

Ask HN: What you hate the most from starting a startup? - htapiardz

Hi HN,
I&#x27;m making a investigation, of what are the things that founders, aspiring entrepreneurs, or people who work in a startup; hate the most of a startup.
I want to get some insights, to start working in solutions to stop having a bad experience from starting or working in a startup.
======
api
Oh lordy, where to begin...

(1) The startup world is full of creeps and psychos. There are a lot of
sociopaths, vapid fast-talking wheeler-dealers, and people who are just flat
out bat nuts crazy. There's also been a huge influx of douchebags since tech
became (supposedly) a way to get rich quick. I've been burned by this a couple
times and have gotten better at judging character as a result, but be warned--
here be dragons.

(2) Credentialism is a lot stronger in startups than most people believe.
Stanford degrees seem to count more than traction. In the end I just broke
down and added "did not attend Stanford or work for Google" to my AngelList
profile. If you care, you're not going to like me anyway.

(3) Everything follows an extreme power law distribution, and it always
implies a catch-22. If you don't live in the Bay Area, it's exponentially
harder to get funding. If you do live in the Bay Area, you need a substantial
exit event to afford a down payment on a modest post-WWII starter house. This
also applies to incubators, startups you might join, employees you might
recruit, etc.

(4) Trendy not-invented-last-week syndrome abounds on the technology side:
[http://www.jwz.org/blog/2003/02/the-cadt-
model/](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2003/02/the-cadt-model/)

(5) Given the quantities of money involved, I'd expect investors to be more
rational than they really are. "Raise on no numbers or good numbers" \-- that
doesn't exactly strike me as rational. No numbers is better than some growth?
That's not by any means the worst example either. I once had an investor type
tell me with a straight face that he looks for founders with a "prominent jaw
line, an alpha male look."

(6) Founding or building something is lonely, thankless, isolating, and a lot
longer of a death march than you probably realize... unless of course you are
"juiced" in which case you can walk into a VC firm and walk out with millions
for a product that doesn't exist. Then you can hire people to build it while
you wheel and deal and pimp your ego. The existence of this kind of "juice"
can be enormously discouraging to mere mortals. It's enough to make you wonder
if this game isn't as rigged as Wall Street. (I don't think it's _quite_ as
rigged as Wall Street, but there's definitely a privilege network.)

(7) With all the talk of innovation you hear from people like Peter Thiel, the
reality is that the most profitable stuff is usually some kind of equity play
on the rapid growth of some trendy thing that isn't technically that
interesting. Examples include Facebook, Snapchat, etc. If you want to extend
the human life span, develop AI, or otherwise advance the human condition,
sign up for a vow of poverty. The only hack around this seems to be to do
something a bit more "boring" to make enough money to then do something more
visionary. The poster boy for this is Elon Musk. There are also exceptions --
things that can be both profitable and interesting -- but those also tend to
be the hardest death marches of all. While you're struggling to create real
value, someone else is making millions flipping some kind of social media app
of the week.

(8) Mobile is the future this week. Last week it was the web. Next week it'll
be the Internet of Things and nobody will ever fund another mobile startup.
Desktop is dead even though everyone builds absolutely everything on a
desktop. See #4.

(9) Don't let anyone fool you -- tech is sexist as hell and geek culture is
misogynistic with a faint whiff of creepy pedophilia and other chthonic
horrors. If you don't have a penis, be prepared for subtile hazing and grunt
work and possibly drool on your seat cushion. Racism exists too, but it's less
stark and omnipresent than the misogyny.

(10) Age-ism is big too, and it contributes a lot to #8 and #4. A big reason
for this is that all the incubator and accelerator programs are geared toward
unmarried childless recent college grads who can move on a whim, room with six
other people, and special enzymes that can derive a full spectrum of nutrients
from ramen and energy drinks.

I could keep going.

Yet I keep coming back for more. Thank you master may I have another?

~~~
phantom_oracle
Don't forget to blog this on the trendy "Medium". A visionary way to "blog"
and start trending with some hashtag.

Apart from my above sentence, which could be a number 11 in your post, this
was a solid answer.

So let's swap it around now...

The real Valley founder checklist:

\- White \- Male \- Alpha \- 23-25 \- Talk the talk \- Know more (important)
people than "how to code" \- Master human-SEO (throwing keywords to investors)
\- Go to Stanford \- Use your connections to "work at Google" \- SoLoMo
(Silicon Valley show) \- Misogynist

I think I got them all.

~~~
api
"Human SEO." I like that. Hadn't thought of it that way before. That's mad
disruptive bro.

Other industries have it worse though, or have different issues all their own.
Finance is a real shitshow.

~~~
phantom_oracle
You think we'll get funding if we follow this model of "disruption",
brogramming and "change the world" by making a nekked-pic-sharing app that
"self-destructs" by changing the image format and hiding it in cold storage?

I love finance! The only industry where you are allowed to compete with your
clients in the same markets directly (and screw them over).

------
palidanx
I think one of the most challenging things is working on the sales side of a
start-up. As an engineer, coding is relatively straight forward, but sales is
a different animal.

When working on sales, I think engineers underestimate how truly difficult it
is for someone to sign-up, or take their wallet out to pay for a service. The
assumption of creating a great product isn't enough for success.

~~~
mtmail
Enterprise sales also takes ages. Even if a manager likes your product, and
their boss, and their boss it can take another couple of steps (months) until
somebody fills out a purchase order. And if you're unlucky you chase them to
pay your bill. Not a small company, but major (publicly traded) companies with
huge profits. So frustrating.

------
pskittle
the anxiety!

