Boy is this thread boring. I was about to write that it's like a thread about politics or religion: huge angry comments that teach one nothing. Then I realized why. The whole question of startups vs "lifestyle businesses," while a neutral topic for most people, is for many of the users of this site a matter of identity (http://paulgraham.com/identity.html).
I find your comment even more obnoxious that what al3x wrote, just for its sheer disingenuity.
This isn't a neutral topic for you either, not in the slightest, but declaring the discussion to be as useless as /r/atheism is simply petulant.
The top level of comments in this thread (barring yours) is full of some of the most helpful and insightful comments I've ever seen on HN. A respected member of the community flames out and people are earnestly helping him figure out where the disconnect was. Given that he chopped down his blog post in response, it looks like al3x really appreciated them and is understanding that the flaminess of his argument wasn't what people were really upset about.
Actually it is a neutral topic for me. I know there have to be both types of companies, and no one is more aware than I am that startups aren't for everyone, because every 6 months I have to pick, from a huge pool, the people I think are suited for it, and it's painful for all involved when I pick wrong.
If you're going to be so nasty, you should be sure first you're right. Though frankly, if you're right, you don't need to be nasty.
You just reframed the debate in the light most favorable to your argument. The issue isn't whether there should be lifestyle companies or not. The issue is, for a hacker equally capable of and equally armed by circumstances to starting either a "lifestyle" business or a shoot-the-moon startup, is there a "right" choice?
Ironically, the part of us that insists so strenuously on its uniqueness is a rather boring, standard-issue part, kind of like our livers if the liver were concerned about itself. I think that's why these discussions are so predictable: they're all the same because our egos are all the same. Not on the surface, of course -- we put care into how we clothe them -- but structually and behaviorally.
This ought to lead to a tremendous efficiency in life: the minute you detect an ego reaction you can know what you're going to get and react accordingly, i.e. bail. Unfortunately the seduction of getting embroiled in these useless things is hard to resist.
In buddhism, when speaking about ego and being egoless this is partly what they are talking about.
Regarding the scientist example, I think the generalization is that for good identities we need to search for meta-identities. A scientist is one. Another might be a meta-identity of being someone who can easily change point of views or identities.
I was going to make this a blog post, but to honor the hacker news way I'm posting it here.
I don't believe the micro-business discussion is just about identity. I think the micro-business approach is the future of the start-up world.
Micro business will force the inevitable disintermediation between entrepreneurs, VC's/Incubators, and starting businesses.
My feeling is that 5 years from now micro-business start-ups will be the primary and dominant way that entrepreneurs start business life - without any thought (or requirement) of seed funding or VC's.
VCs/Incubators will have the same relationship to the start-up world - that record labels now have with the music industry.
Sure, they play their part, but the relationship is very different.
Disintermediation is a consistent pattern that the internet brings to us. There are way more entrepreneurs than there are positions at YC or funds available from VC's.
Like water finding cracks to flow through, entrepreneurs will flow around today's centralized funding paradigm and get started on their own. In essence the internet has made it possible to commoditize startups. The peer relationships that YC & the like bring will become less and less important as groups break away and form their own smaller microcosm venture networks.
It's a pattern that's been repeated again and again. Client server moves to peer-peer. It's happened in the music industry. It's happened in the newspaper industry.
It's not about identity, it's about choice. Alex has made his choice, now he's trying to force it on others as if it is in fact gospel.
I don't care what people call me. I don't care personally that Alex slammed my business. I know what I'm doing is right for me, because I get to reap the rewards every day.
But what I do care about is that this further stifles the discussion of choice. There is so little presented about bootstrapping. There are so few role models. It's an information wasteland, like I wrote in "Drawing Back the Curtain":
Most people don't realize that "tech business" and "funded startup" aren't the same thing. Most people truly believe that they couldn't start a company on the side. They may believe that they are a caged lion because they have a job (as per your metaphor [1]), but that there is nothing for them between being a caged lion forever and having to have some kind of earth-shattering idea that will get funded by somebody so they can develop it full time just to see where it goes.
THAT is what Justin Vincent is railing against: the lack of choice, the "soaking in it" issue, the conflation of "tech business" and "funded startup". The lack of apparent choice. That's what I write against, too.
Justin never wrote about "This is what you should do," he said "This is what you see everywhere but look, there's a totally different way." Alex, on the other hand, slammed my work as an individual. And told us all that merely seeking happiness is not enough for the world, because he's a secular humanist.
Tack-y. Chilling effect. Just like labeling somebody else's business a "lifestyle business" just because it is bootstrapped.
That is the core problem: the attempt to discredit anyone who does things differently. The attempt to stomp out anyone trying to pull the "norm" over from one extreme. Labeling -- such as "oh, that's just a lifestyle business" -- is a way of trying to shut down the discussion.
And witnessing THAT behavior is why everyone is so engaged.
[1] By the way, if we're talking about matters of identity... caged lion? Hackers are like painters? If those aren't appeals to identity, I don't know what is.
