8 ms·

How should a startup founder value her time?

36 points by pors 15y ago

mcherm 15y ago
This argument considers the downside risk (85% chance of not getting paid anything) but does NOT consider the upside risk (small chance of getting filthy rich but still much bigger than the chance if you work as a $150/hr consultant). That makes the math wrong, even if the idea has merit.
- WalterSear 15y ago
  Furthermore, even if the premise is right, the strategies suggested are wrong. 'Working more than is healthy' never makes sense (except in short, >healthy < doses) and hiring support staff only makes sense if you have the cashflow or the increased productivity is worth the increasd burn rate - you haven't made that money yet.
lawnchair_larry 15y ago
Why is 'her' used here, if the author is male?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- teaspoon 15y ago
  Because the subject of the sentence is "a startup founder", not "Jason Cohen".
  - marknutter 15y ago
    It's always irritated me to see the use of the word "her" because of the blatant political-correctness of it. If you want to be PC, use "their".
    - slewis 15y ago
      So we can only use "his" or "their"?
    - jiggy2011 15y ago
      constantly using "their" when reading anything that remotely resembles a story gets old pretty fast.
    - rfrey 15y ago
      You don't like implied political correctness. OP doesn't like implied gender bias. I don't like grammatical convolutions like using "their". What's to be done? How about focusing on the message?
      - marknutter 15y ago
        > what's to be done? use "their"
  - mikemaccana 15y ago
    Then use 'their'.
    - sp332 15y ago
      This particular (hypothetical) startup founder happens to be singular, and female.
      - lawnchair_larry 15y ago
        https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Singular_they https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Singular_they
        sp332 15y ago
        That's the exact opposite of the situation. I pointed out that the founder is singular and female, but the "singular they" is used for indeterminate number and/or gender.
- olalonde 15y ago
  Yep, kind of misleading. I thought the article would specifically target female founders.
- drumdance 15y ago
  http://blog.asmartbear.com/value-time.html#comment-407310992 http://blog.asmartbear.com/value-time.html#comment-407310992
- bdesimone 15y ago
  Usually the masculine form is used as a gender-neutral pronoun. While correct, with no contextual need to deviate from the norm, I find the title unnecessarily distracting. But not as distracting as mismatching number and writing "their time" instead.
- robobenjie 15y ago
  And I was pleasantly surprised to find that (this time) I hadn't noticed until reading the comments. If we live in a world where one group of people is the norm and other groups need special distinction to identify them ("he" is a generic hypothetical person, but "she" means the person has to be female) then we have to undergo social change to bring us to center. This is likely to be uncomfortable.
jasonkester 15y ago
It's never mentioned in the article, but this only applies to the "Get Big Fast" flavor of Startup. Where you're hoping for a big payout in 4 years time if you sacrifice every waking hour between now and then building as fast as possible. So when it concludes that you can't build something small and profitable, and that you can't do anything other than work yourself into the ground, it's just restating its assumptions as conclusions. If, on the other hand you're looking for something to replace your $150/hr consultant gig, you absolutely can build something small that brings in a little profit. And you absolutely can build that thing without working "harder than is healthy". I keep a spreadsheet that tracks the hours I've worked on my startup alongside the profits it has made. It tells me exactly how much my time has been worth for the hours I've spent working on the thing in the last 4 years. And it's creeping up to look like a respectable consulting rate.
- toumhi 15y ago
  Bootstrapping solo founder here. It's kind of overwhelming if all you do needs to be valued at $1000/hour. It sounds more like it could be used as an excuse not to do anything: "I can't figure something I can do that would be valued $1000/hour" => better to keep going at the current job. I've been doing the startup thing for 5 months now, but as it's my first experiment, I don't think I've created $1000/hour stuff so far. Still, I don't see it as a problem. The idea is to value your time, yes, but you should also value intangible things like what you're learning doing this startup for example (which give you an edge for this one or the next startup).
its_so_on 15y ago
Actually, this reasoning is completely wrong. """ Your time is $1000/hour, and you need to act accordingly. Here’s why: Let’s say as a consultant who normally charges $150/hour you stumble upon a weird client who asks for the following terms: “We agree your time is worth $150/hour. However, we can’t pay you for four years, at which time we will pay you in one lump sum.” How much should you increase your hourly rate to make these terms worthwhile? But “lost interest” and a premium doesn’t solve the biggest problem with these terms. The problem is: What if this company goes out of business in four years and doesn’t pay you at all? Supposing this client is an early-stage startup — even if funded — the most likely event is that they stiff you! Because they’re dead. Let’s suppose for the sake of rhetoric there’s a 15% chance the company will exist in four years and pay their bill. """ The article then goes on to reason that, therefore, you should value your time at $1000 per hour with this company. But there's a problem. IF the company goes bankrupt, then EVERY hour of time you spend with them is worthless, and you should reduce to to 0. IF the company doesn't go bankrupt, then any number of hours at, say, $300/hour, is worth it for you. In the first case, if you bill at $1000, the company is just as willing to use lots of your time. If it makes it, it takes off; if it doesn't make it, it's not stuck with the bill. Absent all other market conditions, if you are a monopolist in what they want to do with you, and they NEED 40 hours of your time to survive, that is how much they will take at $40, $80, $120, and $150 or $1000 per hour. If they believe they can use those forty hours to raise $15million in the next 4 years, they might even "agree" to $150,000 per hour. It doesn't matter. No matter what your price, in this scenario you are out the same 40 hours if you play ball with them. It's like winning the lottery. It doesn't matter if the expected value is over $1 per $1 ticket, if the chance of winning is the same. Your utility is massive if you win, you're out $1 if you lose. False reasoning.
- chimeracoder 15y ago
  (I avoid reposting/relinking, but it seems that this theme has been coming up a lot on HN recently.) What you're getting at is the concept of risk-benefit analysis, which is a bit more subtle than just the expected (dollar) value of the result. I describe it in more (academic) detail here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3432356 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3432356
ComputerGuru 15y ago
Interesting tidbit for those debating the correctness of he/she/they in the title: at one (very brief) period of time, there was a school of English writers that believed 'it' was the correct gender-neutral term for living human beings of either gender. The argument being that 'they' was plural, and therefore blatantly incorrect as a he/she replacement, whereas it was singular and gender-less (though gender-less != gender-neutral (at least, not necessarily)). Anyone that's read E. Nesbit's The Five Children and It (the 'It' in the title is completely unrelated, as it refers to a mythical being and not any human) would have experienced this oddity of the English language, and <strike>they</strike> it would have probably paused and wondered about the usage of 'it' as a gender-neutral pronoun. According to Nesbit, saying something like 'A lover and its crush' or, more confusingly, 'The life of a founder, and its priorities' with 'it' here referring to the founder and not his/her's (its <smirk>) life. Sounds weird? How many times have you said a sentence along the lines of "Was it your father or your mother that was in the Army?" Nesbit's approach was the same, taken a few orders of magnitude further :)

36 points by pors 15y ago

This argument considers the downside risk (85% chance of not getting paid anything) but does NOT consider the upside risk (small chance of getting filthy rich but still much bigger than the chance if you work as a $150/hr consultant). That makes the math wrong, even if the idea has merit.

WalterSear 15y ago
Furthermore, even if the premise is right, the strategies suggested are wrong. 'Working more than is healthy' never makes sense (except in short, >healthy < doses) and hiring support staff only makes sense if you have the cashflow or the increased productivity is worth the increasd burn rate - you haven't made that money yet.

lawnchair_larry 15y ago

Why is 'her' used here, if the author is male?

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
teaspoon 15y ago
Because the subject of the sentence is "a startup founder", not "Jason Cohen".
- marknutter 15y ago
  It's always irritated me to see the use of the word "her" because of the blatant political-correctness of it. If you want to be PC, use "their".
  - slewis 15y ago
    So we can only use "his" or "their"?
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    constantly using "their" when reading anything that remotely resembles a story gets old pretty fast.
  - rfrey 15y ago
    You don't like implied political correctness. OP doesn't like implied gender bias. I don't like grammatical convolutions like using "their". What's to be done? How about focusing on the message?
    - marknutter 15y ago
      > what's to be done? use "their"
- mikemaccana 15y ago
  Then use 'their'.
  - sp332 15y ago
    This particular (hypothetical) startup founder happens to be singular, and female.
    - lawnchair_larry 15y ago
      https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Singular_they https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Singular_they
      - sp332 15y ago
        That's the exact opposite of the situation. I pointed out that the founder is singular and female, but the "singular they" is used for indeterminate number and/or gender.
olalonde 15y ago
Yep, kind of misleading. I thought the article would specifically target female founders.
drumdance 15y ago
http://blog.asmartbear.com/value-time.html#comment-407310992 http://blog.asmartbear.com/value-time.html#comment-407310992
bdesimone 15y ago
Usually the masculine form is used as a gender-neutral pronoun. While correct, with no contextual need to deviate from the norm, I find the title unnecessarily distracting. But not as distracting as mismatching number and writing "their time" instead.
robobenjie 15y ago
And I was pleasantly surprised to find that (this time) I hadn't noticed until reading the comments. If we live in a world where one group of people is the norm and other groups need special distinction to identify them ("he" is a generic hypothetical person, but "she" means the person has to be female) then we have to undergo social change to bring us to center. This is likely to be uncomfortable.

jasonkester 15y ago

It's never mentioned in the article, but this only applies to the "Get Big Fast" flavor of Startup. Where you're hoping for a big payout in 4 years time if you sacrifice every waking hour between now and then building as fast as possible. So when it concludes that you can't build something small and profitable, and that you can't do anything other than work yourself into the ground, it's just restating its assumptions as conclusions. If, on the other hand you're looking for something to replace your $150/hr consultant gig, you absolutely can build something small that brings in a little profit. And you absolutely can build that thing without working "harder than is healthy". I keep a spreadsheet that tracks the hours I've worked on my startup alongside the profits it has made. It tells me exactly how much my time has been worth for the hours I've spent working on the thing in the last 4 years. And it's creeping up to look like a respectable consulting rate.

toumhi 15y ago
Bootstrapping solo founder here. It's kind of overwhelming if all you do needs to be valued at $1000/hour. It sounds more like it could be used as an excuse not to do anything: "I can't figure something I can do that would be valued $1000/hour" => better to keep going at the current job. I've been doing the startup thing for 5 months now, but as it's my first experiment, I don't think I've created $1000/hour stuff so far. Still, I don't see it as a problem. The idea is to value your time, yes, but you should also value intangible things like what you're learning doing this startup for example (which give you an edge for this one or the next startup).

its_so_on 15y ago

Actually, this reasoning is completely wrong. """ Your time is $1000/hour, and you need to act accordingly. Here’s why: Let’s say as a consultant who normally charges $150/hour you stumble upon a weird client who asks for the following terms: “We agree your time is worth $150/hour. However, we can’t pay you for four years, at which time we will pay you in one lump sum.” How much should you increase your hourly rate to make these terms worthwhile? But “lost interest” and a premium doesn’t solve the biggest problem with these terms. The problem is: What if this company goes out of business in four years and doesn’t pay you at all? Supposing this client is an early-stage startup — even if funded — the most likely event is that they stiff you! Because they’re dead. Let’s suppose for the sake of rhetoric there’s a 15% chance the company will exist in four years and pay their bill. """ The article then goes on to reason that, therefore, you should value your time at $1000 per hour with this company. But there's a problem. IF the company goes bankrupt, then EVERY hour of time you spend with them is worthless, and you should reduce to to 0. IF the company doesn't go bankrupt, then any number of hours at, say, $300/hour, is worth it for you. In the first case, if you bill at $1000, the company is just as willing to use lots of your time. If it makes it, it takes off; if it doesn't make it, it's not stuck with the bill. Absent all other market conditions, if you are a monopolist in what they want to do with you, and they NEED 40 hours of your time to survive, that is how much they will take at $40, $80, $120, and $150 or $1000 per hour. If they believe they can use those forty hours to raise $15million in the next 4 years, they might even "agree" to $150,000 per hour. It doesn't matter. No matter what your price, in this scenario you are out the same 40 hours if you play ball with them. It's like winning the lottery. It doesn't matter if the expected value is over $1 per $1 ticket, if the chance of winning is the same. Your utility is massive if you win, you're out $1 if you lose. False reasoning.

chimeracoder 15y ago
(I avoid reposting/relinking, but it seems that this theme has been coming up a lot on HN recently.) What you're getting at is the concept of risk-benefit analysis, which is a bit more subtle than just the expected (dollar) value of the result. I describe it in more (academic) detail here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3432356 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3432356

ComputerGuru 15y ago

Interesting tidbit for those debating the correctness of he/she/they in the title: at one (very brief) period of time, there was a school of English writers that believed 'it' was the correct gender-neutral term for living human beings of either gender. The argument being that 'they' was plural, and therefore blatantly incorrect as a he/she replacement, whereas it was singular and gender-less (though gender-less != gender-neutral (at least, not necessarily)). Anyone that's read E. Nesbit's The Five Children and It (the 'It' in the title is completely unrelated, as it refers to a mythical being and not any human) would have experienced this oddity of the English language, and <strike>they</strike> it would have probably paused and wondered about the usage of 'it' as a gender-neutral pronoun. According to Nesbit, saying something like 'A lover and its crush' or, more confusingly, 'The life of a founder, and its priorities' with 'it' here referring to the founder and not his/her's (its <smirk>) life. Sounds weird? How many times have you said a sentence along the lines of "Was it your father or your mother that was in the Army?" Nesbit's approach was the same, taken a few orders of magnitude further :)