You’re on a website which is run by an arm of a prominent venture capital firm.

What did you expect? Us all talking about the successful McDonald’s franchisee in Wichita, Kansas?

You’re consuming news from a portion of the overall economy where there are high stakes, big bets and a lot of money involved. Outsized, massive multi-billion dollar outcomes are the name of the entire game.

That’s why you get that feeling.

Because in the current market you can get yourself a better lifestyle burning through VC cash than by trying to get that cash from the paying customers.

I highly recommend reading https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-letter-i-... It describes two cases, where you need to grow fast and where you don't.

To me it just feels as though the "get rich or die trying" mentality is something more alluring to people, whereas success stories from slow, steady growth makes more sense but is less hyped.

There’s a lot more of the bootstrap stuff on Indie Hackers. Sounds like you’d enjoy their podcast too. indiehackers.com

On this site, "startup" is short for "high-growth startup". Of course you can open a neighbourhood restaurant and it will be a startup, just not the kind people like to talk about here.

On HN "startup" means the kind of business whose ambition is to be a household name, used by millions of people if it's in the consumer space, or all the major customers if it's in B2B.

That kind of thing tends to require a business that grows a lot while generally not making free cash, which is why it needs outside investors. Those investors see a lot of these firms and this is one take on the accumulated learnings.

I agree with you and see your point, but many businesses (especially B2C and high-tech) can't get to profitability without millions in venture capital.

Venture capital is high-risk and high-reward, and investors won't gamble millions without a chance for a massive return.

Massive returns usually happen at large scale.

If you want more companies like yours and fewer like, say, Twitter, then venture capital would need to be a charity.

I'd argue that a lot of people are just following the tune painted in the media and culture as a whole without thinking through whether or not that's what they want.

It's a real shame that building a company has become about racing to the cash (with very little conscious reasoning as to why) and not about building meaningful products, services, and teams that will be around for the long-term.

As a guy running a "tiny" company that just did a little over 100K in revenue its first year, I couldn't be happier. There's only three of us (two of which are contractors) and the current goal is to intentionally limit our team size to no more than 20 over the next few years.

Obviously there are multiple schools of thought. There are companies/people who don't go for funding and sustain on revenue from customers. Basecamp is a great example. They never used the funding they got from Jeff Bezos, instead putting all the money in a hedge fund. David Heinemeier Hansson, a partner at Basecamp talked about why they made this decision in a Tim Ferris podcast episode. He thinks that a company should be built for the long run instead of making a spectacular exit. These are the companies you usually don't hear about in the news. It's not to say that these companies don't grow but do so gradually, at their own pace. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS.

There also companies/people who think they need an exit strategy, rapidly iterate and grow, get multiple rounds of funding from VCs or angels, then sell it to one of the bigger tech companies. There are so many examples of these types of companies. You only need to visit Techcrunch or one of many tech news sites.

There are other types too. The company I work at, we do put in great work, have steady growth. We did get funding from VCs but working towards self-sufficiency. Funding was necessary to keep the company alive, while delivering great value to our customers. In the end it comes down to what kind of a culture you want to set for the company and what you think will be good for the company and the employees.

>I work in a company that has 5-10 employees, nobody is working their ass off and there’s steady income and gradual growth. Our CEO is not a millionaire, but he enjoys his work and the company he works for. There is no plans for fast growth or VC funding.

Contrary to many responses, the drive for growth is a consequence of human psychology and hence how things evolve in business. Humans are fundamentally dissatisfied creatures, and this translates into ever-increasing hunger for profit in businesses.

As a business owner, you cannot decide in isolation that you want to not grow because that decision is impacted by your competitors and customers. If your competitors decide to grow really big, your small business will get threatened. This is exactly what's happening with Amazon. A mom-and-pop shop may be happy not growing, but it's at the risk of not existing at all.

Earlier I had similar thoughts of "why grow", but now I understand better. I wrote about this in a blog post: https://growth.wingify.com/startup-complacency-the-flip-side...

It depends on the product and business model. Some kinds of companies can scale organically. Some need lots of initial investment. If one needs lots of initial investment, the investors are going to expect a large return.

I have successfully run a consultancy for fourteen years. This is very bootstrappable, but does not scale well. Conversely, one cannot make the next Tesla using one's own capital.

I took a social entrepreneurship course where the professor insisted that entrepreneurs had to think big and scale.

I thought, “The dry cleaner down the street he a competitor advantage by memorizing the face and account number of every customer. Even if they don’t scale beyond one shop, they’re an entrepreneur”

Single proprietor businesses generally don’t hire PR firms to hype themselves up. That’s why it’s not in the press.

There are infinitely more companies taking the slow and steady route versus the "Startup -> IPO/Buyout" strategy.

Don't let the hype/marketing make you think otherwise.

I havent read all responses above, so excuse me if this is repeated information.

To answer your question, you have to understand how VCs operate. How they raise money from other institutional investors, rich folks etc and how they need to return that money in a finite time (4-5 years) Everything comes down to money for that reason.

Most startups are vision driven. The more impact you make the faster the more successful the company is. In most cases, impact is catalyzed by big VC funding or getting a lot of employees.

You might like the rather humble attitude of Basecamp: https://m.signalvnoise.com/enough-1d48019c7335

(I'm not affiliated with them in any way, just a fan of the product and someone who sympathizes and agrees with their views.)

>> Can anyone explain to me where does this obsession with VC funding and huge growth come from? I feel like if you grow your company by more then 50% YOY you will end up with a totally different company culture, and you might end up hating your own company.

Startups need an exit strategy.

Employees want to work 5-10 years max and end up with millions to retire peacefully while working in an intense environment which serves as the story of their accomplishment for the lifetime.

Then they plan to follow their other life goals like going on a world tour with the family or watch their kids growing up or creating their own small lifestyle business. It can be anything.

The key realization is that most employees do not want to work for you just because they have found themselves in such place.

When I was new in the industry, I put a lot of blood/sweat into building a company. Today, I can't force myself to put the same amount of efforts even if I want to.

The idea is to raise money fast, hire experienced people for ancillary services and develop the application in a way so that it is able to hold up till IPO. Defer all costs (application maintenance, vendor lockins, IP infringement risks) for post IPO. Create the Hype around the product which gets you eyeballs, subscriptions, MAU and other metrics which translates into the valuation. Once you've caught market attention, the solution can always get more love post IPO.

The market pressure to produce returns post IPO results in the broad application of the company's IP, resources, and talent. This might spin up new industries.

Once the employees have cashed their equity, it's up to them to stay (if they are enjoying the position) or leave (if they've other life goals).

A lifestyle business, won't be able to achieve this for each of their employees. Even very few startups achieve this for most of their employees.

This is mainly due to the demographic of HN. Lot's of young people here with a lot of energy and little life experience.

You definitely should read the whole thing with more attention to this aspect - getting productive hours out of employees is an extremely difficult task, but it does pay off big time. This can be achieved with the "fun" environment at work, with meals at the office, with very clear goals and alignment on those goals, with a bigger ambition in mind, with creative compensation schemes, flexible hours, remote work schemes, and with a lot of other things. That's why there are "managers" (not necessarily) CEOs who can get this productivity out of people, and those who cannot.

Sir did u have tldr for this?

You don’t have to eat it.

They serve dinner every day where I work. I simply go home earlier than that. Nothing happens. It’s quite simple really.

On days where I happen to need to stay late, it’s a really nice convenience. For people who go to the gym after work and come back to eat, they save money by grabbing a quick dinner meal at work.

Thank you, works as .epub as well: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZJZbv4J6FZ8Dnb0JuMhJxTnw...

Download as html: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZJZbv4J6FZ8Dnb0JuMhJxTnw...

Thank you! Original link was not working for me on iOS.

A crude look at Crunchbase apparently indicates that 'one founder is best' and 'four founders is worst'. [1] Though it's not exactly a scientific assessment, the numbers do paint a rough picture.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/26/co-founders-optional/

All the millionaires and billionaires I know in real life are solo founders.

I am a solo founder and I have been a non-solo founder in the past and being a solo-founder is 100x better. I think it depends on the type of person you are and what is important to you.

The biggest advantage of a co-founder IME is that you balance each other's waves. When one of you has a down week, the other can have an up week. If you're a solo founder and you have a down week, the whole company has a down week. This balance keeps progress consistent.

Try this one https://www.dropbox.com/s/8gnq2biztsl1iw4/Founder%20to%20CEO...

Here’s a link to a pdf I just made from the browser (so no table of contents in the sidebar or other fanciness):

https://www.filedropper.com/foundertoceomattsbookforstartups...

PS: the link doesn’t work without cookies or in anon mode.

You should be able to print it as a PDF via Chrome.

In my batch, there were definitely a bunch of solo founders. However, they (almost) all had something special about them: a strong existing team, a strong background, or a strong previous startup success.

IMO the bar should be much higher for solo founders. If you have 2 people, then it's twice as many resources to check all the various boxes you need (sales, design, technical, etc) - otherwise the solo person has to credibly be an amazing all-rounder (which is rare).

That's the core dynamic IMO... then add on the emotional burden part to that and it makes even more sense.

But then again a bad cofounder fit could actually lead to MORE emotional burden too... so obviously it all comes down to specifics.

Very, very few solo founders get into YC. I heard somewhere each batch of companies has about 2 solo founder companies total.

Wow, that sound super useful. Now I just need to write a book.

There is also https://leanpub.com/ which I think is a bit more established.

> In addition, if people are working less than 8-10 productive hours per day, then they are clearly not being as productive as they could be.

Yep, very insightful. I hope I never work for this guy

Completely disagree, that was a very awkward sentence, and read better as 'their' or even 'the' in that particular case.

'her company' for the abstract founder's business is just as wrong as 'his'.

"They" would be the proper term.

This is a funny tactic because it should not work with a thoughtful negotiator.

"If we were to make the offer" is de-facto an offer, it's just not official, and though there might be a legal difference between an 'if we made it' and 'actual offer' ... for all intents and purposes, it's the same. It's the start of the negotiation.

A half-smart negotiator would simply say: "Yes, if you included moving expenses" or whatever they would say otherwise.

THey mention a more nuanced metric further down --- do you still feel it's a poor metric?

Recommended: "Before The Startup" by Paul Graham - http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html

As a software development manager, I had to learn to go home early. I'm the type that enjoys work. I would work late till 8-9pm. My team would feel guilty and stay till 7-7:30pm. When I noticed this, I started leaving early 5-6. I would get in my car making a phone call and in 5 minutes, I would see everyone leaving. All I ask for everyone is 8 STRONG hrs everyday.

American work culture, always trying to please the boss.

The problem here is assuming only hours in deep mode are “productive hours.”

If you’re an engineer not all of your productive hours are writing code.

Right before that happens, eat a good meal then meditate or take a nap.

You'd be surprised how much more you can squeeze out your day.

As a founder you would probably spend more time on calls and other administrative tasks that don’t require much brain energy. That’s how you end up doing long hours.

How do you track it?

It's almost impossible to be productive 100% of the time. Even with just 2h for lunch and all other crap, to get 9h of productive time you're taking about entering at 9AM and leaving at 8PM. No, thanks.

I believe requiring 10 hour work days are 1. unnecessary and 2. immoral.

10 hour work days IS outrageous. Maybe it's common in this industry, but that doesn't make it any less wrong.

And considering that most tech jobs are exempt, this is just a way of getting you to work more hours for the same amount of pay.

During the last century, we all agreed that a 40 hour work week was the standard. Let's keep it that way. I don't want founders and VC creeps prying the overton window in their favor.

The truth is almost nobody even works 8 hour days.

More than half the time is spent BSing, coffee breaks, lunch, browsing the internet.

Our culture equates presence with productivity.

I think it really depends what 'working' means. If it means to pick up the phone when it rings, a lot of founders have no problem working 23 hours per day. If it means doing high concentration, high focus work then some founders don't even find the focus to do it 2 hours every day.

I think the main problem is that founders often don't have clear rules when they are 'working'. Especially, it is very hard to quantify the 'readiness' aspect of their work.

Nevertheless, in my opinion there is nothing wrong in trying to achieve the 8 hours per day (mixed focus work) while trying to explicitly define non-working hours to get the required rest.

Once again this reminds me how Basecamp was build in 10 hours a week.

https://twitter.com/dhh/status/870596974428508160

Would you rather have a 1% chance of $100M/year or a 99% chance of $200k/year?

If all one thinks about is the math, they'd take the chance at 100M, because it is a higher number when multipled by the probability. But you can't pay a mortgage with a probability, and some folks want a mortgage (or other lifestyle features).

Join the club!

I like the egalitarian nature of the community which discourages people from talking about aspects which are only there to fuel their feeling of self-entitlement (like IQ). If I didn't say that I think that my potential is there based on IQ, there wouldn't be a downvote.

It's very telling. HN can be an unforgiven environment for specific topics such as problems with pride, ego and self-reflection. But on the other hand, it's just a downvote.

The opening opinion in a discussion is almost always the hardest to come by, so you’ll want someone confident with having a bad idea sink in public to make it, and that is almost never your junior employees.

If you need a junior to senior round, to make sure your juniors speak their own opinion, you frankly have really big issues in my eyes.

The key is to make an environment where people will share ideas and work on improving them as a team or a unit regardless of their status/position. At least if that is your goal.

You do this by using honesty, assertion and openness. If there are parts of the decision making that aren’t up for discussion, then you make sure everyone understands that and then you let them discuss the rest while making sure everyone understands that being polite and affirming is required for good team work, even if someone thinks an idea or opinion is bad.

I realize tech companies are notoriously bad at this. The army reference, and the fact that it’s getting any sort of traction here is a good example of this. The junior to senior strategy makes a lot of sense in the army, but that is an environment where you own 100% of the decision making as a XO, and you’re not using the method to make a decision, because you’ve already made it, you are simply asking your crew for opinions to make sure there isn’t an angle you have missed. Not only that, but you’ll often be asking people who come from different teams and may not know each other very well, in an environment where you’re under a lot of pressure. That’s almost the exact opposite of what you are doing in any private sector meeting.

If you’re a CEO who’ve gathered all your middle managers to figure out how to trim the staff by 20%, by all means go junior to senior, but if you’re trying to brainstorm something with a team of developers, just don’t.

Disclaimer: I’m Scandinavian, management may be more authoritative in America than it is here.

Some good psychology in that. If you start with the most senior people, then the couple of people who are clearly officially leaders will talk and then everyone else thinks they're next in the pecking order and will trainwreck it.

If the only way to talk is to admit that you're more junior than everyone else who hasn't spoken, then you won't stick your two bob in unless you actually have something important to say.

Interesting, I never thought about the merits. Rome would have a very different history if they did this, I would love to know that alternative

So 10x 1:1s plus a discussion meeting plus a decision meeting... Sounds like a slippery slope to meeting hell.

Is a “dented universe” an admirable goal? Seems vague, and selfish. I get people want to make some sort of impact while they are here, but let’s also admit that that is driven by the ego.

Having the next big startup hardly makes a dent in the world. 1/100th of the energy required to do that could likely save thousands of lives in other mediums of employment or volunteering.

What you're describing is obsession and it can be even more dangerous that just plain old greed. However I find myself saying the same thing sometimes...

> Loved ones should honestly be our number 1 priority. That work is so demanding of the majority of our free time while we are alive is a travesty.

Different people have different priorities and tastes in life. When I tried working 3 day workweek (I could afford a 40% salary hit), I became really bored really fast, and spending so much time with my spouse quickly got me to a divorce.

Having people that you love in your life is nice, but I personally don't love that much to spend majority of life with them. I'd rather do something interesting and productive, like work, instead.

So start a company, work hard, and break yourself out of this system.