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"Before I quit my job, I constantly read books and listened to podcasts about startups. The part that intrigued me most was the boundlessness of possibility."

"Before I quit my job, I constantly read books and listened to podcasts about startups. The part that intrigued me most was the boundlessness of possibility." ^ This is me right now. I've struggled to explain to people why I'm interested in entrepreneurship for its own sake (and not because, e.g., I'm passionate about a particular problem). This quote really encapsulates the draw of it for me. Thanks Michael, just came across your blog recently. Great stuff.

mtlynch 6y ago
Thanks for reading! I'm glad that section resonated with you! I spent several hours writing and rewriting that section, trying to articulate what exactly I found so alluring about becoming a founder. Last year, I considered building software for sheet metal shops,[0] and people warned me that I'd get bored building software for a market I'm not passionate about. But I never felt like that would be true because whatever the business, the part that's fun to me is getting to play with all the little knobs and levers of and seeing whether my choices yielded good results. [0] https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2019/12/#interviewing-machine-shops https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2019/12/#interviewing-mach...
- dualthro 6y ago
  > whatever the business, the part that's fun to me is getting to play with all the little knobs and levers of and seeing whether my choices yielded good results. I am the exact same way, and yet I struggle to articulate this. People say to me "why would you be excited to own a carwash?" (example biz, I own none right now) and my answer is basically what you said -- its this kind of huge, real world, testing environment/challenge. How can we increase efficiency here? How would modifying the soap mixture affect the cleanliness of the cars? So many inputs and outputs to experiment with, I can't think of anything more interesting....
- DavidPeiffer 6y ago
  Metal shops could definitely use some better software. Most don't prioritize it though, because everything has been "good enough" for so long. A company I worked for had a supplier who cut metal. The owner was hardcore about making money. They wouldn't start cutting until he was devoting 95% of the sheet metal to product, and if the machines stopped cutting for more than 1 minute, an andon light would start flashing. Needless to say, he ran a very tight ship!
hermitcrab 6y ago
That infinite horizon of possibilities is both a positive and a negative. The negative is that you have highly imperfect information and you never know what the optimal thing is that you should be doing next. I've been a solo product developer for >15 years now I can tell you that feeling of uncertainty never goes away. Although I have solved it to some extent by factoeing in enjoyment. Whenever I have 2 possibilities and I don't have a feel for which one will give the best result, I do the one that is more fun!

mtlynch 6y ago

Thanks for reading! I'm glad that section resonated with you! I spent several hours writing and rewriting that section, trying to articulate what exactly I found so alluring about becoming a founder. Last year, I considered building software for sheet metal shops,[0] and people warned me that I'd get bored building software for a market I'm not passionate about. But I never felt like that would be true because whatever the business, the part that's fun to me is getting to play with all the little knobs and levers of and seeing whether my choices yielded good results. [0] https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2019/12/#interviewing-machine-shops https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2019/12/#interviewing-mach...

dualthro 6y ago
> whatever the business, the part that's fun to me is getting to play with all the little knobs and levers of and seeing whether my choices yielded good results. I am the exact same way, and yet I struggle to articulate this. People say to me "why would you be excited to own a carwash?" (example biz, I own none right now) and my answer is basically what you said -- its this kind of huge, real world, testing environment/challenge. How can we increase efficiency here? How would modifying the soap mixture affect the cleanliness of the cars? So many inputs and outputs to experiment with, I can't think of anything more interesting....
DavidPeiffer 6y ago
Metal shops could definitely use some better software. Most don't prioritize it though, because everything has been "good enough" for so long. A company I worked for had a supplier who cut metal. The owner was hardcore about making money. They wouldn't start cutting until he was devoting 95% of the sheet metal to product, and if the machines stopped cutting for more than 1 minute, an andon light would start flashing. Needless to say, he ran a very tight ship!

hermitcrab 6y ago

That infinite horizon of possibilities is both a positive and a negative. The negative is that you have highly imperfect information and you never know what the optimal thing is that you should be doing next. I've been a solo product developer for >15 years now I can tell you that feeling of uncertainty never goes away. Although I have solved it to some extent by factoeing in enjoyment. Whenever I have 2 possibilities and I don't have a feel for which one will give the best result, I do the one that is more fun!