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Comment by galvanist | Hacker News Reader

The DIY Garden Box That Destroyed A Nation!

You’ve got me wondering about startup culture. When you’re running a startup you presumably invest all your money, borrow from friends and family, get investors, expose yourself to various types of legal liability, sacrifice family time, risk your reputation, and endanger your retirement. A lot of stuff can go wrong. (Based on your garden box of doom example, I’m sure you could enumerate the risks of a startup better than I.) I wonder if people running the typical startup acknowledge the risk and deal with it, or is it mostly a “what could go wrong? / don’t think about it” kinda situation?

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as a general rule, people who make fear-driven decisions do not start companies. it's the wrong personality type for a variety of reasons.

see above: plant a garden on my deck --> city will demolish my deck because of a pre-existing code violation --> better not do that.

that is a fear-driven decision. the mind of an entrepreneur works more like this:

i want to plant a garden --> do the research --> implement solution --> have confidence to deal with repercussions because you can --> do the research --> implement solution --> etc.

the problem with having a personality that is afraid of imaginary problems is the domain of potential problems is massive, infinite even. good luck getting anything done if you're afraid of imaginary problems.

There's another side to the entrepreneur.

I used to work at a computer repair shop, one of the clients came in to get their computer serviced. Turns out he was an entrepreneurial type. Jack for the power cable on the power supply had become loose and was occasionally loosing connection and shutting the power down. So he took what he had on hand and jammed it in the side of the socket to hold it in place.

Of course, what he had on hand was an uninsulated piece of copper wire. He actually lived through that mistake, so did the tech who serviced his machine. when the machine was plugged back in the wedged piece of copper bridged the power, melting the power line, destroying the surge protector, and giving everyone in the shop a heart attack.

Now you can turn to me and say "He should of known better"

yah, there's a lot of things you SHOULD know. The domain of problems is massive, maybe even infinite, so are the imaginary ones. So you have to be willing to deal with the consequences.

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