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Comment by jasonkester | Hacker News Reader

I disagreed with this when it was posted as a response to one of my comments last night [1], but didn't say anything because it was sitting below that comment, which had already addressed it.

But since it's standing on its own here, I'll pipe in again and remind folks that all that responsibility is entirely optional. You can design your business such that it can grow arbitrarily successful without ever requiring your full attention.

I can understand why the author feels that success and workload go hand in hand, because, well, that's what happened to him. If, on the other hand, you design your venture from day one to ensure that it won't ever drag you away from the beach, it's certainly possible to achieve that. Because, well, that's what happened to me.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6374125

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I've seen a couple of entrepreneurs that did not have a sense of responsibility about them, they did not strike me as particularly nice people to be around. As soon as you have just 1 employee, 1 customer or 1 supplier you start having responsibilities. If you know how to run a business without all of those then you're a very lucky outlier.

I think the employees are the things that bring responsibility. Customers come and go, and so long as you have a good product they'll accumulate over time. If you make it a primary goal, you can get your product to the point where it doesn't generate much in the way of customer service burden. I field maybe one email per week per 500 paying customers.

The added advantage of a low customer service product is that you don't need to hire employees. (Which, I agree, would add all that responsibility you talk about).

I disagree that you need to be an outlier to do this. There's nothing particularly special about the formula, and there are several people doing it here. It's not really a sense of responsibility that's lacking. It's the actual responsibilities. Most weeks I just don't have that much to do.

> Most weeks I just don't have that much to do. This isn't the same, though, as not having responsibilities.

You have a responsibility to build a good product. You have a responsibility to make your paying customers happy with your product.

It does not have to require a lot of work to meet those responsibilities, but that doesn't mean the responsibilities don't exist.

Not sure why so many people are telling you that you have to do this and that as opposed to doing it themselves and letting you do things your way, which sounds like they're working. Would you mind sharing what this business of yours is that requires so little day-to-day management?

Have you ever met the owner of a restaurant franchise location? Their only responsibility is to pick a good store manager, and leave everything else alone. Effectively, they get the business off the ground, make it self-sustaining, and then extract rent (in the economic sense) from it.

I think that it can be true that "hard work and success go hand in hand", but it kinda depends on how you define both "success" and "hard work".

As for the freedom thing... I'll just observe that there are different kinds of "freedom". In that earlier thread, I made the point that, as a founder, I have FAR more to do now, which seemingly means I have more responsibilities and less freedom. Well, yeah, no. I mean, I have less free time now, in a sense. But I have more freedom in that I am the one making decisions about marketing, sales, product roadmap, strategy, etc. In other words, by founding a company, I'm at least a little more free to call my own shots. I decide (well, along with my co-founder, so it's not only me) what markets to pursue, what customers to chase after, what parnterships to engage in, etc.

I'll argue that being a founder means both more responsibility and more freedom, even though that may sound paradoxical, given an intuitive notion of what "freedom" entails.

Also, for what it's worth, in my comment on the other thread, I took the parent comment I replied to as using "freedom" more in the "free time" sense, which is why I agreed and made the comment I made.

i believe the sticking point between the two views is the very definition of what you are selling to customers. someone says product and half of us thing "app store download" and the other half think "custom software services".

if you're in the business of selling services -- prepare for the op's difficulties in a revenue-per-hour world.

if you're in the business of selling digital widgets -- you can work it to a point of relaxed maintenance where you only need to grow if you want to grow.

m3mnoch.

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