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What They Don't Tell You About Starting a Startup

17 points by drm237 18y ago

mixmax 18y ago
The other thing they don't tell you is that you can fail. And that it hurts when you do.
sutro 18y ago
As women forget the pain of childbirth once they hold their babies in their arms, so it is with startups. New life is awkward, messy, and painful. The antidote and the amnesia for startup pain is the creation of a product or service that people like enough to pay for.
- tptacek 18y ago
  (1) Women don't "forget the pain of childbirth" when they hold their babies. Giving birth, I'm told, really fucking hurts. (2) In contrast to giving birth, where the pain at least (mostly) ends after the main event, the pain of running a company continues long after launch.
  - sabat 18y ago
    (1) You're right, it does, but it seems that the pain is just an irrelevant memory because your child is what's important. (2) Obviously you don't have children, or you might think otherwise. :-)
    - tptacek 18y ago
      My son is 8, my daughter is 6, and I sleep in the easy chair in the living room when I talk about childbirth as if I knew what it was like.
  - mdemare 18y ago
    Yes, it really hurts, and women really forget just how bad it was, otherwise they'd stop at one child. Hormones somehow alter their memories. Kinda Orwellian, actually.
    - cglee 18y ago
      Just wondering, are any of you female that are commenting on this? It just reminds me of the male pundits sitting around debating abortion (assuming yall're male).
jamess 18y ago
Top startup tip: Never take advice from someone who doesn't know the difference between "advice" and "advise."
- ashu 18y ago
  Right. All successful entrepreneurs must speak perfect English.
- nadim 18y ago
  "Even as high as DH5 we still sometimes see deliberate dishonesty, as when someone picks out minor points of an argument and refutes those. Sometimes the spirit in which this is done makes it more of a sophisticated form of ad hominem than actual refutation. For example, correcting someone's grammar, or harping on minor mistakes in names or numbers." [1] [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
attack 18y ago
Yes, more advice from people that failed at least a few times instead of know-it-alls who think their anecdote is the huge secret to success.
- dennykmiu 18y ago
  Actually very few entrepreneurs do one startup and become an overnight success. So even if they talk about their success, they are implicitly talking about their failure (or recovery from past failure which might need to future success). I think the mistakes that most of us make is to think that there is a formula, a formula for success or a formula for failure. There is no formula.
dualogy 18y ago
Entrepreneurship is about not caring what anyone else is or is not "telling you".
- dennykmiu 18y ago
  My own experience is that entrepreneurship is an obsession and an addiction. It is a character flaw. It is the deep desire to create and destroy at the same time. It is worse that a disease because disease at least has a curl, or the potential for a curl. The following are my recent articles on how to accept such a predicament and deal with setback and rejection, and how to recover from them. http://foundread.com/2008/04/18/why-you-must-embrace-rejection-to-succeed http://foundread.com/2008/04/18/why-you-must-embrace-rejecti... http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2007/10/riding-a-bike.html http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2007/10/riding-a-bike.html
dennykmiu 18y ago
No one could've said it better than this. Read the following ... "I’ve often told people that this thing [startup] is worse than heroin. I’ve also told people that I think I’ve proved that entrepreneurism is deep in my soul. I’ve been away, but inexorably I come back. It started when I was younger than ten – I can recall the emotions such ideas generated then, and I know I still work the same way." http://foundread.com/2008/04/18/why-you-must-embrace-rejection-to-succeed/#comment-7582 http://foundread.com/2008/04/18/why-you-must-embrace-rejecti...
skmurphy 18y ago
W. Edwards Deming observed "Nothing happens without personal transformation." I think it's this personal transformation that's one of the hardest things about a startup. You start out wanting to change the world and end up at 3AM wondering what's gone wrong and realizing that it's you has to change first. Barry Moltz wrote a great book "You Have To Be A Little Crazy" that addresses the emotional roller coaster that every entrepreneur faces, observing "Entrepreneurs start businesses because..they have no choice. Passion and energy drive them on good days and sustain them on bad days." Some references follow: http://www.amazon.com/You-Need-Be-Little-Crazy/dp/079318018X/ http://www.amazon.com/You-Need-Be-Little-Crazy/dp/079318018X... http://www.barrymoltz.com/ http://www.barrymoltz.com/ http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2006/12/27/you-need-to-be-a-little-crazy/ http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2006/12/27/you-need-to-be-a-lit...
paul 18y ago
Why does it have to be painful? Maybe he's just doing it wrong.
- diego 18y ago
  Perhaps painful is not the right word. It is extremely challenging and demanding, and it can take over your life and take a toll on your health. This is because you have to constantly inject energy into a startup or it will fade away. You get used to making tough decisions all the time with incomplete information, and uncertainty is the norm. Even when business looks great you know that things could change overnight for a number of reasons (market conditions, Google giving away what you are selling, etc). I've been running a successful (as in, quite profitable) startup as a solo founder for the past three years. If my today self sent a fax to the past letting my old self know what it would be like... Well, that probably wouldn't change anything. Maybe we are just masochists.
  - dennykmiu 18y ago
    Pain is definitely not the word. Pain is a very good excuse not to do it. Startup is in fact sort of like child birth. It is very emotional and no one can describe the experience (especially not men) unless you have been through it. I think few woman would recommend against having a child because of the pain even though there is tremendous amount of pain involved. They would tell you that you shouldn't be a mother if you are nor ready to be one. And like motherhood, entrepreneurship turns out to be a responsibility as well.
Tichy 18y ago
What if you are doing it the second time around, and are already rich from the first time? Is it still painful, and will people still spend as much time on it? Somehow I can not imagine they would. Seems to me the first time is painful because of the pressure: financial worries, the worry to be a failure in life, stuff like that. Would not be so much the case if you already made it? Also, isn't it amusing how such links are inevitable called "what they don't tell you about..." rather than simply "It is painful to do a startup"?
adityakothadiya 18y ago
Hi all, I wrote that article because I'm experiencing few things that I wanted to share. I'm working on starting a startup, handling all marriage and day job responsibilities. I find it very challenging, but I still push myself because it's my character flaw - that I want to start a startup. To make this happen, I'm also looking for building a founding team. For that, I'm talking to few people who shared their interest of starting a startup. Whenever I talk to some young professional, the most common observation I have seen is - almost everyone wants to start a startup, literally almost everyone. But the fact is - they just don't know what it takes to make it work -- the insane hard work at initial stages. They just talk about success stories, but when it comes to put the time and build stuff, they disappear. And that's how I got inspired to share this thought on my blog. I am not saying we should take that advice seriously and stop working on our dreams. That advice was more for those people who "think" they want to start a startup, but probably don't understand the reality to make it happen. -Aditya (Adeologue.com)
- dennykmiu 18y ago
  Aditya - good luck. It is possible to have a great family (I have same wife for the last thirty years and we have two teenage kids) and do startups at the same time. Pick you teammate carefully. I wrote about my own criteria in the following ("turn off the light and see if you run away from them"). http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2008/03/team-building.html http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2008/03/team-building.html

17 points by drm237 18y ago

The other thing they don't tell you is that you can fail. And that it hurts when you do.

sutro 18y ago

As women forget the pain of childbirth once they hold their babies in their arms, so it is with startups. New life is awkward, messy, and painful. The antidote and the amnesia for startup pain is the creation of a product or service that people like enough to pay for.

tptacek 18y ago
(1) Women don't "forget the pain of childbirth" when they hold their babies. Giving birth, I'm told, really fucking hurts. (2) In contrast to giving birth, where the pain at least (mostly) ends after the main event, the pain of running a company continues long after launch.
- sabat 18y ago
  (1) You're right, it does, but it seems that the pain is just an irrelevant memory because your child is what's important. (2) Obviously you don't have children, or you might think otherwise. :-)
  - tptacek 18y ago
    My son is 8, my daughter is 6, and I sleep in the easy chair in the living room when I talk about childbirth as if I knew what it was like.
- mdemare 18y ago
  Yes, it really hurts, and women really forget just how bad it was, otherwise they'd stop at one child. Hormones somehow alter their memories. Kinda Orwellian, actually.
  - cglee 18y ago
    Just wondering, are any of you female that are commenting on this? It just reminds me of the male pundits sitting around debating abortion (assuming yall're male).

jamess 18y ago

Top startup tip: Never take advice from someone who doesn't know the difference between "advice" and "advise."

ashu 18y ago
Right. All successful entrepreneurs must speak perfect English.
nadim 18y ago
"Even as high as DH5 we still sometimes see deliberate dishonesty, as when someone picks out minor points of an argument and refutes those. Sometimes the spirit in which this is done makes it more of a sophisticated form of ad hominem than actual refutation. For example, correcting someone's grammar, or harping on minor mistakes in names or numbers." [1] [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

attack 18y ago

Yes, more advice from people that failed at least a few times instead of know-it-alls who think their anecdote is the huge secret to success.

dennykmiu 18y ago
Actually very few entrepreneurs do one startup and become an overnight success. So even if they talk about their success, they are implicitly talking about their failure (or recovery from past failure which might need to future success). I think the mistakes that most of us make is to think that there is a formula, a formula for success or a formula for failure. There is no formula.

dualogy 18y ago

Entrepreneurship is about not caring what anyone else is or is not "telling you".

dennykmiu 18y ago
My own experience is that entrepreneurship is an obsession and an addiction. It is a character flaw. It is the deep desire to create and destroy at the same time. It is worse that a disease because disease at least has a curl, or the potential for a curl. The following are my recent articles on how to accept such a predicament and deal with setback and rejection, and how to recover from them. http://foundread.com/2008/04/18/why-you-must-embrace-rejection-to-succeed http://foundread.com/2008/04/18/why-you-must-embrace-rejecti... http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2007/10/riding-a-bike.html http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2007/10/riding-a-bike.html

dennykmiu 18y ago

No one could've said it better than this. Read the following ... "I’ve often told people that this thing [startup] is worse than heroin. I’ve also told people that I think I’ve proved that entrepreneurism is deep in my soul. I’ve been away, but inexorably I come back. It started when I was younger than ten – I can recall the emotions such ideas generated then, and I know I still work the same way." http://foundread.com/2008/04/18/why-you-must-embrace-rejection-to-succeed/#comment-7582 http://foundread.com/2008/04/18/why-you-must-embrace-rejecti...

skmurphy 18y ago

W. Edwards Deming observed "Nothing happens without personal transformation." I think it's this personal transformation that's one of the hardest things about a startup. You start out wanting to change the world and end up at 3AM wondering what's gone wrong and realizing that it's you has to change first. Barry Moltz wrote a great book "You Have To Be A Little Crazy" that addresses the emotional roller coaster that every entrepreneur faces, observing "Entrepreneurs start businesses because..they have no choice. Passion and energy drive them on good days and sustain them on bad days." Some references follow: http://www.amazon.com/You-Need-Be-Little-Crazy/dp/079318018X/ http://www.amazon.com/You-Need-Be-Little-Crazy/dp/079318018X... http://www.barrymoltz.com/ http://www.barrymoltz.com/ http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2006/12/27/you-need-to-be-a-little-crazy/ http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2006/12/27/you-need-to-be-a-lit...

paul 18y ago

Why does it have to be painful? Maybe he's just doing it wrong.

diego 18y ago
Perhaps painful is not the right word. It is extremely challenging and demanding, and it can take over your life and take a toll on your health. This is because you have to constantly inject energy into a startup or it will fade away. You get used to making tough decisions all the time with incomplete information, and uncertainty is the norm. Even when business looks great you know that things could change overnight for a number of reasons (market conditions, Google giving away what you are selling, etc). I've been running a successful (as in, quite profitable) startup as a solo founder for the past three years. If my today self sent a fax to the past letting my old self know what it would be like... Well, that probably wouldn't change anything. Maybe we are just masochists.
- dennykmiu 18y ago
  Pain is definitely not the word. Pain is a very good excuse not to do it. Startup is in fact sort of like child birth. It is very emotional and no one can describe the experience (especially not men) unless you have been through it. I think few woman would recommend against having a child because of the pain even though there is tremendous amount of pain involved. They would tell you that you shouldn't be a mother if you are nor ready to be one. And like motherhood, entrepreneurship turns out to be a responsibility as well.

Tichy 18y ago

What if you are doing it the second time around, and are already rich from the first time? Is it still painful, and will people still spend as much time on it? Somehow I can not imagine they would. Seems to me the first time is painful because of the pressure: financial worries, the worry to be a failure in life, stuff like that. Would not be so much the case if you already made it? Also, isn't it amusing how such links are inevitable called "what they don't tell you about..." rather than simply "It is painful to do a startup"?

adityakothadiya 18y ago

Hi all, I wrote that article because I'm experiencing few things that I wanted to share. I'm working on starting a startup, handling all marriage and day job responsibilities. I find it very challenging, but I still push myself because it's my character flaw - that I want to start a startup. To make this happen, I'm also looking for building a founding team. For that, I'm talking to few people who shared their interest of starting a startup. Whenever I talk to some young professional, the most common observation I have seen is - almost everyone wants to start a startup, literally almost everyone. But the fact is - they just don't know what it takes to make it work -- the insane hard work at initial stages. They just talk about success stories, but when it comes to put the time and build stuff, they disappear. And that's how I got inspired to share this thought on my blog. I am not saying we should take that advice seriously and stop working on our dreams. That advice was more for those people who "think" they want to start a startup, but probably don't understand the reality to make it happen. -Aditya (Adeologue.com)

dennykmiu 18y ago
Aditya - good luck. It is possible to have a great family (I have same wife for the last thirty years and we have two teenage kids) and do startups at the same time. Pick you teammate carefully. I wrote about my own criteria in the following ("turn off the light and see if you run away from them"). http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2008/03/team-building.html http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2008/03/team-building.html