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I had a paragraph about this in an earlier draft, but I took it out because it was only half true and the true half seemed obvious. The obvious half is that on

by pg 15y ago

I had a paragraph about this in an earlier draft, but I took it out because it was only half true and the true half seemed obvious. The obvious half is that one man's schlep is another man's interesting problem, and that once the company gets going you can hire experts in each of the schleps you need to deal with. But not all the schleps a company undertakes are schleps simply in virtue of not being someone's specialty. You have to satisfy users' needs to make a successful company, and it is very unlikely that the stuff you have to do to satisfy users' needs also happens to be exactly what you'd most like to work on, even if you're the specialist in that problem.

InclinedPlane 15y ago
Yin and yang perhaps. Companies that are entirely schleps tend to be self-limiting. In software I imagine the typical "enterprise trenches" of folks making software based on requirements set out by people who are themselves far removed from the customer as being the typical example of such "all schlep" work environment. On the other hand, an all passion company is likely to end up making inconsequential products, or failing to meet schedules, or having poor customer service, or otherwise just failing at being a grown up company. Perhaps the best companies are those that mix schlep and passion in the proper measure. Apple and Google definitely come to mind as examples.
lrobb 15y ago
>> Most hackers who start startups wish they could do it by just writing some clever software I wonder if the word "hackers" ought to be replaced with "young hackers of the type to apply to YC"? If you're fresh out of school, or have only worked in big silicon-valley companies doing specialized tasks, I can see it. I have a hard time believing someone with even a few years experience in smaller companies haven't come to grips with "schlepness". >> Maybe that's one reason the most successful startups of all so often have young founders. I don't think that's what the research shows: """ Old guys rule. And they are far more likely to be the founder of a successful technology company than most of you understand. How do I know this? Research that my team conducted, based on a survey of 549 entrepreneurs in high-growth industries, showed that the average founder of a high-growth company launched his venture at age 40. """ http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/07/when-it-comes-to-founding-successful-startups-old-guys-rule/ http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/07/when-it-comes-to-founding-s...
- pg 15y ago
  Old hackers still wish they could just program. The difference between old and young is that the old are more likely to know they can't have what they wish for in that respect. The research you quote is about moderately successful startups, not about the most successful of all. You can easily verify I'm right about the outliers by traversing the Forbes 400.
  - lrobb 15y ago
    Ok... with correlation vs. causation out of the way, and a ridiculously small sample size to boot, it appears the average age of Forbes 400 tech company founders was almost 32 at the time of the founding their companies (http://goo.gl/iHAEe http://goo.gl/iHAEe). I have a feeling that's not what you meant when you said "young"...? Maybe you meant to restrict that to only founders that wrote the code their companies are based on? In which case, yeah, the founders of facebook, google, and Microsoft were all young when they started... I'd be careful drawing too many conclusions on that sample size, however.
yason 15y ago
You have to satisfy users' needs to make a successful company, and it is very unlikely that the stuff you have to do to satisfy users' needs also happens to be exactly what you'd most like to work on, even if you're the specialist in that problem. Banks are a good example, though. What irritates me most about banks is not having to figure out how their merchant services work but that they bring a slow, ineffective communication factor into the equation. I would probably dislike dealing with banks for the same reason I dislike trying to make changes in a big company: everything's rolling on a different track from a hacker's viewpoint and the very communication that could bridge that together and bring everyone on the same track goes forward very, very slowly.

by pg 15y ago

InclinedPlane 15y ago

Yin and yang perhaps. Companies that are entirely schleps tend to be self-limiting. In software I imagine the typical "enterprise trenches" of folks making software based on requirements set out by people who are themselves far removed from the customer as being the typical example of such "all schlep" work environment. On the other hand, an all passion company is likely to end up making inconsequential products, or failing to meet schedules, or having poor customer service, or otherwise just failing at being a grown up company. Perhaps the best companies are those that mix schlep and passion in the proper measure. Apple and Google definitely come to mind as examples.

lrobb 15y ago

>> Most hackers who start startups wish they could do it by just writing some clever software I wonder if the word "hackers" ought to be replaced with "young hackers of the type to apply to YC"? If you're fresh out of school, or have only worked in big silicon-valley companies doing specialized tasks, I can see it. I have a hard time believing someone with even a few years experience in smaller companies haven't come to grips with "schlepness". >> Maybe that's one reason the most successful startups of all so often have young founders. I don't think that's what the research shows: """ Old guys rule. And they are far more likely to be the founder of a successful technology company than most of you understand. How do I know this? Research that my team conducted, based on a survey of 549 entrepreneurs in high-growth industries, showed that the average founder of a high-growth company launched his venture at age 40. """ http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/07/when-it-comes-to-founding-successful-startups-old-guys-rule/ http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/07/when-it-comes-to-founding-s...

pg 15y ago
Old hackers still wish they could just program. The difference between old and young is that the old are more likely to know they can't have what they wish for in that respect. The research you quote is about moderately successful startups, not about the most successful of all. You can easily verify I'm right about the outliers by traversing the Forbes 400.
- lrobb 15y ago
  Ok... with correlation vs. causation out of the way, and a ridiculously small sample size to boot, it appears the average age of Forbes 400 tech company founders was almost 32 at the time of the founding their companies (http://goo.gl/iHAEe http://goo.gl/iHAEe). I have a feeling that's not what you meant when you said "young"...? Maybe you meant to restrict that to only founders that wrote the code their companies are based on? In which case, yeah, the founders of facebook, google, and Microsoft were all young when they started... I'd be careful drawing too many conclusions on that sample size, however.

yason 15y ago

You have to satisfy users' needs to make a successful company, and it is very unlikely that the stuff you have to do to satisfy users' needs also happens to be exactly what you'd most like to work on, even if you're the specialist in that problem. Banks are a good example, though. What irritates me most about banks is not having to figure out how their merchant services work but that they bring a slow, ineffective communication factor into the equation. I would probably dislike dealing with banks for the same reason I dislike trying to make changes in a big company: everything's rolling on a different track from a hacker's viewpoint and the very communication that could bridge that together and bring everyone on the same track goes forward very, very slowly.