Every success DOES need a guy like Greg. But I really worry about the part where Greg was working on the effort full-time, doing it all while the other guys still worked. When it ends in success, it is a great story. When it ends without success, Greg is the guy who put all his time into it, then ends up with nothing. Greg becomes the warning story.
Greg is the guy you need. Not necessarily the guy you want to be.
Greg is the guy you need. Not necessarily the guy you want to be.
I don't think that's true. At least at the beginning, a "Greg" will be the person who has all the direct contact with mentors, investors, team, suppliers, and customers. A "Greg" will be the "business face" of things (not necessarily who the public see, but who everyone else sees). That's a very good position to be in when things fail or when the company exits.
CEOs go on to start something new. CTOs start interviewing for a new role. People who are a "Greg" find offers coming to them.
Greg is the guy you need. Not necessarily the guy you want to be.
(I am Greg, and am reasonably happy to be me.)
I think this reply is true. But even that aside, the startup philosophy that guides me is variance maximization. So yes, when starting something new and pouring your heart into it, you have a chance of having nothing concrete to show for yourself in a few years. But if you succeed, the magnitude will be much greater, and you'll have been a core force in making that happen.
I worked on a number of startup ideas in college, which never went anywhere. The first company I worked on that had any sort of success was Stripe (which I joined when we were 4 people). I've taken an identical approach (hard work and trying to cover the entire problem surface area) to each organization I've been a part of, and am pretty happy with recommending it as a general strategy.
I'm guessing Greg means handling a problem / process end to end. Not saying "I'll just do the initial phone screens when recruiting candidates" but just doing the whole thing without passing the buck to someone else.
So having worked way too hard on my startup only to have it fail, I can somewhat relate to this (I do not pretend to be as amazing as Greg). You're right - after my startup failed people were throwing what were objectively great job offers at me. Even more amazing, many of my investors were encouraging me to start another company and were willing to give me fantastic terms just for agreeing to start a company (entirely at the idea stage I could raise 7 digits at an 8 digit valuation with no strings attached from investors I already knew to be great people).
This ignores the mental toll that exhausting yourself on a company takes though. There are lots of people that start companies, but many people quit when the going gets tough. Those that commit everything to it are praised when they succeed but mostly forgotten when they don't. I am just now recovering after several months of not working, catching up on years of lost sleep, and basically becoming a person again.
There are days when I regret it and there are days when I don't. I learned a hell of a lot and I recognize it has opened doors for me, but the real question is was it worth it? And that's going to be different for everybody.
An important note, which is particularly relevant for HN. Paul Graham once said Sam Altman was the right person working on the wrong problem (with regards to his company Loopt). I bet there are a lot of people like that who just commit themselves to the wrong thing.
I learned a hell of a lot and I recognize it has opened doors for me, but the real question is what it worth it?
If you learnt even one thing from the effort, then it was worth it. Not every endeavor will bring you financial rewards, at least not directly. If you took on the effort because you loved the idea, rewards will flow via other means.
It has nothing to do with money. It's about ruining your life trying to make something work that just isn't going to work. I put my company before friends, family, and my health.
It's easy after-the-fact to see that, but it's hard to know when it's happening. Possibly the most celebrated entrepreneur is Elon Musk, and I don't think there's any question he put his company before his personal life multiple times in order to succeed. But how many other people have done that and then failed? It can leave you as a shell of your former self.
Everybody talks about the upside. Nobody wants to talk about the downside.
I just went through one episode myself, so I know how it feels. For a couple of months, it was as if my skull was empty, that there was nothing there. It's an emptiness that's tough to describe.
But this is the point of life! The experience.
Now I'm onto something else.
There has to be this drive to do something different, something that you love and that will make a difference. Sometimes it takes more than one try to find that one thing.
It's the modern form of a luta continua, vitória é certa. How else would you succeed if you don't try, and fail, and fail...
That, or stick with your day job, even if it bores you to death.
I've observed a correlation between people who place a lot of emphasis on not being a chump and the probability that a person will pursue marginal benefits at significant cost to others (including myself). I think it's because both behaviors are rooted in a similar world view and economic model.
Specifically for this context, if Musk and Altman conspired to do wrong by someone, it would be much easier to 'quietly beat them with a $5 wrench' than to engineer and construct OpenAI to publicly serve some cold dish. That's not to say it's all warm and fuzzy, but businesses that can succeed on aligned interests are better than those that seek cut throat markets.
You often hear about founder salaries being set intentionally low by VCs to keep founders hungry.
While I don't dispute the power of stress and pressure to light a fire under someone's ass, I don't think it should come in the form of a person's livelihood.
For example, it's not hard to imagine founder(s) that have been working for years on something with no pay, putting them far behind their traditionally-employed peers. They may even have family obligations on top of that. Proceeding to then pay them low wages in the interest of motivation isn't exactly the best idea.
Granted, I do tend to agree with the ethos of having the founder being the lowest-paid employee in the company. Ideally that just ensures everyone else is paid really, really well.
We've kind of had the hat-trick of weasely-ness going on recently. They get overworked, underpaid, and then the promise of a big payout at the end is diluted away by investors who were barely involved beyond sloshing a bunch of other people's money in their general direction.
I don't like industries that institutionalize the consumption of individuals enthusiasm or altruism. We've essentially lost medicine to the latter and it sucks to see the startup scene consumed by the former.
Greg asked me questions for the first half of the drive back to San Francisco, then declared he was in, and started planning logistics for the rest of the drive.
I think he took on the risk when he bought into it.
But I really worry about the part where Greg was working on the effort full-time, doing it all while the other guys still worked.
Maybe because Greg so loved the idea that compensation didn't not matter to him, just the satisfaction of doing what he loves. He's a champion, and those are the guys you want around you.
And a guy like Greg will always be needed somewhere.
Comments
Every success DOES need a guy like Greg. But I really worry about the part where Greg was working on the effort full-time, doing it all while the other guys still worked. When it ends in success, it is a great story. When it ends without success, Greg is the guy who put all his time into it, then ends up with nothing. Greg becomes the warning story.
Greg is the guy you need. Not necessarily the guy you want to be.
Greg is the guy you need. Not necessarily the guy you want to be.
I don't think that's true. At least at the beginning, a "Greg" will be the person who has all the direct contact with mentors, investors, team, suppliers, and customers. A "Greg" will be the "business face" of things (not necessarily who the public see, but who everyone else sees). That's a very good position to be in when things fail or when the company exits.
CEOs go on to start something new. CTOs start interviewing for a new role. People who are a "Greg" find offers coming to them.
(I am Greg, and am reasonably happy to be me.)
I think this reply is true. But even that aside, the startup philosophy that guides me is variance maximization. So yes, when starting something new and pouring your heart into it, you have a chance of having nothing concrete to show for yourself in a few years. But if you succeed, the magnitude will be much greater, and you'll have been a core force in making that happen.
I worked on a number of startup ideas in college, which never went anywhere. The first company I worked on that had any sort of success was Stripe (which I joined when we were 4 people). I've taken an identical approach (hard work and trying to cover the entire problem surface area) to each organization I've been a part of, and am pretty happy with recommending it as a general strategy.
Could you elaborate on that?
I'm guessing Greg means handling a problem / process end to end. Not saying "I'll just do the initial phone screens when recruiting candidates" but just doing the whole thing without passing the buck to someone else.
So having worked way too hard on my startup only to have it fail, I can somewhat relate to this (I do not pretend to be as amazing as Greg). You're right - after my startup failed people were throwing what were objectively great job offers at me. Even more amazing, many of my investors were encouraging me to start another company and were willing to give me fantastic terms just for agreeing to start a company (entirely at the idea stage I could raise 7 digits at an 8 digit valuation with no strings attached from investors I already knew to be great people).
This ignores the mental toll that exhausting yourself on a company takes though. There are lots of people that start companies, but many people quit when the going gets tough. Those that commit everything to it are praised when they succeed but mostly forgotten when they don't. I am just now recovering after several months of not working, catching up on years of lost sleep, and basically becoming a person again.
There are days when I regret it and there are days when I don't. I learned a hell of a lot and I recognize it has opened doors for me, but the real question is was it worth it? And that's going to be different for everybody.
An important note, which is particularly relevant for HN. Paul Graham once said Sam Altman was the right person working on the wrong problem (with regards to his company Loopt). I bet there are a lot of people like that who just commit themselves to the wrong thing.
I learned a hell of a lot and I recognize it has opened doors for me, but the real question is what it worth it?
If you learnt even one thing from the effort, then it was worth it. Not every endeavor will bring you financial rewards, at least not directly. If you took on the effort because you loved the idea, rewards will flow via other means.
It has nothing to do with money. It's about ruining your life trying to make something work that just isn't going to work. I put my company before friends, family, and my health.
It's easy after-the-fact to see that, but it's hard to know when it's happening. Possibly the most celebrated entrepreneur is Elon Musk, and I don't think there's any question he put his company before his personal life multiple times in order to succeed. But how many other people have done that and then failed? It can leave you as a shell of your former self.
Everybody talks about the upside. Nobody wants to talk about the downside.
I just went through one episode myself, so I know how it feels. For a couple of months, it was as if my skull was empty, that there was nothing there. It's an emptiness that's tough to describe.
But this is the point of life! The experience.
Now I'm onto something else.
There has to be this drive to do something different, something that you love and that will make a difference. Sometimes it takes more than one try to find that one thing.
It's the modern form of a luta continua, vitória é certa. How else would you succeed if you don't try, and fail, and fail...
That, or stick with your day job, even if it bores you to death.
There is a very, very fine line dividing "chief optimist" from "sucker."
I've observed a correlation between people who place a lot of emphasis on not being a chump and the probability that a person will pursue marginal benefits at significant cost to others (including myself). I think it's because both behaviors are rooted in a similar world view and economic model.
Specifically for this context, if Musk and Altman conspired to do wrong by someone, it would be much easier to 'quietly beat them with a $5 wrench' than to engineer and construct OpenAI to publicly serve some cold dish. That's not to say it's all warm and fuzzy, but businesses that can succeed on aligned interests are better than those that seek cut throat markets.
Sounds like we need a Co-founder basic income?
That's a fantastic idea. We could give it a special name to avoid confusion. How about "salary"?
You often hear about founder salaries being set intentionally low by VCs to keep founders hungry.
While I don't dispute the power of stress and pressure to light a fire under someone's ass, I don't think it should come in the form of a person's livelihood.
For example, it's not hard to imagine founder(s) that have been working for years on something with no pay, putting them far behind their traditionally-employed peers. They may even have family obligations on top of that. Proceeding to then pay them low wages in the interest of motivation isn't exactly the best idea.
Granted, I do tend to agree with the ethos of having the founder being the lowest-paid employee in the company. Ideally that just ensures everyone else is paid really, really well.
We've kind of had the hat-trick of weasely-ness going on recently. They get overworked, underpaid, and then the promise of a big payout at the end is diluted away by investors who were barely involved beyond sloshing a bunch of other people's money in their general direction.
I don't like industries that institutionalize the consumption of individuals enthusiasm or altruism. We've essentially lost medicine to the latter and it sucks to see the startup scene consumed by the former.
I think he took on the risk when he bought into it.
But yeah.
But I really worry about the part where Greg was working on the effort full-time, doing it all while the other guys still worked.
Maybe because Greg so loved the idea that compensation didn't not matter to him, just the satisfaction of doing what he loves. He's a champion, and those are the guys you want around you.
And a guy like Greg will always be needed somewhere.