13 ms·

In my experience, startup founders who want to get rich want it more in order to have the freedom to work on what they want than to impress people. That could

by pg 16y ago

In my experience, startup founders who want to get rich want it more in order to have the freedom to work on what they want than to impress people. That could be because we prefer startups whose founders include hackers. On the other hand, we don't just prefer that type because they're more fun to hang around with, but because in our opinion they're more likely to succeed.

javery 16y ago
I think it's about the freedom to work on what you want mixed in with the ambition to build something great. I care more that what I am building makes an impact on people and businesses than if I get super rich, but they usually go hand in hand.
akkartik 16y ago
On the one hand I don't need that much money to have freedom. I live frugally. On the other hand I fear that I'm underestimating how much I need. Because the macroeconomy will be more challenging in the future than it has been in the past. And because we're often competing financially with our closest peers. If more people have successful startups in the bay area the price of housing and everything else will go up. National inflation matters less than regional inflation. We know the rewards of living in a big city. But the cost of living in a big city grows over time, and faster than one thinks. Like the red queen, you end up having to run at some speed just to stay in the same place.
nickpinkston 16y ago
We just had this discussion yesterday at a StartupDrinks. I think the Darwinian notion says: 1.) We are hardwired to want things to attract mates. 2.) Power, Success, Prestige, Freedom, etc. are attractive. 3.) We want things that are derivative of such things, even if we consciously believe we want to benefit humanity, think it's, fun etc. Conclusion: The mind has a way of aligning our conscious interests with our subconscious procreative ones. We need to recognize this, but we don't need to embrace the appetitive.
- prototype56 16y ago
  Yes immediate and proximate causations for our actions are often wildly different . This has parallels across all species . A peacock my really feel that it has passion for dance this need to "express itself"( immediate causation )..but to an outside human observer all it is doing is attracting peahens ( ultimate causation)
- aswanson 16y ago
  I don't care about my freedom being attractive. I want a certain level of material comfort without answering to anyone or reporting to a cubicle. Some drives derive from mating impulses, yes, but many derive from hating bullshit. Period.
  - nickpinkston 16y ago
    The point is that we all consciously have reasons like what you're saying: independence, hating bullshit etc. However, all are motivated by hardwired goals of species survival. These base needs make us want to gain advantage in mating, but also in things like independence - which give us a higher likelihood of survival (i.e. controlling how to fulfill our base needs, reproduce, not be killed by others, etc.).
    - jquery 16y ago
      Your logic is tautologous. Evolution seeks no such things. Evolution just happens and is random. It's quite likely we have many traits which are not advantageous for survival, especially in our modern world. Appealing to evolutionary psychology is an intellectual and argumentative reductionist shortcut.
      - aswanson 16y ago
        Exactly. The reductionism is just too easy in these arguments with every behavior contorted to project onto a sexual / survival basis. There is no quarter given for things simply being what they are.
clistctrl 16y ago
I can only speak to myself, but I want to get rich not for a Lamborghini, but so I can start another company to truly make a difference. Personally I think the Gates foundation is going to have a longer lasting impact on the world then Microsoft has. Yes I realize how huge of an impact Microsoft has had.
- oconnore 16y ago
  I think the one way that riches truly improve your quality of life is to make travel easy. The ability to explore your world is a great gift, and something that not many underpriveledged people can afford. A Lamborghini doesn't factor into that equation, because unless you live near the Autobahn, it doesn't get you anywhere a more modest car can't in the same time. But if I ever become extraordinarily wealthy, my first purchase will be a private jet, and I will explore as much as I possibly can before I die.
  - blizkreeg 16y ago
    I'm not sure where you live but travel doesn't take a lot of money. If you live anywhere in the western world and make a modest living, it is very much possible to explore the world around on a cheap budget. The pleasure is in experiencing the world and her people, not in being able to do it in style, I suppose. IMO, at least. EDIT: didn't mean -in style- in a negative manner. There are probably only a few thousand people in this world who own private jets - ridiculously low odds. So why put it off? That was my only point.
    - oconnore 16y ago
      I never said anything about style. If you live in the western world with a modest living, you can afford to take a few vacations here and there to neat places. But I would have to be rich to telecommute during the week from Venice, Peru, Japan, New Zealand, Lebanon, France, and and on alternating weekends see my little brother's Piano recitals in Boston, and visit my girlfriend in India. Maybe I would discover that that life isn't so great, but I would like to see first hand. And I think you made some unfair assumptions about my point.
axod 16y ago
>> "In my experience, startup founders who want to get rich want it more in order to have the freedom to work on what they want than to impress people." Isn't the whole point of doing a startup, to be able to work on what you want? Surely creating a profitable startup gives you that freedom to do what you like?
- fizx 16y ago
  No, because there's billing, payroll, taxes, customer support, management, board meetings and a hundred other things that come with running a startup. We have to do what's best for the company, and that usually doesn't include taking a month off to try to build a robot spider.
  - thetrumanshow 16y ago
    Yes, but if your margins are good and your growth is strong enough, you can remove yourself from the equation and hire people to takeover most of these tasks. You'll probably still have to attend the board meethings though. Then again, it's probably not considered a startup anymore at that point.
    - wallflower 16y ago
      Read "The E-Myth" by Michael Gerber. It points out how most businesses must be setup from the start to allow a systemizatiom/franchising that allows the founder to exit.
  - run4yourlives 16y ago
    Well that depends, and it is the difference between working for a company and "running" a company, IMHO. The actual act of founding a company can result in you working for it or running it, sometimes one after the other. This transition is as key as the work itself. The traditional method is to sell, taking a lump sum buyout and outsourcing the entire operation to someone else forever. That gives you the base from which you can take a month or more to build robot spiders. Other methods also exist, most popular being to outsource a lot of operation functions and automate others, but still retain control. This happens a lot in many organizations, not just tech startups. This provides enough freedom to build robot spiders and work on your company at the same time; retaining the investment for the long term, presumably because it is something you actually enjoy doing. Tim Ferris is the extreme example here, 37Signals a more realistic one. If you are slaving away "working" for your own company as a long term solution, you are doing it wrong. You may as well go find a corporate job and pile up the pension.
b3b0p 16y ago
I know this is how I feel. The only time I think about the money is when I read someone on here mentioning it, but it quickly fades. Otherwise, all I think about is being able to work on anything I want and starting my own company. Nothing seems cooler than that in my opinion. Besides, if you want bragging rights, how many people can say they started their own company?
- sosuke 16y ago
  The problem is when you don't have money or savings to not think about money all you think about is making that money to do whatever venture you want without worrying about putting food on the table and a roof over your families head.
  - b3b0p 16y ago
    If that were the case, I wouldn't be working on a startup probably. Instead I would be looking for a job to pay for the necessaries.
hyperbovine 16y ago
It's the Mexican fisherman story. Sacrifice your freedom and happiness so that you can get rich so that you can have freedom and happiness. Why not just take the direct route?
- pg 16y ago
  Are you saying that there is some more direct route to working on what one wants? Or that the direct route to happiness is to give up such aspirations?
  - sosuke 16y ago
    Darn it you changed your reply after I replied, this still kind of applies. Edit again, you're reply is practically evolving every time I hit update. Being free and being broke is what I think his direct route is. You can say that the pan handlers have more or less freedom than a business owner, depends on how you define the words.
    - zackattack 16y ago
      Yeah but very few people can successfully pull this off. The vast majority of broke people are still harboring some sort of grudge against society or someone from their past - it's like they have 99% of the inconveniences of abandoning materialism, but none of the benefit because they refuse to "go all the way" with it. In many ways intellectual freedom can only be found once material mastery has been achieved. There are a few famous examples from history that say otherwise, like Diogenes, but I doubt you're at his level. I also doubt you really believe in what you're saying, otherwise you would go straight to "abandoning" instead of posting on Hacker News.
      - sosuke 16y ago
        Way to much you, your and you're in that last sentence zachattack, I felt like you think I personally believe that is freedom. I don't believe in that codswallop at all I was just offering an interpretation of what he might have meant, much like his interpretation of freedom. Money is my means to the end and I won't stop till I've got enough.
blizkreeg 16y ago
I keep hearing this thing about freedom to work on something you want to after getting rich as opposed to something you have to. I'm not sure that Utopian scenario exists. It sounds charming to be a vintner, writer, film producer, or my personal favorite, travel the world care-free once you have enough money but I'm honestly not sure there's more to it than the charm of it. Time and resources aren't that short that we cannot do what we want to (even if it means in a limited manner) in the present. I have a friend who wants to become a writer (he writes very well, too) but in the mean time wants to make a lot of money by being a Fx Quant so he can "retire" to write full-time. I can't help but think that he is mistaking what it means to be a writer to the idyllic charm of the idea. My field of view might be limited but I don't know of even half a dozen people who went on to do drastically different things after getting rich, so to speak. They continued doing what they did before, the only difference being that they now had the means that afforded them more diverse experiences. In fact, just recently one of the ten richest men in my city came back to my division to run it after a hiatus of ten years. He is past 60, owns a vineyard, and enough money to outlast five generations. At this age, he comes back to the challenge but grind of trying to turn around a division's fortunes. The purpose I think comes from industriousness, not in bumming around from one fleeting interest to another because you have money.
- erikpukinskis 16y ago
  I'm honestly not sure there's more to it than the charm of it. I think this is true for those folks who are putting these things off... if you don't enjoy it enough to do it today, there's a good chance that you only find it "charming" in the abstract. I'm not a vintner or a writer... but I brew beer and I write software for fun, and I garden and cook and all of these things... on top of my day job and my startup. They aren't just charming to me, these are things I love, and I'm excited about replacing my day job with more of that stuff as my startup starts to earn a profit.
- ahoyhere 16y ago
  Nail, head, hit. A friend of mine's private dream is to quit the IT business entirely and go raise sheep in NZ. He may truly be a country boy at heart, but there's little stopping him from doing it now… it's just an escapist fantasy. I always wonder if people who claim to want to travel the world have ever actually done enough travel to know how brutal it can be to, in fact, travel the world. I spent 9.5 weeks traveling around the world last year and it just about killed me. Most people can't separate "feeling an impulse to do something" and "knowing it's the real deal for the rest of your life." My husband is one of those types who always wants to move to wherever we're vacationing, but since they're usually backwaters, I know for a fact he'd end up miserable. It's just that they feel good because they're away from obligations. (The real thing is that he doesn't enjoy the work he's doing but he's not ready to admit it to himself yet!)
joecode 16y ago
Indeed. The danger, however, is getting so caught up in the race that you forget why you started in the first place. That's why I'm forcing myself to finish a book before my next startup. It's matter of self-respect.
simplegeek 16y ago
I'm not a startup expert so I'm going to ask an honest question. In old ages, when start-up wasn't a very well-known concept how did great minds convinced themselves to work on what they love without getting rich first (they even had to go through misery)? I mean I probably want to do a startup so that I can get rich enough to work on number theory while feeding my family at the same time (and I'm doing a startup so that I don't go through that misery while pursuing number theory)? So isn't it all because I want to avoid the misery and not because I love freedom?[sorry, not a native speaker]
PaulJoslin 16y ago
This is so true. When I dream of 'winning the lottery', I don't dream of laying on sandy beaches. I dream of starting a new start up, knowing that I can have enough FU money to take risks and make it great.
purpledove 16y ago
She is saying that the start-up mythology of success, which is vital to keeping up the spirits of the best of us, can lead the good-but-not-great astray in their lives. She is saying that ideas are powerful, and internalizing the wrong ones can cause damage. I recently saw pg give an interview wherein he discussed how much more Y Combinator focuses on who the founders are rather than what the idea is. This is a great start, and I think there is a lot of fertile ground that can really be developed into a powerful message that will reach many young people.
bbers 16y ago
Won't successful founders from YC will have the opportunity to work on what they want no matter how much money they have? Or do the founders you know want to work on things that are very expensive?
corruption 16y ago
My goal when I first started was to exit and buy a fully equipped bio/physiology/elec/engineering lab and enough raw material to invent full time. I thought I'd need 10m+ to do this, but over time I'm gradually acquiring everything I need due to places like sparkfun, ebay and alibaba for little more than the cost of an average car. I'm inventing every day (5-6days software, weekends building random projects), learning more than I ever thought possible and loving every minute. My point is that if this is anything like your dream, it's readily doable now as the cost of doing science is extremely cheap these days. And I've found that productivity increases when I take a break from software in the weekends and do some wet/hard projects.

by pg 16y ago

javery 16y ago

I think it's about the freedom to work on what you want mixed in with the ambition to build something great. I care more that what I am building makes an impact on people and businesses than if I get super rich, but they usually go hand in hand.

akkartik 16y ago

On the one hand I don't need that much money to have freedom. I live frugally. On the other hand I fear that I'm underestimating how much I need. Because the macroeconomy will be more challenging in the future than it has been in the past. And because we're often competing financially with our closest peers. If more people have successful startups in the bay area the price of housing and everything else will go up. National inflation matters less than regional inflation. We know the rewards of living in a big city. But the cost of living in a big city grows over time, and faster than one thinks. Like the red queen, you end up having to run at some speed just to stay in the same place.

nickpinkston 16y ago

We just had this discussion yesterday at a StartupDrinks. I think the Darwinian notion says: 1.) We are hardwired to want things to attract mates. 2.) Power, Success, Prestige, Freedom, etc. are attractive. 3.) We want things that are derivative of such things, even if we consciously believe we want to benefit humanity, think it's, fun etc. Conclusion: The mind has a way of aligning our conscious interests with our subconscious procreative ones. We need to recognize this, but we don't need to embrace the appetitive.

prototype56 16y ago
Yes immediate and proximate causations for our actions are often wildly different . This has parallels across all species . A peacock my really feel that it has passion for dance this need to "express itself"( immediate causation )..but to an outside human observer all it is doing is attracting peahens ( ultimate causation)
aswanson 16y ago
I don't care about my freedom being attractive. I want a certain level of material comfort without answering to anyone or reporting to a cubicle. Some drives derive from mating impulses, yes, but many derive from hating bullshit. Period.
- nickpinkston 16y ago
  The point is that we all consciously have reasons like what you're saying: independence, hating bullshit etc. However, all are motivated by hardwired goals of species survival. These base needs make us want to gain advantage in mating, but also in things like independence - which give us a higher likelihood of survival (i.e. controlling how to fulfill our base needs, reproduce, not be killed by others, etc.).
  - jquery 16y ago
    Your logic is tautologous. Evolution seeks no such things. Evolution just happens and is random. It's quite likely we have many traits which are not advantageous for survival, especially in our modern world. Appealing to evolutionary psychology is an intellectual and argumentative reductionist shortcut.
    - aswanson 16y ago
      Exactly. The reductionism is just too easy in these arguments with every behavior contorted to project onto a sexual / survival basis. There is no quarter given for things simply being what they are.

clistctrl 16y ago

I can only speak to myself, but I want to get rich not for a Lamborghini, but so I can start another company to truly make a difference. Personally I think the Gates foundation is going to have a longer lasting impact on the world then Microsoft has. Yes I realize how huge of an impact Microsoft has had.

oconnore 16y ago
I think the one way that riches truly improve your quality of life is to make travel easy. The ability to explore your world is a great gift, and something that not many underpriveledged people can afford. A Lamborghini doesn't factor into that equation, because unless you live near the Autobahn, it doesn't get you anywhere a more modest car can't in the same time. But if I ever become extraordinarily wealthy, my first purchase will be a private jet, and I will explore as much as I possibly can before I die.
- blizkreeg 16y ago
  I'm not sure where you live but travel doesn't take a lot of money. If you live anywhere in the western world and make a modest living, it is very much possible to explore the world around on a cheap budget. The pleasure is in experiencing the world and her people, not in being able to do it in style, I suppose. IMO, at least. EDIT: didn't mean -in style- in a negative manner. There are probably only a few thousand people in this world who own private jets - ridiculously low odds. So why put it off? That was my only point.
  - oconnore 16y ago
    I never said anything about style. If you live in the western world with a modest living, you can afford to take a few vacations here and there to neat places. But I would have to be rich to telecommute during the week from Venice, Peru, Japan, New Zealand, Lebanon, France, and and on alternating weekends see my little brother's Piano recitals in Boston, and visit my girlfriend in India. Maybe I would discover that that life isn't so great, but I would like to see first hand. And I think you made some unfair assumptions about my point.

axod 16y ago

>> "In my experience, startup founders who want to get rich want it more in order to have the freedom to work on what they want than to impress people." Isn't the whole point of doing a startup, to be able to work on what you want? Surely creating a profitable startup gives you that freedom to do what you like?

fizx 16y ago
No, because there's billing, payroll, taxes, customer support, management, board meetings and a hundred other things that come with running a startup. We have to do what's best for the company, and that usually doesn't include taking a month off to try to build a robot spider.
- thetrumanshow 16y ago
  Yes, but if your margins are good and your growth is strong enough, you can remove yourself from the equation and hire people to takeover most of these tasks. You'll probably still have to attend the board meethings though. Then again, it's probably not considered a startup anymore at that point.
  - wallflower 16y ago
    Read "The E-Myth" by Michael Gerber. It points out how most businesses must be setup from the start to allow a systemizatiom/franchising that allows the founder to exit.
- run4yourlives 16y ago
  Well that depends, and it is the difference between working for a company and "running" a company, IMHO. The actual act of founding a company can result in you working for it or running it, sometimes one after the other. This transition is as key as the work itself. The traditional method is to sell, taking a lump sum buyout and outsourcing the entire operation to someone else forever. That gives you the base from which you can take a month or more to build robot spiders. Other methods also exist, most popular being to outsource a lot of operation functions and automate others, but still retain control. This happens a lot in many organizations, not just tech startups. This provides enough freedom to build robot spiders and work on your company at the same time; retaining the investment for the long term, presumably because it is something you actually enjoy doing. Tim Ferris is the extreme example here, 37Signals a more realistic one. If you are slaving away "working" for your own company as a long term solution, you are doing it wrong. You may as well go find a corporate job and pile up the pension.

b3b0p 16y ago

I know this is how I feel. The only time I think about the money is when I read someone on here mentioning it, but it quickly fades. Otherwise, all I think about is being able to work on anything I want and starting my own company. Nothing seems cooler than that in my opinion. Besides, if you want bragging rights, how many people can say they started their own company?

sosuke 16y ago
The problem is when you don't have money or savings to not think about money all you think about is making that money to do whatever venture you want without worrying about putting food on the table and a roof over your families head.
- b3b0p 16y ago
  If that were the case, I wouldn't be working on a startup probably. Instead I would be looking for a job to pay for the necessaries.

hyperbovine 16y ago

It's the Mexican fisherman story. Sacrifice your freedom and happiness so that you can get rich so that you can have freedom and happiness. Why not just take the direct route?

pg 16y ago
Are you saying that there is some more direct route to working on what one wants? Or that the direct route to happiness is to give up such aspirations?
- sosuke 16y ago
  Darn it you changed your reply after I replied, this still kind of applies. Edit again, you're reply is practically evolving every time I hit update. Being free and being broke is what I think his direct route is. You can say that the pan handlers have more or less freedom than a business owner, depends on how you define the words.
  - zackattack 16y ago
    Yeah but very few people can successfully pull this off. The vast majority of broke people are still harboring some sort of grudge against society or someone from their past - it's like they have 99% of the inconveniences of abandoning materialism, but none of the benefit because they refuse to "go all the way" with it. In many ways intellectual freedom can only be found once material mastery has been achieved. There are a few famous examples from history that say otherwise, like Diogenes, but I doubt you're at his level. I also doubt you really believe in what you're saying, otherwise you would go straight to "abandoning" instead of posting on Hacker News.
    - sosuke 16y ago
      Way to much you, your and you're in that last sentence zachattack, I felt like you think I personally believe that is freedom. I don't believe in that codswallop at all I was just offering an interpretation of what he might have meant, much like his interpretation of freedom. Money is my means to the end and I won't stop till I've got enough.

blizkreeg 16y ago

I keep hearing this thing about freedom to work on something you want to after getting rich as opposed to something you have to. I'm not sure that Utopian scenario exists. It sounds charming to be a vintner, writer, film producer, or my personal favorite, travel the world care-free once you have enough money but I'm honestly not sure there's more to it than the charm of it. Time and resources aren't that short that we cannot do what we want to (even if it means in a limited manner) in the present. I have a friend who wants to become a writer (he writes very well, too) but in the mean time wants to make a lot of money by being a Fx Quant so he can "retire" to write full-time. I can't help but think that he is mistaking what it means to be a writer to the idyllic charm of the idea. My field of view might be limited but I don't know of even half a dozen people who went on to do drastically different things after getting rich, so to speak. They continued doing what they did before, the only difference being that they now had the means that afforded them more diverse experiences. In fact, just recently one of the ten richest men in my city came back to my division to run it after a hiatus of ten years. He is past 60, owns a vineyard, and enough money to outlast five generations. At this age, he comes back to the challenge but grind of trying to turn around a division's fortunes. The purpose I think comes from industriousness, not in bumming around from one fleeting interest to another because you have money.

erikpukinskis 16y ago
I'm honestly not sure there's more to it than the charm of it. I think this is true for those folks who are putting these things off... if you don't enjoy it enough to do it today, there's a good chance that you only find it "charming" in the abstract. I'm not a vintner or a writer... but I brew beer and I write software for fun, and I garden and cook and all of these things... on top of my day job and my startup. They aren't just charming to me, these are things I love, and I'm excited about replacing my day job with more of that stuff as my startup starts to earn a profit.
ahoyhere 16y ago
Nail, head, hit. A friend of mine's private dream is to quit the IT business entirely and go raise sheep in NZ. He may truly be a country boy at heart, but there's little stopping him from doing it now… it's just an escapist fantasy. I always wonder if people who claim to want to travel the world have ever actually done enough travel to know how brutal it can be to, in fact, travel the world. I spent 9.5 weeks traveling around the world last year and it just about killed me. Most people can't separate "feeling an impulse to do something" and "knowing it's the real deal for the rest of your life." My husband is one of those types who always wants to move to wherever we're vacationing, but since they're usually backwaters, I know for a fact he'd end up miserable. It's just that they feel good because they're away from obligations. (The real thing is that he doesn't enjoy the work he's doing but he's not ready to admit it to himself yet!)

joecode 16y ago

Indeed. The danger, however, is getting so caught up in the race that you forget why you started in the first place. That's why I'm forcing myself to finish a book before my next startup. It's matter of self-respect.

simplegeek 16y ago

I'm not a startup expert so I'm going to ask an honest question. In old ages, when start-up wasn't a very well-known concept how did great minds convinced themselves to work on what they love without getting rich first (they even had to go through misery)? I mean I probably want to do a startup so that I can get rich enough to work on number theory while feeding my family at the same time (and I'm doing a startup so that I don't go through that misery while pursuing number theory)? So isn't it all because I want to avoid the misery and not because I love freedom?[sorry, not a native speaker]

PaulJoslin 16y ago

This is so true. When I dream of 'winning the lottery', I don't dream of laying on sandy beaches. I dream of starting a new start up, knowing that I can have enough FU money to take risks and make it great.

purpledove 16y ago

She is saying that the start-up mythology of success, which is vital to keeping up the spirits of the best of us, can lead the good-but-not-great astray in their lives. She is saying that ideas are powerful, and internalizing the wrong ones can cause damage. I recently saw pg give an interview wherein he discussed how much more Y Combinator focuses on who the founders are rather than what the idea is. This is a great start, and I think there is a lot of fertile ground that can really be developed into a powerful message that will reach many young people.

bbers 16y ago

Won't successful founders from YC will have the opportunity to work on what they want no matter how much money they have? Or do the founders you know want to work on things that are very expensive?

corruption 16y ago

My goal when I first started was to exit and buy a fully equipped bio/physiology/elec/engineering lab and enough raw material to invent full time. I thought I'd need 10m+ to do this, but over time I'm gradually acquiring everything I need due to places like sparkfun, ebay and alibaba for little more than the cost of an average car. I'm inventing every day (5-6days software, weekends building random projects), learning more than I ever thought possible and loving every minute. My point is that if this is anything like your dream, it's readily doable now as the cost of doing science is extremely cheap these days. And I've found that productivity increases when I take a break from software in the weekends and do some wet/hard projects.