Thinking about starting a business? Here is why you shouldn’t | Hacker News Reader

Thinking about starting a business? Here is why you shouldn’t

quicksprout.com

26 pointsAndrewWarner22 comments

"The odds of any entrepreneur succeeding more than once is very low. A lot lower than succeeding once."

Unless it works like one of those statistics questions where you're more likely to succeed twice than once, but most likely to succeed not at all.

This article is terrible.

Summary:

1. You won't be your own boss.

2. You won't like your personal life.

3. You won't succeed.

4. You'll hate the problems.

5. You'll be a jerk.

6. You'll hate your lifestyle.

7. Again, you'll fail.

Terrible, terrible, terrible.

Save yourself the 5 minutes please.

Please explain how he is wrong?

An article does not have to be "wrong" to be terrible.

This attitude is "wrong" for succeeding.

Ok, bad choice of words. I was simply asking for less of a statement and more of an explanation.

Well, unless you're in a one-solution-per-customer type of business like consulting, the first one seems way off track. Who's your boss when you're making a video game? Your millions of potenial users are not going to call you in for a weekly progress meeting every Monday and a conference call every Thursday.

I don't know if managing an 85-person student group orchestra is any indication of running a business, but I personally like solving the problems that come up, especially ones that aren't directly related to the field. So scratch #4 too.

Finally, I know that you have to manage your time well to run a business. You can't be working 24/7, or you'll just burn out. Therefore, you will still have time for a personal life if you're doing it right. (#2)

Here is why he is wrong

1. You won't be your own boss. Yes, your customers will tell you what they want, but ultimately YOU decide the direction of your product/company. In this sense, you most certainly are your own boss.

2. You won't like your personal life. Unless you are passionate about what your business, and you love what you are building. Also, this is empirically and anecdotally wrong.

3. You won't succeed. Every startup fails for one reason: the founders quit before they build something people like. There is no other reason for failure (esp. in the case of software). I will defend this point separately, if need be.

4. You'll hate the problems. By definition, problems are problematic. But the problems you are trying to solve in YOUR business will be a lot more engaging than the trivial problems you are working on in a large company.

5. You'll be a jerk.

I don't even know how to respond to this one. Have you ever worked in a big office? Go to passiveaggressivenotes.com -- I bet that 99% of the content on that site comes from cubicle-style offices.

6. You'll hate your lifestyle.

Empirically wrong. It's a challenging lifestyle, but whether you hate it or not depends more on your personality type than on the lifestyle itself.

7. Again, you'll fail. c.f. 3

1. He probably meant complete freedom of what to do. You know as well as every other founder out there that 95% of what you do in business or consumer facing software ain't sexy.

2. Some people choose to sacrifice everything. Most startups I have dealt with do this, and many dislike their decisions, but feel it's the only way forward.

3. That's like saying every person could beat usain bolt, they just give up too easily. Not everyone has an unlimited supply of patience or funding to try unlimited ideas, just like athlete's don't have an infinite amount of time. If it were so easy there would be a lot more self made billionaires.

4. Smart people can easily get jobs doing exactly what they want. I'd rather do what I used to (data mining, visualisation, stats) than writing tests, user interface bug fixes, build automation, etc any day.

6. You can't just claim he is wrong and then cite personal preference. A large proportion of people aren't suited to this lifestyle. I happen to love it, but many hate it.

I'm sure that HN can use a bit of balance when it comes to the glories and downsides of being your own boss but this article seems over the top.

Sometimes it's hard and of course there are times when you wonder if you should not have stayed at your 9-5 job. But those are pretty rare, most of the time it's just plain hard work and the satisfaction coming from moving under your own power and to work on the things that you think are important.

I wouldn't have it any other way, bad times included.

Is becoming an asshole an inevitability? I mean, sure, a lot of CEOs I've met have come across as assholes, but isn't that part of the reason why many founders hire somebody to be the CEO?

He didn't say becoming an asshole was inevitable, just that it was inevitable that some of the things you would have to do would make you feel like one.

On the other hand, if becoming a serial entrepreneur during your teenage years leads you to use the tagline "I'm kind of a big deal" on your blog then I think there might be something to the asshole theory.

There's a tradition that anyone seeking to convert to Judaism must be turned away 3 times. They are told only about the possible negatives. Only after they return the 4th time have they shown that they want it badly enough to be taken seriously.

Sometimes I think the same approach should be used for starting a business. OP sure tries awfully hard to emphasize the possible negatives. Hopefully, most hn readers want it badly enough to remain undaunted and keep coming back for more.

I've learned to tune out "advice" like this. My experiences in life have differed so much from what people said they were going to be like that it's hard to listen to these things anymore. You have to make your life your own, stop listening to debbie downers like the author of this article.

This isn't advice insomuch as it's a warning. Advice implies that the OP is recommending some course of action.

This article is total BS. If you want to start your own business do it by all means. You don't have to be lucky to start your business. If you never failed, you never lived.

The success rate of YC startups should suffice to prove the article is not well-grounded.

What is the success rate?

pg mentioned that half of the early YCs died. I think with traditional VCs, I've heard more like 90% failure. Ron Conway (the angel) said that it's thirds for him. (1/3 of investments lose it all, 1/3 return the money, 1/3 have some kind of successful exit)

I recall Jessica Livingston defining "died" as "founders stopped working on it", which I think subscribes to the while there's life there's hope school of optimism (which is very appropriate in my opinion, especially when many startups only become successful after they've completely redefined their business. Is it "the same" startup? I dunno, but it's the same founders, and that's what YC funds.)

But it also means that "I'm not dead yet" doesn't necessarily imply "successful". I think relatively few YCs have been bought out/received further funding; and I would guess for most of them, to be realistic, it's simply too early to tell, because of the above.

>You can’t always choose your own hours or get to work from home. Business is all about making money, so you have to do whatever it takes to succeed. If that means you have to answer calls in the middle of the night, then so be it.

Not necessarily true. I've known an entrepreneur that left consulting to do a software startup for exactly this reason. Being beholden is a consulting nightmare, not a software product company nightmare, in my experience.

Almost all of his complaints are like this one, they depend on what you are doing. Only a consulting company could have all of the problems he claims. And having multiple bosses is usually a plus, no single boss that can fire you or lay you off.

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