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This doesn't help TFA, but building a successful business is usually really difficult (based on what has been seen and written about other successful businesses

by blunte 6y ago

This doesn't help TFA, but building a successful business is usually really difficult (based on what has been seen and written about other successful businesses). Also, many entrepreneurs fail multiple times before succeeding at a business. Indeed, sometimes luck is against you. COVID was probably not on most people's risk models, so who would know it was a bad time to start most businesses? And while sunk cost fallacy is a real problem, I suspect that some terminations with that excuse might have been successes if pursued further. But having a family and children is a significant priority conflict with being an entrepreneur, so I certainly don't judge the TFA. But likewise I don't think I would use the sunk cost expression.

valentinu 6y ago
I second your opinion about having a family to support will conflict with being an entrepreneur. It reminds me about the reason #9 not to start a company: http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html > I wouldn't advise anyone with a family to start a startup. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, just that I don't want to take responsibility for advising it. I'm willing to take responsibility for telling 22 year olds to start startups. So what if they fail? They'll learn a lot, and that job at Microsoft will still be waiting for them if they need it. But I'm not prepared to cross moms. > What you can do, if you have a family and want to start a startup, is start a consulting business you can then gradually turn into a product business. Empirically the chances of pulling that off seem very small. You're never going to produce Google this way. But at least you'll never be without an income. > Another way to decrease the risk is to join an existing startup instead of starting your own. Being one of the first employees of a startup is a lot like being a founder, in both the good ways and the bad. You'll be roughly 1/n^2 founder, where n is your employee number. > As with the question of cofounders, the real lesson here is to start startups when you're young.

by blunte 6y ago

valentinu 6y ago

I second your opinion about having a family to support will conflict with being an entrepreneur. It reminds me about the reason #9 not to start a company: http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html > I wouldn't advise anyone with a family to start a startup. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, just that I don't want to take responsibility for advising it. I'm willing to take responsibility for telling 22 year olds to start startups. So what if they fail? They'll learn a lot, and that job at Microsoft will still be waiting for them if they need it. But I'm not prepared to cross moms. > What you can do, if you have a family and want to start a startup, is start a consulting business you can then gradually turn into a product business. Empirically the chances of pulling that off seem very small. You're never going to produce Google this way. But at least you'll never be without an income. > Another way to decrease the risk is to join an existing startup instead of starting your own. Being one of the first employees of a startup is a lot like being a founder, in both the good ways and the bad. You'll be roughly 1/n^2 founder, where n is your employee number. > As with the question of cofounders, the real lesson here is to start startups when you're young.