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What's "sniffy" about it? Is Blank not praising the napkin projects effusively enough? It certainly looks like praise to me. Read the sentence in context. He's
by mechanical_fish 16y ago
What's "sniffy" about it? Is Blank not praising the napkin projects effusively enough? It certainly looks like praise to me.
Read the sentence in context. He's trying to explain where all the startups are. We are awash in napkin experiments; why aren't we similarly flooded with startups? Well, because there's a significant risk barrier between one and the other.
And, yes, he doesn't downplay that risk barrier. That seems fair. It doesn't do your audience any favors to elide the significant difference between a napkin experimenter and an actual founder. People can and do go bankrupt over that difference.
- HeyLaughingBoy 16y agoI also have a problem with the "tone" of the article. Steve seems to be saying that unless you commit full time, you're not a business. If I start a "napkin experiment" website in my spare time and provide a simple service and people pay me for it and I turn a profit, is that not an entrepreneurial venture? Isn't it a business? Come tax time, the IRS will sure think it is. Using the "go full time or go home" metric to decide whether or not something is a startup or a business seems unnecessarily arbitrary to me.
- MicahWedemeyer 16y ago+1 to this. I don't work full time on my lifestyle business but the IRS will be taking a hefty chunk this year. I wish they read HN more so they could scoff at my lack of entrepreneurship and spurn my meager revenues.
- davidw 16y ago> What's "sniffy" about it? It just felt condescending to me, somehow. "Those people are not entrepreneurs or founders" just doesn't sit quite right for me, even though I think his distinction is basically correct. Maybe I read it wrong or maybe he dashed it off quickly or something - I generally like his essays a lot.