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I've been avoiding this whole latest essay debacle, but this essay particularly struck me. It is not a balanced perspective at all in my opinion, and is quite

I've been avoiding this whole latest essay debacle, but this essay particularly struck me. It is not a balanced perspective at all in my opinion, and is quite frankly the silliest and saddest rebuttal I've read so far. What this person fundamentally doesn't understand is sacrifice, the key component to starting any company, and having any sort of real success in life. Does this person honestly think that starting a company entails living a life of poverty forever? I mean give me a break, you can spend your life eating at fancy restaurants and going to museums when you're 50. When you start a company, you give up ephemeral comforts like eating at PF Changs for a short period of time for a chance to do something incredible. The argument that you shouldn't start a start up because you will not have a lot of cash for a fews months or a few years is pretty shallow in my opinion. In fact, its much sillier to say "you are lame because you can't afford to eat out for a limited period of time" than it is to say "you are lame because you haven't started a company" (not that pg implied that). I had this guy's life. Before Y Combinator, I worked at a very high profile company on a very high profile product, and had all the money I needed to buy the latest and greatest tv, or take my girlfriend to a fancy restaurant or go on some fancy vacation. My cofounder and I ate out EVERY night. We owned crazy gadgets, we bought expensive toys. Guess what: that's not what happiness is about. And thank god. At the end of the day, unless you're curing cancer or something, you will not feel whole, even when working on something incredible. At least I didn't. Now I'm in Y Combinator. I get way less sleep. I am stressed all the time. There's no such things as weekends. But I'm doing something, and if I succeed, it will be mine. And if I don't, well guess what, I can still always go back to that old life. And at the end of the day, that's the most important thing: the worst case scenario for me, is the best case scenario for this guy.

cstejerean 19y ago
If you fail will you be happy with going back to your old life? Will you all of a sudden enjoy being in a "cage"? What happens if you're only happy when working on startups and every single one of them fails? Will you be poor forever? What if your current startup succeeds? Will you stick with it as it becomes a large company or leave and try to recreate the startup environment you enjoyed so much? (it seems to me that YC might be a way for PG to relive his startup days, which is why he tries to reproduce the Viaweb model so closely).

cstejerean 19y ago

If you fail will you be happy with going back to your old life? Will you all of a sudden enjoy being in a "cage"? What happens if you're only happy when working on startups and every single one of them fails? Will you be poor forever? What if your current startup succeeds? Will you stick with it as it becomes a large company or leave and try to recreate the startup environment you enjoyed so much? (it seems to me that YC might be a way for PG to relive his startup days, which is why he tries to reproduce the Viaweb model so closely).