Autistic in a startup?

29 points by HedgeMage 8 years ago | 9 comments

I'm about to go pick up my teenage son from school and hope he had an okay day. I'm in an angry mood, though.

Lucas starts high school next year, and his middle school (what some would call "junior high") is trying very hard to convince me and him that autistic people can't succeed in startups. The lengths they are going to to push him away from the local entrepreneurship high school just...stagger me.

I'm fighting them. He's a bright kid, and his social difficulties are nearly invisible when attending or teaching at a tech con, or in other environments less adversarial than his current school situation. However, I'm worried about his morale because so many adults in his life seem to truly believe that I'm delusional and autistic people shouldn't reach for this sort of life. It makes me sad.

I have been around startups a long time, and met many cool autistic adults. If you are one or know one, please drop a comment that I can show my son about something cool you or they have done.

Or, check out his beekeeping blog at https://bloomingtonbees.com -- it's not currently accepting comments, but he's been known to check his traffic. ;) Lucas is currently working on a beekeeping start-up, with an eye to other agricultural projects in the future.

cvaidya1986 8 years ago |

Hello. Startups are counterintuitive. Success depends on being unpopular but right. The outgoing types conform. The introverts tend to think from first principles and are less prone to herd mentality. Ipso facto, your son has a higher chance of success than many of the ‘popular’ folk. Because he will be unpopular but right more often than them. The beekeeping blog is great ! Please convey my best wishes and the reasoning why he will be successful if possible. Also please let him read Zero to One.

matt_the_bass 8 years ago | |

Agreed. Though he may need a partner in one of those “popular” people to handle the sales and networking side of things.

hierophantos 8 years ago |

Recently someone close to me, upon reflecting on childhood influences and overcoming those strong initial biases made during the impressionable years, said: "It only takes one adult to truly care about your long-term trajectory."

That you are posting this, shows that he's got someone in his corner.

Bees are awesome, by the way. I'd invest. :)

potta_coffee 8 years ago |

On the spectrum here. People like us seem to be able to obsessively focus on certain kinds of problems, both to our detriment and our great success. I apologize for generalizing here. Anyone who tries to tell your son to set his sights lower than anything he wants to achieve is an asshole and they should be shown the door.

I'm busy finding my own success right now and I've finally found a niche where I fit. Previously I've been told that I was stupid, I would never be an engineer, I would never succeed, etc. My current team loves my work. Doors are opening for me. It's all hard work.

ecesena 8 years ago |

Thank you for sharing this story, I was mostly unaware and the comments here contain a lot of insights.

If I understand this correctly, he'd be "indistinguishable" in a remote startup. There are great examples of very successful ones, and I'm sure we'll see an increased number of them. As for my personal experience, ALL projects start remote.

For example, in my last project (MemPa), we're a team of 6 distributed between US, Italy, France & Germany, and we did a single 30min call (where I was mostly talking) in the 2-3mo since we started the project.

I don't see in-person communication as a limit factor for launching something new.

As for the blog, I have a couple of comments to boost the traffic (if you can please forward).

1. Add an image to every post. This increases the likelihood that someone will share your post.

2. Use titles rich of keywords (think to what people may search on Google to find your post). This way your posts are not buried in your blog, but can be found later on, months and years.

3. Why ghost and not medium? I think you can have much more engagement on medium, but maybe I'm wrong.

4. Bind yourself to a social. If you like to take pictures, use Instagram. If you don't, use Pinterest. Talking about the second one which I know better, create boards with things that inspire you, and intermix your posts (that now have a beautiful cover image). This way people looking at your inspirations will also land to your blog.

muzani 8 years ago |

I have mild Asperger's. Startups are the perfect career.

Charisma on a techie is practically a 'dump stat'. The necessary charisma (sales, pitching, teamwork) can be practiced easily.

Autistic people also have little trouble with written communication. In fact, many autistic people are even better at written communication.

The main issue is in face to face communication, where they tend to misinterpret a lot of things. This works well where the majority of communication happens on Slack or project management tools. A lot of teams also implement one on one meetings. Presentation skills matter less. As well as the ability to speak up in a meeting or make jokes face to face.

One option is to find a charismatic partner. But personally, I found that I was better at articulating my own ideas and handling things like negotiations than my more charismatic partners.

Be careful with negotiations though. People can be dicks and autistic people tend to lash out when treated unfairly in a negotiation. It can be trained so that they stay calm, but you have to be aware of the tendency.

cpt1138 8 years ago |

So many tech people are "on the spectrum" its almost a given. School may be your son's most difficult trial given the propensity to shoo away anyone not 100% school proof to the building on the other side of the field.

jandrusk 8 years ago |

Sadly as much awareness as there is around autism, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to remove peoples stereotypes by thinking atypical's can only function in the bubble they have imagined. Just from his blog posts, he seems to communicate his thoughts very well.

We have a son on the spectrum, so we can identify with what your going through. Keep up the good fight.

LearnerHerzog 8 years ago |

This upset me to hear. This would cause an uproar in a lot of places. I'm not autistic but I know of many who are the best coders in their workplaces and whose levels of focus and attention are beyond compare. Read through YCombinator's articles regarding successful startups and, coupled with goal-oriented passion/desire, the ability to work hard and long hours with great focus is an ideal characteristic of a successful team.

Here is howI interpret someone saying "Autistic people can't succeed in startups": (A) What is being said: A completely invalid statement, easily disprovable with plenty of examples, that generalizes all autistic people without regard to their interests and/or severity of the condition. (B) Who is saying it: Middle school staff who have zero established career-affiliation to the startup world, and no reason to be worthy of pushing children away from their attainable dreams/goals. It's easy to assume the staff responsible for this statement would likely fail a basic test on modern entrepreneurship. Conclusion: The statement should be completely ignored.

An example of advice worth taking: An article by Peter Thiel (Paypal co-founder) called: Asperger’s can be a big advantage in Silicon Valley http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-aspergers-is-an-a...

His blog is impressive for his age, and he clearly found and is pursuing a passion at a much younger age than most people; but whether or not he has autism, it's important he learns and understands how to handle certain inevitable social situations that may aim to discourage him from achieving his goal. He will surely come across a number of haters along the way and he needs to be able to distinguish between constructive criticism and personal attack. You should tell him how this is a great example of the kind of negative influence he needs to ignore if he wants to be an entrepreneur. Every successful CEO had been put down by non-believers at some point before they hit big. A good example: Walt Disney was fired from his first job as a newspaper cartoonist because he apparently "lacked imagination".

Read this article, especially #2 and #7: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-radin/ideas-are-the-easy-...