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There's nothing special about starting a company for sure, but successfully growing one takes a lot of grit.
by jimbeam77 9y ago
There's nothing special about starting a company for sure, but successfully growing one takes a lot of grit.
- lhnz 9y agoUnpack grit and you're left with psychological traits which many normal people have.
- jimbeam77 9y agoSo why don't many normal people successfully grow a business?
- ghostly_s 9y agoBecause the economy can only support a limited number of business owners, but a large number of employees.
- jimbeam77 9y agoThe economy doesn't 'support' business owners - business owners (and their customers and employees) are the economy.
- knieveltech 9y agoThat business owners are floated on the backs of their employees seems pretty obvious.
- lacampbell 9y agoYes, you're generally either an employer or an employee in a modern economy. Is this news to anyone?
- knieveltech 9y agoI feel like you are missing or intentionally ignoring the point here.
- lacampbell 9y agoI'm giving you the benefit of the doubt.
- knieveltech 9y agoDroll, given I'm not the one who appears to be confused here.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- omginternets 9y agoBecause they're doing other, equally-valuable things that require the same traits?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- lhnz 9y agoWell, some of them do. And also a lot of people with "grit" don't amount to anything. They lack networks, capital or the right idea. Or they have something else that they feel is more important than building a startup: a family, work flexibility, or a hobby that consumes them.
- tboyd47 9y agoThey need health insurance
- __jal 9y agoBecause the risk calculation looks different when one has a bank account that can support one's family while working for free for a x% chance of a payout.
- Terr_ 9y agoIn addition, beware the stories of "self made" tycoons which will conveniently ignore how -- even if they didn't trigger it -- they still had a safety-net of wealthy relatives that they could rely on for emergencies or loans. (Ex: Bill Gates.) Statistically speaking, poorer people can't afford to undertake the same risks, so they can't take advantage of the same opportunities. Once you hit zero, you can't gamble your way back.
- ryandrake 9y agoBingo. Tons of money can't buy you the home run, but it can buy you a stronger bat, a slower pitch, and as many swings as you need to hit that home run.
- knieveltech 9y agoTranslation: why don't many normal people have trust funds, expensive educations, the disposable income and lack of financial responsibilities to be able to work for free for extended periods of time, friends in industry, investor class connections, or some combination of all of the above plus a shitload of luck.
- trendia 9y agoIf those things are required, then why do so many immigrants become entrepreneurs?
- ladytron 9y agoThey are not required. Many more here who are successful do not have all or any of those things. They just don't talk much.
- chickenfries 9y agoMany wealthy immigrants have those privlidges...
- s73ver 9y agoThey're not required, but they make things a whole lot easier.
- mschuster91 9y agoSpoken from a German POV, it's quite simple: racism. When you're an immigrant and no one wants to hire you because you have a non-German family name (illegal in theory, hard to enforce in practice!), you have four options: be stuck in low-level menial work for the rest of your life, rely on food stamps/government assistance ("Hartz IV" in Germany), turn into crime life or start a small company (costs ~ 50€ or such for a fully-liable company, and for a sorta-limited company "UG" a bit more). Also, immigrants usually do not carry cultural dead weight - once again I refer to Germany. Starting a company is not really popular here, as you will be socially shunned if you fail (even if you not end up bankrupt in the process, but that's another can of worms). Germans are risk-averse to the extreme, immigrants usually not.
- maxxxxx 9y agoMaybe some people just aren't interested in doing that? Many entrepreneurs don't want to be employees and maybe many employees don't want to be entrepreneurs. I think both groups should be happy that the other exists.
- metaphorm 9y agothey do. you just don't read about the successful entrepreneurs that grow their business from 1 gas station convenience store to 4 gas station convenience stores.
- iamacynic 9y agoi don't think it really registers in peoples' conscious minds that somebody owns _every single_ restaurant/deli/store/shop/building/etc. in a city, and it's definitely not some rich dotcom guy.
- analog31 9y agoLack of an idea is the main obstacle for me. My best business idea so far has only produced about $20k/y of sales.
- ktRolster 9y agoIf you are really skilled at running a business, then going to startup conferences and such will certainly give you a bunch of ideas.
- dv_dt 9y agoI think it's basically the shrinking of the middle class and people with enough capital to contemplate starting a business. Looking at the number of business starts shows an ever decreasing number - which correlates with the stagnation of wages and size of the middle class. Also linked, the number of hours worked has increased steadily, as well as a increase in both parents working, so availability of time in households to supply "labor capital" to start businesses has also shrank.
- throwaway18917 9y agoClearly they're just not trying hard enough to be rich.
- martin1975 9y agoWhy would I/we when between me and my wife we earn > 200k a year with 9-5 jobs? Most SBO owners dont make that much. I get to see my family and children grow. The people I know who run a small business successfully slave away at their workplace because they have to... or the last friend sold it because he burnt out after a year. The only time one would endeavor to run a massive business rather than a small one is if you invented/patented something or provided a service that can be scaled and you need help to bootstrap it... in which case unless BillG or DonaldT is yer uncle, you're gonna be sucking on some VC's titty anyway... i. e. they own you.
- ghostly_s 9y agoAnd do you think only the CEO deserves credit for when this happens?
- shallot_router 9y agoObviously it'll depend. But if a founder/CEO turns a 3-person startup into a 500-person multimillion dollar company within a year or 2, and is responsible for a lot of that effort, then they arguably deserve the bulk of the credit. In most cases, probably 10% or less of the credit belongs to the CEO, though.
- kelnos 9y agoThat's the thing though: as the size of the company, customer count, and revenue numbers increase, the founder/CEO has less and less _directly_ to do with that. If I found a company and directly hire 10 people and act as a day-to-day leader where everyone reports to me, you can say that I had a large impact on everything that happened. Two years later, when we have 300 people, I'm out of the day-to-day hiring decisions and I'm not directly making all the deals that the company makes, I can still claim to be steering the ship, but I can't claim direct credit for much of what the company does. Sure, it was my initial founding decision that has made all of it possible, but I'd be incapable of being involved in literally everything at a larger scale such that I could take credit for it.
- harryh 9y agoHere are some decisions that you might be faced with when holding the CEO job at a 300 person company: - The New York Times has just written an article about how your company mined user data and sold it in a nefarious way. But this sort of sale is critical to your business model. What do you do? - You hired a VP of Sales 6 months ago who interviewed better than anyone you have ever met and came with glowing recommendations, but he has missed his quota for 2 quarters. Do you fire him or do you give him some more time? - A competitor has, completely unexpectedly, launched a similar product as yours but is charging customers half the price. Your CTO doesn't know how they could be turning a profit at such a low cost. They're very quickly eating into your market share. How do you respond? Obviously these situations would be far more nuanced than these 2 sentence descriptions and obviously you would get all sorts of opinions from employees & advisors but ultimately making these sorts of calls is the CEOs job. Making these decisions well is not easy and it can have a huge impact on the company.
- hkmurakami 9y agoSure. But I'd want to see a world where headlines like "Entrepreneurs are just rich kids" cease to be, because that headline is only created when entrepreneurship is put on a pedestal and is seen as something that is inherently superior to everything else. People wouldn't feel indignant that it is "unfair that rich kids have an advantage" at the entrepreneurship game (which they absolutely do), if entrepreneurship weren't seen as this holy grail mount Kilimanjaro thing.
- knieveltech 9y agoI'm pretty sure people are going to continue to be pissed off about some lucky assholes winning the birth lottery and cashing in their ticket to further profit off the labor of others less fortunate regardless of what kind of media spin you try to put on it.
- WalterBright 9y agoWhat do you attribute the success of Bruno Mars too?
- knieveltech 9y agoI don't know who that is but I strongly doubt their career in any way dismisses the lack of class mobility in the US. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america-social-mobility-parents-income/399311/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america...
- WalterBright 9y agoBruno Mars has been profiled on "60 Minutes" a couple times because he's a classic rags-to-riches story.
- WalterBright 9y agoBy the way, high taxes makes upward class mobility much more difficult.
- smacktoward 9y agoLess so when you get $100 million dumped on your head first, though.
- gech 9y agoIt takes grit to get up everyday at 4 a.m. just to drive a truck or work at a warehouse or be a nurse etc etc etc
- voidz 9y agoHow is that relevant?