4 ms·

Founders Need Rock Hard Abs

46 points by jordancooper 17y ago

kwamenum86 17y ago
"and at some point the dude that’s throwing all the blows get’s tired" annnnnd....that's where the analogy broke down. I thought it was a bit disjointed. All that talk of strong abs was unnecessary. But strip out the attempt at clever humor and you have an important message, I think.
swombat 17y ago
After two months of product development, business planning, and strong forward momentum, my friends just got their first real “punch to the stomach.” Being rejected by YC is far from a "real punch to the stomach". The point of the article is absolutely right. You need a quasi-inexhaustible supply of rock-hard abs to run a start-up. Sometimes, things go very wrong. As the comments on http://danieltenner.com/posts/0005-starting-up-with-a-friend.html http://danieltenner.com/posts/0005-starting-up-with-a-friend... showed, it can oh-so-easily happen that you find yourself losing your best friends over your start-up. After I launched my first start-up, my father's advice was: "Are you prepared for the possibility that it might all fall apart in complete disaster in 6 months?" I didn't know how right he was, but having that in my mind certainly helped prepare me. I'll close with a quote from the ever-insightful "If" poem by Kipling: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!' ... Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
- martincmartin 17y ago
  What's worse? Having it all fall apart in complete disaster in 6 months? Or having it require continual Herculean effort to keep it limping along for years?
  - gloob 17y ago
    Or having it require continual Herculean effort to keep it limping along for years? Perhaps "Sisyphean" would be a more evocative adjective, in that particular situation.
- Psyonic 17y ago
  Hell of a poem there by Kipling. Thanks for the link above as well... that would certainly be a tough blow
- vsingh 17y ago
  "If" is one of my favorite inspiring poems. Here's a great video version of it: http://www.vimeo.com/1305608 http://www.vimeo.com/1305608
efsavage 17y ago
"p.s. i don’t use spell check - deal with it" Advice from someone who can't be bothered with the most basic details and easiest remedies? I'll pass.
- edw519 17y ago
  Advice from someone who can't be bothered with the most basic details and easiest remedies? This is actually excellent feedback. It reminds me of the time I took 4 enterprise vice presidents from New Jersey to visit a software vendor in Silicon Valley. They had great (multi-million dollar) software and it was perfect for this customer. Our first meeting was at 9 a.m., and there was no coffee! The Vice President of Sales actually found the coffee and filters and brewed the first pot himself in the vendor's conference room. (Probably the first time he made coffee in 20 years.) Then he said, "Why should I trust them to handle my customer orders when they can't even do the basics right?" A subtle but very important point. When engineering people sell to business people, we have the extra burden of showing that we know how to conduct business at their level. The easiest way to get started is with precise attention to details. And faux pas destroy trust much quicker with web technology. I didn't even notice OP's quote. Thanks for pointing this out, efsavage.
  - jgrahamc 17y ago
    Years ago I met the CEO of a company that wanted to hire me at SFO. He had bought himself a coffee and didn't offer me one. I bought my own and he didn't seem to notice. Said everything I needed to know about the guy.
    - patio11 17y ago
      The following question is not rhetorical. I do not have any good way to reason my way to the answer but feel it might be important in my future professional dealings with American coffee drinkers (a social situation I have literally never been in before). What does not buying someone coffee tell you about them? Does it matter that this took place in or outside of his office? Does it matter that he invited you? [Edited to add: Oh, I live in Japan. This might be interesting to some of y'all: here, the boss outranks the job applicant and is almost certainly the host rather than the guest in this context. Thus, it is his social responsibility to arrange for tea or coffee for his guest. The guest should probably decline the offer once before accepting it. Not offering the coffee is a fairly significant breach of etiquette -- it would cause me to wince hearing the story. Buying your own coffee, on the other hand, is about a step short of slapping him in the face. It says "I noticed your lapse of etiquette" and, more importantly, "I just called you on it." Given that a guest has bought himself coffee, the polite thing to do as the host is to take no notice of the fact. We have manuals for this sort of thing.]
petercooper 17y ago
The secret of Tim Ferriss's success.
philwelch 17y ago
Sometimes I wish these bloggers could just say what they mean without throwing in tortured analogies and pop culture references.
jordancooper 17y ago
discussion around spell check is interesting...it was just a funny way of saying "i suck at spelling, sorry about that." I try to catch everything, just wanted to set a disclaimer that the spelling and grammar in this blog is not going to be of a professional caliber...

46 points by jordancooper 17y ago

"and at some point the dude that’s throwing all the blows get’s tired" annnnnd....that's where the analogy broke down. I thought it was a bit disjointed. All that talk of strong abs was unnecessary. But strip out the attempt at clever humor and you have an important message, I think.

swombat 17y ago

After two months of product development, business planning, and strong forward momentum, my friends just got their first real “punch to the stomach.” Being rejected by YC is far from a "real punch to the stomach". The point of the article is absolutely right. You need a quasi-inexhaustible supply of rock-hard abs to run a start-up. Sometimes, things go very wrong. As the comments on http://danieltenner.com/posts/0005-starting-up-with-a-friend.html http://danieltenner.com/posts/0005-starting-up-with-a-friend... showed, it can oh-so-easily happen that you find yourself losing your best friends over your start-up. After I launched my first start-up, my father's advice was: "Are you prepared for the possibility that it might all fall apart in complete disaster in 6 months?" I didn't know how right he was, but having that in my mind certainly helped prepare me. I'll close with a quote from the ever-insightful "If" poem by Kipling: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!' ... Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

martincmartin 17y ago
What's worse? Having it all fall apart in complete disaster in 6 months? Or having it require continual Herculean effort to keep it limping along for years?
- gloob 17y ago
  Or having it require continual Herculean effort to keep it limping along for years? Perhaps "Sisyphean" would be a more evocative adjective, in that particular situation.
Psyonic 17y ago
Hell of a poem there by Kipling. Thanks for the link above as well... that would certainly be a tough blow
vsingh 17y ago
"If" is one of my favorite inspiring poems. Here's a great video version of it: http://www.vimeo.com/1305608 http://www.vimeo.com/1305608

efsavage 17y ago

"p.s. i don’t use spell check - deal with it" Advice from someone who can't be bothered with the most basic details and easiest remedies? I'll pass.

edw519 17y ago
Advice from someone who can't be bothered with the most basic details and easiest remedies? This is actually excellent feedback. It reminds me of the time I took 4 enterprise vice presidents from New Jersey to visit a software vendor in Silicon Valley. They had great (multi-million dollar) software and it was perfect for this customer. Our first meeting was at 9 a.m., and there was no coffee! The Vice President of Sales actually found the coffee and filters and brewed the first pot himself in the vendor's conference room. (Probably the first time he made coffee in 20 years.) Then he said, "Why should I trust them to handle my customer orders when they can't even do the basics right?" A subtle but very important point. When engineering people sell to business people, we have the extra burden of showing that we know how to conduct business at their level. The easiest way to get started is with precise attention to details. And faux pas destroy trust much quicker with web technology. I didn't even notice OP's quote. Thanks for pointing this out, efsavage.
- jgrahamc 17y ago
  Years ago I met the CEO of a company that wanted to hire me at SFO. He had bought himself a coffee and didn't offer me one. I bought my own and he didn't seem to notice. Said everything I needed to know about the guy.
  - patio11 17y ago
    The following question is not rhetorical. I do not have any good way to reason my way to the answer but feel it might be important in my future professional dealings with American coffee drinkers (a social situation I have literally never been in before). What does not buying someone coffee tell you about them? Does it matter that this took place in or outside of his office? Does it matter that he invited you? [Edited to add: Oh, I live in Japan. This might be interesting to some of y'all: here, the boss outranks the job applicant and is almost certainly the host rather than the guest in this context. Thus, it is his social responsibility to arrange for tea or coffee for his guest. The guest should probably decline the offer once before accepting it. Not offering the coffee is a fairly significant breach of etiquette -- it would cause me to wince hearing the story. Buying your own coffee, on the other hand, is about a step short of slapping him in the face. It says "I noticed your lapse of etiquette" and, more importantly, "I just called you on it." Given that a guest has bought himself coffee, the polite thing to do as the host is to take no notice of the fact. We have manuals for this sort of thing.]

petercooper 17y ago

The secret of Tim Ferriss's success.

philwelch 17y ago

Sometimes I wish these bloggers could just say what they mean without throwing in tortured analogies and pop culture references.

jordancooper 17y ago

discussion around spell check is interesting...it was just a funny way of saying "i suck at spelling, sorry about that." I try to catch everything, just wanted to set a disclaimer that the spelling and grammar in this blog is not going to be of a professional caliber...