Hacker News Reader

Successful founders certainly have an incentive to make it seem like founding their startup was extremely hard so it seems like their success was more due to skill and less due to luck. This isn't to say the ratio of skill/luck is any specific number, just that a founder always has an incentive to tell the history in a way that tilts it more to the "skill" side.

Though I think the whole ecosystem (VCs, founders, the press) feed this notion because attributing success to luck isn't really interesting to people. You don't see a lot of books by lottery winners about how to succeed in life.

Again, this isn't to say these stories aren't true; founding a startup is extremely difficult. But then again, so are a lot of things. If I just selectively picked and exaggerated stories of "normal" programmers, I could make them seem like really special people.

So basically, my advice is to trust a story of a successful startup's founding history with the same grain of salt you would a fisherperson's story of how large of a fish they caught on their last vacation. Some truth, some exaggeration, and without any evidence you have no way to know.

But I just don't believe that you can't be a successful founder and still have a life/family/healthy lifestyle.

You can be successful in any number of odd scenarios but that is not the norm. It is not hard to prove: if you talked to any founder that led the creation of a billion dollar enterprise from nothing, you will find an endless stream of stories such as Adora's.

One of the things people fail to understand is that when you are embarking on an ambitious venture, the goal post keeps moving all the time. When you start out, you think that at a million dollar revenue, you'll be golden. Then you hit the million and now the goal post has moved to ten million dollars. And then something happens that completely threatens your whole business. Now you find yourself not just trying to grow revenue but save the entire business.

In this situation, how much time you find for life/family/health will vary from founder to founder but as a rule, it is good to go in assuming the answer is "not much".

> You can be successful in any number of odd scenarios but that is not the norm. It is not hard to prove: if you talked to any founder that led the creation of a billion dollar enterprise from nothing, you will find an endless stream of stories such as Adora's.

Starting with the exceptions, and not the rule, can lead to distorted perceptions. Building a billion dollar enterprise is not the normal outcome for most founders. It is the "odd" scenario.

There's nothing wrong with modeling your entrepreneurial journey after those of billion-dollar founders, but the "go big or go home" path is not the only option for entrepreneurs starting a business.

It is entirely possible to start a multi-million dollar business and still have a life, and I'd encourage more entrepreneurs to talk to self-employed millionaires (there are a lot of them) than read Forbes articles about tech's most visible billionaires.

It is entirely possible to start a multi-million dollar business and still have a life

Yes, but anyone that knows the author and his business should also know that his post isn't addressed to those looking to make nice profitable businesses. The author has a very specific audience of people seeking funding and wanting to build large companies. His post appropriately addresses them; it isn't written that much for people whose ultimate motivation is to build a self-sufficient profitable million dollar business.

Building a billion dollar enterprise is not the normal outcome for most founders. It is the "odd" scenario.

Being successful at building the billion dollar business is the odd scenario in this case; attempting to build it is the norm. That most fail is just proof of how hard it is.

> The writer has a very specific audience of people seeking funding and wanting to build large companies.

First, every "large" company was once a "small" company. You don't get to $100 million in revenue without first getting to $1 million in revenue. Focusing on the former milestone before the latter is silly.

Second, while I respect your point, it's important to look at actions, not words. Early-stage investors in Silicon Valley talk a lot about the type of businesses they want to fund, but spend half an hour browsing Crunchbase, AngelList, etc. A ton of the companies with seed funding (perhaps the majority) have very little chance of growing into the types of businesses their investors say they're looking to be involved with.

Finally, in response to your edit that attempting to build billion-dollar businesses is the norm: you can only come to such a belief if you have firmly ensconced yourself in the Silicon Valley startup scene. Countless new businesses are formed around the country each year and the people who create them, most of whom don't have billion-dollar delusions, are just as much "founders" as the broke 20-something making the rounds on Sand Hill Road.

Focusing on the former milestone before the latter is silly.

Just because a company has billion dollar ambitions does not mean it isn't focused on the first million dollars. What remains true is that the first million can be just as hard(if not harder) as the other big jumps.

It is easy to play armchair VC and think we know what will and won't turn into a billion dollar business. If you have seen the Bessemer anti-portfolio, even Apple, Google and Intel were far from no-brainer investments(http://www.bvp.com/portfolio/antiportfolio).

So what matters is not so much that AngelList is full of companies that will never be billion dollar businesses. What matters is that among those companies are billion dollar companies and every investment represents a bet by a group of folks.

Unfortunately you're focused too much on the investor, and not on the entrepreneur.

Investors have the luxury of spraying and praying because they primarily invest capital; founders, whose investment consists of time and opportunity cost, don't have this luxury. In simple terms, your investors have n lottery tickets, and you have one.

Statistically, as a founder, you are not likely to build a billion dollar business. That is worth repeating, often. Pretending that your odds are better than they really are and working yourself into the ground because Silicon Valley culture has convinced you that it's the only way is foolish.

Which leads to my final point: if you're an entrepreneur, it's worth thinking long and hard about the path you take. If you're convinced that your ambitions should be measured in 9 and 10 figures and you are enticed by the funding game, you're often not just unnecessarily sacrificing your quality of life, you may be sacrificing the potential to build a successful 7 or 8 figure business.

Finally, in response to your edit that attempting to build billion-dollar businesses is the norm: you can only come to such a belief if you have firmly ensconced yourself in the Silicon Valley startup scene.

You misunderstood me. I never said shooting for billion dollar businesses is the norm across the country but rather in the context of startups, particularly those that YC is most interested in funding.

I'm not debating or necessarily even disagree with what you are saying about founders and their chances of success. But that is not what we are debating here.

The primary debate here is whether Sam Altman's post to his audience makes the right point about his message. I think it does.

I think I get it. What you're saying is that YCombinator's target audience is highly intelligent individuals, savvy enough to spot untapped market opportunities and capable enough to have a chance at exploiting them, but who are either too lazy to look at the IPO and M&A data or aren't very good at statistics?

Personally, I find it hard to believe that every YCombinator-backed founder believes he's chasing a billion-dollar opportunity, but maybe I'm delusional.

You can spray n pray capital...

Its a bad strategy for your life, tho

The 'tortured artist' is a romantic notion

It's that meme that is being co-opted by VCs here

The 'entrepreneur as tortured artiste'

Since the 'starving artist' basically sums up

the ideal sucker for a major label record deal

(ie, weak negotiating leverage)

Its worth being critical of over-adopting the analogy.

(at least, if your the starving artist).

That being said, nothing clears the mind

like no food on the plate.

And a clear mind is what you need to succeed.

I work for a startup. We're 15 people all told, and by all indications we're doing great.

The entire team shows up by 9:30am every day, and the office is empty again by 5:30pm, almost like clockwork. I exaggerate a bit... every now and then you might have a couple people stay past 6pm, but that's about it. Overtime is a very rare thing indeed.

I find it absurd this meme that to be successful in a startup, you must work yourself to exhaustion every day, sleep very little, and do it again the next day.

Or at least, it's not true for any company (startup or otherwise) that I'd ever want to work for.

A 15 person company is in a completely different place than one in which the founder is the only person and is working on building the basic foundation.

That's exactly where I'm at right now, bootstrapped and solo-founder. It's an interesting beast. I have a tendency to want to do harder sprints because I want to clear out my backlog, clean-up docs, fix some bugs, and then continue on my way, but that's never going to be the reality of the situation for quite a while ... it's all on me. Every bug, email, social-media thing, log entry, bill, server, etc., is on me ... that shit is overwhelming. So I decided to adopt a more "go as you please" policy... only work on things I was interested in or was a blocking issue. I found my burn-outs reduced quite a bit, and now I can see them coming on a lot sooner. On top of that, I get to take breaks from bug fixes to tinker with R&D stuff to remind myself why I'm doing this, what I'm working toward ... which turns into longer working hours with fewer burnouts and more progress ... which is good because it's all on me. So that means my schedule is usually up by 8:30am, showering and coding by 9am and working and taking breaks as I feel like it to be honest. And if something comes up, I try to do that unless I have something that really gets done (like a blocking issue). So a lot of time it can be writing docs at 3:30am because I can't sleep, working 18 hours straight, or taking a weekend to read or visit friends because I've been burning out on a bug. The freedom to build it and enjoy life at the same time, all while working on my pet-project. It's gotten me this far, maybe it can get me farther, shrug, I've never done this before, haha.

I would be just as impressed if Adora would have worked half the day as a cleaner to learn the business, then code the other half before getting a good night's sleep and doing it again.

Agreed, and I do believe this would be pretty realistic in many places. I don't know whether she chose San Fran to start in or whether she had no other choice, but if she did choose this, it was a mistake and cost her a great deal of sleep.

didn't have a choice. initially applied to cleaning companies in mountain view (and surrounding areas) but was rejected. almost went all the way to santa rosa to take a gig there but the sf job turned up, which saved me two additional hours.

"No life" as you call it is just a necessary reality for a lot of startup founders if you want a chance at making it, especially in the early days, especially on your own or without funding. You may not hear about it because generally these founders' startups are either not yet well known, don't end up making it or they don't share this information until later. It's not always desirable to share that you're sleeping in your car or making sacrifices others may deem unhealthy or unsustainable. It's more glamorous looking back, after you're a success story, to reminisce about the blood, sweat and tears you poured into your startup to make it what it is today.

It's definitely not the only way but with the number of startups, resources, talent and overall competition today, everything counts in the beginning and can make or break you.

In my own experience as a solo founder without funding, nothing gets done unless you do it yourself. People already have work and school and other commitments so that means making sacrifices, ones that aren't always glamorous, ones that may be scary and overwhelming and at times unhealthy but that people will continue making simply to have a chance to succeed at what they love, and that's their prerogative.

"but somehow, VCs (like Altman) keep squeezing this image into their blog posts somehow."

It is merely (or should be) a technique used to separate the "men from the boys" and the "women from the girls".

For example if that statement scares you away then you may not be cut out for what you need to do. According to Altman and/or YC.

I think this is quite similar to what I saw when watching a documentary or movie on Navy seals. It was quite clear to me that all of the seals interviewed were absolutely willing to die for their country. No doubt this was something that came up in training a lot in order to weed out the people who really weren't so obsessed with being a Seal that they couldn't imagine dying for their country.

I have to tell you that when I started a non tech company many years ago (after college) I worked for 6 years w/o taking a vacation practically 7 days a week. I didn't pay attention to the weather. Every day was the same. People used to pity me but it didn't bother me at all. I liked to work. I never thought about it it's just you do what you have to do. You know what? I still work that much and I don't even have to. (But I do take vacations..)

I don't think it's mandatory. I think it's a humble-brag instead. These people aren't working so hard because otherwise they'll fail; they're working so hard because they can't not.

> Who profits most from cultivating this image? The startup founder or the VC?

I hate these kinds of arguments, as though there were some evil man looking to exploit people for his own gains.

As you know, startups are pass or fail (in 99% of situations). It is in the VC's best interest to put you into the pass category. If it were better to not work 100% on your startup 24/7 then it would also be in the VC's better interest to not recommend that to you. The VC doesnt somehow earn more money because you worked more on your startup. Furthermore, if doing that actually hurt your startup, the VC would be doing himself a disservice recommending it to you because it would mean that you would more likely fail and thus earn the VC nothing.

I don't believe OP was implying that this is the path all startups need to take. I think he was simply using a more extreme example to convey that startups are hard.

Not always that hard. But yeah, sometimes that hard.

I just don't believe that you can't be a successful founder and still have a life/family/healthy lifestyle.

Obviously situations like Adora's make for a good story, and that's a big part of why they spread. But, realistically: we are describing (mostly) young people who have forgone the steady jobs their peers all have to try making something enormous from literally nothing. They still have bills to pay, at least one mouth to feed, quite possibly student debt, family and friends who don't really understand any of it, and maybe even family and friends who put in money (makes for a pretty shitty Christmas dinner when your company only has 2 weeks of runway left, the next round isn't closing fast enough, and Uncle Johnny's already in it for too much). Of course with a bit of experience someone could avoid/mitigate some of those issues, and that's part of why organizations like YC exist, but it is in no one's interest to sugarcoat how difficult it really is to start a startup. Anyone who says founders tell these stories to brag about how hard they work has never done it.

Due respect, I think you're missing the point. Tech start-ups are defined by strategies & efforts designed to achieve an extraordinary amount of growth/progress in an abbreviated period of time. A founder knowingly trades x/yrs. of massive work in the hope of achieving rewards that make that decision a wise choice.

Great point. Read http://ryancarson.com/ for a very different point of view.