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A big factor in entrepreneurship that is undervalued is desperation. When you have a cushy tech job to fall back on, you simply won't try as hard as when you ha

• mettamage 5y ago
  It can lead to chronic stress. Chronic stress can kill in the worst case. I think Elon Musk is a good public example of what (chronic) stress can do despite being financially successful.
  • dumbfoundded 5y ago
    It's definitely way more stressful but it's a balance. I think having too little stress can be just as unhealthy as too much stress. Some amount of stress is necessary to feel engaged and important in the activities you work on. You can work at a big company and feel completely unnecessary to the world. As a founder, finding the balance is extremely difficult but a very rewarding journey if you can sustain it. There's a certain zen about finding peace and focus in a chaotic situation.
  • DelightOne 5y ago
    Sure it's stress, but it also gives you control, gives you the tools and people you need to deal with it. In a job you don't necessarily have those.
  • bigbillheck 5y ago
    Musk might have a lot of chronic, but it's not stress.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
• Taylor_OD 5y ago
  A lot lot lot of start up founders have some type of exit (life changing but not retiring type money) then go work as an engineer at FANG+. It's always interesting talking to them because most of the time they thought about leaving during their time running the start up but stuck around for one reason or another. Sometimes because they didnt have time to interview elsewhere.
  • dumbfoundded 5y ago
    As a bootstrapped founder who went through such an exit, but not planning on going back to a big tech company, I had temptations of going back for at least a couple years. My primary motivation was the fear of suffering personal consequences for completely running of our money. Now that I've exited and have plenty of time to start the next thing, I can't ever see myself going back to a big company. There's something addicting about entrepreneurship. To me, it just feels so much more real than working at a big company. At a big company, I felt like I just tried to make my boss happy and I had a very limited toolset to do such. As an entrepreneur, it's very connected to delivering value to other people who won't give you the time of day if you don't. It's difficult to explain but it feels way more real than a job.
    • granshaw 5y ago
      Amen. Plus the high of getting a new sale or getting good direct feedback from your customers Also love how customers don’t give a ** about who you are, just how good your product is. Very different from typical employment where there’s a constant undercurrent of posturing and your person/personality is always front and center to your performance, as much as people don’t wanna admit it
• sombremesa 5y ago
  I'd expect that the people the article talks about did have other options since they were "high earners". > we confirm labor shocks disproportionately impact high-earners and these same workers start more successful firms
  • dumbfoundded 5y ago
    I think the term "forced" implies to me that the other options were worse at least. High earners can become low earners very quickly like real estate agents in 2008. These people have a larger bank roll and wider network then suddenly find themselves without a way to sustain their existing lifestyle. Similarly, the dot com bust gave many previously high paid programmers a lot of free time and few options to maintain their income.
  • awb 5y ago
    I was a reasonably paid developer / manager in 2008 and couldn’t find a job as hiring was frozen. Unemployment wasn’t going to cover the mortgage so I was in a sense forced into entrepreneurship despite being a previously attractive hire for multiple companies. I had to work 2x as hard to make the same salary on my own the first year, but after that the rewards became easier as the company grew. I doubt I would have had the courage or interest in leaving a comfortable salaried position for entrepreneurship if I wasn’t forced into it. Turned out to be a life changing lay off for me though in a good way.
    • sombremesa 5y ago
      The issue is that GP points to this as a significant factor: > "Forced entrepreneurs" risk great personal consequences because they have no other options. This is just ground reality for many entrepreneurs (immigrant families opening new restaurants, for example) and does not serve as much of a differentiating factor. Based on the study in the OP, the differentiating factor is more likely to be some difference in risk tolerance by way of savings (since these were high earners after all), some difference in skill (since these were high earners after all), or some difference in opinion of self (since these were high earners after all) which kept them from giving up and just taking a minimum wage unskilled labor gig somewhere. It's not interesting that people turned to entrepreneurship after being laid off. It's interesting that people who were laid off from cushier jobs were able to start businesses more successfully.
• afarrell 5y ago
  > they have no other options This isn’t really true and should not motivate us to value desperation. Survivorship bias prevents us from hearing the voices of those who chose the final solution to desperation.
  • awb 5y ago
    If you’re taking about suicide, we do have statistics to tell part of that story.
    • TrinaryWorksToo 5y ago
      And it's way too high. Perhaps we shouldn't innovate at all costs. Perhaps it's okay to slow innovation if more people live.
      • cle 5y ago
        Or perhaps the person "burning the midnight oil" will come up with an innovation that will save even more lives, and which is only possible by a single person putting in the mental effort. I don't have a strong opinion on this issue, IMO it's too complicated and subjective to feel confident in any particular stance. There's no question in my mind that entrepreneurs taking larger personal risks are more motivated to make things work, but whether that translates to a net positive or not? Who knows?
        • afarrell 5y ago
          People also stay up late to see the stars. Where we see desperation in a company history, we should look again to check if it is actually relentlessly resourceful curiosity.
          • cle 5y ago
            You are presenting a false dichotomy, it can and often is degrees of both.
  • 5y ago
• PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > "Forced entrepreneurs" risk great personal consequences because they have no other options. Anyone capable of starting a tech company has the skills and motivation required to get a reasonably well paying tech job. And that's more or less what most of them do when their startups fail. I see a lot of resumes from people listing themselves as CEO or CTO of a tech startup that barely registers in a Google search. I know at least one recruiter who makes a habit of calling up people at Crunchbase companies with <10 employees and letting them know to reach out if they're ever thinking about going back to the job market. Turns out, a lot of them are ready to go back to regular jobs after realizing that startup life isn't as glamorous as it sounds.
  • jbay808 5y ago
    That might be less true outside of the US.
  • sdevonoes 5y ago
    Not everyone works in tech. I know some "forced entrepreneurs" that failed big. They were "forced" in the sense that the country in which they were living was just not able to provide them a decent job.
  • sokoloff 5y ago
    > Anyone capable of starting a tech company has the skills and motivation required to get a reasonably well paying tech job. I say that's mostly true, provided they're authorized to work in the US and move there.
  • krono 5y ago
    Back then when, lacking formal education in this field, I was unable to get anything better than unpaid traineeships. Since I needed income those were no viable option, plus I was demonstratively far beyond that skill level and felt I was being taken advantage of to an unfair degree. If I wanted to stay in this field, my only option was to start my own business which I ended up doing. Things worked out quite well. > Anyone capable of starting a tech company has the skills and motivation required to get a reasonably well paying tech job. I find that way too simplistic and too blankety even for a blanket statement.
• shoto_io 5y ago
  Absolutely. I was a well paid manager in a travel company. Then Covid hit... In hindsight I am glad I got the chance to become an entrepreneur. I am not sure if I would have had the guts to make the jump without the f:ing pandemic.
• whall6 5y ago
  They’ve burnt their ships so to speak
  • afarrell 5y ago
    The “Death Ground” strategy is more relevant in a situation where the greatest danger is a rout.
• cpp_frog 5y ago
  In Spanish there is a saying that goes: A hungry man thinks more a hundred intellectuals.
• Stevvo 5y ago
  As somewhat of a forced entrepreneur myself, I disagree. Didn't finish high-school and have never held down a job for more than a few months, but don't feel at risk of 'great personal consequences'. If the market changes and my current ventures go to shit, I will just develop a new product much like an employed person would find a new job.
  • dumbfoundded 5y ago
    I think the difference is the paper focuses on previously high income earners. When people earn a high income, they tend to get mortgages, dependencies, and expensive habits. When you have all of that, it's tough to take it away without it feeling like a great loss.
• jressey 5y ago
  When Covid hit, I quit my cushy job to create a video game. It was awesome, and given the time and resources I am confident it would have sold a few thousand copies. But c'mon, I quit my job to get away from working for a living for a year. I put in 4-6 hours a day in earnest, but it was pretty obvious from the beginning that I wasn't gonna finish and coding the game was just an opportunity to be more creative than I am as a manager. No way would I have ever entertained this idea without knowing I could walk back in to a high-paid job a month after starting to look, which I did.
• crooked-v 5y ago
  > When you have a cushy tech job to fall back on, you simply won't try as hard as when you have no safety net. Or you don't try entrepreneurship at all, because if you fail you don't have anything to fall back on.
• rapind 5y ago
  If you’re a desperate entrepreneur in B2B, just a heads up that there are a lot of predators out there trying to cheat you into cheap/free work. It’s like a special kind of land shark that can smell your desperation. The willingness to walk away is a game changer in sales (and other things in life).
• htrp 5y ago
  the survivorship bias is great for society, less good for the failed entrepreneur
• Vadoff 5y ago
  How many self made billionaires came from “forced entrepreneurship”? Doesn’t feel like many, maybe even closer to none.