Entrepreneurship Is Not Sexy | Hacker News Reader

Entrepreneurship Is Not Sexy

coconutheadsets.com

48 pointsiamelgringo15 comments

"It's immensely cool to be an entrepreneur now... 'when I was at university, the cool guys all pretended to be in a band, now they all pretend to be entrepreneurs'"

- The Economist, Special Report on Entrepreneurship, March 14, 2009 (http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13216025)

Having a start-up is Punk 2.0

Maybe Y Combinator is the new CBGB.

OMG.CBGB? FTW!

"It was about grinding it out. It was a story of will. It was a story of perseverance. It was a story of doing tasks that, from the outside looking in, would seem boring, dry, and monotonous."

Sounds sexy to me.

Well, or more to the point, it sounds like the real work behind all "sexy" pursuits. Movie stars don't get to be movie stars by going to ritzy parties.

"Too many entrepreneurs stop after they build the product. They think that building products is what makes them an entrepreneur"

The most true statement I've heard about entrepreneurship in a while.

Actually I think there's a good business in making deals with all the people out there that have a finished, or almost finished product they've abandoned when they found out that the product is not the end of the trip but the beginning, and getting together a bunch of business and marketing guys to sell and market the stuff.

It seems like it takes a long time for someone to realize that they don't have the will to see their product to the next step. Or that they haven't built something that's worth millions of dollars.

This seems like a good approach to doing what you suggest: http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2009/04/the-red-gate-mill...

In a startup, particularly as a founder, what you do matters to you personally in a very real way. You are deeply connected with the problem you're solving, the people you're helping and the fruits of your labor. In a regular job at a large company, you are alienated from the problem you are solving and the people you are helping by a large organization in an operating environment that is often organized around other goals than solving people's problems.

Startups give meaning. If that isn't sexy, I don't know what is.

If it didn't do that, if it wasn't so sexy... nobody would do it. Because as the PG quote goes, its "...like getting punched in the face repeatedly." But as the author points out... for some people its just a fantasy, there is no deep need to follow through on it. You either have the bug or you don't.

I have a saying, plucked from Team America, of all places: "You need a montage."

Basically, there's a reason films about a person standing up to triumph over a powerful adversary often compress the most important intervening moments, in which the person acquires their capacity to overcome, into a short segment: because those intervening moments aren't fun, and they aren't entertaining, even if they are ultimately fulfilling.

So it's what I say when people talk to me about being frustrated with the difficulty of steps made toward their aspirations: "You need a montage." As in, you're going to have to slog through a bunch of difficult, tedious stuff if you ever hope to overcome the odds against you.

But knowing that, and taking it on even so, is what marks so many great achievements.

There are ups and downs in any job and a lot of grinding no matter what profession it is. Even passions like music takes A LOT of effort - and one must be lucky, great and work very hard to make a breakthrough.

Like Peter Norvig wrote in "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years": one should not really strive to become an expert or successful at something in 10 days, but 10 years. I think the same can be said about startups, i.e. look on the long-term goal and not the short-term one.

Well, the one thing that motivates me to come back to entrepreneurship despite some past failures is simply the fact that,

There is a future in working for yourself. If your plan succeeds, you own your destiny and with it comes financial independence.

What is really the future for an employee? If the business goes south, you are laid off. If you work really hard you get promoted and make a little more. Hardly a recipe for financial independence.

Of course that's oversimplification, but the payoff in entrepreneurship is highly gratifying and motivating.

No one would ever say "let's just build the hotel... put it out there and see what happens."

I've started to think of it as building a raft to get off a deserted island. You probably don't need the titanic. You probably want more than a raft. And then it's all in the sailing (skill of the team), wind (market fit), and how much water you brought (capital/resources).

I have to say this captures my experience and thoughts on the matter almost perfectly. At Constrex, we launched the product around 8 weeks ago, and I'm now going through the hard, hard slog of raising awareness and educating the market as to what benefits we can bring them.

It's been damn hard going, and will continue to be for quite a while, but in some perverse way, I'm really enjoying myself. I'm definitely keeping this post book-marked, to send to people tempted to become entrepreneurs. It could just be a good litmus test: if you don't find it too discouraging, then maybe - just maybe - you might have what it takes to get a business off the ground.

This post really hits home for me in particular. We just launched our product about 3 weeks ago and although we're making money, it's not the big splash we'd hoped. I know that I at least had envisioned building a product, making it awesome, and not worrying very much about the sales and marketing. A good product sells itself right? We've been doing some soul searching and I think we're just going to have to grind through the transition from product development to managing a business and selling a product. I'm both terrified and excited.

Don Juantrepreneur is sexy, though.

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