Comment by lkrubner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lkrubner | Hacker News Reader

She says:

"There are a lot more startups today, and you can in effect become an early investor in one by going to work for it."

It's important to remember that she means this for one very particular industry, and she is talking about a very particular kind of startup. Overall, there has been a steady decline in the number of startups during the last 30 years:

https://www.fedinprint.org/items/fednsr/707.html

"The first observation is the steady decline in the firm entry rate over the last thirty years, and the second is the gradual shift of employment from younger to older firms over the same period. Both observations hold across industries and geographies."

The great era of starting a new business in the USA was several decades ago. It is much more difficult to do so now, and that is perhaps part of the reason why there are less entrepreneurs now, and less new companies being founded.

Yes, she is talking about one particular kind of company, but Jessica's definition of a startup is the generally agreed upon one here on HN [1]. (The fed is using a definition of a brand new company.)

While the fed paper is really interesting, I don't think it is relevant for this discussion.

My own personal and unsubstantiated view is that we're living in the golden age of startups.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

And that's assuming your founder is scrupulous and actually gives you the promised equity, and it vests.

No, I'm not bitter, why do you ask?

I thought you were a new user who had no idea where he was right now! :)

(missed edit window.) What I mean is that, just as the OP does (who is in fact a very experienced HN contributor despite this one comment reading as though written by an outsider), we all know the context that is meant here with a specific kind of startup, and don't presume to generalize it.

"The great era of starting a new business in the USA was several decades ago" - except for building the next instagram or airbnb while having $0 in capital and maybe 8 months of coding experience, oh and not even any business experience, perhaps still being a twenty-something who has never done anything. Then "several decades ago" probably wasn't the best time to build the next social startup.

But the above ridiculous constraints are still enough for some of us, people reading this very thread, to succeed at this. Literally. That doesn't mean we presume to extend this to the rest of America's 20 million entrepreneurs and business owners. That's why I said it looked like he was a new user who didn't know where he was for a second :)

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