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This has its own sets of biases. Working on a startup with nothing coming of it only works until you're tapped out. How many founders do you know would just rem

by jyu 14y ago

This has its own sets of biases. Working on a startup with nothing coming of it only works until you're tapped out. How many founders do you know would just remain broke when they run out of money vs doing the rational thing which is getting a job or whatever to get back to supporting life's basic necessities?

sskates 14y ago
Ang Lee was, even after 5 years of failure. I have heard of quite a few people in other industries (namely entertainment and art) that just failed to make it and would have been better served having spent that time pursuing something else. I've never heard of an example in tech startups though. I would love to run a controlled experiment. Unfortunately we can't force people to do anything, so we never really can eliminate people's choices as a confounding variable. I can give you one data point from my own experience. We committed to creating a company for two years no matter what happened. After a year and a half, there's no question it was the right choice. If I had chosen to do something else like high frequency trading, programming at a large company, or grad school, the likely outcome would not be on the same level as where we're at now. Even our worst case scenario, selling for a talent acquisition, ends up ahead of those other options.
- kintamanimatt 14y ago
  > would have been better served having spent that time pursuing something else This is just the gamble that success requires. It's easy to say that objectively they may have been better doing something else in retrospect, but perhaps they felt some satisfaction trying. In any event, it's impossible to know whether someone is going to succeed in advance, or remain unsuccessful. It appears the decision to persevere, like the decision to "give up", cannot be made rationally. I'd love to be shown otherwise though.

by jyu 14y ago

sskates 14y ago

Ang Lee was, even after 5 years of failure. I have heard of quite a few people in other industries (namely entertainment and art) that just failed to make it and would have been better served having spent that time pursuing something else. I've never heard of an example in tech startups though. I would love to run a controlled experiment. Unfortunately we can't force people to do anything, so we never really can eliminate people's choices as a confounding variable. I can give you one data point from my own experience. We committed to creating a company for two years no matter what happened. After a year and a half, there's no question it was the right choice. If I had chosen to do something else like high frequency trading, programming at a large company, or grad school, the likely outcome would not be on the same level as where we're at now. Even our worst case scenario, selling for a talent acquisition, ends up ahead of those other options.

kintamanimatt 14y ago
> would have been better served having spent that time pursuing something else This is just the gamble that success requires. It's easy to say that objectively they may have been better doing something else in retrospect, but perhaps they felt some satisfaction trying. In any event, it's impossible to know whether someone is going to succeed in advance, or remain unsuccessful. It appears the decision to persevere, like the decision to "give up", cannot be made rationally. I'd love to be shown otherwise though.