21 ms·

The Real Silicon Valley

256 points by jfornear 14y ago

jenoneal 14y ago
Hey Jesse, great post though I'm sorry to hear about your startup. If you need a place to crash, I have a spare room for friends who are starting companies, folding companies or just passing through the Valley. Feel free to get in touch anytime. In the meantime, thought you might like this quote from a piece Michael Arrington wrote a while back: "Some of the richest people I know aren’t really entrepreneurs. They worked at HP and then moved to Netscape when it got hot. They made a fortune and then jumped to Google and made another fortune. And now they’re jumping to Facebook. They may be very good engineers, or sales people, or marketing, or execs. But they ain’t entrepreneurs. They’re just resume gardening and they’re really no different from everyone else. I don’t care if you’re a billionaire. If you haven’t started a company, really gambled your resume and your money and maybe even your marriage to just go crazy and try something on your own, you’re no pirate and you aren’t in the club." http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/31/are-you-a-pirate/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/31/are-you-a-pirate/
- neilk 14y ago
  You hear that, loser marriage-having people?
  - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
    Loud and clear!
  - zainny 14y ago
    The title of the article should really be "Are you a Broken Human Being?"
- guylhem 14y ago
  spot on. And leave the deniers be happy in their mindless happy existence. They may look as good or even better (richer) but it ain't the true thing.
noname123 14y ago
Why be depressed? If you are young and a programmer making 100K at 25, party with your hipster friends and sock away 40K in savings every year. You'll end up with 200K by 30, not a cool billion dollar but with 6% muni-bonds, you suddenly have tax-free interest income of equivalent of $1.2 million at regular 1% CD rate. Work on interesting projects that you want to work on. Do some traveling. Go back to grad school for fun. Learn a new language, sport or talk to girls. Go to your favorite startup or software company website and click on the mugshot of the guy who's in 40's in blue dres-shirt, is that who you want to be when you want to be? If no, don't get on the VC rat-race; it's just as soul-crushing as the investment banker's rat-race except less lucrative.
- arbuge 14y ago
  Eh? Having $1.2m beats having 200k any day... If 6% muni-bonds are a good investment (I personally have no idea), then presumably the guy with the $1.2m portfolio could buy them too... why is the 1% CD his only investment option?
  - noname123 14y ago
    Point is having FU money, for most people it's $3mil at today's current interest rate to generate $30K which is annual young person's cost of living in a big metro. If you can cut your cost of living down $12K, then only $200K is needed.
    - arbuge 14y ago
      Careful with that. That ignores inflation, which as a great man once said, is the most pernicious tax of all. Inflation is currently around ~1.8% per year. Money in a 1% CD is effectively losing 0.8% per year. If you're happy with a $30k return on a $3m portfolio, you need to get a 2.8% return in today's inflation environment.
      - rprasad 14y ago
        Interest rates on investments take into account estimated inflation, so the $30k already takes into account likely inflation (but would not take into account higher-than-expected inflation).
mahyarm 14y ago
I get the impression from your post that balls to wall burnout effort isn't the key to success, so why do you do it that way?
zaidf 14y ago
The real Silicon Valley will never be televised. I feel this way as well but I am curious as to why. My reasoning is that the incentives for entrepreneurs to swap dirty laundry for publicity isn't a worthwhile exchange for most entrepreneurs. I hear about how startups are extremely boring but I think people overestimate how much "fun" other professions are and how television works. It doesn't matter if 90% of a start-up is writing code like a robot; what matters is the other 10% and I think we have plenty of true, crazy stories to go around if founders had much of an incentive to play them out on air. I sure don't. I don't want my B2B customers nor investors to judge me only from the 10% dramatic part of my life.
amirhirsch 14y ago
author appears to be an expert in start-up vernacular.
tarr11 14y ago
It'd be great if the author wrote about something specific. This article contains little detail about anything that actually happened.
- Wilduck 14y ago
  Agreed. I read this: > What Hacker News doesn't prepare you for, however, is when a competitor gets acquired for a billion dollars, work-life imbalance, and getting dumped by your World of Warcraft girlfriend. and was pretty interested. It sounds like the start of two pretty interesting stories. Instead of actually telling these stories, however, the post descended into platitudes. I'm beginning to feel that I should be flagging posts that are as meatless as this one.
  - zacharyz 14y ago
    From his site it sounds like he was a designer working on picplz and app.net. My guess is the competitor he was talking about was instagram.
    - fudged71 14y ago
      To me, Instagram (a competitor) being bought by Facebook is a huge opportunity. Just look at all the people "leaving Instagram" right now due to predictable changes in their TOS.
- timjahn 14y ago
  Couldn't agree more. Amazing intro and then the post hits a brick wall. I thought maybe the rest was cut off....
nodesocket 14y ago
Jesse, I completely feel your pain. I moved up to San Francisco the previous June with the grand vision of building out my team, raising a round of investment and building my PaaS for hosting node.js apps (NodeSocket) to something really special. I left a cushy director level job in San Diego and left a core group of good friends as well. I simply packed up everything in my car and made the drive up. The first couple of months I stayed on friends couches and did AirBnB, essentially living out of my suitcase, and hacking all day and night. The trough of sorrow is deep, with extreme peaks and valleys. One day I was talking with Sequoia Capital and first tier angel investors flying high and optimistic, the next day, they are all passing, and I realized that I have burned through my entire savings. The thing about startups is they are born easy, but die a very long and drawn-out death. I recently just came to terms, and announced that NodeSocket is shutting down (http://blog.nodesocket.com/shutting-down http://blog.nodesocket.com/shutting-down) to pursue a new opportunity Commando.io (http://commando.io http://commando.io). Keep with it, take some time off from startups and entrepreneurship. Doing a startup is the hardest thing most people will ever do.
- VexXtreme 14y ago
  Why move to San Francisco? One of the benefits of living in this day and age is that you can start a business from pretty much anywhere in the world. Sure, it is presumably easier to acquire VC, talent and deal with general logistics if you're located in the valley but still... It's pretty obvious that leaving your job, friends, moving to a different city and living off your savings is a high risk move vs staying where you are and working from there. Not knocking you or anything (I don't know your entire story), I'm just saying. If I were to start a company now, I'd probably stay right where I am and keep my job until I saw a level of success with my new project.
  - untog 14y ago
    I think he answered the question- he was looking for funding. You can do a great many things remotely these days, but investors want face to face meetings, so you have to go to tech hubs to get them.
pvdm 14y ago
Narcissism (Delusions of grandeur) is a psychological affliction, not a drug.
spdy 14y ago
Sometimes Silicon Valley looks from the outside like Las Vegas but for programmers. Make a billion dollars with an idea you have no clue about how to monetize in the first place.
acchow 14y ago
> Technically I am now homeless and unemployed. But if you can code, you could be in a 100k job with a 10k signing by Monday. That's hardly "homeless".
- yen223 14y ago
  Where are these 100k jobs that people keep talking about? Because there is no such thing where I come from.
  - intellegacy 14y ago
    Silicon valley, Boston, and NYC are paying $100k for senior level developers. Of course Malaysia and S.E.Asia and the rest of the world has a lower level of salary (except perhaps Singapore).
oscargrouch 14y ago
I quit my TI job, lost my beautiful fiancee, lost my friends and came back to live with my parents, and all of this after thirty.. Im pretty sociable guy.. and had a very rich and good social life before all this.. Im living in Brazil, without access to this garden of VC funds you guys have in the Valley.. But i live in front of a beautiful beach, where i go out everyday to run, and let some stress behind me.. Im still here.. working.. penyless.. and you know what keep me moving? is not the money i can make.. (i dont even know if this dream im pursuing will make me any rich).. but the simple fact to be able to live working on my dream.. have the possibility to not only change my life, but also the life of many others for better.. make me go everyday.. believe, work hard.. i dont know if i will succed.. but i know that the most important thing in life is to try.. to make diference.. to make this place better.. im sure theres no payment better than this.. You see, the right amount of money that we all really need, is enough to give us freedom to do what we thing we should.. So i think you need to get another sort of payment, while you are (dollar) broke.. you must be payed by your own dreams.. this may look stupid.. but when we are in the edge of our lifes, because we believe in something.. we have the ultimate freedom.. a freedom that not only can change our lifes.. but make a wave of new unthinkable possibilities become reality Im sure that when all this im passing now has gone.. i will remember this time with joy.. Try to imagine your future you, talking with your present you.. the future you are happy? what he got to tell you.. Im here man, im a warrior and i wont give up... If you think you have made a mistake then, go on .. and maybe latter you will try again something else.. and succed tremendously.. but deep inside we all know if we are in the right path.. Your heart will tell you this everyday.. and if thats is the case.. go on man! the world are made by the hands of the ones who didnt give up. The ones who dare to dream.. Life for game changers are hard.. and they only succed because they are harder. Its a wonderful time for you to discover your real you, and what you capable of.. you will probably surprise yourself.. No better payment than this :) Good luck in your path!
- braco_alva 14y ago
  This is exactly how I feel, Im in Guatemala, where we don't have much access to VC funds either. A year has passed since we started, and we still don't have a steady income, but it is worth it, totally worth it, when I realize that I am doing exactly what I want to do, even if the odds are against me, I know I have to keep trying.
timjahn 14y ago
If this is what the "real Silicon Valley" is like, this explains why I've never had the burning desire to move there and build a company there instead of Chicago. That and the realization that there's more to life.
shmerl 14y ago
Sorry for off-topic but why specifically Silicon Valley? While it has many historical technological centers and is often hyped, it's not the only possible place to open a technological startup.
suyash 14y ago
You need to update the photo before you speak about SV..SV !== San Francisco
svachalek 14y ago
Don't ever gamble more than you can afford to lose. That applies to a lot more than just money.
pla3rhat3r 14y ago
The race to the "American Dream" is not a one lane road. Keep pushing. Someday your tenacity and passion will be rewarded.
jacoblyles 14y ago
And nobody will ever advise you that the large cost and huge risk might not be worth it because then they would have to admit the same thing to themselves. Have you ever met anybody that works on the weekend, even when the startup doesn't need them to, just because they don't know what else to do? There are incredibly amazing things happening in Silicon Valley. And also lots of people burning their lives away for little reason or return. Keep your eyes open to both sides of the ledger is the best advice I can give. Be sure that what you are doing is something you truly love, and not just something you want to love or want to portray that you love for the benefit of others. And it's okay to give up and/or take a break.
- eric-hu 14y ago
  > Be sure that what you are doing is something you truly love, and not just something you want to love or want to portray that you love for the benefit of others. Can you expand on this? How do you ever know? Whether I love what I do has been one of my existential questions for the last decade, and why I didn't immediately follow through with my CS degree out of college. I feel like I can never know whether I'm doing something I "truly" love...but I'd like to be wrong
  - jacoblyles 14y ago
    It's fine to do something that you don't "love". But you better damn well love it if you're going to sacrifice your financial, emotional, and physical health for it like the typical Silicon Valley founder.
cabinguy 14y ago
Bah Humbug (please excuse me, it's just a seasonal expression). While I can feel your pain, this story has nothing to do with SV - it's the story of an entrepreneur. The same story exists in every state in the U.S. and every major city (and most small ones) in the world. Entrepreneurship is very hard. I'm 41 y/o and bootstrapped my first internet company at 24. I owned a nice home, a beautiful vacation (lake) home, a big office building, 2 Mercedes Benz (wife's SUV, my car) & an awesome FICO score before I was 29. It all went away (except for my primary home) by the time I was 35. As entrepreneurs we believe that the charts will always go up and to the right (we can't help it) - but they don't. This year, after TEN (10) F'ING YEARS of working on what everyone in SV would label a little "life style business," we hit $1M+ in revenue. I am confident we will hit $2M+ next year and $100M eventually. Our company is debt free and my co-founder (and best friend since kindergarten) own 100% of the company. My point: It's not easy. We have been working very, very hard for TEN (10) F'ING YEARS on this thing. I lost almost everything along the way...but I never, ever stopped believing in what we were building. When you hear those billionaires claim that "perseverance" is the key to success - listen to them, they are telling you the truth.
- the_cat_kittles 14y ago
  Well said. I was struggling today with my art, and your words resonated- the truth is deeper than entrepreneurship. I realized that for the millionth time, I was expecting something to be easy, and it never is. It always helps to hear real life stories, thank you.
- kposehn 14y ago
  Well put.
- mav3r1ck 14y ago
  The whole point of Monty Python's "Dark Night" sketch was because Cleese wanted to show the ridiculousness of the statement of "always persevere". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Knight_(Monty_Python) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Knight_(Monty_Python) I agree with your statements and am glad to hear you're doing well, but I think that sometimes, it is wiser to know when to stop and take a long, hard look at what you are actually best at. But at least most Silicon Valley startups don't make quadriplegics out of survivors.
seanlinehan 14y ago
Entrepreneurship truly is a roller coaster. You constantly swing from ecstasy to depression, sometimes on a day by day basis. The underlying truth is that over time this cycle does not cease; it will continue in full force. However, over time things get better. I may be an optimist, but I believe that in the long run things always get better. One of my professors showed my class a graph that described this effect, which I have recreated. [1] In the long run, an entrepreneur's lows can be better than the rest of the world's highs. That is the future we seek. [1] http://i48.tinypic.com/20hxbbt.jpg http://i48.tinypic.com/20hxbbt.jpg
michaelochurch 14y ago
I really wish there was a way to: (a) have the autonomy and interesting work of a startup tech founder (while a full-time technologist, not a manager) but (b) without the extreme income variance. If your job requires you to take personal loans, there's something wrong. I also think there are a lot of people who have the talent but not the ability to afford the risk. The extreme income variance is a bug, not a feature, in my opinion. I'd be willing to sell all upside past $100 million (which would have median value of zero, but reasonable expectancy given the autonomy I'd have) in exchange for downside insurance, because I can't possibly imagine why I'd even want $10 billion.
- dxbydt 14y ago
  you are looking for a rose without the thorns:) you'd be better off with a lily ( ie. straight job at big-co/small-co, no income variance )
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    I don't think it's an unreasonable possibility, actually. What I'm describing is an R&D like environment. There's no reason autonomy has to come with the extreme and mostly random income volatility of the VC-istan ecosystem. It's not that I want zero income variance. How many people would want to live in that world? I don't. It's that I'd be willing to give up the upside over $50 million in exchange to never have to worry about being unable to support a family. There has to be a way to structure that kind of insurance plan without requiring a compromise of autonomy.
    - hazov 14y ago
      Academia is like that if you choose your field of research well.
      - michaelochurch 14y ago
        Academia is not like that. You don't have much immediate job risk, because jobs have defined lengths of time (2-year postdocs, 6-year tenure race, indefinite tenure) but the career risk is intolerable. Academia has a terrible job market; it has sold out a generation and a half and I don't see it being able to unwind that. Academia has almost no financial upside but a lot of downside.
SeoxyS 14y ago
If you're buying into the Silicon Valley hype, and then get disappointed, you're doing it wrong. Silicon Valley is not a place that's amazing a first, and then awful once you fail. It's simply a place that happens to have the highest concentration and best resources for building tech companies. Ultimately, though, surviving Silicon Valley comes down to one simple rule: don't build stupid shit. Work on a business, get revenues from the start, and don't fall into the trap of trying to build an Instagram. Frankly, most of the stuff everybody here is working on is idiotic. The business models & grand vision plans people come up are ridiculous. With a little more care for building things that are actually useful and that people will pay for, we'd have much less "blew my life savings trying to make a social network for pets and am now homeless and girlfriend-less" stories.
- onedev 14y ago
  I agree. I hear about a lot of "companies" here trying to do stupid shit, and I can't believe that they can't see what I see. Instagram for pets, Pinterest for gardeners, what's next?
- oscargrouch 14y ago
  I think this is a "Show me the money" effect.. People read news about 1B instagram deal.. and think about doing something similar.. to become the next startup billionaire I think this is not the right reason.. you need a lot of emotional background to support you when things get ugly entrepreneur are masochists, they have fun doing it.. this billionaire wannabe with the silly idea, won't stand still
- agorabinary 14y ago
  I could not agree more. I wonder how much of the SV environment is created from the trickle down investments of legitimately good ideas --- that is, a Facebook spawning thousands of millionaires, some of which happen to invest in their brother's friend's silly idea not out of any rational analysis, but from just being young and stupid and lucky enough to grab up a few early FB shares. Furthermore, consider the difference in building a startup and building a typical brick and mortar business. Think of how simple the thought was to create a social network where users choose friends to create a distinct social circle. Or Drew Houston allegedly conceiving of Dropbox by repeatedly forgetting his USB drive in college. Very many SV startups build themselves off of some eureka moment that, being based on the internet, requires minimal investment, effort, connections, and reputation to establish early stage. Then, as long as it is a good idea, investment and employees flood in. Compare this to the enormous barriers of entry extant in a traditional brick and mortar with the bank loans and industry connections and disparate business resources, and combined with a barely-out-of-college aged potential CEO with or without good ideas. You get two entirely different standards of discrimination. It almost seems sometimes like SV considers bad ideas as a normal state of affairs, as a "learning experience" to future brilliance. Fail to succeed? Most successful startup founders hit it right on their debut--- why? Because they have a mentality of, "Should I do this?", and not merely, "Can I do this?". I'm not saying low barriers to entry are necessarily a bad thing. It just seems like either there are one, a lot of fools with grand visions or two, ulterior-minded entrepreneurs looking to pad their resume or impress their friends with some social networking rip-off that only cost them $10k to build. Bustling, metropolitan environments often offer that billion dollar jackpot or Hollywood walk of fame, but require in turn a more demanding degree of discrimination to tell that shiny metal from mere fool's gold.
spitfire 14y ago
So is there anywhere people outside the US could watch this silicon valley show? I'm curious but can't find a source that doesn't block those outside the US.
phatbyte 14y ago
I advice everyone on HN to view this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nif01WZ9aI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nif01WZ9aI Maybe this won't change anything, but there's more in life than just getting funded with millions of dollars. I feel pretty bad for people who get depressed or worse because they didin't made it in SV...that's so superficial about life and things in general. Do we all really need millions of dollars and IPO to be happy and be considered "successful" ? What does that even mean ? Do what you love, that's my advice. My girlfriend is a nurse and when people are in their dead bed, she said that the thing most people regret is not doing what they loved, spend time with their families, going on trip around the world. And that hospital is used mostly by high class people, with lots of money.
- martinced 14y ago
  My only regret on my dead bed is going to be to have make the world progress faster than I could have. I've writing technical books helping to share knowledge and that's the one thing I feel the most proud about. I won't regret having brought my contribution to sharing knowledge. I love my family, but I also love my work. I love R&D. I love trying to create something that shall help people. I'll never ever have any regret about moving to California (not there anymore) and worked there like crazy for someone else's startup. Then "success" has never been measured only by money: there are very succesful non-profit organization out there. But people are typically working hard to make them work too. It's not about "making an IPO" or "getting rich". It's about "making a difference". "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
  - phatbyte 14y ago
    I got nothing against people who pursue that, I speak against myself on my first post. I also want to create something that makes a difference, I want to generate value and create something meaningful for other. But I would never replace my dream with all the other things I love in life. In the end the balance will always be negative for me. With this said, It doesn't mean I aim low on things I want to achieve, I just thing balance is the correct path to have in life.
hnriot 14y ago
Real life is seldom like a tv show. I don't think this should be news to anyone. I bet physicians don't like Grey's Anatomy either. While I'm sorry things didn't work out for you, I don't see this as anything to do with this area. Your story is one that is playing out all over America in this economy.
peripetylabs 14y ago
I read countless horror stories before launching my own startup, without hesitation. If your goal is to do what you love, and hopefully earn a living from it, you have my sympathy; if your goal is to get rich quick, well, that's always been a fool's game.

256 points by jfornear 14y ago

Hey Jesse, great post though I'm sorry to hear about your startup. If you need a place to crash, I have a spare room for friends who are starting companies, folding companies or just passing through the Valley. Feel free to get in touch anytime. In the meantime, thought you might like this quote from a piece Michael Arrington wrote a while back: "Some of the richest people I know aren’t really entrepreneurs. They worked at HP and then moved to Netscape when it got hot. They made a fortune and then jumped to Google and made another fortune. And now they’re jumping to Facebook. They may be very good engineers, or sales people, or marketing, or execs. But they ain’t entrepreneurs. They’re just resume gardening and they’re really no different from everyone else. I don’t care if you’re a billionaire. If you haven’t started a company, really gambled your resume and your money and maybe even your marriage to just go crazy and try something on your own, you’re no pirate and you aren’t in the club." http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/31/are-you-a-pirate/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/31/are-you-a-pirate/

neilk 14y ago
You hear that, loser marriage-having people?
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  Loud and clear!
- zainny 14y ago
  The title of the article should really be "Are you a Broken Human Being?"
guylhem 14y ago
spot on. And leave the deniers be happy in their mindless happy existence. They may look as good or even better (richer) but it ain't the true thing.

noname123 14y ago

Why be depressed? If you are young and a programmer making 100K at 25, party with your hipster friends and sock away 40K in savings every year. You'll end up with 200K by 30, not a cool billion dollar but with 6% muni-bonds, you suddenly have tax-free interest income of equivalent of $1.2 million at regular 1% CD rate. Work on interesting projects that you want to work on. Do some traveling. Go back to grad school for fun. Learn a new language, sport or talk to girls. Go to your favorite startup or software company website and click on the mugshot of the guy who's in 40's in blue dres-shirt, is that who you want to be when you want to be? If no, don't get on the VC rat-race; it's just as soul-crushing as the investment banker's rat-race except less lucrative.

arbuge 14y ago
Eh? Having $1.2m beats having 200k any day... If 6% muni-bonds are a good investment (I personally have no idea), then presumably the guy with the $1.2m portfolio could buy them too... why is the 1% CD his only investment option?
- noname123 14y ago
  Point is having FU money, for most people it's $3mil at today's current interest rate to generate $30K which is annual young person's cost of living in a big metro. If you can cut your cost of living down $12K, then only $200K is needed.
  - arbuge 14y ago
    Careful with that. That ignores inflation, which as a great man once said, is the most pernicious tax of all. Inflation is currently around ~1.8% per year. Money in a 1% CD is effectively losing 0.8% per year. If you're happy with a $30k return on a $3m portfolio, you need to get a 2.8% return in today's inflation environment.
    - rprasad 14y ago
      Interest rates on investments take into account estimated inflation, so the $30k already takes into account likely inflation (but would not take into account higher-than-expected inflation).

mahyarm 14y ago

I get the impression from your post that balls to wall burnout effort isn't the key to success, so why do you do it that way?

zaidf 14y ago

The real Silicon Valley will never be televised. I feel this way as well but I am curious as to why. My reasoning is that the incentives for entrepreneurs to swap dirty laundry for publicity isn't a worthwhile exchange for most entrepreneurs. I hear about how startups are extremely boring but I think people overestimate how much "fun" other professions are and how television works. It doesn't matter if 90% of a start-up is writing code like a robot; what matters is the other 10% and I think we have plenty of true, crazy stories to go around if founders had much of an incentive to play them out on air. I sure don't. I don't want my B2B customers nor investors to judge me only from the 10% dramatic part of my life.

amirhirsch 14y ago

author appears to be an expert in start-up vernacular.

tarr11 14y ago

It'd be great if the author wrote about something specific. This article contains little detail about anything that actually happened.

Wilduck 14y ago
Agreed. I read this: > What Hacker News doesn't prepare you for, however, is when a competitor gets acquired for a billion dollars, work-life imbalance, and getting dumped by your World of Warcraft girlfriend. and was pretty interested. It sounds like the start of two pretty interesting stories. Instead of actually telling these stories, however, the post descended into platitudes. I'm beginning to feel that I should be flagging posts that are as meatless as this one.
- zacharyz 14y ago
  From his site it sounds like he was a designer working on picplz and app.net. My guess is the competitor he was talking about was instagram.
  - fudged71 14y ago
    To me, Instagram (a competitor) being bought by Facebook is a huge opportunity. Just look at all the people "leaving Instagram" right now due to predictable changes in their TOS.
timjahn 14y ago
Couldn't agree more. Amazing intro and then the post hits a brick wall. I thought maybe the rest was cut off....

nodesocket 14y ago

Jesse, I completely feel your pain. I moved up to San Francisco the previous June with the grand vision of building out my team, raising a round of investment and building my PaaS for hosting node.js apps (NodeSocket) to something really special. I left a cushy director level job in San Diego and left a core group of good friends as well. I simply packed up everything in my car and made the drive up. The first couple of months I stayed on friends couches and did AirBnB, essentially living out of my suitcase, and hacking all day and night. The trough of sorrow is deep, with extreme peaks and valleys. One day I was talking with Sequoia Capital and first tier angel investors flying high and optimistic, the next day, they are all passing, and I realized that I have burned through my entire savings. The thing about startups is they are born easy, but die a very long and drawn-out death. I recently just came to terms, and announced that NodeSocket is shutting down (http://blog.nodesocket.com/shutting-down http://blog.nodesocket.com/shutting-down) to pursue a new opportunity Commando.io (http://commando.io http://commando.io). Keep with it, take some time off from startups and entrepreneurship. Doing a startup is the hardest thing most people will ever do.

VexXtreme 14y ago
Why move to San Francisco? One of the benefits of living in this day and age is that you can start a business from pretty much anywhere in the world. Sure, it is presumably easier to acquire VC, talent and deal with general logistics if you're located in the valley but still... It's pretty obvious that leaving your job, friends, moving to a different city and living off your savings is a high risk move vs staying where you are and working from there. Not knocking you or anything (I don't know your entire story), I'm just saying. If I were to start a company now, I'd probably stay right where I am and keep my job until I saw a level of success with my new project.
- untog 14y ago
  I think he answered the question- he was looking for funding. You can do a great many things remotely these days, but investors want face to face meetings, so you have to go to tech hubs to get them.

pvdm 14y ago

Narcissism (Delusions of grandeur) is a psychological affliction, not a drug.

spdy 14y ago

Sometimes Silicon Valley looks from the outside like Las Vegas but for programmers. Make a billion dollars with an idea you have no clue about how to monetize in the first place.

acchow 14y ago

> Technically I am now homeless and unemployed. But if you can code, you could be in a 100k job with a 10k signing by Monday. That's hardly "homeless".

yen223 14y ago
Where are these 100k jobs that people keep talking about? Because there is no such thing where I come from.
- intellegacy 14y ago
  Silicon valley, Boston, and NYC are paying $100k for senior level developers. Of course Malaysia and S.E.Asia and the rest of the world has a lower level of salary (except perhaps Singapore).

oscargrouch 14y ago

I quit my TI job, lost my beautiful fiancee, lost my friends and came back to live with my parents, and all of this after thirty.. Im pretty sociable guy.. and had a very rich and good social life before all this.. Im living in Brazil, without access to this garden of VC funds you guys have in the Valley.. But i live in front of a beautiful beach, where i go out everyday to run, and let some stress behind me.. Im still here.. working.. penyless.. and you know what keep me moving? is not the money i can make.. (i dont even know if this dream im pursuing will make me any rich).. but the simple fact to be able to live working on my dream.. have the possibility to not only change my life, but also the life of many others for better.. make me go everyday.. believe, work hard.. i dont know if i will succed.. but i know that the most important thing in life is to try.. to make diference.. to make this place better.. im sure theres no payment better than this.. You see, the right amount of money that we all really need, is enough to give us freedom to do what we thing we should.. So i think you need to get another sort of payment, while you are (dollar) broke.. you must be payed by your own dreams.. this may look stupid.. but when we are in the edge of our lifes, because we believe in something.. we have the ultimate freedom.. a freedom that not only can change our lifes.. but make a wave of new unthinkable possibilities become reality Im sure that when all this im passing now has gone.. i will remember this time with joy.. Try to imagine your future you, talking with your present you.. the future you are happy? what he got to tell you.. Im here man, im a warrior and i wont give up... If you think you have made a mistake then, go on .. and maybe latter you will try again something else.. and succed tremendously.. but deep inside we all know if we are in the right path.. Your heart will tell you this everyday.. and if thats is the case.. go on man! the world are made by the hands of the ones who didnt give up. The ones who dare to dream.. Life for game changers are hard.. and they only succed because they are harder. Its a wonderful time for you to discover your real you, and what you capable of.. you will probably surprise yourself.. No better payment than this :) Good luck in your path!

braco_alva 14y ago
This is exactly how I feel, Im in Guatemala, where we don't have much access to VC funds either. A year has passed since we started, and we still don't have a steady income, but it is worth it, totally worth it, when I realize that I am doing exactly what I want to do, even if the odds are against me, I know I have to keep trying.

timjahn 14y ago

If this is what the "real Silicon Valley" is like, this explains why I've never had the burning desire to move there and build a company there instead of Chicago. That and the realization that there's more to life.

shmerl 14y ago

Sorry for off-topic but why specifically Silicon Valley? While it has many historical technological centers and is often hyped, it's not the only possible place to open a technological startup.

suyash 14y ago

You need to update the photo before you speak about SV..SV !== San Francisco

svachalek 14y ago

Don't ever gamble more than you can afford to lose. That applies to a lot more than just money.

pla3rhat3r 14y ago

The race to the "American Dream" is not a one lane road. Keep pushing. Someday your tenacity and passion will be rewarded.

jacoblyles 14y ago

And nobody will ever advise you that the large cost and huge risk might not be worth it because then they would have to admit the same thing to themselves. Have you ever met anybody that works on the weekend, even when the startup doesn't need them to, just because they don't know what else to do? There are incredibly amazing things happening in Silicon Valley. And also lots of people burning their lives away for little reason or return. Keep your eyes open to both sides of the ledger is the best advice I can give. Be sure that what you are doing is something you truly love, and not just something you want to love or want to portray that you love for the benefit of others. And it's okay to give up and/or take a break.

eric-hu 14y ago
> Be sure that what you are doing is something you truly love, and not just something you want to love or want to portray that you love for the benefit of others. Can you expand on this? How do you ever know? Whether I love what I do has been one of my existential questions for the last decade, and why I didn't immediately follow through with my CS degree out of college. I feel like I can never know whether I'm doing something I "truly" love...but I'd like to be wrong
- jacoblyles 14y ago
  It's fine to do something that you don't "love". But you better damn well love it if you're going to sacrifice your financial, emotional, and physical health for it like the typical Silicon Valley founder.

cabinguy 14y ago

Bah Humbug (please excuse me, it's just a seasonal expression). While I can feel your pain, this story has nothing to do with SV - it's the story of an entrepreneur. The same story exists in every state in the U.S. and every major city (and most small ones) in the world. Entrepreneurship is very hard. I'm 41 y/o and bootstrapped my first internet company at 24. I owned a nice home, a beautiful vacation (lake) home, a big office building, 2 Mercedes Benz (wife's SUV, my car) & an awesome FICO score before I was 29. It all went away (except for my primary home) by the time I was 35. As entrepreneurs we believe that the charts will always go up and to the right (we can't help it) - but they don't. This year, after TEN (10) F'ING YEARS of working on what everyone in SV would label a little "life style business," we hit $1M+ in revenue. I am confident we will hit $2M+ next year and $100M eventually. Our company is debt free and my co-founder (and best friend since kindergarten) own 100% of the company. My point: It's not easy. We have been working very, very hard for TEN (10) F'ING YEARS on this thing. I lost almost everything along the way...but I never, ever stopped believing in what we were building. When you hear those billionaires claim that "perseverance" is the key to success - listen to them, they are telling you the truth.

the_cat_kittles 14y ago
Well said. I was struggling today with my art, and your words resonated- the truth is deeper than entrepreneurship. I realized that for the millionth time, I was expecting something to be easy, and it never is. It always helps to hear real life stories, thank you.
kposehn 14y ago
Well put.
mav3r1ck 14y ago
The whole point of Monty Python's "Dark Night" sketch was because Cleese wanted to show the ridiculousness of the statement of "always persevere". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Knight_(Monty_Python) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Knight_(Monty_Python) I agree with your statements and am glad to hear you're doing well, but I think that sometimes, it is wiser to know when to stop and take a long, hard look at what you are actually best at. But at least most Silicon Valley startups don't make quadriplegics out of survivors.

seanlinehan 14y ago

Entrepreneurship truly is a roller coaster. You constantly swing from ecstasy to depression, sometimes on a day by day basis. The underlying truth is that over time this cycle does not cease; it will continue in full force. However, over time things get better. I may be an optimist, but I believe that in the long run things always get better. One of my professors showed my class a graph that described this effect, which I have recreated. [1] In the long run, an entrepreneur's lows can be better than the rest of the world's highs. That is the future we seek. [1] http://i48.tinypic.com/20hxbbt.jpg http://i48.tinypic.com/20hxbbt.jpg

michaelochurch 14y ago

I really wish there was a way to: (a) have the autonomy and interesting work of a startup tech founder (while a full-time technologist, not a manager) but (b) without the extreme income variance. If your job requires you to take personal loans, there's something wrong. I also think there are a lot of people who have the talent but not the ability to afford the risk. The extreme income variance is a bug, not a feature, in my opinion. I'd be willing to sell all upside past $100 million (which would have median value of zero, but reasonable expectancy given the autonomy I'd have) in exchange for downside insurance, because I can't possibly imagine why I'd even want $10 billion.

dxbydt 14y ago
you are looking for a rose without the thorns:) you'd be better off with a lily ( ie. straight job at big-co/small-co, no income variance )
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  I don't think it's an unreasonable possibility, actually. What I'm describing is an R&D like environment. There's no reason autonomy has to come with the extreme and mostly random income volatility of the VC-istan ecosystem. It's not that I want zero income variance. How many people would want to live in that world? I don't. It's that I'd be willing to give up the upside over $50 million in exchange to never have to worry about being unable to support a family. There has to be a way to structure that kind of insurance plan without requiring a compromise of autonomy.
  - hazov 14y ago
    Academia is like that if you choose your field of research well.
    - michaelochurch 14y ago
      Academia is not like that. You don't have much immediate job risk, because jobs have defined lengths of time (2-year postdocs, 6-year tenure race, indefinite tenure) but the career risk is intolerable. Academia has a terrible job market; it has sold out a generation and a half and I don't see it being able to unwind that. Academia has almost no financial upside but a lot of downside.

SeoxyS 14y ago

If you're buying into the Silicon Valley hype, and then get disappointed, you're doing it wrong. Silicon Valley is not a place that's amazing a first, and then awful once you fail. It's simply a place that happens to have the highest concentration and best resources for building tech companies. Ultimately, though, surviving Silicon Valley comes down to one simple rule: don't build stupid shit. Work on a business, get revenues from the start, and don't fall into the trap of trying to build an Instagram. Frankly, most of the stuff everybody here is working on is idiotic. The business models & grand vision plans people come up are ridiculous. With a little more care for building things that are actually useful and that people will pay for, we'd have much less "blew my life savings trying to make a social network for pets and am now homeless and girlfriend-less" stories.

onedev 14y ago
I agree. I hear about a lot of "companies" here trying to do stupid shit, and I can't believe that they can't see what I see. Instagram for pets, Pinterest for gardeners, what's next?
oscargrouch 14y ago
I think this is a "Show me the money" effect.. People read news about 1B instagram deal.. and think about doing something similar.. to become the next startup billionaire I think this is not the right reason.. you need a lot of emotional background to support you when things get ugly entrepreneur are masochists, they have fun doing it.. this billionaire wannabe with the silly idea, won't stand still
agorabinary 14y ago
I could not agree more. I wonder how much of the SV environment is created from the trickle down investments of legitimately good ideas --- that is, a Facebook spawning thousands of millionaires, some of which happen to invest in their brother's friend's silly idea not out of any rational analysis, but from just being young and stupid and lucky enough to grab up a few early FB shares. Furthermore, consider the difference in building a startup and building a typical brick and mortar business. Think of how simple the thought was to create a social network where users choose friends to create a distinct social circle. Or Drew Houston allegedly conceiving of Dropbox by repeatedly forgetting his USB drive in college. Very many SV startups build themselves off of some eureka moment that, being based on the internet, requires minimal investment, effort, connections, and reputation to establish early stage. Then, as long as it is a good idea, investment and employees flood in. Compare this to the enormous barriers of entry extant in a traditional brick and mortar with the bank loans and industry connections and disparate business resources, and combined with a barely-out-of-college aged potential CEO with or without good ideas. You get two entirely different standards of discrimination. It almost seems sometimes like SV considers bad ideas as a normal state of affairs, as a "learning experience" to future brilliance. Fail to succeed? Most successful startup founders hit it right on their debut--- why? Because they have a mentality of, "Should I do this?", and not merely, "Can I do this?". I'm not saying low barriers to entry are necessarily a bad thing. It just seems like either there are one, a lot of fools with grand visions or two, ulterior-minded entrepreneurs looking to pad their resume or impress their friends with some social networking rip-off that only cost them $10k to build. Bustling, metropolitan environments often offer that billion dollar jackpot or Hollywood walk of fame, but require in turn a more demanding degree of discrimination to tell that shiny metal from mere fool's gold.

spitfire 14y ago

So is there anywhere people outside the US could watch this silicon valley show? I'm curious but can't find a source that doesn't block those outside the US.

phatbyte 14y ago

I advice everyone on HN to view this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nif01WZ9aI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nif01WZ9aI Maybe this won't change anything, but there's more in life than just getting funded with millions of dollars. I feel pretty bad for people who get depressed or worse because they didin't made it in SV...that's so superficial about life and things in general. Do we all really need millions of dollars and IPO to be happy and be considered "successful" ? What does that even mean ? Do what you love, that's my advice. My girlfriend is a nurse and when people are in their dead bed, she said that the thing most people regret is not doing what they loved, spend time with their families, going on trip around the world. And that hospital is used mostly by high class people, with lots of money.

martinced 14y ago
My only regret on my dead bed is going to be to have make the world progress faster than I could have. I've writing technical books helping to share knowledge and that's the one thing I feel the most proud about. I won't regret having brought my contribution to sharing knowledge. I love my family, but I also love my work. I love R&D. I love trying to create something that shall help people. I'll never ever have any regret about moving to California (not there anymore) and worked there like crazy for someone else's startup. Then "success" has never been measured only by money: there are very succesful non-profit organization out there. But people are typically working hard to make them work too. It's not about "making an IPO" or "getting rich". It's about "making a difference". "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
- phatbyte 14y ago
  I got nothing against people who pursue that, I speak against myself on my first post. I also want to create something that makes a difference, I want to generate value and create something meaningful for other. But I would never replace my dream with all the other things I love in life. In the end the balance will always be negative for me. With this said, It doesn't mean I aim low on things I want to achieve, I just thing balance is the correct path to have in life.

hnriot 14y ago

Real life is seldom like a tv show. I don't think this should be news to anyone. I bet physicians don't like Grey's Anatomy either. While I'm sorry things didn't work out for you, I don't see this as anything to do with this area. Your story is one that is playing out all over America in this economy.

peripetylabs 14y ago

I read countless horror stories before launching my own startup, without hesitation. If your goal is to do what you love, and hopefully earn a living from it, you have my sympathy; if your goal is to get rich quick, well, that's always been a fool's game.