Don’t Start a Company, Kid | Hacker News Reader

Don’t Start a Company, Kid

blog.bignerdranch.com

50 pointsquanganhdo17 comments

I have huge technical respect for Mr. Hillegass (bought and read several of his books). I also respect the crux of this post, which for me was the following sentence:

"Being smart and hard-working got me to seven employees. Luck took me the rest of the way."

The funny thing is that I don't want to be an entrepreneur for the money. I'm also not interested in the hockey stick. I wonder if the odds are better if one is just aiming for a lifestyle business.

Best part of the article was almost a sidebar:

When you have Enough, the extra money means very little. I’ve been broke, and being broke sucks balls. Having Enough is awesome. How would I define “Enough”? Enough means that you can take a friend out to a nice lunch and not have to worry about how much it costs. I have hung out with a couple of billionaires—my experiences indicate that being a billionaire is just incrementally better than Enough.

Exactly.

As someone who would absolutely love to be a billionaire (I once wrote an 'Ode to Wealth', it's under my comments somewhere), honest question: What makes that the best part of the article?

I tend to agree with you on this.

At the end of the day no one can argue that someone that lives on $20,000 a month doesn't have a better quality of life than someone living on $5000 a month.

I totally appreciate the sentiment in the article but at the end of the day, money equals freedom.

If I had assets of $5 to $10 million in investments throwing off $200k-$500k a year in cash, that would be a nice lifestyle indeed.

Does it mean I would work any less harder? Probably not. But, if I want to take that 3-4 month trip to Europe and spend 50k on the trip, then that's what I would do.

And I think the comparison is wrong. Being billionaire is incrementally better than a multimillionaire (let's say net worth of $5 million and beyond).

Making $100k a year is definitely not close to somebody making $500k a year.

In terms of starting a company and the risks involved, I think for most people that do it, its an itch. The money is the reward but that's not why we want to do it.

I also think that the odds increase dramatically when you focus on building a business where you don't expect it to ever go IPO or be worth more than 5-10 million.

Finally, a kindred spirit!

You said it best: "at the end of the day, money equals freedom." My previous sentiments: [0]

>At the end of the day no one can argue that someone that lives on $20,000 a month doesn't have a better quality of life than someone living on $5000 a month.

Oh, you'd be surprised. TONS of people will disagree; I know several of them :). They'll create strawmen, saying things like "Oh, yeah, he spends $20,000 / month, but he {had to sell his soul to get it | isn't happy | has a bad relationship with his family"}. Personally, I think it's just jealously, and bitterness.

Me? I'm a 1st year CS student. I have a math final on Thursday, but I owe about USD380 on my tuition, so I'm gonna be barred from sitting the exam, which means an automatic fail. The course is a pre-requisite for semester 2 courses. Which means my degree plans just got pushedback. Being in this situation, when I hear people talk like money ain't a thing, it kinda makes me shake my head. No beef with @carsongross, but to me, money is really, really important. For want of 0.4BTC, my kingdom is lost ;(.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2025537

My 'Ode to Wealth': https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2026680

When (Money In From People Who Aren't Assholes) / (Money Out) > 1... bam, freedom.

While you work on the numerator, there's also a denominator there you can work on without actually hurting your happiness too much, it turns out.

Really? You can't find a way to scrounge up $400? I've found your first obstacle to being rich. Go talk to people. That is a problem you should easily be able to solve. Try to find the money. Can't find the money? Go talk to people at the school until it gets taken care of. You are effectively giving up a semester of your life for $400. Be persistent. There are things of enough importance that you should not simply resign yourself to the fate someone else has dictated. I'd also suggest buying a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People if you can scrounge up another $10. The lessons in that book were the main reason I had enough to eat my first 3 years of college.

Freedom means having everything you want and not having to take any shit from anyone to finance it.

There are two directions to attack this from: make a sufficient amount of money and also work mentally on wanting less.

The beauty of the second direction is that it doesn't tempt you into a leveraged position where you can really lose it all. It lets you approach wealth from a position of strength: fuck you, wealth, I don't need you. And, paradoxically, it ends up making wealth (and certainly freedom) more likely.

I'm aristotelean about the whole thing: there is obviously a balance between the two. But I tend to think that the natural desire for money and freedom is often used to manipulate otherwise sane people into desperate positions of weakness vis-a-vis wealth.

See my comment below.

Studies show that beyond a certain surprisingly-low point, wealth doesn't add much to happiness.

Additionally, as I say below, I think approaching wealth from a position of strength ("fuck you, wealth, I don't need you.") ends up making it (and even more so, it's final cause, freedom) more likely.

I have a friend who works for BigNerdRanch here in Atlanta now. It seems like a really great company, led by a smart, hard-working guy who has, as he notes, both earned and lucked into success. They have a great company culture where they value results over presenteeism and time clocked, and they build truly innovative solutions for a variety of different clients.

If I desired to work with Ruby or Apple technologies it would be a delightful place to work.

As for his recommendation, I would add the caveat that if you have an idea you want to get off the ground, treat it as a hobby or side-project and jump to full-time working on it if you can get either investment or profitability. There's no reason to wholesale discourage people from starting a small company, but be responsible!

When you work for a company, like our client Procter & Gamble, they will present you with a problem. “Here,” they will say, “is our problem and a big bucket of money. Please create a solution.” There is no need for guessing.

Ummm i want the best of both worlds... how can I (a person with no contacts in the company) go to procter & gamble, and say "hey I'm pretty good at tech, let me solve your problems"?

In the UK, you can work as a contractor on a software project for BigCo. If you go as a permanent employee as part of a consultancy company (eg Thoughtworks, IBM) they will take the lion's share of your day rate. As a contractor that changes to your benefit.

Fuck it! If people have the balls and drive to go after what they perceive to be doable, why stop them? Failure is part of all our lives. That failure will lead them towards a) bettering whatever they thought was going to make it big or b) settling for conformity. I say let them fail, it will bring life lesson not learned any other way.

Yes, but is not necessary to fail right now!

Also, you need the right kind of failure... one to bad will have lasting repercussions (or delay things more). Changes get better with a little of experience doing things "normally" and do side things. Eventually then jump...

So ... Your response is basically YOLO?

It hurts just thinking about it:

  You will spend a large percentage of your energy on stuff
  that will eventually be thrown away.

Where's the counter, inspiring epilogue?

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