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Comment by driverdan | Hacker News Reader

Living in a Mission dump trying to sleep three people to a bed is not how you should be starting a business. Why do people think this is how you optimize for success?

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Right. Nothing against this company and all the best to them, but what is the larger narrative this story is building? Its really exploitative to tell young people that they should come to one of the most expensive places in the world and sleep in their cars so they can have the privilege of giving equity to Y Combinator.

It's something really dark in California's culture (I have lived my entire life here). From '49 to Hollywood to now Silicon Valley, its a reverberating call for people to come here and get rich quick. And in any gold rush, its always better to be the ones selling the pics and shovels than the ones buying them.

This is what the press does. The median or average case isn't interesting, so they find interesting stories that are outliers and write about them. Is it illustrative of what normal people can and should expect? No. Is it useful in any way for somebody who wants to start a business? No. Is it interesting? Yes. The press' job doesn't involve building a useful narrative for people, it is just to write interesting stories.

Changing the press is not going to happen, but if you disagree with this story, I highly recommend flagging it and if enough people agree that will drop it off the HN homepage.

I think the only reason to flag it would be the title, which is bad clickbait. The narrative problem goes deeper than the press's interest in rags-to-riches stories; journalists are not the only ones telling people that if they too would give up their comfort and security, they could be uplifted by the grace of VC investments.

Have you guys not noticed that the article was not written by a journalist?

I think a lot of the time people miss the positive side of these stories.

It's not just a story of impoverishment, its also story of adventure. If you were going to backpack around the world, you're certainly going to be sleeping somewhere dumpy, eating poorly, dealing with crazy situations, etc. But thats okay, because you've accepted that you're trading off comfort for some unique experience.

When I was a teenager, my friend would crash at my house and we'd just hack on our websites, play computer games, and occasionally step outside. For weeks at a time, that's all we'd do. And honestly it was some of the most fun and fulfillment I've ever had.

You don't really get to do that as an adult, except in extreme cases like when you try to build a startup. Life isn't about necessarily optimizing for comfort or salary. Sometimes its more fulfilling to do what you want to do, where you want to do it, on your terms.

I absolutely agree, but people need an honest appraisal of the situation. You should be making these sorts of decisions because this - in the moment - is the lifestyle you want, not because you believe it will make you a founder of the next WhatsApp.

I'm a bit more laissez-faire about the messaging behind these stories. Your assumption is that young, naive founders are being suckered and exploited by the perpetuation of these stories, because they don't need to live such extreme lifestyles to be successful. This is partially true.

But we already know that we all can't be winners, and most ideas will be losers anyway. In our subgroup of grinders, I don't know that there is a significant statistical difference in the outcome vs the normal population of startups. But heuristically, we know that people willing to put themselves through more pain are objectively tougher, and harder to kill. Traits that probably are pretty good to have for a startup entrepreneur.

Thus, I don't think its such a bad thing for entrepreneurs to do, even if its for the wrong reason. We don't need to protect anyone from themselves, startups are such an extreme experience that they'll quickly know whether or not they're happy with their decision.

Sure; I'm not saying no one should do this - and definitely not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to do this.

What I think is a problem is the way that it is memetically emerging into a life narrative. To take an example that is probably not controversial - many people are going to college who really should not be. It isn't advancing their interests and often isn't even intangibly edifying for them. Why are they going to college? Because there's a cultural messaging telling them to go to college. Their ability to self-determine is being undermined by a larger sense of what they are supposed to do.

So if there's a narrative that you should eat ramen, work 100 hour weeks, so on, to try to catch the Zuckerberg lottery - well, who wins in that game? A few of the people playing, and also the VCs.

Time to roll out my favourite Venkatesh Rao link, I think: http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepre...

EDIT: I submitted it to the front page as well, for good measure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8510967

I could just as easily say that you are building a narrative wherein people should become dependent on modern material goods (many of which did not exist decades ago and most of which would be considered frivolous luxuries 100 years ago), and therefore always forced to work on someone else's idea.

It might be more clear if you would describe utopia for us. If someone wants to try a zillion ideas without answering to anyone, who should pay them in the meantime? And would that money be enough to live comfortably in one of the most sought-after areas in the world?

100 years ago frivolous appliances like washing machines where unesercery because you had a maid to do the heavy work

What's your point? The author who was sleeping in tight quarters also had access to washing machines at a laundromat, and did not require a servant.

So what fundamental, basic aspect of life are the authors giving up by temporarily lowering their cost of living? Is whatever they are giving up so important that it undermines the freedom that they gain? Does it make it impossible to join the "normal" life later?

that the so called "material" goods allow us a better quality if life than our grandparents and great grandparents.

I believe Taro would be the first person to tell founders they should NOT follow their path to building a company. In retrospect, he realizes how ridiculously naive they were. The lesson that I take away from their story is that even if you don't have a good plan and it turns out it was stupidly inefficient, you can still succeed if you just don't give up.

I see a lot of smart founders give up even with a good plan. The reason? They don't have grit.

I don't hear anybody claiming that. The article is just the story of what these guys did.

The determination behind it, on the other hand, is damned impressive.

Well, it also puts you in a desperate position and you make decisions (and possibly accept deals) that you normally wouldn't take.

I've been on both positions. When I had no money coming in, it was always in the back of my mind and my business ideas were short-sited, not creative, and rushed. They all failed.

I go to tons of startup events where new companies are presenting and the majority of business and products I see are exactly this. I'm not sure if it's because of a lack of experience of the reasons above.

I only became successful when I had money coming in and didn't have to worry at all about it. I could focus on my business goals with a clear head. The money was a part-time consulting job. I was able to quit it after a year because I was making more with my business. It's been going strong for 2 years now.

I guess I'm different. I don't think I would ever go h ycombinator. My first business idea involves very-little up front capital, but has nice returns. I'm going to use the proceedsa to invest in my next idea, that requires some capital. My ideas are always profit-centric. If it's cool, but has little chance of making money, I don't even consider it. I consider those hobby projects I might create for fun.

I took the story as descriptive, not prescriptive. Did I miss some subtext suggesting otherwise?

I'm assuming it was because they didn't have any money at the time, not as a business strategy. Personally, I'd stay home and build software that solves a real problem, but I'm not in YC...

It just makes a good story feeding into the mythology of SV. Not to take anything away from these guys for their actual achievements, but the article itself is nothing more than color-by-numbers startup porn clickbait.

You're right that most people's experiences don't turn out this way, but that's why it's worth reading. I also think it's unfair to say that this is nothing more than clickbait. It's easy to see a lesson about grit here and I think founders need to hear these stories as much as possible...regardless of where they are located.

Also, it seems odd to me that you would say that you don't want to take anything away from their achievement, because this seems to be the only reason you're commenting. I think it's very obvious that Taro has no agenda to perpetuate the mythology of SV. It just happened to be in SV that these series of events happen to him.

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