anything that comes to mind"), then you will know you can execute on it without having to spend 16 hours on it daily. While it is entirely understandable to work extremely long hours every now and then, it is probably more viable over the long term to have a plan and execute on it at your own pace. The things we will change the course of our startup (e.g. "we have to launch before July 7th") won't change them at all, besides if your startup is one event away from failure, even if it is Google launching a similar product, then it is safe to say it should not be called a business.

Kick back. Write a plan. Execute it.

It seems as if the college idiom has graduated alongside the people going on to found startups. In college it was "Good grades. A social life. Sleep. Choose two because you can't have all three." Now it's the more mature but still very similar "Startup. Significant other. Health."

There's another hidden cost directly related to this article. It's call opportunity cost. If you're interested in starting a company you are drawn to these kinds of articles, and ultimately they just waste your time. It's startup porn, and it takes away from time you could be working. [Raises right hand and swears to stay off HN the rest of the work day.]

You don't think a dialogue around work-life balance is relevant to entrepreneurs & startup employees?

There's another hidden cost to starting a company - smart, young, energetic engineers are pulled away from established companies that are much more likely to succeed.

I feel like the current balance has gone much too far into the startup direction and I've been waiting for some time for the pendulum to swing back.

From the article: "Jason Nazar, the founder and chief executive of Docstoc, said: “You can have your start-up and one thing. You can have your start-up and your health. You can have your start-up and your family. Or you can have your start-up and your significant other, but you can’t have multiples. If you try to have multiples, you’ll be poor at all of them.”"

Actually, a wise philosopher named Jennifer Lopez (yep, J-Lo) said that first. Her quotation (paraphrasing here) was something to the effect of: "You can have a great career, a great relationship with your partner, or be a great parent. Pick any two."

Startups are hard, let's go shopping?

Meh. OK, yes, doing a startup can be a difficult process, and you probably have to make some serious sacrifices if you want to succeed. That's not a big revelation.

In my own case, I've basically forgone social interaction, dating, spending time with friends, etc., in order to try and get this thing off the ground. No, it's not pleasant, but I remind myself that this state of affairs is (if things go well) temporary... we'll get some traction at some point, and I may be able to back off a little. One day, we'll be a profitable, growing company, we'll hire a CEO, and I'll designate myself "chief coffee mug washer" and step aside to spend time doing fun stuff. Maybe some of my friends will still be alive then, and still know who I am. And maybe I'll still be young enough to have some kind of chance of finding a girlfriend. Or not. Who knows? But who ever said any of this was going to be easy?

Winning isn't normal, right?[1]

[1]: http://www.jasonshen.com/2010/winning-isnt-normal/

If you're not enjoying what you're doing, and you're sacrificing so much to do it, then there'd better be some pretty big pay-off at the other end. Pretty big gamble to be taking essentially on faith otherwise.

Aaah, but that's just it - I do enjoy what I'm doing. I'll be disappointed if there isn't a big payoff at the end, but I enjoy the process of creating, building, learning, growing and discovery. Working on this startup has taught me so much and taken me in so many interesting directions...

I guess you could say I'm an adherent of the mindset that "startups are the new graduate school". I love learning new stuff and forcing myself to learn what I need to know to do this startup is a great experience in many ways.

But like everything in life, there are always tradeoffs.

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