The air in the valley | Hacker News Reader

The air in the valley

yoda.posterous.com

24 pointsrantfoil14 comments

The article seems to extol the virtues of founders who were and are willing to lie about experience and make up numbers. And instead of planning and saving up to fund their startup they maxed out their credit cards and nearly got evicted because they couldn't pay their rent.

"then goes ahead and mis-represents to them that he is an iPhone Cocoa whiz"

There is a difference between a creatively solving a problem and an unethically solving a problem.

True - but, what seems to be a pretty common (almost universal) thread amongst successful startup entrepreneurs, is that unlike us employees, they don't always have the luxury of being ivory-pure. They push the limits.

And, if you notice in the story - the entrepreneur delivered - his mouth wasn't writing checks that his (coding) fingers couldn't cash. He came through. So, in my books, he _was_ an iPhone Cocoa whiz.

Great Story!

I hear what you are saying, but I dislike that it often seems normal and expected for entrepreneurs to be unethical.

When the adrenalin is pumping you do what it takes and sometimes you get in a box, and you get out anyway you can.

Entrepreneurs are risk takers, either you are all in when the chips are down or you fail.

On their way to meet an investor, one of them runs out of gas and pulls up to fill gas. He tries each of his credit cards and it doesn't work as its all maxed out and its the same case with the other founder. Finally they call a family member who drives up to the gas station and fills gas for them so they can drive to the investor meeting.

Really? Isn't that story slightly embellished by the founder? As an investor, I'd be concerned that this guy is taking me for a ride, especially after I read this:

Well unfortunately he doesn't know Cocoa - but that doesn't stop him. He sends an email to the firm who advertised for a bid to code an iPhone app -- then goes ahead and mis-represents to them that he is an iPhone Cocoa whiz

Who cares if it's "slightly embellished"? I'm sure the spirit of the story is true, so who cares if the details are slightly "improved" to create a more compelling story? I think all founders should be able to provide a compelling narrative. It obviously worked; they made satish's first blog post.

Who cares if it's "slightly embellished"?

Me, if that's my $1.1 million on the line.

Didn't Bill Gates sell a product to someone(IBM?) before they'd a single line of code written?

If you're referring to DOS, IIRC the code was written, but it wasn't owned by the fledgling Microsoft yet. They made the big deal with IBM and then went across town and paid the Pickles&Trout guy something like $5K for it.

I was going to simply say that all the tales seem to be various distractions that don't seem to be factors for success. But then there is an idiom in Chinese 破釜沉舟 which roughly means breaking your cooking utensils and your boats (removing your means for a retreat) and fighting, which has historically proven to be a great psychological motivator. So I wonder if that psychological urge outweigh the time spent on these distractions. I have to say tho, it must take a special kind of a personality to deal with that kind of stress and uncertainty.

I also like to add that after that stress and uncertainty phase, things seem kind of flat and boring.

Which is where I am now. What's next?

You could argue that the actions described in the article define a good startup founder. Having a vision and single-minded focus to follow up on it, regardless of convention, is not easy.

As someone mentioned, he always followed through (i.e iPhone dev) and if these slightly dubious anecdotes detail the difference between success and failure... well, they will become history in the birth of a company.

Good luck to them!

I guess this is why most of us are just reading HN and are uncertain if we want to take the plunge :) This story is exactly the kind of worst-case scenario I'm afraid of.

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