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I think you make fair points and I don't have any strong disagreements. And it's true that I may have extrapolated "working for a start-up" to "founding a start

by dvt 14y ago

I think you make fair points and I don't have any strong disagreements. And it's true that I may have extrapolated "working for a start-up" to "founding a start-up." However, I really do think that places like Github aren't dime a dozen and even calling Github a start-up (at this point, or even in 2010) would be somewhat of a misnomer. Working for a start-up seems to be defined by "wearing many hats" as the presentation states. The "wearing many hats" phase generally only occurs in the early phases of a start-up. That's where my extrapolation stems from. And don't forget that many start-ups go under (again, we're talking about actual start-ups here, not Github in 2013). This was briefly mentioned in the presentation. But again, I don't think most college grads are resilient enough to handle that. I guess I just have a very serious problem with the romanticization of start-up culture -- it's a jungle out there.

eric-hu 14y ago
Those concerns are valid, but I disagree with you about college grads lacking that resilience. By your own admission you've been through some start ups. Could you handle it? What does it mean to not be able to handle it? I think this touches on the core of the talk--people are afraid to jump into the startup world because they don't think they can handle it. It sounds like he's saying it's not that bad. Your company may fail, yes...but then you just get out there and find a new company to work for. Zach Holman was Github employee number 9 [1]. I'd say they were a startup at that time. His perspective is obviously colored by their success, but they only sought funding 2 years later. Still, the definition of 'startup' is indeed vague, and PG wrote an essay on it [2]. I interpret PG's definition--a company designed to scale fast--to mean that so long as a company is growing by a multiplicative factor, it's still a startup. [1] http://zachholman.com/posts/scaling-github-employees/ http://zachholman.com/posts/scaling-github-employees/ [2] http://paulgraham.com/growth.html http://paulgraham.com/growth.html

by dvt 14y ago

eric-hu 14y ago

Those concerns are valid, but I disagree with you about college grads lacking that resilience. By your own admission you've been through some start ups. Could you handle it? What does it mean to not be able to handle it? I think this touches on the core of the talk--people are afraid to jump into the startup world because they don't think they can handle it. It sounds like he's saying it's not that bad. Your company may fail, yes...but then you just get out there and find a new company to work for. Zach Holman was Github employee number 9 [1]. I'd say they were a startup at that time. His perspective is obviously colored by their success, but they only sought funding 2 years later. Still, the definition of 'startup' is indeed vague, and PG wrote an essay on it [2]. I interpret PG's definition--a company designed to scale fast--to mean that so long as a company is growing by a multiplicative factor, it's still a startup. [1] http://zachholman.com/posts/scaling-github-employees/ http://zachholman.com/posts/scaling-github-employees/ [2] http://paulgraham.com/growth.html http://paulgraham.com/growth.html