5 ms·

The word entrepreneur and its baggage

30 points by johns 18y ago

tsally 18y ago
I found five examples to back up my case, so listen to me! As all the YC companies can tell you, for your average case building a business still takes a lot of work.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- bigbang 18y ago
  Yeah. The fact that examples have to be pointed out, says it more of an exception.
- ryanwaggoner 18y ago
  Forget the YC companies...almost anyone who has started any kind of business will tell you that it's a lot of work.
  - davidw 18y ago
    It seems like it would be a natural equilibrium for it to be a lot of work unless it's something where it's basically impossible to not work a lot. If person A works 5 hours a week, and person B does 20, even if person B only gets twice as much done as A, there's still twice as much going into the business. I guess there are outliers, where someone gets really lucky and manages to stumble on to some sort of very easily defensible barrier to entry, but that's not the norm.
    - eru 18y ago
      Depends on the business. If A's shorter working hours allow him to offer dramatically lowered costs, then he may succeed.
      - ryanwaggoner 18y ago
        Example?
        eru 18y ago
        Startups like other companies, too, have to pay for their factors of production. Labour is one of them. The labour of the founder also has to be payed --- either explicit or implicit.
    - jlangenauer 18y ago
      The examples that 37 signals are relying on are ones where there is already the opportunity to outsource business processes - order fulfilment to Amazon etc. This is all well and good where you're doing something which is not too different from what is being done before (and at a similiar scale to what has been done before). But what about the people trying to do something new? You're going to have to invest a lot more time for two simple reasons: a) You may not have external systems you can simply outsource to, because they may not exist, or may not fill the exact need of your business, and b) if you are doing something new, there's a whole heap more experimentation, research and trial and error involved to get a working product that has traction in the marketplace, as no-one's made the mistakes with a similiar product before which you can learn from. You gotta make those mistakes yourself.
  - hwijaya 18y ago
    Agreed. And, a lot of passions. Beside, i think most people that Matt points out is still quite exceptional. For one thing, John Gruber and Jason Kottke know what they are talking about more than majority of people. In fact, the act of starting itself (let alone know more than most people) is already a difficult thing to achieve. As i can testify, my friend who told me he want to be pro-blogger months ago, hasn't even started now. So, i would probably say Matt's post is more exception rather than rule.
ryanwaggoner 18y ago
I hate these kinds of blog posts, because they make it sound like starting a business isn't about risk or hard work anymore. Supposedly, the advent of technology has made succeeding at your own company so easy that anyone can do it. You don't need to write a business plan, get an MBA, or even have any experience. Furthermore, you won't even need to work hard at it! The problem is that the barriers to entry don't just drop for you...they drop for your competitors too. So now it's even harder to compete within a given market because of the sheer volume of competition. You may find cases at the edge (37signals' home and soapbox) where money, risk, hard work, a plan, education, experience, and connections didn't matter, but they're complete outliers. You're probably better off playing the lottery.
- jpwagner 18y ago
  Agreed. By the way, why does this concept pop up so often currently in our culture? (even an amateur can be successful) ie, American Idol, World Series of Poker, Millionaire gameshows...etc
  - aaronblohowiak 18y ago
    WSoP is in a different class than your other examples. Otherwise, I think that the trend to devalue classical training in professions is detrimental to maintaining high quality standards. In some things, sufficient is satisfactory. Yet, in the systems and products that we create to run our businesses and lives on, we should strive for excellence. I contend that one of the advantages that being "schooled" gives you is the ability to discern the mediocre from the great, whereas to the lay person, both seem "good." I do not think that formalized study in existing institutions is a requirement, but I do think the level of intense study that they demand is.
  - frig 18y ago
    It's part of the american folk mythology (for a real obvious-in-hindsight example, consider Star Wars (original trilogy): Luke goes from farm hand to ace fighter pilot with no training, and becomes a passable jedi with a few months of training...). It probably originates 50% from the urban/rural divide and 50% from the underlying outlook of protestantism. In brief: - much of american history consists of pioneers going and settling the land, then -- decades later -- the 'experts' show up (these could be anything from farm scientists to law enforcement to general government busybodies). So there's this weird split between respect for learning and accomplishment (no, really!) but on the other hand the belief that you can really boostrap yourself / figure things out by yourself just fine. Anything that plays into the belief you could perform at an 'expert' level with only a very minimal amount of training is therefore good entertainment. - the basic protestant outlook is that your (personal) salvation is predetermined (though perhaps you can mess it up), and that consequently nothing you do can earn salvation if you weren't already gifted it; however, there's a parallel belief that God will show favor upon the saved, eg by granting them success in their worldly endeavors...and so, loosely speaking, a protestant-minded person would interpret someone attaining expert-level performance in a very short period of time as a sign that that person had been gifted with salvation. At this point in time I'd say neither of those reasons is self-consciously driving the meme's dominance, but those are some of the deep roots of that particular outlook, most likely.
volida 18y ago
what a lame article
jmtame 18y ago
I heard about this guy who preached a "4 hour workweek" yet he probably worked >80 hours a week.

30 points by johns 18y ago

I found five examples to back up my case, so listen to me! As all the YC companies can tell you, for your average case building a business still takes a lot of work.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
bigbang 18y ago
Yeah. The fact that examples have to be pointed out, says it more of an exception.
ryanwaggoner 18y ago
Forget the YC companies...almost anyone who has started any kind of business will tell you that it's a lot of work.
- davidw 18y ago
  It seems like it would be a natural equilibrium for it to be a lot of work unless it's something where it's basically impossible to not work a lot. If person A works 5 hours a week, and person B does 20, even if person B only gets twice as much done as A, there's still twice as much going into the business. I guess there are outliers, where someone gets really lucky and manages to stumble on to some sort of very easily defensible barrier to entry, but that's not the norm.
  - eru 18y ago
    Depends on the business. If A's shorter working hours allow him to offer dramatically lowered costs, then he may succeed.
    - ryanwaggoner 18y ago
      Example?
      - eru 18y ago
        Startups like other companies, too, have to pay for their factors of production. Labour is one of them. The labour of the founder also has to be payed --- either explicit or implicit.
  - jlangenauer 18y ago
    The examples that 37 signals are relying on are ones where there is already the opportunity to outsource business processes - order fulfilment to Amazon etc. This is all well and good where you're doing something which is not too different from what is being done before (and at a similiar scale to what has been done before). But what about the people trying to do something new? You're going to have to invest a lot more time for two simple reasons: a) You may not have external systems you can simply outsource to, because they may not exist, or may not fill the exact need of your business, and b) if you are doing something new, there's a whole heap more experimentation, research and trial and error involved to get a working product that has traction in the marketplace, as no-one's made the mistakes with a similiar product before which you can learn from. You gotta make those mistakes yourself.
- hwijaya 18y ago
  Agreed. And, a lot of passions. Beside, i think most people that Matt points out is still quite exceptional. For one thing, John Gruber and Jason Kottke know what they are talking about more than majority of people. In fact, the act of starting itself (let alone know more than most people) is already a difficult thing to achieve. As i can testify, my friend who told me he want to be pro-blogger months ago, hasn't even started now. So, i would probably say Matt's post is more exception rather than rule.

ryanwaggoner 18y ago

I hate these kinds of blog posts, because they make it sound like starting a business isn't about risk or hard work anymore. Supposedly, the advent of technology has made succeeding at your own company so easy that anyone can do it. You don't need to write a business plan, get an MBA, or even have any experience. Furthermore, you won't even need to work hard at it! The problem is that the barriers to entry don't just drop for you...they drop for your competitors too. So now it's even harder to compete within a given market because of the sheer volume of competition. You may find cases at the edge (37signals' home and soapbox) where money, risk, hard work, a plan, education, experience, and connections didn't matter, but they're complete outliers. You're probably better off playing the lottery.

jpwagner 18y ago
Agreed. By the way, why does this concept pop up so often currently in our culture? (even an amateur can be successful) ie, American Idol, World Series of Poker, Millionaire gameshows...etc
- aaronblohowiak 18y ago
  WSoP is in a different class than your other examples. Otherwise, I think that the trend to devalue classical training in professions is detrimental to maintaining high quality standards. In some things, sufficient is satisfactory. Yet, in the systems and products that we create to run our businesses and lives on, we should strive for excellence. I contend that one of the advantages that being "schooled" gives you is the ability to discern the mediocre from the great, whereas to the lay person, both seem "good." I do not think that formalized study in existing institutions is a requirement, but I do think the level of intense study that they demand is.
- frig 18y ago
  It's part of the american folk mythology (for a real obvious-in-hindsight example, consider Star Wars (original trilogy): Luke goes from farm hand to ace fighter pilot with no training, and becomes a passable jedi with a few months of training...). It probably originates 50% from the urban/rural divide and 50% from the underlying outlook of protestantism. In brief: - much of american history consists of pioneers going and settling the land, then -- decades later -- the 'experts' show up (these could be anything from farm scientists to law enforcement to general government busybodies). So there's this weird split between respect for learning and accomplishment (no, really!) but on the other hand the belief that you can really boostrap yourself / figure things out by yourself just fine. Anything that plays into the belief you could perform at an 'expert' level with only a very minimal amount of training is therefore good entertainment. - the basic protestant outlook is that your (personal) salvation is predetermined (though perhaps you can mess it up), and that consequently nothing you do can earn salvation if you weren't already gifted it; however, there's a parallel belief that God will show favor upon the saved, eg by granting them success in their worldly endeavors...and so, loosely speaking, a protestant-minded person would interpret someone attaining expert-level performance in a very short period of time as a sign that that person had been gifted with salvation. At this point in time I'd say neither of those reasons is self-consciously driving the meme's dominance, but those are some of the deep roots of that particular outlook, most likely.

volida 18y ago

what a lame article

jmtame 18y ago

I heard about this guy who preached a "4 hour workweek" yet he probably worked >80 hours a week.