[HN Gopher] I turned down $500k, pissed off my investors, and sh...
___________________________________________________________________
I turned down $500k, pissed off my investors, and shut down my
startup (2016)
Author : arunsivadasan
Score : 338 points
Date : 2022-06-11 08:33 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.disruptingjapan.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.disruptingjapan.com)
| timoth3y wrote:
| Hi, author here.
|
| I'm surprised (and delighted) to see this back on Hacker News.
| I'm happy that people find value in the article, and the process
| writing it forced me to put my thoughts together and helped get
| me through an emotionally difficult time.
|
| To address a few questions from the comments.
|
| 1) A common opinion is that I gave up too quickly, that I was
| just burned out, or taking the money would have let me figure
| things out later. This was simply not the case. An experienced
| mountaineer knows if a mountain is climbable with the team, gear,
| and weather he has. This one was not.
|
| 2) I would have been 100% fine with the team and investors going
| ahead without me, but AFAIK, neither side ever discussed it.
|
| 3) We were absolutely not viewing contract information, and would
| not have been able to do so even if we wanted to. We anonymously
| logged when functions were called without storing user or input
| data of any kind.
|
| 4) Six years later, I'm doing well. The Disrupting Japan podcast
| is going strong. I took a senior role in corporate VC for a
| while, and ended up at Google.
|
| I was overwhelmed by the attention and positive response I got
| from this article. The asymmetry of value of money and time was
| one of my main learnings, and I'm glad to see it resonates with
| so many other founders.
| [deleted]
| einpoklum wrote:
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Since you were done pursuing the idea and were just shutting
| things down, did you ever consider open sourcing whatever you
| had? Curious about the thought process you went through around
| that.
| crabbygrabby wrote:
| Good for you, you did the right thing. Maybe you would have
| shoe horned some fix, but honestly, screw it. Imagine waking up
| at 5am and forcing yourself to work on a company that you knew
| wasn't going to make it.
| sshine wrote:
| > Imagine waking up at 5am and forcing yourself to work on a
| company that you knew wasn't going to make it.
|
| Or to take up repeatedly at 5am and work 12+ hours a day on
| something that gains traction slowly.
| uptime wrote:
| Both are valid, one does not cancel the other out.
|
| I've been part of a fun project backed by good people and
| then had new tech eat our lunch. We still spent long hours
| trying to find value somewhere. That was less fun but OK,
| not a waste.
|
| I have been part of a slow traction project when the first
| great dot-com crash happened and too many contracts got
| cancelled. That was the worst time of my professional life
| but not a waste.
|
| I have spent time on very promising tech in a field ripe
| for either a good living providing something needed in
| service deserts, or an exit. The founder found every excuse
| not to launch, to keep versioning pre-launch. That
| neverlaunch project was a waste of a year that I'll never
| get back.
|
| Learning when to bail is a true skill. Not to quit just
| because it is messy or inconvenient, but when it is
| actually harmful.
| thejammahimself wrote:
| The comparison you made between money, and time is one which I
| think perfectly explains the situation you faced. I can imagine
| it must be incredibly difficult to spend so many hours working
| on something you're not sure is going to work out. Time is, I
| think, valuable to us all. Some of us often feel we don't get
| enough of it, and I think sometimes we overlook how important
| free time is when making decisions in life. Sounds like you're
| doing well now; you learnt an important lesson through this
| experience. Hope it all goes well in the future!
| hypfer wrote:
| > I might write another article on how to tell these tangential
| feature requests from useful feature requests.
|
| Did you ever get around to writing that article? It sounds
| interesting
| timoth3y wrote:
| > Did you ever get around to writing that article? It sounds
| interesting
|
| I have not, but you know, I got that request a lot back in
| 2016 too, so it sounds like i really should write that
| article.
|
| I promise I will get it written this year.
|
| Who knows, it might even end up here on HN.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| If this original post (and thank you again for it) pops up
| on the HN homepage from time to time, it may be worth it if
| you have the time and bandwidth.
| kotcity wrote:
| Yes, this is of high interest. The problem is more common
| than many people think and I anticipate this post with
| great enthusiasm.
| mwigdahl wrote:
| Same here, this would be very useful to me both directly
| and in conversations with my executive management.
| brokenodometer wrote:
| Great article. I'm curious what ideas people sent you after
| publishing for solving the gratification problem. What was the
| strongest, even if you still don't think it would have worked?
| [deleted]
| yashap wrote:
| It was a good read, thanks for writing it. Also, assuming this
| is correct:
|
| > Almost no SMB views contract management as an urgent problem.
|
| And I think it probably is, then IMO you made the right
| decision. I don't know the space very well, but my gut feel
| would be SMBs don't have real CLM needs like Enterprises do,
| they mostly just need something like DocuSign. Taking the money
| and pivoting might have worked, but I agree, it's a massive
| risk in terms of your time and your team's jobs.
| coverband wrote:
| DocuSign actually offers an integrated CLM product, built on
| top of a smaller company they acquired a while back. With
| everything also integrated with Salesforce, etc., it makes
| automation pretty easy.
| cynusx wrote:
| Did you consider moving up earlier in the contract lifecycle to
| the contract negotiation process?
| ramesh31 wrote:
| I think the reason these companies fail to begin with is that
| they are too high level and generalized. Even a specific
| subset of CLM like managing real estate transactions is an
| exceedingly complex business domain with hundreds of
| entrants. Trying to go after the entire market with a single
| product is just naive IMO.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| >My team and most of my investors are pissed,
|
| I know it is childish, but I always enjoy this difference between
| US and British English.
|
| In British English when someone is annoyed they may be described
| as 'pissed off'. Describing someone as being 'pissed' means they
| are drunk! These US articles paint such vivid surrealism in my
| mind. In this case I love the idea of all of the investors being
| permanently inebriated.
|
| There is a lovely part of the 'special relationship' where the US
| doesnt care what the UK thinks of them, and therefore the UK has
| great fun at their expense. I suppose that is a win win
| situation? The US projects an image of being the leader of so
| many things, and the rest of the world jokes about how arrogant
| this is.
| have_faith wrote:
| It's common in the UK to use both forms of "pissed".
| havblue wrote:
| You don't have to worry about which definition someone uses
| if it's an angry drunk.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| Sadly that is now the case. I think the proper meaning will
| fall out of use thanks to US media.
|
| I am comforted by reports of US children talking about
| pavements, dustbins and shopping centres thanks to Peppa Pig.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's also not unheard of in the US to use it mean "drunk." At
| least, I would understand it in context.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Found it interesting that the author describes CLM as a vertical
| the requires strict access control then describes how they are
| viewing those secure contracts. Sounds like lack of production
| controls was the true fatal flaw!
|
| I'm assuming they had a better way of analysis than actually
| reading contracts since most vendor procurement processes I've
| seen require attestation of data privacy..
| browningstreet wrote:
| I'm assuming the users of the CLM that he was observing were
| the admins who would initiate contract flows in the product. If
| NDAs existed between SaaS and clients, as would be typical,
| there's no issue. Access controls would keep other employees in
| client org from seeing contracts, but not.. say, infosec team
| members.
| 3np wrote:
| Original post (2016): https://medium.com/startup-lesson-
| learned/why-i-turned-down-...
|
| Altfront: https://scribe.rip/startup-lesson-learned/why-i-turned-
| down-...
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I've been in a similar situation but we realised we couldn't rely
| on marketing and that we need sales just before running out of
| money, incapable of raising another round.
|
| I would have definitely took the 500k.
|
| Needing sales doesn't mean the business is to throw away, it just
| means you need way more money than you were thinking.
|
| Probably 500k wasn't enough to execute the scale the founder
| imagined, but it could have been a good intermediate step to
| raise more money later on.
| aidos wrote:
| OT I was looking for attribution for a little more context but
| the only clue comes from the footer:
|
| "This article was first published in Medium and appeared in
| VentureBeat & Business Insider"
|
| I get the syndication and the other outlets using this content at
| the time it was written (2016). There's just something very
| dishonest about the slapping the words on a page with some stock
| images 6 years later though.
|
| I don't really have a point - maybe it would be better to link to
| the original medium (I know) post though?
|
| https://medium.com/startup-lesson-learned/why-i-turned-down-...
|
| Edit: on the other hand the article itself is very honest. And
| it's an interesting question.
| timoth3y wrote:
| Hi. Tim here.
|
| I first published in on my podcast site and then on Medium and
| LinkedIn a few days later.
|
| https://www.disruptingjapan.com/turned-500k-pissed-off-inves...
|
| It seems that far more people will click on a Medium or
| LinkedIn link rather than a personal blog. Then it was picked
| up by Venture Beat, Business Insider and a dozen other
| publications and it was off to the races.
|
| I received my 15 minutes of internet fame and over 1,000 emails
| about the article.
| new299 wrote:
| The author (Tim Romero) also runs disruptingjapan. So it's more
| like he's just replicating content he originally wrote for
| another publication to his personal/professional site...
| aidos wrote:
| Oh well that makes a _lot_ more sense. Thanks for the heads
| up.
| alephnan wrote:
| Another option: let the team and investors continue without you.
|
| You also have a fiduciary responsibility to the investor and a
| responsibility to the team members who worked equally as hard.
| ekidd wrote:
| In the article, the author said that none of the team has quit
| their day jobs yet. And this appeared to be their first
| significant fundraise.
|
| Their strategy critically depended on staying in the SMB
| market, not the enterprise market. And it was apparent that
| their product wasn't solving a major, urgent customer problem.
|
| The last thing you want to do is to pour your life into a
| startup that solves a non-problem. If you're not solving an
| urgent problem, you won't be able to reliably close sales.
| aidos wrote:
| That's what struck me too. What about the others involved who
| might be relying on it? But maybe the author _was_ the team and
| without them it was dead in the water anyway?
| menzoic wrote:
| > The rest of the team kept their day jobs. That was fine. It
| made my final decision easier.
| sokoloff wrote:
| " The rest of the team kept their day jobs. That was fine. It
| made my final decision easier."
|
| It sounds like there were others, but they had a good
| fallback/continue without ContractBeast position.
| usrusr wrote:
| "The rest of the team kept their day jobs."
|
| It sucks for them, because effort invested on the side
| implies that it must have been quite loaded emotionally, but
| right before turning the others full time seems like the
| least bad time for giving up.
| icambron wrote:
| The article buries the startup's more fundamental flaw
|
| > Almost no SMB views contract management as an urgent problem.
|
| If you are a solving a problem your target market doesn't care
| about, you're not going to get adoption. This isn't a product
| problem or a top-down vs bottom-up problem.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| It's not a flaw, it just means your target is bigger businesses
| (hence why he needed sales instead of marketing)
| icambron wrote:
| Their whole thesis was that SMBs need contract management.
| That thesis appears to have been mistaken. So it's certainly
| a flaw. Sure, you could fix it by creating a new thesis about
| a different market, building a product that addresses that
| market, and setting up the right GTM for it. But that's a
| whole other business, and they explain well enough why it's
| not one they want to do.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I think the thesis was, that SMBs could benefit from
| contract management in the long term, but (and not
| initially understood) it was not an urgent problem in the
| short term. To get buy-in for a long term initiative,
| they'd need consultative sales at the executive/owner level
| of the businesss, but that would mean competing with
| established "enterprise" companies, who already are not
| selling to SMBs because software sold that way is too
| expensive for the SMB market.
| icambron wrote:
| By "thesis" I meant the thesis of the business, not of
| the article.
|
| The article said just what you said; my point is that
| another way to explain those dynamics is that you can't
| sell software to SMBs if they don't urgently need it.
| That's because that logic about top-down sales is true
| regardless of what you're selling. And that's why the
| foreknowledge that SMBs don't urgently need to solve a
| contract management problem is a huge red flag, ideally
| before you've written a line of code.
| noduerme wrote:
| >>Pressing them directly on why they were not using ContractBeast
| to create all their contracts resulted in a lot of feature
| requests.
|
| >> Now, talking with customers about features is tricky. Often
| you receive solid and useful ideas. Occasionally a customer will
| provide an insight that will change the way you look at your
| product. But most of the time, customers don't really want the
| features they are asking for. At least not very badly.
|
| This a thoughtful, well-rounded and obviously experienced view,
| but ultimately it shades toward being very pessimistic about the
| competence of the end-user.
|
| >>When users are unhappy but can't explain exactly why, they
| often express that dissatisfaction as a series of tangential,
| trivial feature requests.
|
| Clearly, the writer had the self-reflection to realize that the
| product wasn't working, and for that should be applauded. On the
| other hand, maybe there's something a little intentionally self-
| blinding about the above statement. Assuming that people are just
| putting out meaningless feature requests because they'll never
| use the software anyway is, to say the least, taking things from
| a very negative starting point of view. Maybe something larger
| was actually missed in the "tangential, trivial feature requests"
| which if compiled would have pointed to a fixable underlying
| problem if one were take them seriously as a constellation of
| indicators pointing to a root issue.
|
| This is speculative:
|
| >>These aren't necessarily bad ideas, but they had nothing to do
| with why they were not using ContractBeast more extensively.
|
| This is indicative of burnout, where you stop seeing the value
| (for other reasons which are harder to quantify):
|
| >>In any event, I was overwhelmingly getting these kinds of
| tangential, trivial feature requests.
|
| And this is resignation:
|
| >>It didn't provide a significant immediate benefit. I was
| fighting human nature and losing.
|
| If I'd been sitting around that office, I might have suggested
| adding a human consultant to the loop for every new client from
| onboarding to full use -- not a virtual pop-up box, but someone
| they could call on the phone. And not to sell anything but to
| suggest uses and help implement the changes to the customer's
| business ops that they would then come to rely on. Mid-sized
| businesses don't make drastic changes overnight but that's also a
| guarantee of lock-in if you can convince them to rely on your
| product. So you'd give each one a sort of a "guardian beast
| angel" if you like, who was available at all hours. The sole
| purpose of the employee would be to track a few dozen customers
| and their user experience, really understand how this worked in
| their business models, and find ways to improve their use of the
| software while filtering back some feature requests and bugs. And
| thus get the customers to realize the full benefits of the
| software, without any attempt to sell them anything. This kind of
| thing would be a loss leader, it would be money out of pocket,
| but it would be far more cost effective than any kind of
| advertising, and it would establish trust and good word of mouth
| in addition to providing a customer base that was now dependent
| on you. Also, it wouldn't have involved actually writing any new
| features if you felt that the software was already sufficient to
| the tasks most users would require, if they knew how to use it
| properly. It would also give you runway to roll out new features
| on your own timetable without constantly trying to please an
| audience, since the customer-facing "beasts" would provide
| workarounds for niche use cases and reassure them personally that
| improvements were in the pipeline.
| jaclaz wrote:
| Nice idea that of these people dedicated to evaluating
| customer's ideas/suggestions.
|
| As a (hopefully competent enough) end-user, I can confirm how
| for _some reasons_ the process of accepting (or refusing if it
| is the case) feedback or suggestions is often alien to many
| developers /programmers.
|
| I don't know if this is due to them being too busy with other
| (possibly more important) things, if there is some sort of
| arrogance involved (i.e. the way the program is written is
| already perfect) or if there is some other reason, but surely
| to try and convince some software makers (I am talking about
| specific, "narrow", business software) that "feature x" is not
| needed or implemented in such a way that makes working with the
| program much slower or possibly making it more prone to errors
| is often a lost battle.
| [deleted]
| tluyben2 wrote:
| > I was deciding whether this venture was worth committing to
| another year of 70+ hour weeks. I need a higher level of
| certainty than investors do because my time is more valuable to
| me than their money is to them.Investors place bets in a
| portfolio of companies, but I only have one life.
|
| Both startup founders and investors alike seem to forget this
| (for obvious reasons) so it is good to put this on your toilet
| wall so you see it often.
| jokoon wrote:
| 70h per week, I really can't imagine a world where I could
| accept this.
|
| Sometimes I try to imagine how the alternative would be in a
| planned economy for software.
|
| On one hand, it would be very slow and very inefficient.
|
| But on the other hand, venture capitalism also has its flaws.
| Sometimes it sounds like there is an "excess efficiency" that
| leads to burnout and non-sense, where you constantly need to
| quote-unquote "innovate".
|
| In my view there is a limit about innovation, you can't always
| "disrupt" over and over and over again.
|
| If I get paid that much money, I'm going to work on my own
| terms, there is no way somebody will compromise my health like
| that.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> 70h per week, I really can't imagine a world where I could
| accept this._
|
| I can think of several. The grandiose ones: your kid has
| cancer, the kind that _might_ be fixable, but there is no
| treatment, and you have to design one. You have a viable
| theory for nuclear fusion or carbon sequestration and need to
| get funding for and then perform the experiment. There is a
| verified meteor /comet strike and there's some hope of saving
| people underground, but it needs to be built and stocked.
|
| In reality, you don't need grandiosity. This life is
| 'acceptable' to a lot of people, especially small business
| owners, the store owner/operator, or car mechanic, who
| effectively lives at their store. For others there is "paying
| your dues", doctors doing a residency, grad students doing
| slave labor on something only tangentially related to their
| degree. For others, like farmers, they work like this for
| some part of the year, every year.
| jokoon wrote:
| all those example don't apply to digital contract software.
|
| if someone is passionate about their job, I'm not sure
| they're being well paid, or they also have very rare
| skills, so it's an exception, not a rule.
|
| also I live in a country with good healthcare.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| For how long? Not that I think it's healthy or anyone
| _should_ do this, but for most of the past two decades,
| American military services regularly deployed units of
| thousands at a time for 15 months overseas, during which they
| worked up to 20 hour days with 2 hours of sleep, 7 days a
| week for the entire 15 months. And they did this with zero
| chance or expectation that they might get rich, also knowing
| there was quite a good chance they 'd end up permanently
| disabled.
|
| For better or worse, devotion to a cause is a proven
| motivator of human action.
|
| As for alternatives in the business world, we'd need some
| economic system that wasn't analogous to warfare in which one
| firm outcompetes all others to take most of the winnings. If
| you want a lesson from the US losing in Afghanistan, and
| arguably losing in Iraq, in spite of being able to drive its
| labor force to such extreme exertion, consider that a massive
| advantage of the insurgency was their ability to mobilize a
| part-time gig-based workforce that mostly worked from home.
| But _which_ lesson does business learn from that? Allow work
| from home? Or getting part-time contractors with no benefits
| to kill themselves and sacrifice children for you?
| Aeolun wrote:
| > 70h per week, I really can't imagine a world where I could
| accept this.
|
| On my own company, when single, and living in my one room
| apartment? Absolutely.
|
| With a family, children, with tons of responsibilities and in
| someone elses employ? Not on your life.
| the_common_man wrote:
| I dislike this trope of a single person having nothing
| better to do than work. Single people have responsibilities
| too and have quality lives. They don't need to work
| themselves to death
| Kiro wrote:
| And I dislike the trope of working being orthogonal to
| quality of life. Sitting in front of the computer working
| on my own thing is the ultimate enjoyment. That's what's
| giving me a quality life.
| the_common_man wrote:
| I think the word work has a specific meaning. It's work
| is a phrase. Nobody is saying you should not enjoy your
| work but work is associated with drudgery and tedium in
| the common usage
| corobo wrote:
| Yeah there's work (activity) and there's work (job)
|
| I love working (activity) -- coding is a hobby I long ago
| made the mistake of monetising haha.
|
| My stuff? I'll spend a weekend chasing a dead end without
| a second thought.
|
| General sort of cog in the machine day to day work?
| You're paying me to be a bit bored a lot of the time. Not
| a complaint or anything, just the routine stuff that
| can't be automated yet.
|
| Fun comes from learning new things, money comes from
| being paid for what you already learned.
|
| Of course this is just me, if everyone was like me the
| world would suck. Absolutely no judgement if you get your
| fun outside of an IDE!
|
| E: bit of context I'm currently single and have no
| dependents, I would imagine (hope) my priorities would
| change if that changed
| kfajdsl wrote:
| Yep, this so much.
|
| Working for somebody else, where I have little stake in
| the company? I won't just put in the bare minimum to not
| get fired, but I also won't work absurd hours, especially
| on a salary.
|
| My own stuff? I'm ready for the 40 (job) + 60 (my own
| projects) work week!
|
| For reference, I'm very young and no where close to
| having a family.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I think this is where the Elon Musk is so detached from
| reality. Because he can do exactly what he wants all day,
| and he loves what he is doing what he does all day is not
| work. Certainly in the sense that say, assembling parts
| of a weird electric car for 12 hours a day whilst being
| trapped in the factory for 24 hours is work.
|
| I see it in smaller business. I once got a phone call
| from my then boss, a sort of VC, who was clearly drunk,
| who could not make my meeting because he was doing BD.
| They worked collosal hours on this, in the corporate
| entertainment suites of the local sporting venues, in the
| city bars etc. Even lunch was a work activity for them.
| bowsamic wrote:
| A lot of people are not wired this way, we can't expect
| it from all.
| tshaddox wrote:
| There's not really a "trope" beyond it being necessary
| _but not sufficient_ to be able to work 70+ hour weeks.
| sgt wrote:
| Sure, but if the alternative (for you) is to waste time
| in front of the TV or gaming, it may be a valid point.
| wrren wrote:
| I wouldn't consider those things to be a waste of time at
| all...
| leetrout wrote:
| Careful there -- relaxing or enjoying something mundane
| is not wasting time.
|
| We have been conditioned to call things like this a waste
| of time but it doesnt mean it is. Not for everyone.
| Capitalism would have us believe we must constantly be
| delivering value that is defined by external standards
| but that is a dangerous game.
|
| 4000 Weeks is a pretty good book with more on this topic.
| brokenkebab2 wrote:
| Gaming, and watching TV _sometimes_ may not be complete
| waste of time. But both are addictive, and can easyly
| make your life miserable.
| mathgeek wrote:
| This isn't really relevant to the current discussion
| about how much extra time is spent on "work" beyond
| normal working hours. Working ~40 hours a week and
| choosing to spend most of your other conscious hours
| consuming media is a different situation from spending
| most/all of your hours on the latter.
| mmmpop wrote:
| https://i.redd.it/3hn1jb4p3ih41.jpg
| brokenkebab2 wrote:
| Not sure I see your point. "Choosing to spend most of
| your other conscious hours consuming media" is certainly
| choosing to waste a significant part of one's lifetime.
| Doing it all the time is wasting most of it, and likely
| being broke (with exception of rare edge cases). The
| question we touched in this particular branch: whether
| extra work constitutes a better alternative to more
| gaming/media in the absence of other obligations/fields
| of activity (such as family)
| Aeolun wrote:
| You are not necessarily producing value, you are ensuring
| you are capable of producing value in the future.
| rtpg wrote:
| I think it's not that single people have nothing better
| to do. It's that you would need to be single and have
| basically no life to do this kind of 70h work week (or be
| prepared to end up single, cuz you sure won't be tending
| to your relationships/responsibilities )
| wruza wrote:
| As a consciously single I disagree along the lines of
| this argument (not with the argument itself). You're
| seeing lost relationships as something destructive, and
| sure it is, but also disregard what others do as
| something that you can get rid of without any harm ("no
| life anyway"). I like my life, who's anyone to judge what
| is important in it or not. Our world-wide society _has_
| this trope. "Hey, these people have kids(!), and these
| are in relationships, etc etc. And you are single
| nolifer, your rights and opportunities can wait". As if a
| kid or a partner were some kind of a universal voucher.
| rtpg wrote:
| I'm not judging people who are single w/o kids. just
| saying if you're in a relationship or have kids that is a
| commitment and time needs to be spent on there.
|
| I don't think you should overwork yourself cuz you don't
| have kids. Do what you want with your life.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| It seems like you're reading the argument incorrectly.
| The argument being made is
|
| > If you have a family, then there's no way you have time
| for 70hr weeks
|
| The argument is _not_
|
| > If you do not have a family, then you _do_ have time
| for 70hr weeks
| nend wrote:
| Seems like you're projecting a bit. I didn't see the
| person your responding to make any judgement about a life
| with a partner/kids vs one without.
| wruza wrote:
| You're right on projection, and I shouldn't have written
| "you" and "disregard" in the same sentence. I meant some
| part of normal-life folks, addressing _them_ via that
| line. My mistake, sorry all for confusion.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| It has got to fuck up your body too. You are either
| asleep or sitting at a desk. Maybe sitting in a commute
| too.
| throwawayacc2 wrote:
| It depends on what point in your life you are. I was at
| one point single and fully committed to work. I worked
| sometimes even 12 hours per day, every day, pulling in
| weekends too and I had a payoff for that. I'm single now
| too, but I'm not doing that. I'm focusing on dating.
| Different people, at different times have different
| priorities. It's not any one individual thing that's bad,
| it's elevating one above the rest.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I'm not trying to speak for everyone. I'm saying that _I_
| personally can absolutely see myself doing it in these
| situations. Not trying to imply anything about anyone
| else.
| briandear wrote:
| They don't have to. They could take a normal job and
| don't have to do the extraordinary job of founding a
| company.
| Petersipoi wrote:
| How is that a trope? Everybody here who has kids used to
| not have kids, and all would agree that before they had
| kids they had significantly more time to dedicate to non-
| kid-raising activities.
|
| Nobody is saying single people have "nothing better to
| do". Just that they very often have more flexibility with
| what they can reasonably choose to do.
| crabbygrabby wrote:
| In the US 70 hr work weeks at startups and even certain
| industry's are not abnormal. Are those people usually
| making good decisions, thinking clearly, and not being
| jerks? Nope, but it's what a lot of people willingly do.
| I've seen people pull 80 hr weeks
| wruza wrote:
| _On my own company, when single, and living in my one room
| apartment? Absolutely._
|
| If you're around 20 maybe. Before you've already developed
| a hair-trigger on chronic disorders.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| > On my own company, when single, and living in my one room
| apartment? Absolutely.
|
| Speak for yourself. I have hobbies, a workout routine,
| friends to meet up with, family members to visit, and
| beauty sleep to catch. If you're working 70h a week you're
| sacrificing most if not all of those things.
| literallycancer wrote:
| He already said he was single. You can have a workout
| routine and plenty of sleep even when working 70h weeks.
| Just skip the Netflix and other people, for a time.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| I'm single too... I don't see the relevance, though. You
| don't just have to like working. You have to actively
| decide against doing much of anything else. If you are
| working ten hours a day with no weekend, or 14 hours a
| day with one, you're going to be exhausted for the rest
| of that time.
|
| You can fit working out in there (~30-60 min a day, plus
| travel time if you don't have your own equipment) if
| you're willing to burn the candle at both ends like that.
| At that point you will have committed the overwhelming
| majority of your time, and if you try to add anything
| else to your life, any kind of unexpected outing or
| emergency, or even just waking up one day and not feeling
| up for it, will have to come directly out of the time
| you've budgeted for your work and health.
| literallycancer wrote:
| I forgot that some people still commute. I assumed that
| you have an office in your residence and a gym in the
| garden. You will have committed most of your time, yes.
| Still at least in my experience it let me do more in a
| quarter than in a year of taking it easy. You can retire
| after a few years, which should still be early enough to
| enjoy life.
| andrepd wrote:
| > Sometimes I try to imagine how the alternative would be in
| a planned economy for software.
|
| > On one hand, it would be very slow and very inefficient.
|
| Why do you say that? Large, "boring" sectors of the economy
| would probably work just fine being algorithmically steered.
| jokoon wrote:
| I said that to appeal to the HN crowds.
|
| Computing and software was researched and invented in a
| planned manner (NASA etc).
|
| Maybe you can't "expand" and "generalize" software in a
| planned economy, if you want everything to be made with
| software. The article talks about about 80 competitors, so
| it can easily be said something should be planned.
| brokenkebab2 wrote:
| Because there are 0 successful examples for it. And as
| someone born in USSR let me say if you like to experiment
| with planned economy you better choose a country nobody
| will regret leaving in dust afterwards
| Aerroon wrote:
| Because they wouldn't be. A planned economy just takes the
| power of business owners and adds it to the pile of power
| politicians have. These algorithms would just 'happen' to
| suggest things favorable to those in charge.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I have never done a 70h week. probably 50h the top. I think
| it would be impossible for me. I mean I could be physically
| in an office for that long... but that is not the same thing.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| It's impossible, that's why. I have seen people in my role
| work a lot more hours than me, but not to turn out more
| work than me.
| d4rkp4ttern wrote:
| Love this quote. As a cynical counterpoint to all the apparent
| glamour to being a CEO of a small startup, especially one that
| has taken investor money, I came up with this expansion:
|
| CEO = Chief Enslaved Officer.
|
| Enslaved to your investor obviously.
|
| Enslaved to your customers.
|
| And even enslaved to your employees. This one may need some
| elaboration -- the CEO constantly needs to manage their
| motivation through ups and downs and ensure they are
| productive, and be responsive to them.
| d4rkp4ttern wrote:
| Actually I would improve this to:
|
| CEO = Cheap, Enslaved Officer.
|
| For obvious reasons -- CEOs intentionally take very little if
| any pay.
| lasc4r wrote:
| Yeah, no.
| mandmandam wrote:
| I hope you're very careful about who you throw slavery
| metaphors around with.
|
| Anyone with not-too-distant relatives that were _owned_ by
| wealthy old white dudes may find the equating of CEOs with
| slavery an "I have no time for this person" level offense.
| zdragnar wrote:
| This silly notion that there has only ever been a single
| form of slavery, and that there's no point in discussing
| any other than what occurred in America in a specific time
| period is so very harmful.
|
| I understand why the topic at large is a sensitive one, and
| more for some than others. That doesn't mean I'll be overly
| concerned with someone who responds to such an analogy with
| some variation of "I have no time for you".
| klik99 wrote:
| I don't think the problem is discussing other kinds of
| slavery, because wage slavery is a thing that's
| discussed, but there is a type of slavery that is very
| recent, still relevant because we're still feeling the
| effects of it, and it does seem in bad taste to compare
| being a tech CEO to something people are still digging
| themselves out of the effects of.
|
| We're all on someone's dollar and beholden to them so by
| the "chief enslaved officer" logic we're all slaves which
| really cheapens and nearly erases a very real and very
| recent thing.
| [deleted]
| drc500free wrote:
| The purpose of an analogy is to short-circuit a long
| explanation by appealing to an already deeply understood
| concept. It's important to understand how the referenced
| concepts are understood and experienced by the audience
| if it's going to be an effective analogy. Comparisons to
| how the concept could technically be defined in a dry
| academic context are a bit irrelevant, since the whole
| point is to trigger a flash of intuition. Anyone who's
| reaction is "no, that's no the way you were supposed to
| experience that analogy" should probably not being using
| analogies to convey anything at all.
|
| Using a trauma that you haven't experienced as a point of
| reference can also be seen as minimizing that trauma.
| Especially if you're going for a purposefully extreme
| juxtaposition like "being at the very top of a business
| with control over other people's labor and livelihoods is
| just like being a slave."
|
| Because it's nothing like that at all to someone with
| deeper experience with the subject, and is as false to
| them as other shocking juxtapositions like "stubbing your
| toe is like having your entire family murdered in the
| holocaust (because they both hurt!)" or "needing to have
| a license to operate a car is like being gangraped
| (because you don't want either!)." Those kinds of
| analogies can be interpreted as purposefully trivializing
| and mocking that trauma, because there are quite a few
| people out there who really enjoy doing that sort of
| thing.
|
| So when language is used like that, people who are hurt
| by the reference have to decide whether the speaker is
| simply ignorant of how it's going to land or if they are
| doing it on purpose. Some of them are going to chuck
| Hanlon's razor out the window and assume it's done on
| purpose as part of some sort of power game or sadism.
| afarrell wrote:
| As someone who does have Black enslaved ancestors: Sure,
| we can discuss comparisons among transatlantic chattel
| slavery, the treatment of the helots, or the people
| trafficked south along the Volga.
|
| The problem with a CEO calling themselves a slave is that
| it pretends that someone who has made an active choice to
| start a company is a victim. As this article shows, a CEO
| can choose to walk away from their company without fear
| of violence or starvation. If I meet a CEO who labels
| themselves enslaved, that tells me they are unwilling to
| recognize their responsibility for their own choices.
| That mindset makes them unfit to hold the power of the
| leadership position they aspire to.
| mise_en_place wrote:
| Slave is a bit extreme, but servant leadership is what I
| think they were trying to get at.
| d4rkp4ttern wrote:
| Indeed. The OP was able to quit relatively easily because
| he had not yet taken investor money. Imagine trying to
| quit after taking their money. That is where the element
| of "servitude" comes in, which admittedly sounds extreme
| but makes a point.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Does VC money come with a "CEO is not allowed to quit"
| clause? CEO's can quit anytime they want - only their
| preide or egos may prevent them.
| maxwell wrote:
| Why couldn't they quit after taking the money?
| dbingham wrote:
| You're missing a lot with that analogy - which is that of
| everyone involved in the veature, the CEO has the most power.
|
| They have the most knowledge of anyone and are the ultimate
| decision maker about the future of the venture. The CEO gets
| to make the choice: they can walk away any time, they can
| quit and they can shut things down.
|
| If they don't want to walk away, they get the strongest voice
| in decisions about what paths to take. They have all the
| knowledge they need about the venture on which to base those
| choices. They have the full picture, access to all the
| financial knowledge, the conversations with the investors,
| the data from the customers - everything.
|
| No one else in the venture has that. Even if others have the
| knowledge (in the case where the CEO operates with a rare
| level of extreme transparency) - they don't have the choices.
|
| That is not enslavement.
|
| With power, naturally, comes a lot of responsibility and that
| can feel heavy. Especially if you are ethical. But that is
| _not_ enslavement.
|
| When you are enslaved, you have zero power.
| d4rkp4ttern wrote:
| These are great points, I agree. Especially:
|
| >With power, naturally, comes a lot of responsibility and
| that can feel heavy. *Especially if you are ethical*. But
| that is not enslavement.
| totetsu wrote:
| Move over poster of New Zealand's fishes.
| damagednoob wrote:
| New Zealand. Why not?
| effingwewt wrote:
| Funny to me that these are seen as novel concepts, and all over
| the comments are people going on about how this is so true for
| _founders_.
|
| What about the workers actually building the product, making
| far less, and probably putting in more time. Why is the issue
| of their valuable time compared to money almost never
| discussed.
|
| We _all_ only have one life and ot should be able to be
| enjoyed. Why do we always forget the pursuit of happiness,
| except as it applies to the upper class.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Sounds like this guy did the correct thing.
|
| I am sorry it didn't make it, but, as the author points out:
|
| _> Human nature sucks._
|
| Yup. I have to design for human nature, and it can be immensely
| frustrating. I can tell you that this scar _< pulls up shirt>_
| was from when I neglected to plan for users misinterpreting an
| icon button, and this scar _< rolls up sleeve>_ was from when I
| thought that a verbose help screen would help users understand a
| somewhat abstract concept, but this scar _< drops pants>_ was
| from when I assumed that users would cut me slack, because I'm
| such a nice guy, and was doing this from the goodness of my
| heart.
|
| This is the main reason that I'm glad he pulled the plug:
|
| _> and the team ready to quit their day jobs_
| timoth3y wrote:
| > This is the main reason that I'm glad he pulled the plug: >>
| and the team ready to quit their day jobs
|
| Me too. I'm happy to report we all ended up on good terms with
| each other once all the drama settled down.
| menzoic wrote:
| Why does he think he needs to work 70+ hour work weeks? He
| mentioned he couldn't sleep knowing user adoption was low. I
| think the biggest problem here is that he felt pressured to over
| work himself to solve a highly visible problem.
|
| This affects many engineers including myself. In many cases over
| working is not necessary and there are diminishing returns,
| possibly even less overall net returns if you burn out or become
| too sleep deprived and stressed to function efficiently the
| following days. In this case he quit, which is an example of
| this.
|
| As engineers we have to learn how to manage expectations and
| disconnect from work. As engineering leaders we need to foster a
| culture of maintaining good work life balance. As founder and
| CEO, he's in the best possible position to do this. Especially in
| this case where there is no external deadline.
| FabioFleitas wrote:
| The thing is - in startups, there always is an external
| deadline (assuming you're not cash flow positive or profitable)
| - it is tied directly to your runway and when you'd run out of
| cash. That is the ultimate deadline for pretty much all
| startups.
|
| The very early stages of a startup (and even later stages)
| usually require this much effort because you honestly don't
| have enough money to last you the "right" amount of time you
| need - and therefore you need to put in more time.
|
| As you said - this isn't sustainable long-term - but,
| especially in the early stages, you may not have a "long-term"
| in that venture if you're not able to put these hours in.
|
| Not to say it's impossible to find a great work-life balance
| for an early stage startup - but it's highly unlikely.
| sylware wrote:
| "I was deciding whether this venture was worth committing to
| another year of 70+ hour weeks. I need a higher level of
| certainty than investors do because my time is more valuable to
| me than their money is to them.Investors place bets in a
| portfolio of companies, but I only have one life."
|
| You do the real hard work, they provide numbers in a computer
| database (and often kick you out once this hard work is done).
| sakoht wrote:
| There are a lot of projects that want to serve an under-served
| space, but lack a novel idea about how to do it. In many ways,
| even companies like Theranos fell into this trap. They knew it
| would be great to have the device they promised, but the company
| wasn't founded around any sort of novel idea about how to
| accomplish it, just a wish.
| etothepii wrote:
| This. Exactly this.
|
| However, if you do something full time the inspiration to
| implement your wish can appear. Waiting to be blessed by
| inspiration probably won't lead to a solution.
| jimhi wrote:
| I mean maybe but this is software. Providing enterprise
| software per use or per customer at at low cost is a common
| path.
| pepelondono wrote:
| You took the right decision given your context.
|
| But the whole matter could have been avoided if you were solving
| a problem you actually cared about. Then there would have been no
| doubt if you should or should not invest another year of your
| time.
| sfink wrote:
| I would challenge that.
|
| If I'm solving a problem I personally care about, then I will
| also be personally willing to put in vastly more effort into
| learning and getting up to speed with the solution than the
| vast majority of my target customers will.
|
| As the OP said, you need something that will give relatively
| quick return on investment of effort. If it's going to require
| a larger up-front investment, then you have to really, _really_
| care about the improvement it 's providing in order to put in
| that effort.
|
| I have innumerable half-baked solutions to various problems I
| care about, and by "half-baked" I mean they only work in
| specific situations and require massaging the inputs into a
| form that the solutions will accept. And that's fine for me;
| after all, I cared enough to implement the fancy solution in
| the first place. But I don't expect anyone else to use it
| unless I clean it up and package it nicely.
| throwawayarnty wrote:
| This is extremely selfish.
|
| A founder has a team (investors are part of that team) that
| trusts each other to have incentives towards having the startup
| make it big.
|
| Ditching the team and investors like that is extremely
| distasteful and shows that the founder does not have the
| qualities to be a leader.
|
| The founder didn't do the right thing, he did the selfish thing
| by throwing his employees under the bus.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| The "employees" had other day jobs. Why is it less selfish to
| spend other people's time and money on a company that you can't
| see any way for it to succeed than cutting everyone's losses as
| soon as possible?
| lwhi wrote:
| No.
|
| I think what you mean to say is, it's an extremely terrifying
| situation for an investor.
|
| By the end of the article, I wonder whether there weren't
| actually fixable problems. I was left wondering whether I would
| have made the same decision. However, it's essential we all
| have the freedom and agency to choose how to live our lives
|
| This is the choice the author made, and it's blatantly obvious
| that the decision needs to be respected.
| andi999 wrote:
| Why does it need to be respected? Why not e.g. sell the
| company and IP.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| > The founder didn't do the right thing, he did the selfish
| thing by throwing his employees under the bus.
|
| How is leaving them in their more secure day jobs rather than
| binding then to a likely failed company throwing anyone under
| the bus?
|
| This founder did the smart thing, and probably did what was
| best for everyone involved.
| new299 wrote:
| In this case it seems like he didn't have any full-time
| employees, so there isn't the employee issue.
|
| But I'm curious as to how this might effect investors
| generally. I assume it could make them look bad, and cause
| issues with the fund LPs?
|
| I.e. you announced an investment, did a capital call and then
| suddenly the money gets returned. LPs might get annoyed that
| money is now sitting in the fund accounts collecting interest?
| or I guess it just makes the fund look bad generally?
| menzoic wrote:
| Sounds better than burning the funds into a startup failure
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| The existing investors lost money, everyone else paid in
| stress and overwork
| polote wrote:
| The problem with this article, is that it gives the feeling that
| creating a company is a sequence of logical steps. But that's not
| the case at all. OP stopped the company because he didnt want to
| invest his time in working on this problem, and thats a fair
| decision. But this has nothing do with unfixable flaw or "people
| sucks" or something like that. Those things are part of any
| business.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I think you missed the main thrust of the article. They were
| trying to land in the mid market segment and expand from there
| into the large market where it's more expensive to acquire
| sales. However, after doing a bunch of research actively
| interviewing their user base, the author couldn't figure out a
| way to get these users to use the product enough for that land
| and expand strategy to work (it wasn't sticky enough to
| actually start generating sales). In essence, from the author's
| perspective, there was no path forward for success with the
| current business stategy.
|
| You are of course free to disagree and you may be right that
| there was a path there or they could have pivoted to do
| something totally different. What the author was trying to
| convey and maybe you missed is that they weren't interested in
| spending another year exploring trying to find a totally
| different viable business strategy.
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| Sometimes there is no pivot. Hopefully he keeps swinging and hits
| one out.
| radisb wrote:
| Couldn't someone else willing to give those 70h/week take your
| place?
| hk1337 wrote:
| I would think their customers would also be pissed that their
| contract service is now gone.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| This is the root problem! If you are a first time CTO which
| contract service do you want to use? Generally, you bet on sure
| wins. Some startup is not a sure win (it might not be there in
| 2 months). When companies go under - paperwork is flying
| everywhere (unsecured). You want your contracts flying around?
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