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Comment by mufumbo | Hacker News Reader

This might sound like a focus issue? Three startups in six years?

Are you able to focus on only one thing and for more than 5 years? Almost nothing extraordinary can happen before 5 years. Even if you sell before.

Example: I am 99% sure I can make millions of dollars if I go on my yard and start making a hole in the floor. Although, here are the constraints: - working 18 hours a day. - every day and 7 days a week. No vacation.

Are you able to accept the constraints?

This come back to this: passion never fails.

I wish you the best luck on your next thing.

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"passion never fails"... you are being incredibly optimistic and have heard way too many success stories i think. There's a massive amount of passionate people working incredibly hard for many years straight who haven't achieved even medium amount of success.

Do you know anyone who followed the 3 constraints and failed? I don't know any.

I just googled "startup persistence" and look what comes out in point 5 and 6: http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html

This kind of hyperbole only serves to reinforce the OCD some people in tech have about "working" long hours. What you described in your OP is lunacy, which will cause mental illness in many people. It is also fallacious, since it will be nearly impossible to find a statistically significant sample of people who have actually done this.

I'm an engineer, so I'm giving out the only thing I learned by observation.

As an engineer, my observation and pattern matching skills are pretty good, so I am only describing what I observed by analysing "successful" entrepreneurs. I'm probably different, because I arrived to the Bay Area only five years ago. It may not be clear to you if you always lived and worked here.

In any case, depends how you define success? The author of the thread is also an engineer that codes, so I am guessing his definition of "come to fruition" would be an exit where he can cash-in more than $10mm.

What's the aggregate number of engineers who made a satisfactory exit? Is it "statistically significant" to you?

I did that formula for the past year and was very lucky that it worked before 5 years. Although, I was planning to "exit" in 10 years.

"Every successful engineer I've observed wears socks. Thus, wearing socks is the cause of their success; if you wear socks you will be successful".

I hope the logical fallacies are clear when expressed like that. 1) sample size is too small to draw conclusions from. 2) correlation is not causation. 3) even if something is a factor in success it does not follow that it will determine success (necessary but not sufficient).

Besides, where did the OP express an interest in cashing out? S/he wants a job that is interesting to them.

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