Amazing. The moral of the story is that having an exceptionally independent, driving job like a startup actually makes you better at weathering crises.
Pretty counter-intuitive. One would think that having more stability and security in the background would free up one's mind to be able to help and cope and the like. But it makes a lot of sense that the opposite is true. Even in the midst of crises, you don't want your life to be entirely about crisis management. A large dose of of independence and drive helps a lot with that. Being able to travel and still work helps. Feeling like you're still doing something that matters to you helps even more.
It no doubt depends on the person, but for a community of startupfounders (or aspiring ones) I hope it resonates. There are surely examples of "big scary generic companies" handling this kind of ordeal (when it happens to their employees) well -- what's worth noting is that I didn't need an income to support either of my parents. None of us took any salary until reddit was acquired, so it'd have been much more difficult if my mother didn't have great health insurance (she worked at a hospital within the Johns Hopkins administration and had fortuitously recently signed up for the premium plan).
As an interesting comparison, my dad's a small business owner (travel agency, where he's had 1-2 employees) in a rather unsexy industry, but having a rockstar employee meant he could make every trip to the hospital with my mom.
I got so much of my independence because my dad was able to be the advocate & caretaker for my mom (not enough is said about how much these people go through - obviously it's not as awful as being the victim, but it's still incredibly trying). But I'm certain being his own boss (and having a fantastic team) made his awesomeness for my mom possible.
"If you've worked with the spineless, you know how frustrating it can be to deal with their poisonous helplessness -- something that's only heightened in a startup where the most important thing you can do is not give up. And you'd better fucking believe that when you come home to a mother battling brain cancer and a father spending every waking hour taking care of her and running his own business, you don't complain, you don't cower, and you most certainly don't quit."
I'm currently in a situation where I have such a person close to me. It was very helpful to have that pointed out again.
I've managed to work 2 hours on my startup idea this evening. Whereas I otherwise probably would've given in to the demons ("it's 20:40 already.. too late to get anything useful done, I'll just play some videogames the rest of the evening").
"The moral of the story is that having an exceptionally independent, driving job like a startup actually makes you better at weathering crises."
In this case yes, but it's anecdotal evidence to say the least. He was involved in a rapidly growing, popular and revenue-generating start-up, this last point being the key. If you're involved in start-up that's struggling or pre-rev, then I imagine the story would be quite different.
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Amazing. The moral of the story is that having an exceptionally independent, driving job like a startup actually makes you better at weathering crises.
Pretty counter-intuitive. One would think that having more stability and security in the background would free up one's mind to be able to help and cope and the like. But it makes a lot of sense that the opposite is true. Even in the midst of crises, you don't want your life to be entirely about crisis management. A large dose of of independence and drive helps a lot with that. Being able to travel and still work helps. Feeling like you're still doing something that matters to you helps even more.
It no doubt depends on the person, but for a community of startupfounders (or aspiring ones) I hope it resonates. There are surely examples of "big scary generic companies" handling this kind of ordeal (when it happens to their employees) well -- what's worth noting is that I didn't need an income to support either of my parents. None of us took any salary until reddit was acquired, so it'd have been much more difficult if my mother didn't have great health insurance (she worked at a hospital within the Johns Hopkins administration and had fortuitously recently signed up for the premium plan).
As an interesting comparison, my dad's a small business owner (travel agency, where he's had 1-2 employees) in a rather unsexy industry, but having a rockstar employee meant he could make every trip to the hospital with my mom.
I got so much of my independence because my dad was able to be the advocate & caretaker for my mom (not enough is said about how much these people go through - obviously it's not as awful as being the victim, but it's still incredibly trying). But I'm certain being his own boss (and having a fantastic team) made his awesomeness for my mom possible.
Tangentially, this also seems to illustrate why Alexis/reddit have been successful -- perseverance and flexibility are crucial to startups!
Yes, from the article:
"If you've worked with the spineless, you know how frustrating it can be to deal with their poisonous helplessness -- something that's only heightened in a startup where the most important thing you can do is not give up. And you'd better fucking believe that when you come home to a mother battling brain cancer and a father spending every waking hour taking care of her and running his own business, you don't complain, you don't cower, and you most certainly don't quit."
Yeah, I found it jarring that he took time out here to call someone he was working with at the time spineless.
I thought Alexis hit the nail squarely on the head with that paragraph actually. Helplessness really is poisonous.
I'm currently in a situation where I have such a person close to me. It was very helpful to have that pointed out again.
I've managed to work 2 hours on my startup idea this evening. Whereas I otherwise probably would've given in to the demons ("it's 20:40 already.. too late to get anything useful done, I'll just play some videogames the rest of the evening").
I'm not sure he was referring to someone he was working with at the time.
"The moral of the story is that having an exceptionally independent, driving job like a startup actually makes you better at weathering crises."
In this case yes, but it's anecdotal evidence to say the least. He was involved in a rapidly growing, popular and revenue-generating start-up, this last point being the key. If you're involved in start-up that's struggling or pre-rev, then I imagine the story would be quite different.