The tone in here sure has shifted. I remember Brian showing us his binder of maxed out credit cards they used to bootstrap the company. I remember the early version spitting unicorn errors every few seconds.
A few things can be true at the same time:
- Airbnb is an inspiring story for any entrepreneur
- it has had arguably detrimental impacts
- the founders came from privileged backgrounds
- they also worked their ass off and are fiercely intelligent and risked plenty
On the tech side - it’s always funny to hear the (correct) critiques of early Rails. It reminds me of when I was talking trash about Java as a kid. My boss laughed and said “Java bought me my house, so it’s good in my book”. Or the first Tesla I ever saw with the license plate “PHP LOL” in the Facebook parking lot.
Pragmatism must beat idealism. In business and in database primary keys and everything in between.
If you come from a privileged background then what are you risking really? Maxed out credit cards can easily be repaid by your rich parents/uncles/whatever.
Though perhaps there are things they risked that I am not familiar with.
Risk does not necessarily mean financial risk. There's a lot more being risked doing a startup than cash, and those things should be pretty obvious, though maybe not everyone sees them as risks. I can think of a few and I've never done a startup. Reputation, mental health, credibility, friends and business associates, future job prospects, legal risks, etc. Fuck up a startup bad enough and even if you have millions in the bank you could have lost all of the things I just listed.
Call me a dreamer but losing the things I mentioned is worse than losing money, which would be the same experience for both rich and poor people, since they have absolutely nothing to do with a number in a ledger.
Comments
The tone in here sure has shifted. I remember Brian showing us his binder of maxed out credit cards they used to bootstrap the company. I remember the early version spitting unicorn errors every few seconds.
A few things can be true at the same time:
- Airbnb is an inspiring story for any entrepreneur
- it has had arguably detrimental impacts
- the founders came from privileged backgrounds
- they also worked their ass off and are fiercely intelligent and risked plenty
On the tech side - it’s always funny to hear the (correct) critiques of early Rails. It reminds me of when I was talking trash about Java as a kid. My boss laughed and said “Java bought me my house, so it’s good in my book”. Or the first Tesla I ever saw with the license plate “PHP LOL” in the Facebook parking lot.
Pragmatism must beat idealism. In business and in database primary keys and everything in between.
It's just a clickbait title, article is actually positive in tone.
If you come from a privileged background then what are you risking really? Maxed out credit cards can easily be repaid by your rich parents/uncles/whatever.
Though perhaps there are things they risked that I am not familiar with.
Risk does not necessarily mean financial risk. There's a lot more being risked doing a startup than cash, and those things should be pretty obvious, though maybe not everyone sees them as risks. I can think of a few and I've never done a startup. Reputation, mental health, credibility, friends and business associates, future job prospects, legal risks, etc. Fuck up a startup bad enough and even if you have millions in the bank you could have lost all of the things I just listed.
Of all of the things you mentioned, rich people have much less risk comparatively than a poor person in the exact same situation
Call me a dreamer but losing the things I mentioned is worse than losing money, which would be the same experience for both rich and poor people, since they have absolutely nothing to do with a number in a ledger.
Or just a poor person in their daily life.