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The fact that we have any activity at all shows the indomitable spirit of American entrepreneurialism. Further, the fact that so many Americans ever start busin

The fact that we have any activity at all shows the indomitable spirit of American entrepreneurialism. Further, the fact that so many Americans ever start businesses without the safety net of healthcare goes to show that we are a nation of optimistic maniacs. The wasted potential economic energy in this country is a tragedy of colossal proportions.

brightball 8y ago
Startups supported my married couples are generally the path to success, assuming investors are absent. One of you works a job that provides income and benefits for both of you, while the other works on a startup. Assuming most of what you need is a time investment, this is an approach that works for a lot of households to bootstrap. Higher startup costs make it tougher though.
- fma 8y ago
  Can confirm...wife started a franchise with a brick and mortar presence. I hold down the stable income. Also have the help of parents to look after our baby, as sometimes I need to help her on nights/weekends. The same is true for other franchisee's we've met (1 remains the breadwinner). If you bought into an existing one that already generates revenue, then sometimes both spouses work there full time. But that means you need to have had $$$ in the first place. We know of one franchisee who's wife is a stay at home mom. He quit his job to start one...less than a year with slow growth, he closed the center and went back to a traditional salaried job. He didn't pick a good location for exponential growth, but IMHO he had enough steady growth and would have been profitable if he could stick around for another few months.
TAForObvReasons 8y ago
Plenty of people were born into wealth or have enough saved up that they could afford to take a risk. The safety net enabled people in lower socioeconomic classes, who didn't have the birthright benefits to survive a tumble, to take the same type of risks that the upper classes could. The erosion of the net effectively killed the bottom of the ladder The extreme downvoting probably reflect the affluent upbringing of a large portion of the HN community.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  As someone who was raised in the bottom of the socioeconomic classes it's interesting and a bit frustrating talking to people who don't understand what risk taking meant for us versus people with more money and a safety net. For me, many of the risks I took to get to this point would've involved either bankruptcy or my death if they had failed. When I talked to my coworkers on how they feel people should rise up the ladder, they didn't seem to get that the people that made it simply had a good roll of the dice.
  - TAForObvReasons 8y ago
    This is an underreported and unfortunately minimized part of the story of most successes. For example, Bill Gates had a solid financial backing when he left Harvard: http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ > [Bill Gates' Great-Grandfather] Maxwell founded Seattle's National City Bank in 1906. His son, James Willard Maxwell was also a banker and established a million-dollar trust fund for William (Bill) Henry Gates III. Bezos' parents kicked money into what would become Amazon: > The first initial start-up capital for Amazon.com came primarily from my parents, and they invested a large fraction of their life savings in what became Amazon.com
    - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      And Musk started with very little - at one point seeing if could get by on a dollar a day if it came to that. Or Kalanick who things went bad enough for that he was forced to move back in with his parents as an adult, and then later to Thailand for a lower cost of living. Or Dell who worked as a dish washer and newspaper boy - eventually using those funds to drop out of college to focus on his booming computer assembly/upgrade 'business' he was running out of his dorm room.
      - TAForObvReasons 8y ago
        Musk absolutely didn't start from "very little": https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/04/10/2014-rocket-man-the-otherworldly-ambitions-of-elon-musk/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/04/10/2014-rocket-man-the-o... > After [Musk's parents] divorced in 1980, Elon mostly lived with his father, who says he owned thoroughbred horses, a yacht, several houses and a Cessna. One of their homes was in Waterkloof, a leafy suburb of Pretoria that was popular with foreign diplomats. > Wanderlust ran on both sides of the family. On holidays, Errol [Musk's Dad] and his kids would travel, he said: to Europe, Hong Kong, throughout the United States. Or they’d take the plane to Lake Tanganyika, where Errol had a stake in an emerald mine. Elon would later get his own pilot’s license, but he no longer has time to fly. > While wealthy South Africans typically hired maids and gardeners, Errol decided that his children would do chores and cook their own food, taking shifts. Michael Dell: http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Ca-Ge/Dell-Michael.html http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Ca-Ge/Dell-Michael.ht... > In 1984, as a first-year college student in Austin, Texas, Michael Dell borrowed $1,000 from his parents to start a computer accessories business. To put this in perspective, in 2015 less than 30% of Americans have $1000 in their savings: https://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/savings-account/62-percent-americans-under-1000-savings-survey-finds/ https://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/savings-account/62-pe... Kalanick's parents: https://www.recode.net/2017/5/27/15705290/bonnie-kalanick-mother-uber-ceo-dies-boating-accident https://www.recode.net/2017/5/27/15705290/bonnie-kalanick-mo... > From teaming over complex science projects like building a real electrical transformer to giving him his first experience programming computers, [Kalanick's dad] had been the one to bring home early computers for his tech-curious son to fiddle with.
EliRivers 8y ago
I think the US is middle of the pack in terms of entrepreneurialism [1], but it's a hard thing to define and measure and there are a lot of confounding factors and other such around these measures. I suspect it's impossible to get a meaningful comparison unless the countries being compared are very similar. [1] https://blog.approvedindex.co.uk/2015/06/25/map-entrepreneurship-around-the-world/ https://blog.approvedindex.co.uk/2015/06/25/map-entrepreneur...
wozniacki 8y ago
The wasted potential economic energy in this country is a tragedy of colossal proportions. Interesting observation. Now hypothetically lets imagine for the sake of argument we've a safety net of the likes of somewhere on the spectrum between France and one of the Scandinavian countries. All else equal, do you think the American entrepreneurial dynamism you see now would still be around if we had one such welfare state-lite? Or do you think people would grow lackadaisical? Have there been studies on this sort of thing? I'm not implying that its necessarily bad but this comes up a lot in discussions of UBI and such. Tangentially, just last week there was a discussion on how labor laws make life difficult for startups in France.[1] The discussion there makes you wonder perhaps the issues surrounding what actually spurs the indomitable entrepreneurial instinct is more complex than it seems on the surface.[2] [1] Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There? (nytimes.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17169314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17169314 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17169740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17169740
- yawz 8y ago
  It's interesting to see the differences in the difficulties in starting a business in the US vs. Europe. It is "easier" to start a business in the US, but it is riskier because of the general weakness of the social safety net (healthcare, social helps, free childcare, etc.).
hnisgroupthink 8y ago
Yes exactly. People harp on cryptocurrencies for their rampant scams and problems. They are correct. But it's still competitive because our current system is embroiled with significant corruption.

brightball 8y ago

Startups supported my married couples are generally the path to success, assuming investors are absent. One of you works a job that provides income and benefits for both of you, while the other works on a startup. Assuming most of what you need is a time investment, this is an approach that works for a lot of households to bootstrap. Higher startup costs make it tougher though.

fma 8y ago
Can confirm...wife started a franchise with a brick and mortar presence. I hold down the stable income. Also have the help of parents to look after our baby, as sometimes I need to help her on nights/weekends. The same is true for other franchisee's we've met (1 remains the breadwinner). If you bought into an existing one that already generates revenue, then sometimes both spouses work there full time. But that means you need to have had $$$ in the first place. We know of one franchisee who's wife is a stay at home mom. He quit his job to start one...less than a year with slow growth, he closed the center and went back to a traditional salaried job. He didn't pick a good location for exponential growth, but IMHO he had enough steady growth and would have been profitable if he could stick around for another few months.

TAForObvReasons 8y ago

Plenty of people were born into wealth or have enough saved up that they could afford to take a risk. The safety net enabled people in lower socioeconomic classes, who didn't have the birthright benefits to survive a tumble, to take the same type of risks that the upper classes could. The erosion of the net effectively killed the bottom of the ladder The extreme downvoting probably reflect the affluent upbringing of a large portion of the HN community.

fzeroracer 8y ago
As someone who was raised in the bottom of the socioeconomic classes it's interesting and a bit frustrating talking to people who don't understand what risk taking meant for us versus people with more money and a safety net. For me, many of the risks I took to get to this point would've involved either bankruptcy or my death if they had failed. When I talked to my coworkers on how they feel people should rise up the ladder, they didn't seem to get that the people that made it simply had a good roll of the dice.
- TAForObvReasons 8y ago
  This is an underreported and unfortunately minimized part of the story of most successes. For example, Bill Gates had a solid financial backing when he left Harvard: http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ > [Bill Gates' Great-Grandfather] Maxwell founded Seattle's National City Bank in 1906. His son, James Willard Maxwell was also a banker and established a million-dollar trust fund for William (Bill) Henry Gates III. Bezos' parents kicked money into what would become Amazon: > The first initial start-up capital for Amazon.com came primarily from my parents, and they invested a large fraction of their life savings in what became Amazon.com
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    And Musk started with very little - at one point seeing if could get by on a dollar a day if it came to that. Or Kalanick who things went bad enough for that he was forced to move back in with his parents as an adult, and then later to Thailand for a lower cost of living. Or Dell who worked as a dish washer and newspaper boy - eventually using those funds to drop out of college to focus on his booming computer assembly/upgrade 'business' he was running out of his dorm room.
    - TAForObvReasons 8y ago
      Musk absolutely didn't start from "very little": https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/04/10/2014-rocket-man-the-otherworldly-ambitions-of-elon-musk/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/04/10/2014-rocket-man-the-o... > After [Musk's parents] divorced in 1980, Elon mostly lived with his father, who says he owned thoroughbred horses, a yacht, several houses and a Cessna. One of their homes was in Waterkloof, a leafy suburb of Pretoria that was popular with foreign diplomats. > Wanderlust ran on both sides of the family. On holidays, Errol [Musk's Dad] and his kids would travel, he said: to Europe, Hong Kong, throughout the United States. Or they’d take the plane to Lake Tanganyika, where Errol had a stake in an emerald mine. Elon would later get his own pilot’s license, but he no longer has time to fly. > While wealthy South Africans typically hired maids and gardeners, Errol decided that his children would do chores and cook their own food, taking shifts. Michael Dell: http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Ca-Ge/Dell-Michael.html http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Ca-Ge/Dell-Michael.ht... > In 1984, as a first-year college student in Austin, Texas, Michael Dell borrowed $1,000 from his parents to start a computer accessories business. To put this in perspective, in 2015 less than 30% of Americans have $1000 in their savings: https://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/savings-account/62-percent-americans-under-1000-savings-survey-finds/ https://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/savings-account/62-pe... Kalanick's parents: https://www.recode.net/2017/5/27/15705290/bonnie-kalanick-mother-uber-ceo-dies-boating-accident https://www.recode.net/2017/5/27/15705290/bonnie-kalanick-mo... > From teaming over complex science projects like building a real electrical transformer to giving him his first experience programming computers, [Kalanick's dad] had been the one to bring home early computers for his tech-curious son to fiddle with.

EliRivers 8y ago

I think the US is middle of the pack in terms of entrepreneurialism [1], but it's a hard thing to define and measure and there are a lot of confounding factors and other such around these measures. I suspect it's impossible to get a meaningful comparison unless the countries being compared are very similar. [1] https://blog.approvedindex.co.uk/2015/06/25/map-entrepreneurship-around-the-world/ https://blog.approvedindex.co.uk/2015/06/25/map-entrepreneur...

wozniacki 8y ago

The wasted potential economic energy in this country is a tragedy of colossal proportions. Interesting observation. Now hypothetically lets imagine for the sake of argument we've a safety net of the likes of somewhere on the spectrum between France and one of the Scandinavian countries. All else equal, do you think the American entrepreneurial dynamism you see now would still be around if we had one such welfare state-lite? Or do you think people would grow lackadaisical? Have there been studies on this sort of thing? I'm not implying that its necessarily bad but this comes up a lot in discussions of UBI and such. Tangentially, just last week there was a discussion on how labor laws make life difficult for startups in France.[1] The discussion there makes you wonder perhaps the issues surrounding what actually spurs the indomitable entrepreneurial instinct is more complex than it seems on the surface.[2] [1] Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There? (nytimes.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17169314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17169314 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17169740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17169740

yawz 8y ago
It's interesting to see the differences in the difficulties in starting a business in the US vs. Europe. It is "easier" to start a business in the US, but it is riskier because of the general weakness of the social safety net (healthcare, social helps, free childcare, etc.).

hnisgroupthink 8y ago

Yes exactly. People harp on cryptocurrencies for their rampant scams and problems. They are correct. But it's still competitive because our current system is embroiled with significant corruption.