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I've started reading The E-Myth Revisited (http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About/dp/0887307280/ http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-S

by mahipal 16y ago

I've started reading The E-Myth Revisited (http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About/dp/0887307280/ http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-Abou...). Someone recommended it pretty highly on one of the previous HN book threads. I wish I'd read it two start-ups ago. It's downright scary how well he describes the exact path my companies took.

hga 16y ago
I believe that was me, although I wasn't sure how generally useful it would be for technology startups (the biggest lesson in the first edition was to build your business like you were going to franchise it; you can't really reduce software development into a franchise plan). What sort of companies were/are your startups?
- mahipal 16y ago
  They were mobile software start-ups, and certainly there were plenty of other reasons that I left them behind. But the pattern he describes maps pretty well to my companies. As a Technician, I started a company focused around building what I loved to build (good software). To a certain point, it's easy for N co-founders to keep juggling all the balls that comprise running a business (rather than just writing code). This is the "Infancy Phase," and all was well, just as he describes. It was the "Adolescent Phase" of the business where everything fell apart. All the various things we were juggling became too much, and they started to fall by the wayside. In my specific companies, I think a big cause of this was trying to do too much in terms of product. And so I followed one of the paths he predicts--I threw my hands up, and started small again with a new company. The revelation that did it was pretty much exactly what he writes: You realize something you've avoided all these years... You don't own a business--you own a job... the worst job in the world! You can't close it when you want to... You can't leave it when you want to... You can't sell it when you want to, because who wants to buy a job?

by mahipal 16y ago

hga 16y ago

I believe that was me, although I wasn't sure how generally useful it would be for technology startups (the biggest lesson in the first edition was to build your business like you were going to franchise it; you can't really reduce software development into a franchise plan). What sort of companies were/are your startups?

mahipal 16y ago
They were mobile software start-ups, and certainly there were plenty of other reasons that I left them behind. But the pattern he describes maps pretty well to my companies. As a Technician, I started a company focused around building what I loved to build (good software). To a certain point, it's easy for N co-founders to keep juggling all the balls that comprise running a business (rather than just writing code). This is the "Infancy Phase," and all was well, just as he describes. It was the "Adolescent Phase" of the business where everything fell apart. All the various things we were juggling became too much, and they started to fall by the wayside. In my specific companies, I think a big cause of this was trying to do too much in terms of product. And so I followed one of the paths he predicts--I threw my hands up, and started small again with a new company. The revelation that did it was pretty much exactly what he writes: You realize something you've avoided all these years... You don't own a business--you own a job... the worst job in the world! You can't close it when you want to... You can't leave it when you want to... You can't sell it when you want to, because who wants to buy a job?