[HN Gopher] Raising money fucked me up
___________________________________________________________________
Raising money fucked me up
Author : yakkomajuri
Score : 360 points
Date : 2026-01-17 18:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.yakkomajuri.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.yakkomajuri.com)
| moralestapia wrote:
| Imagine betting on someone and xe writes this ...
| teiferer wrote:
| Then I know they are capable of deep self-reflection. A good
| thing. Any founder without such thoughts and some point or
| another is either lying to you or will eventually fail big
| time.
| globalnode wrote:
| if i bet on someone and they wrote this id know my money was
| spent well
| moralestapia wrote:
| Good. Send xir some cash!
| allenrb wrote:
| Nothing about this struck me as a sign that money wasn't well-
| invested. From the headline, I was picturing "we raised and
| then I blew it in Vegas".
|
| Nothing wrong with admitting to uncertainty and insecurity. I
| mean, there are two types of people -- those who suffer doubt
| sometimes, and those who don't admit it. Give me the first kind
| any time.
| jbs789 wrote:
| Finding the right psychologist/coach/founder to chat this over
| with will probably do you and the company wonders.
| yakkomajuri wrote:
| Hey, author here. Totally agree on how helpful these people
| are. I have a psychologist and also some great mentors. This
| doesn't make you immune to things like I wrote about but helps
| you process and get over them when they happen.
|
| As a side note, I'm in a much better mental space now, largely
| due to facing these things straight on. Things are good, and
| I'm motivated and sharp!
| jbs789 wrote:
| Awesome to hear. Best of luck!
| quantumgarbage wrote:
| Loved it, understanding and working through your vulnerabilities
| is super hard but ultra rewarding. Bold but very altruistic move
| to publish this
| AstroBen wrote:
| I think everyone would seriously benefit from learning poker. I
| used to play professionally and the idea of looking at things as
| probabilistic bets, and in terms of expected value is so deeply
| rooted in my mind
|
| Investments are bets. Most sane investors aren't putting it all
| on one thing
|
| Startups are bets
|
| Applying for jobs. Sales. Dating. Health. Basically everything
|
| You risk $X money and time for a payoff of $Y that comes Z%
|
| You can make the best decision and have a bad outcome because
| there are so many unknowns. This isn't chess
|
| You can play everything wrong and still hit it out of the park
|
| I mean this is one of the range of outcomes that could've
| happened. You can't declare yourself a success or failure from
| one project
|
| Just keep making good decisions and don't risk it all, and you'll
| more than likely end up fine
| teiferer wrote:
| > You risk $X money and time for a payoff of $Y that comes Z%
|
| Unlike in poker where you know those 3 numbers if you are
| paying attention, in real life you know only X, and sometimes
| not even that. The rest is a guessing game, and that estimation
| is the hard part.
| foltik wrote:
| In poker you learn to strategically size $X based on your
| estimates of $Y, Z%, and current bankroll.
|
| Even if your estimates have large error bars, it can still be
| a good bet if you believe it's +EV and have a large enough
| bankroll.
| altmanaltman wrote:
| I read about mathematical expectation in a poker book for the
| first time a long time ago and it's really an interesting way
| to think about the world. In real life, it's a bit different
| though since there are other factors than just raw percentages
| like poker hands. For example, you could do everything right
| and still fail while someone else (like a nepo hire) can do
| everything wrong and still succeed.
|
| Life's odds are rigged.
| diab0lic wrote:
| I think the metaphor is pretty extensible to handle the
| things you point out.
|
| > you could do everything right and still fail
|
| Sometimes even a high probability draw doesn't get there on
| the river.
|
| > while someone else (like a nepo hire) can do everything
| wrong and still succeed
|
| Some people always start with pairs, Axs, or suited
| connectors.
| altmanaltman wrote:
| No, that's not what I meant. I meant more like you could
| flop a high probability draw that does get there on the
| river, but the nepo kid still wins even though they just
| had one pair.
|
| In poker, there are rules everyone has to follow. In real
| life, the rules can differ from person to person. Hence,
| the odds are rigged.
| mhogers wrote:
| One of my favorite star trek scenes:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4A-Ml8YHyM
| PlatoIsADisease wrote:
| If you want me to ruin this for you, look up Bertrand's Paradox
| and The Problem Of Priors.
|
| I recently had to deal with this, ugh, I just pick a prior or
| two and see what the outcome looks like. I'm not sure we can
| calculate probability of success, but rather use probability to
| find losing ideas that should never be done.
| rramadass wrote:
| Nice.
|
| What are some good books to build this sort of perspective on
| Probability/Randomness/Chance?
| PlatoIsADisease wrote:
| These are ~1 layer removed, but it shook me from an
| epistemological perspective. Basically it destroys the idea
| of metaphysical truth.
|
| I'll start with the easy one that was written in native
| English, William James's Pragmatism. Its only 4 hours long,
| and teaches 1 of the 3 branches of
| metaphilosophy(Pragmatic). For ROI in philosophy, it
| doesn't get better than this. It teaches one of the 3
| theories of Truth.
|
| Next is significantly more difficult, but everyone only
| understands 10% of Wittgenstein. Read both early and late
| Wittgenstein. If I remember correctly, its ~12 hours of
| pain as you will barely understand him. However, it shakes
| foundations of math and science as you will find these are
| mere constructs of language. This will also teach you 1 of
| the 3 branches of metaphilosophy(Analytical), and teach you
| how language works. You really need to read both early and
| late. But I imagine reading early Wittgenstein will
| convince you to read late. Its super painful, but you
| should deal with the pain.
|
| (the remaining branch of philosophy is Continental... that
| takes a long time to learn, but its mostly nonsensical
| rebuttals to Plato, take it from someone who read this for
| 8 years...)
|
| Regarding that initial thought on the Problem of Priors,
| here is a quick youtube video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy6xXEhbGa0
| rramadass wrote:
| William James i have read, both "Pragmatism"(not
| completely though) and "Talks to Teachers" (my favourite)
| but not much of Wittgenstein.
|
| There is a lot here which jives with ancient Hindu
| Schools of Philosophy, specifically; _Nyaya_
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyaya), _Vaisheshika_
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaisheshika) and
| _Charvaka_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charvaka).
|
| Bayesian epistemology with priors have always been
| problematic since if there were no constraints on prior
| beliefs than anything goes. But in order to constrain the
| priors you need to know the distribution to calculate
| probabilities.
| PlatoIsADisease wrote:
| If I can recommend anything: Stay away from ancients.
| Western or Eastern.
|
| Stick to contemporary people who are dead and have no
| marketing team to promote them.
| rramadass wrote:
| See also _The Book of Risk_ by Dan Borge.
| ericdykstra wrote:
| I studied poker a lot in high school, and it still influences
| how I think today.
|
| Probabilistic thinking about the EV of your decisions is a good
| framework, but "Just keep making good decisions" is the hard
| part. Same as in poker, though, the hard part about making a
| decision in life isn't the middle-school level probability
| math, but about making the right estimates about payoff
| potential and success rate based on incomplete information.
|
| Analyzing things as they are rather than how you wish they
| were, being able to separate useful information from noise, and
| taking a step back to look at second-order effects are all
| useful skills that will help you make better decisions the more
| you develop them.
| neltnerb wrote:
| It gets messy when the other poker players are your mentors and
| family whom you love and respect, when the money is real, when
| the amounts to you feel enormous (whether they matter to the
| investor is a different story), and when losing carries
| unpredictable emotional and social consequences. And when
| mentors and family do it you are probably their only bet. It
| feels like betting other people's money and I totally get how
| that's a psychological hangup to feel that it is wrong.
|
| I am not being sarcastic or flippant in this, it limits me to
| not be willing to take advantage of the risk/reward system, but
| it's somehow deeply tied into my ethics in ways I didn't even
| really notice until my second startup. And I'm okay with that
| limitation, but I'll work through it sooner or later and regain
| my appetite for risk.
|
| Aside from that, many people despise thinking this way about
| their work. Like me, even though I'm willing to do it. I've met
| founders who _loved_ negotiation. Like I swear they must have
| been nightmare children. I hate negotiation, I want people to
| treat each other fairly and will stick with a good human that
| does so forever. I suspect those people don 't mind ripping off
| family and friends, much less strangers. It is harsh, and I've
| seen things, but anecdotes aren't statistics, and that's a huge
| obvious red flag to me. If the leaders like to do internal
| negotiation games I just want out. It's just painful to have to
| deal with being around when you just want to make stuff work.
|
| It's important to talk about ahead of time, and get in writing,
| but that's also something easily overlooked among family and
| friends who do not do this kind of thing much. And the
| downsides need to be honest and clear to avoid mistrust.
|
| Now, after working at two startups and starting three, my third
| is a consulting company that exclusively does things hourly
| except in very special circumstances. It's never going to grow
| fast because it scales as my hours of labor. But I am way more
| able to pick a price for my labor than decide how to price
| something that I haven't done yet. I could figure it out, I
| just kinda don't want to. For now?
| taurath wrote:
| Expectations that we hold inside of ourselves can be a really
| difficult echo of identities we tried fantasizing about when
| growing up and as an adult. We want to do well, we want the
| approval, we want the validation.
|
| The anxiety over expectations can kill you. It's self abuse -
| people (investors, bosses, spouses) don't invest in you for your
| anxiety driven productivity, they do it because of who you are
| outside of that worry. It's hard to replace it if you consider it
| your motor. Let the desire to do well and good stay, but let the
| fear of others disappointment go, and the fantasy that we can
| control those outcomes by squeezing every last drop out of
| ourselves.
| teiferer wrote:
| Can you separate "who you are" from that worry? Seems to me
| it's a part of you and you wouldn't be you without it, for
| better and worse.
| taurath wrote:
| Identities shift over time whether we intend it or not. Who
| you were at 5, or 10 is not who you are at 20, 30, 40. We all
| pick up baggage, trinkets, burdens, and experiences.
|
| One worries because it was a helpful strategy compared to not
| worrying, but some (like me very specifically) can get
| attached to that worry to the detriment of picking up other
| mechanisms.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Reminds me of Internal Family Systems (IFS)
| taurath wrote:
| That's more about the idea that it's helpful to think of
| ourselves as made of parts, as a way to describe both our
| various roles in life (employee, spouse, friend, learner,
| etc) and also how we can interact with parts that we've
| exiled away, or hold experiences we have hangups about.
|
| What I'm mostly talking about is that transformation
| happens through life's journeys! Requires much less
| commitment to the idea, as it's pretty universally
| understood.
| vlan0 wrote:
| It's always important to remind one's self that "who you are"
| is simply the story one is attached to. Things like
| meditation or psilocybin can help bring that to light.
| akomtu wrote:
| Imo, the opposite is true: you'll find out who you are only
| when you have given up all those false identities animated by
| you.
| csomar wrote:
| The closest show/cartoon for this I can think of is Rick
| and Morty Season 7, Episode 10 - "Fear No Mort." In that
| episode, Morty gets trapped in a fear-based "hole" where
| he's forced to confront all his deepest anxieties and
| insecurities. The whole point is that he can't escape by
| running away or pretending to be someone he's not. He has
| to face his fears directly and accept his true self, flaws
| and all. It's only when he does and accepts himself as he
| actually is, that he's able to break free.
|
| That episode really got to me. Every time the screen goes
| dark and transitions to Morty realizing he's still trapped
| in the hole, something inside me freaks out too. It's like
| the show is forcing me to realize I'm not actually
| confronting these truths in my own life. I'm probably still
| in the hole, aren't I?
| justanotherjoe wrote:
| For me the question is just, do you think it's a disorder or
| not. Would you take a medication for it, if there is such a
| thing. If yes to both, Then, it's not really you. You are
| just who you choose to be.
| arathis wrote:
| A wonderful and personally relevant thing to read.
| Nition wrote:
| It's hard being human. A lot of cognitive ability peaks before
| age 25[1], physical before 35[2], and to some extent it's an
| inexorable downward slope from there. Accumulated experience
| often makes up for it, but only to a point. You still won't be
| as good as the version of you that started earlier, or learned
| faster. People reach 40 and finally start exercising and eating
| properly and miraculously feel 25 again - there are always ways
| to fight it. But they'd have been even more effective with the
| same habits at 25.
|
| Life is stressful. There is fear of failure, there is fear of
| disappointing others, and ultimately there is fear of death.
| And that final deadline doesn't even have the courtesy to let
| us know when it will come.
|
| But many people get nothing much done without a deadline. Most
| get more done with some time pressure. I'm not sure how we
| would manage immortality. If we lived twice as long, would we
| work half as fast? One hopes that for a little while at least,
| we manage to be happy and content with what we have.
|
| [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4441622/
|
| [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17717011/
| cannonpr wrote:
| If what you value most is performing IQ tests, or competitive
| chess, then yes there is good data on the 25 part. If what
| you value is complexity and richness of thought, not so much.
| resonious wrote:
| Honestly if I exercised and ate perfectly from 20-29 I
| would've had a miserable 20s. Doing high-discipline stuff
| like that is way easier when you have a material reason (i.e.
| you've _actually_ felt the consequences of not being fit or
| healthy) compared to when people just tell you "do it!
| you'll really thank yourself for it 20 years later!". Being
| in perfect physical condition at the cost of the
| psychological stress of forcing myself to do stuff I don't
| want to do every day does not sound worth it.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > forcing myself to do stuff I don't want to do every day
|
| If you make it over the initial hump of developing the
| habit it just becomes an expected part of your day. The
| dislike evaporates. Skipping it feels weird.
| resonious wrote:
| Maybe I'm just a baby, but I actually have done routine
| exercise for long periods (sometimes months, sometimes
| years) and stopping felt AWESOME.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Fair enough. That is most definitely not normal but I
| believe you that it's just how it is for you. It's the
| same thing with any given medication - it will work for
| most people most of the time but not for everyone all of
| the time.
| eucyclos wrote:
| The trick is to tie your sense of identity to being a
| badass with more than enough self control.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Most people are complete dumbasses at 25. (I include myself
| at 25 in that assessment) So if this is peak intellectual
| capabilities something does not add up.
| Nition wrote:
| It's the lack of experience, essentially. See this chart
| from the study I linked: https://i.imgur.com/zhR6NC1.jpeg
|
| Things that rely on experience peak at a much higher age,
| but the pure mental stuff peaks earlier.
| youoy wrote:
| To me that graph seems to say that the pure
| "subconscious" stuff or "ML similar" stuff peaks earlier,
| but comprehension peaks much later. So you perfect your
| tools in the brain at around 25, but then it takes
| another 20 years to really know how to use them
| correclty.
| taurath wrote:
| That's one way to think about it. For me personally, a single
| evening with even driven and dedicated 25 year olds makes any
| claims of a downward slope like you describe laughable. At
| best, they'll know one thing sort of well at that age. Most
| of the interesting stuff happens when you synthesize a lot
| more experience, and have the appreciation for time and
| wisdom to utilize it well. Whats the average age of startup
| founders, like 45? Average age of authors first books like
| 36-42.
|
| Give me a break with that hustle culture.
| eucyclos wrote:
| Your last paragraph brings to mind an insult from a fictional
| culture where the very wealthy and powerful can live
| indefinitely: "<minor villain> has grown nothing. And he has
| planted nothing". Such a perfect summation of the attitude of
| a culture with lots of time
| resonious wrote:
| And what's interesting here (and likely in other cases) is that
| the expectations aren't even real. The author's investors don't
| even put pressure on him. Not to put too many words into the
| author's mouth here, but it seems like he got possessed by the
| "tech founder" persona. It's like he started doing things not
| because of his own volition but because it's the more tech
| foundery thing to do.
| tptacek wrote:
| Without trying to be glib about it, this post sounds like a
| description of second-system syndrome, applied to
| entrepreneurship. It happens to all of us.
| didip wrote:
| When doing my own startup in the past, the biggest pain were:
| loneliness and inexplicable paranoia. Which then lead to anxiety.
|
| This, when unchecked, can lead to self inflicted, unnecessary
| pressure on myself. And failure to meet the impossible deadlines,
| created downward spiral.
|
| I think this is normal, everyone went through the same thing.
| That's why some VCs filter for megalomaniacs, zealots, or people
| who have no idea what pain is, because the journey is insane
| arduous.
|
| The pain magnifies if the startup is located in VHCOL. Every
| month a whale appears and eat a big chunk of your runway. Who
| wouldn't have anxiety?
| neumann wrote:
| Thank-you! It is great to read a honest and self-aware journal
| covering this.
|
| As someone who fantasizes about running my own thing, working for
| a few start-ups have made me very stringent on what my
| requirements are for starting something (co-founders, investment,
| location, market). And also that these requirements have become
| so very risk-averse that I probably am not the personality
| profile to run a business! Nevermind the endless imposter
| syndrome.
| PlatoIsADisease wrote:
| I have a few 1099 MBA advisors that I call Chief of Staff. I
| check my questions against what they think. When you get 3 MBAs
| with engineering, finance, or CS degrees agreeing independently,
| it bumps up confidence.
|
| I think this is a case where this helps considerably. Its
| essentially the 'consulting' thing for small businesses.
| jackfranklyn wrote:
| This is exactly why I've avoided raising so far. Not because VC
| money is bad - obviously it enables things that wouldn't
| otherwise be possible - but because I know myself well enough to
| recognise I'd react exactly like this.
|
| The author nails it: "I started to actually operate in a way that
| is counterproductive for my startup, while thinking I was
| actually doing what was best." That's the dangerous part. The
| pressure doesn't announce itself as pressure. It masquerades as
| ambition, urgency, drive.
|
| Bootstrapping has its own version of this though. Instead of
| investor expectations, you've got the slow burn of "am I wasting
| years of my life on something that needs capital to work?" The
| grass is always greener. At least with VC money, you can move
| fast and find out if you're wrong. With bootstrapping, you can
| spend 3 years proving out something that would have taken 6
| months with proper funding.
|
| Neither path is inherently better. But knowing which one will
| fuck with your head less is worth figuring out before you're in
| the middle of it.
| himeexcelanta wrote:
| With boot strapping at least you can de risk with
| consulting/freelancing. And I think with the new generation of
| software development tools it's much easier to validate the
| core business problems without grinding out code for weeks on
| end.
| robocat wrote:
| It's a hard call to name root causes.
|
| If they hadn't taken the money, what would the counterfactual
| article have said?
|
| Everybody creates narritives and belief-systems, where causes
| and effects seem so clear.
|
| Perhaps I'm far too skeptical about their self-analysis. I've
| met very few people where their own analysis about themselves
| has matched what I have read in them. So many people misread
| their own minds and emotional drives. So I have learnt to
| cynically look for excuses and rationalisations and
| justifications.
|
| The article is brilliant because we too rarely hear about
| people's doubts and negatives.
|
| Some people (whether successful or not) do know themselves, but
| it is uncommon in my experience.
|
| I helped bootstrap a business and we were in an incubator.
| There I saw some of the side-effects on businesses and founders
| from taking investment. We were just lucky that we couldn't be
| bothered with doing the distracting pony-show to get an
| investor onboard: we would have taken investment if it weren't
| so costly to do so.
|
| Money and ownership causes weird pressures.
| qingcharles wrote:
| If you can bootstrap, bootstrap. That's my advice.
|
| You might be able to move faster with VC money, depends on your
| product. But getting that VC money can break you. And now
| you're on the hook and you've lost full control.
| qudat wrote:
| > Then you look around and see "startup X gets to $1M ARR a month
| after launch" and shit like that and I'm feeling terrible about
| how we're barely growing.
|
| Comparison is the thief of joy. I fall into this trap almost
| weekly. Success stories are incredibly rare and we only see the
| splash, not the iceberg of failure just beneath the surface.
|
| I think about my current business constantly even though on paper
| we are making enough to keep this thing going forever but it
| never feels enough.
|
| I felt this post and appreciate the honesty.
| asdev wrote:
| they're also all mostly lying/fudging the numbers. you can't
| believe what you see online anymore
| StellarScience wrote:
| And similarly: slow growth is terrible
|
| Slow growth is awesome! Slow growth gives you time to address
| the challenges of growth, and think through sensible solutions.
|
| Rapid growth feels like you're constantly plugging holes in the
| dike or putting out fires.
|
| Like you I've had brief moments of jealously seeing a company
| that started after mine and grew faster. But when I think
| rationally, I just wish them well, and realize I'm happy with
| _any_ pace of growth that 's not negative.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| >low growth is awesome! Slow growth gives you time to address
| the challenges of growth, and think through sensible solution
|
| Well, this is somehow incompatible with VC-MBA-bobo
| architecture?
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think this is why I unconciously hold back from ever asking
| money for any of the stuff I build. Much more comfortable.
| danield9tqh wrote:
| I really liked this, thank you
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| > It's much more comfortable to be the person that "could be X"
| than to be the person that tries to actually do it.
|
| Brilliant insight.
|
| Reminds of me this, from Theodore Roosevelt's Citizenship in a
| Republic:
|
| > It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how
| the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have
| done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually
| in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
| who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,
| because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who
| does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great
| enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy
| cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high
| achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails
| while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those
| cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
|
| Good luck, and go get 'em.
| bruce511 wrote:
| I agree, and I'll supplement with this;
|
| >> But from now on, I'm either gonna be a successful founder,
| or I'm not. And if I'm not, I'll have to deal with having
| broken with the expectations that people had of me.
|
| Don't worry, they expected you to fail. They hoped you'd
| succeed, but expected failure. Statistically most businesses
| fail, and failure rates are faster when your customers are VCs
| not users.
|
| I say this as encouragement, not criticism. Accepting that
| failure is (by far) the most likely outcome is both realistic
| and freeing. The anxiety of failure is gone.
|
| Frankly, your lack of marketing experience would worry me.
| Without the ability to reach users (much less customers) how
| can you do anything but fail? New businesses are not bounded by
| technical ability (especially in the age of AI) they are
| bounded by Marketing.
| what wrote:
| Who needs marketing when the VC can get their entire
| portfolio to buy your product.
| ipaddr wrote:
| VCs are the best advertising.
| bruce511 wrote:
| Leaving aside for the moment yesterday advertising and
| marketing are very different functions (advertising is
| easy, marketing is hard);
|
| If your target customers are "VC funded companies" then
| sure, getting in bed with as many VCs as possible is
| certainly one marketing approach (and probably a good
| one.)
|
| Certainly you're are a lot of products targeted at
| businesses who are flush with cash and eager for kit like
| fancy chairs.
|
| The important part of marketing is knowing who your
| potential customers are, and the best way for them to get
| to know you.
| roenxi wrote:
| Yeah but the US presidents would say that - they typically have
| track records of wanton destruction that are rather easy to
| criticise. It is notable that Roosevelt was part of a
| generation of global political leadership that bungled their
| way into first an economic then a literal bloodbath, the
| magnitude of which the world has not seen before or since. And
| US policies had a major hand in setting up 50 years of
| communist ascendance across a big chunk of the globe. I think
| he might have nuked two cities on the way through too, don't
| recall if it was him [ _EDIT_ ].
|
| If those were events I was involved with, I too would be giving
| powerful speeches about the importance of disregarding critics.
| The decision makers only handled the situation well if you
| assume that the catastrophe of the early part of the century
| was a bit like weather, sort of coming form nowhere in a way
| no-one could foresee or really influence.
|
| [ _EDIT_ ] I checked, he set the program up but it was his
| successor that actually dropped the bombs. If Truman had any
| sense he'd also be talking about the importance of disregarding
| critics.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Are you thinking of FDR? Theodore Roosevelt was long before
| nukes.
| roenxi wrote:
| Oh yes, sorry. I was thinking FDR when I wrote the comment
| - but happily I can leave it unchanged since the same
| complaint applies to Theodore Roosevelt as well with only
| some minor tweaks. They weren't as bad as the Europeans,
| but the quality of the US leadership was not good given
| what they teed up in the early 20th century.
|
| It is similar to the Bush family, but from an era where the
| internet wasn't around to let people compare notes. These
| political dynasties deserve criticism and should listen to
| it.
| pjc50 wrote:
| A) wrong Roosevelt
|
| B) there's no way for the US to not get involved in WW2 other
| than pre emptive handover of the Philippines to Japan.
| roenxi wrote:
| There is a lovely synthesis of A and B though - looking at
| the Wikipedia page for the right Roosevelt, he was involved
| in the Philippine-American War where they occupied the
| Philippines in the first place (or pacified, if you prefer,
| I suppose they'd probably already occupied the place in
| advance of the war). So if you're complaining about the
| Japanese conquering the Philippines you'd have to agree
| that Teddy Roosevelt deserved some criticism for also doing
| exactly that?
|
| The criticism basically writes itself. These people are
| very easy to criticise, they were mostly horrible. Just
| saying, it is easy to see why there are speeches around
| about how the critics ought be discounted. The track record
| invites harsh criticism.
| mlrtime wrote:
| The thing with critics is that anyone can be one, it's
| easy, especially with hindsight.
|
| What is difficult is being in the position of ultimate
| responsibility over the lives of many people, making a
| decision and living with it. Everyone thinks they know
| what is best or what they would do, I don't think so.
|
| Criticism (IMO) should always have a response on what
| should have been done instead, given the information at
| the time. Otherwise it's just playing Monday morning
| quarterback.
| trwhite wrote:
| > It's much more comfortable to be the person that "could be X"
| than to be the person that tries to actually do it.
|
| It's much more impressive to say you have done something than
| to say you're going to do it.
|
| A friend of mine has all these failed hobbies he tells everyone
| he's going to do, then gives up on. I wait a few months before
| telling people I'm doing something so I'm fairly confident it's
| something I will carry on.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| > A friend of mine has all these failed hobbies he tells
| everyone he's going to do
|
| IME over years, when you're talking about doing something
| your actually doing it is thwarted. I've noticed that that
| both with myself and with others.
|
| Keeping mum and going about it privately, then sharing it
| when done, seems to have much higher success rates.
|
| I've tried to reason through it in many different ways:
| talking about it satisfies you and you don't seek
| satisfaction from the actual implementation of the idea;
| talking about it "dissipates the energy"; and a number of
| other attempts at explanation.
|
| But beyond explanations, the anecdata seems to suggest that
| doing much precede talking about. Even when you're developing
| something (say, software) in public, first you do then you
| talk about it in the commit message.
|
| This seems to parallel the old dictum that ideas are easy,
| while working to realize them is the actually hard part.
| Who'd have thought.
| dakom wrote:
| I agree wholeheartedly. It's like the energy and motivation
| has to go somewhere, and talking too much is a vacuum.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| > It's much more impressive to say you have done something
| than to say you're going to do it.
|
| From my experience, you have to do both otherwise someone
| else takes what you do, markets as his own and you get
| scraps. It keeps happening to me, since I don't generally
| like to talk about what I do. And I think fundamentally it's
| a big difference between European and American culture.
| jolmg wrote:
| Might be more of a difference between what to do in your
| working (employee) life vs in your private life. In your
| private life, you can't get scraps because it's generally
| work on things you own, like a business, personal fitness,
| skills, etc. In your employee life, you're generally
| working on things that you don't own for recognition to get
| a promotion or raise. There the recognition is the entire
| point and people may not look too deeply into who did what,
| so you may need to be more overt about things.
| away271828 wrote:
| I wrote a (shortish) book with someone once who was obviously
| much more attracted to the idea of being an author than
| actually writing a book.
| 6510 wrote:
| I notice that if you get to the point you could be doing
| something any extra thought is probably counter productive
| but to talk about it might even end it.
|
| The entrepreneurial spirit isn't visiting you to talk about
| things.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Many people like the idea of X much more than the reality of
| X.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >more impressive to say you have done something than to say
| you're going to do it.
|
| Even more impressive to do and not say.
|
| >It's much more comfortable
|
| It can be even more amazing what can be accomplished during a
| time when comfort is not being sought.
| toss1 wrote:
| This!
|
| That exact line in the OP's article reminded me of that exact
| quote from T.R. and it's great to see another mind had exactly
| the same thought to post it.
| tarsinge wrote:
| This kind of warrior ethos outside of fantasy books or games is
| a huge turn off to me, it feels so anachronistic. I don't
| understand why it seems so prevalent in the US, especially as a
| country built on Christianity that has Jesus coming as an
| harmless lamb to teach compassion, humility and love. Courage,
| devotion, perseverance, sure. Victory or defeat? No thanks.
| gnosis67 wrote:
| Your complaint is well warranted, yet know as one on the
| other inside, Americans are apathetic and dejected. It is the
| mob that professes these self delusions as their own. And
| Americans are not self aware enough to distinguish the mob
| heads from their own and in the heat of exchange.
|
| The individual American goes along with the strongest voice
| in their head. There have been a valiant few, this is a time
| of self satisfying rhetoric. Sweet lies over bitter truths,
| on all sides.
|
| Now, the seeds of hypocrisy long since sewn, blossom into a
| mass mind sickness of self identity we see today. On all
| sides. Every side, even those twelve sides deep you would not
| recognize.
|
| Power is everyone's burden, it may only be delegated
| irresponsibly for so long before it collapses upon itself.
| mionhe wrote:
| You're missing the part in Christianity where he comes again,
| this time as triumphant victor who overcame all things to
| save the human family.
| like_any_other wrote:
| > This kind of warrior ethos [..] feels so anachronistic.
|
| A succinct condemnation of our times.
| durandal1 wrote:
| Also a succinct condemnation of HN as a hub for strivers.
| rrvsh wrote:
| i used to shun this kind of rhetoric when i was younger,
| preferring to think of myself a scholar among the Simon the
| chipmunks of the world, but I've come to accept that humans
| are made to fight. i dont think its wrong to venerate the
| warrior - im the farthest thing from a US citizen or a
| Christian, but my culture still has their folk heroes. look
| up lieutenant adnan if you'd like a stirring of the spirit
| bicx wrote:
| Yeah, I'm in agreement here. I get how this mindset might
| be off-putting, but we're still in a phase of human
| development where if you don't fight, you're going to lose
| to people who will.
|
| Trump is an example of someone who wants to fight, and now
| all of us who just want to get along are now playing catch-
| up, trying to figure out how to respond.
| hattmall wrote:
| Sure those are the things Jesus advocated for in society, but
| it's not as if a warrior ethos isn't warranted for Jesus
| considering the attitude towards his message at the time.
| Especially when you gauge it in the light of what eventually
| happened to him. The ultimate message in Christianity is the
| necessity of perseverance in pursuit of goals. The world in
| general isn't immediately receptive to a message that
| priorities acceptance over lament.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| That was the part that stood out for me as well.
|
| I know people who have talked that talk, never dared walk it. I
| am happy with myself that I have walked that walk--many times.
| Most of the time they have not ended up how I had hoped they
| would in my imagination. Other times, they did. Regardless, in
| all cases, I am not left here now wondering _what would have
| happened if..._
|
| Getting a game I wrote published in 1989 or so was one that
| worked out. Hitchhiking from Alaska back to the Lower-48 when
| the salmon season closed was another.
|
| Quitting Apple to write games for the iPhone was a big fail.
| When I realized it though I applied and was hired back at
| Apple. Until that little experiment though I had been watching
| apps skyrocket to the top-10 while I unable to submit an app of
| my own (Apple policy, of course).
|
| I had an idea for a great fantasy novel in my head for years.
| Only when I finally forced myself to start to write it did I
| realize I really didn't have an idea for a great fantasy novel.
| I had _part_ of an idea for a great fantasy novel. And then
| there 's the middle of the story you have to write, has to be
| interesting...
|
| But as I say, in all cases at least I'm not stuck in Walter
| Mitty's [1] shoes for the rest of my life.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Mitty
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| It is always the "what if" when looking back at the
| opportunities that presented themselves in life that eat at
| you. Things that might have been were it not for the lack of
| courage to try.
|
| I rarely regret the things I did that didn't work out, it is
| always the things I could have done but didn't do. Reducing
| the number of compelling yet unexplored branches in life
| significantly increases life satisfaction.
| hahahahhaah wrote:
| Dont worry pal for the investors you are a bet. They have many
| bets and they expect most to lose and one to win big. It is wrong
| to think that not turning $1m into $100m or $1bn is letting
| someone down.
|
| Be the bet. Do your thing and you might be right. They dont need
| you to make a sale tomorrow.
| geooff_ wrote:
| Well written. One interesting pattern in founders I've been
| thinking about recently is how early you encounter major
| blockers, and how that shapes your self worth.
|
| Having a strong product and being unable to raise feels like
| shit, early users may validate you're solving a problem but it
| may not make sense to investors.
|
| Having an early raise is a very positive signal, I can only
| imagine you're perceived trajectory coming out of that. Being
| unable to settle on a problem also sucks in a different way.
|
| Regardless of what camp you're in I feel the take-away is you
| need to focus on reflecting inwards. Be better than you were
| yesterday, not better than someone's projections on LinkedIn.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| The best business plans:
|
| 1. do not require secrecy
|
| 2. do not require external funding to enter a profit mode
|
| 3. do not quire some fancy specialized team labor skills
|
| 4. do not operate like they have a $10B market cap with
| financial and legal teams
|
| 5. produce products that are unique, have actual utility, and
| have perceived scarcity in the market
|
| One often will keep more money with a smaller firm in a niche,
| than competing with irrational groups with practically
| unlimited hype investment capital. Most truly successful people
| I know do not hang out on social media goading competitors and
| cons. =3
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Some feedback from me (not a likely user though):
|
| - It was easier to find a link to where you worked at than your
| repo (https://github.com/skaldlabs/skald?tab=readme-ov-file), you
| should have linked it visibly
|
| - I had no idea what / why I should use it so I looked at the
| demo video and it didn't seem to solve any particular use case
| for any particular problem, it was more a ,,config'' video
| instead of a demo video
|
| - From reading the (quite interesting) article it seemed like you
| are focusing on pivoting instead of iteration speed. Have you
| tried for example to just query an LLM to build the whole project
| that you have done? How much time would be to vibe code it?
|
| I know that HN is mostly against vibe coding, but if the project
| could have been created in 1-3 days and you took 3 month, that's
| a bigger issue than growth itself. In that case the metric that
| should be looked at is iteration speed instead of just growth
| (both are super important though!)
| nickjantz wrote:
| > "- It was easier to find a link to where you worked at than
| your repo (https://github.com/skaldlabs/skald?tab=readme-ov-
| file), you should have linked it visibly"
|
| Genuinely curious, can I ask why this is relevant to point out?
| This seems like just a general blog post, about raising money
| for a startup and personal reflections on it. Why would a link
| to a github repo be an important part of that?
| xiphias2 wrote:
| It's just part of both getting feedback and general sales.
|
| For engineers it feels too pushy / not genuine, but after
| spending time / effort on a great non-generated interesting
| article, inserting a link for people who want to check it out
| isn't pushy.
| debo_ wrote:
| I used to have problems like this and then I almost died a couple
| of times. I no longer have problems like this.
| soorya3 wrote:
| > The thing is: it's a lot easier to live your life thinking you
| could have done X if you wanted to, than to "disappoint" these
| people that believed in you by trying and failing. You can always
| lean on this idea in your head of what you could have been, and
| how everyone believed in you so it must be true, but you just
| chose not to follow that path.
|
| sometimes the best decision is the one you don't take.
| rramadass wrote:
| _There is a space between man's imagination and man's attainment
| that may only be traversed by his longing._
|
| -- Kahlil Gibran
| resonious wrote:
| This may sound weird but this was a very interesting read for me
| as a father of 2 small kids.
|
| A somewhat common (yet often not followed (because it's hard))
| piece of parenting advice is to not praise kids too much.
| Especially character judgements like "you're so smart" or "you're
| so creative". Reason being it makes them do things that _seem_
| smart or _seem_ creative just to get the praise. Then it comes
| crashing down when they 're faced with a challenge that contests
| the idea that they're "a smart kid".
|
| It _kind of_ looks like this is happening to the author. He
| became a founder, and started doing things that _seem like what a
| founder would do_ , then got hit hard when he was unable to
| fulfill the "founder" role (i.e. didn't grow fast enough).
|
| I'm not totally sure what to conclude here. I guess humans are
| susceptible to this kind of thing regardless of age.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > It kind of looks like this is happening to the author. He
| became a founder, and started doing things that seem like what
| a founder would do, then got hit hard when he was unable to
| fulfill the "founder" role (i.e. didn't grow fast enough).
|
| This happens a lot in the startup world: It's really common for
| someone to be among the top in their classes from a young age,
| be praised by all their family members and friends, and be
| called the next Bill Gated / Jeff Bezos / Elon Musk (adjust for
| age) for the first quarter of their life.
|
| So they enter the startup world believing that they were
| destined for this. They may think success is inevitable, they
| just need to get that first investment round to hire a couple
| engineers and then start telling everyone what to do.
|
| I don't think this author is an extreme example of this because
| they're _actually_ talented and successful at many things.
| However I could see this mindset leading them down a path that
| seemed like the right thing to do but wasn't actually a good
| fit for their personal style. The article talks about how
| they're doing better now, but it's filled with so many
| admissions that they think a full-time job would have been a
| better path in general that it's hard to unsee it. I wish them
| the best and I appreciate the honesty, but I feel like I've
| seen this movie many times before in the local startup world.
| vladms wrote:
| > The article talks about how they're doing better now, but
| it's filled with so many admissions that they think a full-
| time job would have been a better path in general that it's
| hard to unsee it.
|
| My personal experiences taught me that things generally do no
| play out as one imagines neither for "startup" nor for "full-
| time job". There are advantages and disadvantages for each,
| best is to try (a bit) both and decide for yourself. Of
| course I get that for some this is not possible, just saying
| what I think it would be the ideal.
|
| I think some discontent with one's current situation is
| healthy - to allow for progress - but I always find strange
| when people strongly project that "something else would be
| better" without having experience with it.
| sibeliuss wrote:
| It's less about praising your children, vs being honest with
| them! Don't give them false praise, and they'll be fine.
| x_may wrote:
| I believe the what the parent comment was referring to is the
| advice not to praise character, but instead praise hard work.
|
| "You're so smart" leaves room for failure when they encounter
| something that challenges their image of being smart.
| Praising the amount of effort they put in is not something
| that is taken away or challenged regardless of the outcome.
| durandal1 wrote:
| One of my kids are particularly brilliant and what I found
| is that the combination works best, "you are smart
| therefore I have high expectations" AND "without doing the
| work being smart doesn't matter". Together this creates a
| self image of the capable doer.
| utopiah wrote:
| Genuine praise on the attempt, rather than the result.
|
| Even if it's a failure but a lot of effort and learning along
| the way, it is still a success.
| mcny wrote:
| I think time and again, the main thing people should realize is
| you should never, ever raise venture capital unless you really,
| really have to(tm).
|
| Or at least know that your interests as a founder and the
| interests of those who invest in your company will not always
| coincide. And they do this a lot more times every single day than
| you do.
| user3939382 wrote:
| If you can innovate do it and you'll be profitable. If you can't
| then hope you have good relationships and can peddle marketing
| nonsense with a smile. These VC guys are shoebutton Edisons
| looking for Teslas.
| DANmode wrote:
| Dude: we're provably (not probably) in a recession.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| It's just really, really hard to get someone to pay you money.
| This AI boom has made earning money optional for some companies,
| but for the long tail of AI-adjacent companies you need revenue.
| Convincing someone to pay you is just simply so so hard. No one
| really gets it until they have to actually make revenue. It's
| sooooo hardddd
| another_twist wrote:
| Its not. If you have a resume, send it out. A startup is a
| business and if it doesnt make money, fuck it and do something
| else. Sometimes you have to throw the baby out with the
| bathwater before that baby destroys you.
| saint-evan wrote:
| This is absurd! The author raised money without a concrete
| execution plan, treating capital as permission to "think," and
| then panicked when thinking alone didn't magically turn into
| value. The post implies there was no wedge, no market insight,
| not even a search strategy... just the weird hypothesis that
| people say 'I fit the founder profile, therefore I should found
| something' It frames the absence of structure as a psychological
| tragedy, but irl this was a self-inflicted governance failure.
| The author clearly had no personal theory of value creation
| before taking investor money, and the money simply magnified that
| undefinedness. Paying yourself to think is ridiculous unless
| you're running a consultancy otherwise it's just accountability
| theater... Cinema being what this post is!
| another_twist wrote:
| I dont want to dump on the founder here. I appreciate their
| guts for saying the uncomfy part out loud and being so honest,
| open and aware of their own thoughts. Major kudos in my book.
| But dont quit without a quit criteria - a problem, customer
| conversations, recurring problem insight. Fuck the VCs that say
| just do it, its advice for rich kids not people who worry about
| finances running out. Given that this author worked at Posthog,
| it probably means they lived in London and got paid a decent
| salary but not a good one. eg Posthog lists their comp at 120k
| pounds with equity (that thing doesnt have liquidity yet).
| Thats not a top of the line offer in London where Meta / Goog
| and others would beat it. Once you have say 100k pounds saved
| up and mortgage for the next 2 years, maybe then you can think
| of bootstrapping without an insight. Until then, Leetcode,
| promotions, better offers are your ticket out of a middle class
| life. VCs wont show up with more money if and when you're
| hungry.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| Starting with the desire to be a founder then searching for a
| problem is something I've only recently discovered is a common
| occurrence. And i find it a sort of odd reason to become a
| founder.
|
| Has it this always been common or if it's a characteristic of a
| vc-hype cycle?
|
| Why devote yourself so long to creating solutions for a problem
| of solving it isn't more gratifying than money?
|
| But after almost decade of working in GTM for B2B startups, I'm
| starting to realize I find it totally unfulfilling and having
| begun moving back into the arts world i came from. So maybe I'm
| just cut from a different mold. Not better, just different.
| yakkomajuri wrote:
| Hey, author here. I was working part-time for months, we had a
| live product with customers, a thesis, and an execution plan.
| This part was maybe lost in the post.
|
| We raised, continued down the same path, and only then realized
| it didn't make sense. I was being honest about my motivations
| in hindsight here, realizing after the fact that the product we
| had at the time wasn't the idea of my life and that I really
| wanted to go out on my own (and took the chance that appeared).
| ggm wrote:
| Never regretted not striking out on my own, but I suspect people
| who have the cojones to try, would utterly hate not having tried.
|
| It's not symmetric.
| adrianmsmith wrote:
| > As I dug deeper into these feelings, I realized I was feeling
| pressured. Except they're not saying this, I am.
|
| That's a great insight.
|
| Once you've realized that, I think the best thing to do is to
| talk to the person whose pressure you imagine. Then you can find
| out what they're really thinking. Perhaps they really are
| thinking that (in which case the pressure is real and you can act
| on it) or they aren't (hearing them say that will alleviate the
| pressure).
|
| Once when freelancing I asked a customer what they liked and
| disliked about my work. They had previously seemed happy with me,
| so I was pretty sure I know what they'd say. I believed I wrote
| good stable software. What they actually said was they were a
| small company, and they had had previous developers who, when
| there were server problems etc., just shrugged and said they
| didn't know how to fix it. They felt I wasn't like that, that I'd
| sit there and get it fixed, call up friends if necessary, etc. So
| yeah, they were happy, but not for the reason I'd imagined.
|
| So my learning was: So you always have to talk to people to find
| out what they think. You really can't guess.
| tucnak wrote:
| What did they say they disliked about your work?
| saxelsen wrote:
| This hit close to home..!
|
| I had a startup some years ago and took angel funding from
| family. When we were later running out of cash and had to raise
| professional money to stay alive, the pressure of the
| expectations I _thought_ my family had because I was on the verge
| of losing their money caused me debilitating panic attacks.
|
| I still feel the effects 6 years later, but have learned to cope
| whenever I feel the pressure begin to build. But man did it scar.
|
| OP if there is any advice I can give, it's that you should have a
| chat with your investor friends about and make sure you feel like
| you can always walk away.
| rishabhpoddar wrote:
| Im a former YC founder, I recommend to NOT raise external money
| from anyone, unless there is literally no other choice.
|
| Raising money has been marketed as success by VCs and they have
| done a great job of it. Remember, that in reality, raising money
| is sign that your business is not doing well.. not the other way
| around.
|
| Furthermore, a lot of people hope that raising money will help
| them get distribution and customers' trust. Thats NOT true. We
| raised a decent amount of money from YC and other VCs, and
| despite that, the thing that helped us most for distribution was
| content SEO and posting on reddit + no customer ever told us that
| they were using our product cause we raised $X from these VCs..
|
| People also expect that well known VCs will help you magically
| solve issues in your company. That's not true either.. VCs may
| seem very smart, but when it comes to the details of solving
| issues about your company, they literally can't help, cause they
| don't know as much as you do about your business.
|
| Another reason people want to raise money is cause they can't
| afford to quit their jobs and rely on their startups. In this
| case, well, do not quit your job.. work on your startup as side
| project until it's already generating 1.5-2x your annual salary,
| in a stable way. Remember this way, you dont have a deadline for
| your startup based on your runway, which is GREAT not only from
| your startup's survival point of view, but also from a mental
| health point of view.
|
| I would also like to talk about hiring. A lot of people just
| assume that raising money is needed cause that way they can hire
| people and grow faster. This is again, not true.. usually, hiring
| people means you are actually going to slow things down unless
| you know EXACTLY what you want to hire for, which is rare for a
| startup. Even if you find a great person for the job, they will
| take at least a few months to be full productive, and if your
| startup is not growing like crazy (which is true for most
| startups), the person will likely leave (cause they are good and
| will find a better company) = wasted time.
|
| I would like to say that money you raise for your company is NOT
| your personal money. You can't just spend it on buying stuff for
| yourself. In fact, even taking a decent salary from that money is
| looked down upon, unless your startup is doing really well
| already.
|
| Finally, VCs play a numbers game. They invest in 100s of
| companies hoping one of them will give out a massive return and
| cover the losses for everyone else + make a huge profit. You are,
| statistically, in the ones that won't make it, and you will be
| written off.. at this point, you will have an entity, owing a
| large part of your company who literally doesn't care about you.
|
| All of the being said, here are the reasons of why you SHOULD
| raise money: - Your business model only works at scale. - Your
| initial investment costs are very high: This is usually never
| true for software companies. - You are trying to impress your
| partner and / or friends in the short term and give them the
| illusion that you are successful already (lol).
| vladms wrote:
| > We raised a decent amount of money from YC and other VCs, and
| despite that, the thing that helped us most for distribution
|
| When one does not raise money you get questions like "how do we
| know you will be here in 6 months, how are you funded?". I
| doubt people will tell you directly "oh, we have seen you are
| funded we decided to give you a chance".
|
| > raising money is sign that your business is not doing well
|
| You can raise money to execute (a part of) a larger plans.
| There are various fields that have barriers to entry in terms
| of regulation and/or compliance. This can still be couple of
| FTE + costs before you can sign any deal.
|
| > work on your startup as side project until it's already
| generating 1.5-2x your annual salary, in a stable way
|
| This highly depends on the type of business. If you are for
| example in B2B you can't tell your customer "sorry I can meet
| only after 19:00 because of my other job" not to mention how
| you can be perceived.
|
| I would add to reasons why you should raise money: make sure
| the startup has external feedback that you listen to. All
| founders are quite stubborn - which is good and necessary - and
| is hard to convince them they need to adjust/pivot/rethink
| things. Investors can do that, but best is to have some
| previous experience with the field, otherwise they can be just
| noise.
| rishabhpoddar wrote:
| > When one does not raise money you get questions like "how
| do we know you will be here in 6 months, how are you
| funded?". I doubt people will tell you directly "oh, we have
| seen you are funded we decided to give you a chance".
|
| The thing is, we did raise money, and we still go the same
| questions, and we replied saying these are the VCs that have
| funded us, and we still lost those kinds of deals. The deals
| we won, were mainly cause we solved some burning pain point
| of that specific user, who really didn't care about our
| funding status.
|
| > You can raise money to execute (a part of) a larger plans.
| There are various fields that have barriers to entry in terms
| of regulation and/or compliance. This can still be couple of
| FTE + costs before you can sign any deal.
|
| Agreed. But for most startups, people raise cause they need
| more money to survive.
|
| > This highly depends on the type of business. If you are for
| example in B2B you can't tell your customer "sorry I can meet
| only after 19:00 because of my other job" not to mention how
| you can be perceived.
|
| Agreed. It's not ideal, however if you are solving a big
| enough pain point for the user, I'm willing to bet they won't
| mind it.
|
| > make sure the startup has external feedback that you listen
| to. All founders are quite stubborn - which is good and
| necessary - and is hard to convince them they need to
| adjust/pivot/rethink things. Investors can do that, but best
| is to have some previous experience with the field, otherwise
| they can be just noise.
|
| Yup, I agree here as well. But, the best external feedback is
| not from your investors, but from your (potential)
| customers!!
| QuiCasseRien wrote:
| > It's much more comfortable to be the person that "could be X"
| than to be the person that tries to actually do it
|
| I totally agree with that statement and it mostly explains why so
| many people does not go down a rabbit hole.
| Havoc wrote:
| That sort of jump always looks both incredibly brave and foolish
| to me. I guess it's necessary for startups though.
|
| I'd think more would do a ramen bootstrap to test waters on both
| product fit and potential for monetization though
| stephenlf wrote:
| The author felt pressure to build an explosive startup with tons
| of early funding. For those feeling similar pressure, look into
| the concept of "slow burn startups." These are startups that
| stick around and make long-term impact.
| olucas wrote:
| That was such a good read. Thank you!
| rrvsh wrote:
| what a great article. I've started a daily blog this year a la
| nik.art, but its really easy to write about surface level stuff
| like what my projects are or how i enjoyed a piece of media.
| today, i skipped the blog post, telling myself it was just a rest
| day because sundays, but in reality i just went through some
| upsetting shit and didnt really want to write what was on my
| mind. this post really made me realize that's kind of the point
| of writing though. thanks for sharing :)
| alexissantos wrote:
| Re: "It's much more comfortable to be the person that 'could be
| X' than to be the person that tries to actually do it."
|
| I build entertainment experiences (escape rooms, live game shows,
| etc.), and I find that this also applies to individual
| projects/products. In the early planning stages we outline the
| ideal contours of a project, but as we build and run into
| constraints we start to see the gap between our vision and
| execution. And, usually, it's fine. We're the only ones who can
| see that gap because we're the only ones who knew the original
| plan. Guests only see what exists. We see what _almost_ existed,
| what was left on the cutting room floor.
|
| The planning stage is the most comfortable because we don't yet
| have to reckon with how we have fallen short of our plan. Now,
| during every planning phase, there's a visceral acknowledgment
| that there _will_ be a gap between vision and execution, but we
| make choices that attempt to make those gaps smaller or, at
| least, acceptable.
| arikrahman wrote:
| You lost me at girlfriend, pal. But seriously, it's the living
| dichotomy between master and slave morality. There is a different
| system to live by when you're in the higher echelons of
| performance.
| sweetrabh wrote:
| thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm about to go down this
| journey and this is extremely useful to keep in mind.
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