7 ms·

Why you need your own company

161 points by sivers 17y ago

erlanger 17y ago
Not to mention that chicks dig it. The other way around, it's very sexy if a girl runs her own business.
- dimitar 17y ago
  A teacher recently told us during a lecture: How many of you know the definition of the word "engineer"? An engineer is a person who has found something more interesting than sex!
  - antiform 17y ago
    In my opinion, the original quote by Aldous Huxley is more accurate: "An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex." [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley]
    - dimitar 17y ago
      Thanks, Aldous Huxley is amazing.. I should read more from this author. I've read "Brave New World", so I guess "Island" is next.
      - sivers 17y ago
        Yes! "Island" changed my life! That's the book that made me quit my job in 1992. Haven't had a job since. Read slowly and ponder.
icey 17y ago
This is far and away the best description of the attraction to starting up for me. I don't want to retire young; I want to keep making things. I just want to do them on my terms.
- jamongkad 17y ago
  Ditto, though the article didn't offer much, it helped me articulate the feeling I've been having when and if I get to that point.
aplusbi 17y ago
The only thing this article made me want to do is visit that hot spring in Japan.
- noodle 17y ago
  i visited there for a day and it is just as glorious as it sounds.
JabavuAdams 17y ago
Why you need a project would be a more accurate title.
- adamhowell 17y ago
  Agreed, experimentation does not a business make.
  - icey 17y ago
    When the business is your own, experimentation is not only easier, but also much more meaningful.
    - adamhowell 17y ago
      Yes, when it's experimentation on your core idea. But when experimentation is "playing w/ crowdsourcing", "a fully multilingual site" or "an experiment in transparency" then -- until one of them gains traction -- they're more projects than businesses.
- mixmax 17y ago
  Agree, a friend of mine does a million hardware projects, many of which could probably end up as profitable companies. He doesn't care about money though, he just wants to do fun stuff with hardware and avoid people wearing ties and entanglement with authorities. If you're in a nerdy mood here's his project page: http://dzl.dk/projects/index.html http://dzl.dk/projects/index.html
- billswift 17y ago
  Unless you are just playing for your own entertainment (not that there is anything wrong with that), having it as a business both provides a measure of success (users and profits) and to the extent that it is successful (that is, profitable) provides resources for its own continuation.
alain94040 17y ago
Nice article. One of the benefits of this economic downturn is that all the get-rich-quick folks who were starting web2.0 companies are now gone. So now it's just us: people who fit the article's description for passion.
bbuffone 17y ago
He gained his "Freedom to create" via his own company and that made him happy, but the "Freedom to create" isn't tied to having your own company. It can come as an employee or intern of a fortune 500 company. Really all depends on the cult around you.
- staunch 17y ago
  This is just watering down the idea to the point where it's meaningless. The degree of freedom is what's important. Not even the CEO of a fortune 500 company has the freedom that the owner of a company has. If you must ask permission, or answer to someone else, then you don't have the kind of freedom I want.
  - bbuffone 17y ago
    "If you have to ask permission, or answer to anyone, to make decisions about what you do then you don't have freedom." Completely disagree. Freedom isn't binary. Everyone has to answer to someone. - If you own your own company you are responsible for your employees and thus limits what you can do. Probably why he was glad to sell it and get rid of the company. - Create your own open source project, as soon as it is used by other they will want additional feature and fixes. - Working with others to create something means that there will be trade-offs on what everyone does. "If you have to ask permission or answer to anyone then you don't have the kind of freedom I want." Not sure what kind of freedom you want, but unless you are living on an island by yourself creating software that no one uses it seems your lying to yourself if you think you have achieved.
    - hs 17y ago
      "Completely disagree. Freedom isn't binary. Everyone has to answer to someone." i have thousands of customers, if one of them misbehave, i just ignoore him. i have couple of rude email/SMS that i don't bother replying. but if you have only one boss(es) or a handful of customers, then that's very risky. so freedom also include not having to answer to someone and it's not as binary as you want to make it sound theoritical
    - 17y ago
knightinblue 17y ago
is the favicon of this site lifted from that of http://smashingmagazine.com/ http://smashingmagazine.com/ ?
- burke 17y ago
  Nope: different colour, font, and font-size -- and he didn't use a gradient. EDIT: And even if it was, big deal. It's just an "S".
pchristensen 17y ago
More accurately, what you need is F You money so you can tinker with projects. He started out describing his company as a nightmare, but now that he's loaded he doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to.
- aditya 17y ago
  Sure, but he did start a company that he sold to get F You money so he does have a point.
  - pchristensen 17y ago
    It's just not the one he made in this post.
- sounddust 17y ago
  As a founder who makes a modest living from his site, I can say that you don't need to be rich or have "F You" money to enjoy the experience that Derek writes about. You just need to have enough of a reputation that people will be interested in giving your new projects a chance. It's such a great experience to come up with an idea, integrate it into your site a few days later, and instantly have thousands of people using it, giving feedback about how great it is or how much it sucks. Watching your ideas instantly take off or dud. When you work for a company, you may have a very large potential audience, but you may not be allowed to try out some of your best ideas (and even if you are permitted to work on them, they may never launch to the public). Likewise, if you are an individual working on ideas in your spare time and not giving them your full attention, you may never gain enough of an audience to know if your ideas are good. Really, "your own company is one of the best playgrounds of all" sums it up perfectly.
eterno 17y ago
Spot on and beautifully put. On a related note, it never made sense to me that some first time entrepreneurs give it all up and become VC's.
c00p3r 17y ago
It looks like self-exhibition or self-promotion, like the famous writings of mr. Spolsky. Yeah, he is a successful man. So what?
gits_tokyo 17y ago
"I hated having 85 employees. It had become a little hell. I needed to get away and clear my mind." My Advice: Start a business where you need no more than 2-3 people period (outside of your other partners legal, and financial advisors). 85 employees shivers NFW, you couldn't pay me enough. Classic ball and chain.

161 points by sivers 17y ago

erlanger 17y ago

Not to mention that chicks dig it. The other way around, it's very sexy if a girl runs her own business.

dimitar 17y ago
A teacher recently told us during a lecture: How many of you know the definition of the word "engineer"? An engineer is a person who has found something more interesting than sex!
- antiform 17y ago
  In my opinion, the original quote by Aldous Huxley is more accurate: "An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex." [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley]
  - dimitar 17y ago
    Thanks, Aldous Huxley is amazing.. I should read more from this author. I've read "Brave New World", so I guess "Island" is next.
    - sivers 17y ago
      Yes! "Island" changed my life! That's the book that made me quit my job in 1992. Haven't had a job since. Read slowly and ponder.

icey 17y ago

This is far and away the best description of the attraction to starting up for me. I don't want to retire young; I want to keep making things. I just want to do them on my terms.

jamongkad 17y ago
Ditto, though the article didn't offer much, it helped me articulate the feeling I've been having when and if I get to that point.

aplusbi 17y ago

The only thing this article made me want to do is visit that hot spring in Japan.

noodle 17y ago
i visited there for a day and it is just as glorious as it sounds.

JabavuAdams 17y ago

Why you need a project would be a more accurate title.

adamhowell 17y ago
Agreed, experimentation does not a business make.
- icey 17y ago
  When the business is your own, experimentation is not only easier, but also much more meaningful.
  - adamhowell 17y ago
    Yes, when it's experimentation on your core idea. But when experimentation is "playing w/ crowdsourcing", "a fully multilingual site" or "an experiment in transparency" then -- until one of them gains traction -- they're more projects than businesses.
mixmax 17y ago
Agree, a friend of mine does a million hardware projects, many of which could probably end up as profitable companies. He doesn't care about money though, he just wants to do fun stuff with hardware and avoid people wearing ties and entanglement with authorities. If you're in a nerdy mood here's his project page: http://dzl.dk/projects/index.html http://dzl.dk/projects/index.html
billswift 17y ago
Unless you are just playing for your own entertainment (not that there is anything wrong with that), having it as a business both provides a measure of success (users and profits) and to the extent that it is successful (that is, profitable) provides resources for its own continuation.

alain94040 17y ago

Nice article. One of the benefits of this economic downturn is that all the get-rich-quick folks who were starting web2.0 companies are now gone. So now it's just us: people who fit the article's description for passion.

bbuffone 17y ago

He gained his "Freedom to create" via his own company and that made him happy, but the "Freedom to create" isn't tied to having your own company. It can come as an employee or intern of a fortune 500 company. Really all depends on the cult around you.

staunch 17y ago
This is just watering down the idea to the point where it's meaningless. The degree of freedom is what's important. Not even the CEO of a fortune 500 company has the freedom that the owner of a company has. If you must ask permission, or answer to someone else, then you don't have the kind of freedom I want.
- bbuffone 17y ago
  "If you have to ask permission, or answer to anyone, to make decisions about what you do then you don't have freedom." Completely disagree. Freedom isn't binary. Everyone has to answer to someone. - If you own your own company you are responsible for your employees and thus limits what you can do. Probably why he was glad to sell it and get rid of the company. - Create your own open source project, as soon as it is used by other they will want additional feature and fixes. - Working with others to create something means that there will be trade-offs on what everyone does. "If you have to ask permission or answer to anyone then you don't have the kind of freedom I want." Not sure what kind of freedom you want, but unless you are living on an island by yourself creating software that no one uses it seems your lying to yourself if you think you have achieved.
  - hs 17y ago
    "Completely disagree. Freedom isn't binary. Everyone has to answer to someone." i have thousands of customers, if one of them misbehave, i just ignoore him. i have couple of rude email/SMS that i don't bother replying. but if you have only one boss(es) or a handful of customers, then that's very risky. so freedom also include not having to answer to someone and it's not as binary as you want to make it sound theoritical
  - 17y ago

knightinblue 17y ago

is the favicon of this site lifted from that of http://smashingmagazine.com/ http://smashingmagazine.com/ ?

burke 17y ago
Nope: different colour, font, and font-size -- and he didn't use a gradient. EDIT: And even if it was, big deal. It's just an "S".

pchristensen 17y ago

More accurately, what you need is F You money so you can tinker with projects. He started out describing his company as a nightmare, but now that he's loaded he doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to.

aditya 17y ago
Sure, but he did start a company that he sold to get F You money so he does have a point.
- pchristensen 17y ago
  It's just not the one he made in this post.
sounddust 17y ago
As a founder who makes a modest living from his site, I can say that you don't need to be rich or have "F You" money to enjoy the experience that Derek writes about. You just need to have enough of a reputation that people will be interested in giving your new projects a chance. It's such a great experience to come up with an idea, integrate it into your site a few days later, and instantly have thousands of people using it, giving feedback about how great it is or how much it sucks. Watching your ideas instantly take off or dud. When you work for a company, you may have a very large potential audience, but you may not be allowed to try out some of your best ideas (and even if you are permitted to work on them, they may never launch to the public). Likewise, if you are an individual working on ideas in your spare time and not giving them your full attention, you may never gain enough of an audience to know if your ideas are good. Really, "your own company is one of the best playgrounds of all" sums it up perfectly.

eterno 17y ago

Spot on and beautifully put. On a related note, it never made sense to me that some first time entrepreneurs give it all up and become VC's.

c00p3r 17y ago

It looks like self-exhibition or self-promotion, like the famous writings of mr. Spolsky. Yeah, he is a successful man. So what?

gits_tokyo 17y ago

"I hated having 85 employees. It had become a little hell. I needed to get away and clear my mind." My Advice: Start a business where you need no more than 2-3 people period (outside of your other partners legal, and financial advisors). 85 employees shivers NFW, you couldn't pay me enough. Classic ball and chain.