8 ms·

I have a very similar story, except I'm on part one. Recent graduate, very modest family, and drank all the Paul G koolaid which got me to jump into the whole s

I have a very similar story, except I'm on part one. Recent graduate, very modest family, and drank all the Paul G koolaid which got me to jump into the whole scene just to realize I'm mostly surrounded by upper middle class types where there's still risk being taken just not nearly as much. This has taught me to always consider the source of advice more rigorously. I still think he's a great thinker, but some of the advice should come with a disclaimer. I haven't been turned away from the tech startup world, but I'll be much more calculated if I'm ever to join another one. I also don't plan on staking my career purely in startups and am attracted to bootstrapped business now more than ever.

efaref 11y ago
Agree. The risk of having to run back to mummy and daddy with their tail between their legs is no risk at all. I could be quite entrepreneurial if I didn't also have to pay for my apartment and food every month without fail.
- twcooper 11y ago
  But from a broader social standpoint, isn't it a good thing that people who can afford to take risks are the ones taking the risks? It sucks on an individual basis if you're living paycheck-to-paycheck and can't risk failure, but it's not such a bad thing that the affluent are taking larger economic risks than the poor.
  - lhc- 11y ago
    It sorta spits at the idea of social mobility ("the american dream") though. The biggest rewards are only really available to those who can take risks like starting a business, and if you restrict that to only those who are already well-off, you remove most chances for the poor to ascend to the higher classes.
    - tertius 11y ago
      This implies that you believe that there is a global elite and there has always been a global elite and that they are all related and there is no way to become a part of that elite. Because if you say that "if you restrict that to only those who are already well-off", their parents probably weren't or their parents' parents etc. There are many occupations that really only require hard work and little risk that has big payout. The end result here is that no, life isn't "fair". But by and large, a person that has the ability to take risk, does and succeeds will create that ability for others to do the same in the future.
      - 6t6t6 11y ago
        > There are many occupations that really only require hard work and little risk that has big payout. Such as?
        tertius 11y ago
        Medicine.
        6t6t6 11y ago
        You need quite more than just hard work to become a doctor.
    - Mikeb85 11y ago
      This is why a social security net (ie. Welfare state) can actually be good for the economy. In fact, most western countries qualify as 'welfare states' when compared to 3rd world countries. But this supports the whole idea of a basic income - if everyone is able to live without working, they can take risks such as going to University, starting a business, etc... A lack of social net prevents risk taking and severly limits mobility, creating a 'have-not' class and keeping them there for the most part.
    - eloff 11y ago
      There isn't that much social mobility, there's plenty of statistics that prove that. The American dream is just that, a dream. Like most dreams, the odds are long. You can reduce those odds, but don't kid yourself that it will be easy.
  - bakhy 11y ago
    yeah, the affluent, taking one for the team <3
  - mikeash 11y ago
    I would rather see the most able taking the risks, because they'll be the ones most likely to succeed, and we all benefit. Assigning resources to the most able is, of course, an immensely difficult problem that nobody really knows how to solve. But it should be the goal, and I don't see affluence as a good substitute. How many people are out there right now with the personal ability to change the world in some large beneficial way, but without the necessary finances? What are the rest of us missing out on because they're stuck working a 9-5 job to pay their rent, while some idiot with money is building Twitter for Cats and talking about how much of a risk taker he is because he's living off $50,000 in savings until the VC money comes in?
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    No, that's the opposite of how it should be. In an ideal world would be everyone would be free to take business risks, and customers would reward the ideas that offer a real benefit. What we have now is a world where hardly anyone is free to take business risks, and the people who are tend to share the same political and social values. Politically, that makes for caste perpetuation and monoculture - which is the exact opposite of the entrepreneurial mythology.
  - mistermann 11y ago
    In some ways it's good, but in other ways it's worse. One noteworthy change in the last few years compared to say 10 to 20 years ago, most startups are either self-funded or funded through incubators of the already rich, unlike pre-2005 or so when regular investors had a chance getting in relatively close to the ground floor (let's ignore that most everyone lost their shirt!) I think the negative of this is that most of the wealth created in the technology is going to remain in the pockets of those who are already rich and well connected. I'm increasingly feeling like as our society becomes more technically advanced, it's almost inevitable that the vast majority of wealth is going to flow up to the top 10%.
- millermp12 11y ago
  The refrain of posers everywhere...
- larrys 11y ago
  You of course are right. Tail between legs is embarrassing but in the end you won't go hungry or homeless. Problem is in popular culture there are also stories about the 1 out of 1000 guys (just like you) that essentially gambled and came out ahead. Let me say that again. Gambled and won. You hear those all of the time. What you don't hear is about the ones who lost or hit the skids as a result of those chances that they took. Or maybe you do (there are always counter stories floating about) but the shine of the winners typically totally blocks those out. For example I am sure in response to this thread someone has already mentioned the type of family that Steve Jobs came from.
  - 6t6t6 11y ago
    That's the big fallacy of capitalism. Nobody buy books about the guys who took a risk and lost everything, but everybody buys books about the One Guy who became millionaire after being a drop out. What you call "popular culture", is just propaganda to make people believe that if they don't became rich is their own fault.
majani 11y ago
A suggestion for the disclaimer: *this advice only applies to upper middle class white males based in Silicon Valley(or at least the US), who own trendy startups that have raised some VC funding
- rubiquity 11y ago
  You don't have to be a white male to be an upper middle class startup founder.
  - rubbingalcohol 11y ago
    Yeah but then you typically have to drop out from Stanford.
    - rubiquity 11y ago
      That still does not make sense.
      - pound 11y ago
        don't get it all too literally. it's about certain stereotypes.
- orthoganol 11y ago
  I know a lot of Blacks, Asians, and Women born into a lot more privilege than I, who exhibit the same behavior as those white male founders who sometimes get described as egotistical/ self absorbed/ "douchey". I mean, are you trying to claim there are no upper middle class tech scensters who are Black, Asian, or Female? Or do they get a pass for acting exactly like the white male counterpart because they aren't white males?
cryoshon 11y ago
The lesson from this is don't drink anyone's kool aid consciously. PG has a huge incentive to wax heroic about the "risk takers" "makers" and "founders"; it's the Silicon Valley cargo cult, and should be compensated against in the mind of the reader. Always be brutally critical of applying the question of qui bono-- always, no exceptions, ever. PG has little incentive to explicitly qualify ideas that are his foundation (regarding the prerequisites for the above), and frankly it'd kind of break up the nice flow his pieces have anyway if he did. His target audience doesn't want to be told that they started life on second base, and honestly it's quite annoying to have someone tell you so with the intention of taking you down a peg.
- escape_goat 11y ago
  > taking you down a peg. Like, back to first base, say?
  - modfodder 11y ago
    Or at the back of the rotation, maybe even playing for the farm team rather than the Show.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  >honestly it's quite annoying to have someone tell you so with the intention of taking you down a peg. This is why a lot of HNers flag articles about privilege, sexism, etc.
  - patzerhacker 11y ago
    Privilege is just secular "original sin".
    - thuuuomas 11y ago
      I bet that line goes over well at the golf course.
acqq 11y ago
I like what JWZ wrote about the related topics: http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/ http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-se... "I did make a bunch of money by winning the Netscape Startup Lottery, it's true. So did most of the early engineers. But the people who made 100x as much as the engineers did? I can tell you for a fact that none of them slept under their desk. If you look at a list of financially successful people from the software industry, I'll bet you get a very different view of what kind of sleep habits and office hours are successful than the one presented here." The whole text is worth reading.

efaref 11y ago

Agree. The risk of having to run back to mummy and daddy with their tail between their legs is no risk at all. I could be quite entrepreneurial if I didn't also have to pay for my apartment and food every month without fail.

twcooper 11y ago
But from a broader social standpoint, isn't it a good thing that people who can afford to take risks are the ones taking the risks? It sucks on an individual basis if you're living paycheck-to-paycheck and can't risk failure, but it's not such a bad thing that the affluent are taking larger economic risks than the poor.
- lhc- 11y ago
  It sorta spits at the idea of social mobility ("the american dream") though. The biggest rewards are only really available to those who can take risks like starting a business, and if you restrict that to only those who are already well-off, you remove most chances for the poor to ascend to the higher classes.
  - tertius 11y ago
    This implies that you believe that there is a global elite and there has always been a global elite and that they are all related and there is no way to become a part of that elite. Because if you say that "if you restrict that to only those who are already well-off", their parents probably weren't or their parents' parents etc. There are many occupations that really only require hard work and little risk that has big payout. The end result here is that no, life isn't "fair". But by and large, a person that has the ability to take risk, does and succeeds will create that ability for others to do the same in the future.
    - 6t6t6 11y ago
      > There are many occupations that really only require hard work and little risk that has big payout. Such as?
      - tertius 11y ago
        Medicine.
        6t6t6 11y ago
        You need quite more than just hard work to become a doctor.
  - Mikeb85 11y ago
    This is why a social security net (ie. Welfare state) can actually be good for the economy. In fact, most western countries qualify as 'welfare states' when compared to 3rd world countries. But this supports the whole idea of a basic income - if everyone is able to live without working, they can take risks such as going to University, starting a business, etc... A lack of social net prevents risk taking and severly limits mobility, creating a 'have-not' class and keeping them there for the most part.
  - eloff 11y ago
    There isn't that much social mobility, there's plenty of statistics that prove that. The American dream is just that, a dream. Like most dreams, the odds are long. You can reduce those odds, but don't kid yourself that it will be easy.
- bakhy 11y ago
  yeah, the affluent, taking one for the team <3
- mikeash 11y ago
  I would rather see the most able taking the risks, because they'll be the ones most likely to succeed, and we all benefit. Assigning resources to the most able is, of course, an immensely difficult problem that nobody really knows how to solve. But it should be the goal, and I don't see affluence as a good substitute. How many people are out there right now with the personal ability to change the world in some large beneficial way, but without the necessary finances? What are the rest of us missing out on because they're stuck working a 9-5 job to pay their rent, while some idiot with money is building Twitter for Cats and talking about how much of a risk taker he is because he's living off $50,000 in savings until the VC money comes in?
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  No, that's the opposite of how it should be. In an ideal world would be everyone would be free to take business risks, and customers would reward the ideas that offer a real benefit. What we have now is a world where hardly anyone is free to take business risks, and the people who are tend to share the same political and social values. Politically, that makes for caste perpetuation and monoculture - which is the exact opposite of the entrepreneurial mythology.
- mistermann 11y ago
  In some ways it's good, but in other ways it's worse. One noteworthy change in the last few years compared to say 10 to 20 years ago, most startups are either self-funded or funded through incubators of the already rich, unlike pre-2005 or so when regular investors had a chance getting in relatively close to the ground floor (let's ignore that most everyone lost their shirt!) I think the negative of this is that most of the wealth created in the technology is going to remain in the pockets of those who are already rich and well connected. I'm increasingly feeling like as our society becomes more technically advanced, it's almost inevitable that the vast majority of wealth is going to flow up to the top 10%.
millermp12 11y ago
The refrain of posers everywhere...
larrys 11y ago
You of course are right. Tail between legs is embarrassing but in the end you won't go hungry or homeless. Problem is in popular culture there are also stories about the 1 out of 1000 guys (just like you) that essentially gambled and came out ahead. Let me say that again. Gambled and won. You hear those all of the time. What you don't hear is about the ones who lost or hit the skids as a result of those chances that they took. Or maybe you do (there are always counter stories floating about) but the shine of the winners typically totally blocks those out. For example I am sure in response to this thread someone has already mentioned the type of family that Steve Jobs came from.
- 6t6t6 11y ago
  That's the big fallacy of capitalism. Nobody buy books about the guys who took a risk and lost everything, but everybody buys books about the One Guy who became millionaire after being a drop out. What you call "popular culture", is just propaganda to make people believe that if they don't became rich is their own fault.

majani 11y ago

A suggestion for the disclaimer: *this advice only applies to upper middle class white males based in Silicon Valley(or at least the US), who own trendy startups that have raised some VC funding

rubiquity 11y ago
You don't have to be a white male to be an upper middle class startup founder.
- rubbingalcohol 11y ago
  Yeah but then you typically have to drop out from Stanford.
  - rubiquity 11y ago
    That still does not make sense.
    - pound 11y ago
      don't get it all too literally. it's about certain stereotypes.
orthoganol 11y ago
I know a lot of Blacks, Asians, and Women born into a lot more privilege than I, who exhibit the same behavior as those white male founders who sometimes get described as egotistical/ self absorbed/ "douchey". I mean, are you trying to claim there are no upper middle class tech scensters who are Black, Asian, or Female? Or do they get a pass for acting exactly like the white male counterpart because they aren't white males?

cryoshon 11y ago

The lesson from this is don't drink anyone's kool aid consciously. PG has a huge incentive to wax heroic about the "risk takers" "makers" and "founders"; it's the Silicon Valley cargo cult, and should be compensated against in the mind of the reader. Always be brutally critical of applying the question of qui bono-- always, no exceptions, ever. PG has little incentive to explicitly qualify ideas that are his foundation (regarding the prerequisites for the above), and frankly it'd kind of break up the nice flow his pieces have anyway if he did. His target audience doesn't want to be told that they started life on second base, and honestly it's quite annoying to have someone tell you so with the intention of taking you down a peg.

escape_goat 11y ago
> taking you down a peg. Like, back to first base, say?
- modfodder 11y ago
  Or at the back of the rotation, maybe even playing for the farm team rather than the Show.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
kelukelugames 11y ago
>honestly it's quite annoying to have someone tell you so with the intention of taking you down a peg. This is why a lot of HNers flag articles about privilege, sexism, etc.
- patzerhacker 11y ago
  Privilege is just secular "original sin".
  - thuuuomas 11y ago
    I bet that line goes over well at the golf course.

acqq 11y ago

I like what JWZ wrote about the related topics: http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/ http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-se... "I did make a bunch of money by winning the Netscape Startup Lottery, it's true. So did most of the early engineers. But the people who made 100x as much as the engineers did? I can tell you for a fact that none of them slept under their desk. If you look at a list of financially successful people from the software industry, I'll bet you get a very different view of what kind of sleep habits and office hours are successful than the one presented here." The whole text is worth reading.