What keeps people from starting startups is the fear of having so much responsibility. I'd use Occam to narrow that statement down even further: "What keeps pe

What keeps people from starting startups is the fear of having so much responsibility. I'd use Occam to narrow that statement down even further: "What keeps people from starting startups is fear". I think Paul might have a bit of a selection bias because of Y Combinator. He spends a lot of time with founders that are weighed down with all the responsibility of running the company. And, after you start, that's a big problem, but you don't realize how big of a problem the sense of responsibility is until you've already jumped off the cliff of founding a startup. I spend a lot of time at Hackers and Founders meetups, talking with people who are very nervous about jumping off the corporate bandwagon and founding a startup. One of the biggest reasons that they don't is fear. Fear of being irresponsible. Fear of seeming irresponsible to people around you. Fear of going broke. Fear of failure. Fear of being inadequate to the task. Fear of not having the support of your spouse (which is generally the spouses version of fear of being broke, I suppose). But, in all our Hackers and Founders meetups, I've never heard anyone say, "I want to start a startup, but I'm scared of having so much responsibility". We're arguing a very small point of the essay at large. Over all, it was a great piece of work. Keep em coming, Paul.