Kind reminder that starting a software business still requires you to, you know, live and stuff :)
Even if you can build it all by yourself, for most people runway is limited by savings. And that means that with a few exceptions, it's hard to stretch beyond a couple of months (or maybe one-two years) before you need to think about shutting down.
If you can get to profit before that, awesome, your business might be a good idea. (You'll still have depleted a good chunk of your savings, and it's not like the world comes with profit guarantees)
Investment buys runway, opex, and scale. Some businesses need that, some don't. Software work reduces the opex load (for many attempts), but scale and runway might still be necessary.
You can often found it as you go from a primary job and or a spouse's job. I have a friend who drops about 100K into his startup a year hoping for a big exit. Pretty much all startups or small businesses involve risk. Your other putting in time or money or both. The Only Exception is if you find deep pocket feces that are willing to pay you a good salary to work on your own project, which is especially rare
Sure, but that's still usually limited runway compared to getting funding. Yes, there are cases of spouses supporting a decade of work to get something off the ground. Yes, some people make enough to afford dumping it all into a startup (and a good chunk into a lawyer making sure they don't violate constraints from the existing job). But all these are several std.devs outside the normal "start a business" crowd.
Either way, the risk you can take without VC is limited by your wealth. Large bets without VC require independent wealth. We can quibble about what amount constitutes "independent wealth", but the fact doesn't change - VC allows you to dream bigger. (And I say that as a fierce critic of VC culture, but that is the upside of it)
That depends on what you mean by "having it to drop" . That's less than a median income in San Francisco. If you put 100% of your income into a startup, are you out of touch or do you just have skin in the game?
I don't think it's particularly in touch to dismiss someone who works 50 hours a week to make an income and then Works another 50 hours a week on a startup that spends that income
> That's less than a median income in San Francisco. If you put 100% of your income into a startup, are you out of touch or do you just have skin in the game?
If your trust fund pays for rent and living expenses in San Francisco, and you don't even think of it as abnormal that your ENTIRE INCOME can be allocated to business bets, then yes -- you are indeed wildly out of touch.
If you put 100% of income—remaining after paying life costs (how much is that? I hope you do not rent!)—into work, it means you: do not travel, do not go to any events that cost money, do not dine out much, do not have any other hobbies that cost money (sports? music? photography? LEGO? DIY?), do not date, do not need to support a family, do not have emergencies for which you pay out of pocket, etc.
Are there people who just do not need any of those things? Maybe, but I would question it. (Too often what you think you need could be different from what you actually need.) Personally, even as someone who enjoys software engineering and would do it as a hobby, I think I would be quite miserable.
Here is what I think is reasonable: Someone would have an idea that is attractive for YC et al., raise money, and be able to comfortably afford all those things while working on a company. That is, I think, the promise of the leading quote in TFA. Unfortunately, the quote is phrased as if they are out there to help people start companies, while in reality it is about starting businesses with specific potential for explosive growth that are attractive to VC.
I agree that there is a market for both, your do or die founder and your comfort focused founder with a good idea. the markets are just different and unequal.
They are out there to help people start companies, just not all people and ideas in equal measure.
> Are there people who just do not need any of those things?
Yes. That would have described me very well at one point in my life. Coincidentally, it was at the time I was running my first (unsuccessful) business.
Did you at least still participated in social media and such, or it was literally just work?
If it was just work, do you now think it was a good idea to ignore everything in life except work?
I.e., you thought you didn’t need those things and you actually didn’t need those things, vs. you needed them but you thought you didn’t and it caught up with you eventually.
Video Games industry survivor here, chuckling at the low number ;)
Yes, people do. It carries potentially huge personal costs, but if people are passionate enough, they absolutely will risk that. (Mind, I'm not saying this is a good idea, at all, but merely that it happens)
At least in the cases I did, it was usually a 9 month gruelling sprint at the end of a ~2.5-3.5 year project. Followed by people lollygagging about for ~3 months before they could do any reasonable work again. We sure got a lot of Age of Empires in during that time, though ;)
Which is maybe acceptable if it is your main job, but a bigger problem if you burn out from a side project and then can’t do much on your day job for some mysterious (to management) reason…
I agree it's not very sustainable, at least for your typical person in Western Society, but it's not unheard of either.
I've worked hundred hour weeks and also supervised crews of Hispanic Americans that will work 100 hour weeks.
On the other end of the spectrum, I've known m&a lawyers that do the same to close deals at the end of the fiscal year.
100 hour week is roughly 14 hour days with no weekend break. 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. is pretty common for agricultural work during harvest season for big cash crops. You start while it's dark and you end while it's dark.
It is not sustained/sustainable. I worked 100 hour weeks too, but then it took like a month to recover and during that time I could not properly work even 50 hours on my main job.
Agriculture is historically seasonal: you work a lot during some times, but the rest of the time you do completely nothing on the agriculture front. Not a luxury at most modern workplaces.
I do not know what you mean. What I described with regards to agriculture is how it worked historically with communities growing stuff for themselves or to sell at a local market. I encountered leftovers of that personally growing up. People could work hard in planting/harvest times during summer and in winter do mostly nothing except maintenance and such. I am not talking about commercial industries which may well be working people to the bone unsustainably (and illegally, if it was a developed country) with 12+ hour shifts. Barely a worthy example.
It's not all rare for certain workers to to spend 14+ hour days, 7 days a week, for multiple weeks straight, without any breaks. And they do this every year, year after year. And they can still live to their 80s.
The claim that a long period of rest is always necessary in-between 100 hour work weeks is simply not true.
I've met at least 1 person capable of doing 'creative innovative mental work' on a similar basis. Making categorical claims over billions of adults is simply incorrect.
Even if you can build it all by yourself, for most people runway is limited by savings. And that means that with a few exceptions, it's hard to stretch beyond a couple of months (or maybe one-two years) before you need to think about shutting down.
If you can get to profit before that, awesome, your business might be a good idea. (You'll still have depleted a good chunk of your savings, and it's not like the world comes with profit guarantees)
Investment buys runway, opex, and scale. Some businesses need that, some don't. Software work reduces the opex load (for many attempts), but scale and runway might still be necessary.