

Citizenship in a Republic - tomrod
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_a_Republic

======
untog
EDIT: the title of this post has now been changed, to the extent that it loses
its entire relevance to HN. It was previously something along the lines of
"After a year reading HN, this quote reminds me of the people here"

\---

I'm deeply skeptical of any attempts to romanticise "doing a startup".

 _"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is
marred by dust and sweat and blood"_

Running a startup is hard work. No-one disputes that. But if you are in the
position to run your own startup you are _incredibly lucky_. There are a lot
of people out there that might be far better entrepreneurs than you, but
because they weren't born into a situation that gave them a good education and
the ability to take a risk, they never will.

Running a startup is stressful, but don't try to pretend that there aren't
enormous upsides. You can do whatever you want, you can work with whomever you
want. The industry _celebrates failure_ \- think about that for a second. You
can try your best, fail miserably, and people will still say that you did a
good job. How many other people in the world can do that? The guy earning
minimum wage in his factory job, spending all his salary just to keep out of
poverty- if he fails, he is fired, and he and his family are screwed. He is
the person whose face is much more likely to be covered in actual dust and
sweat and blood.

Being in this industry is a position of extreme privilege. Harping on about it
as if it's a heavy burden to bear is utter nonsense and only helps the
perception of "startup folk" as deeply out of tune with how the rest of the
world works.

~~~
n3rdy
Oh yay, another post like this.

> Running a startup is hard work. No-one disputes that. But if you are in the
> position to run your own startup you are incredibly lucky. There are a lot
> of people out there that might be far better entrepreneurs than you, but
> because they weren't born into a situation that gave them a good education
> and the ability to take a risk, they never will.

Nobody is born into a situation that ~20 years later destine them to run a
startup.

The type of person who takes charge of their life, also takes charge of their
education, you cannot learn some of the skills it takes to be a self made
person.

Risk appetite isn't something predetermined at birth, and it isn't learned
from someones environment. You can develop the ability to take risk from
surrounding yourself with successful people, just as easily as you develop it
from having nothing left to lose, and realizing how much you've been
overestimating your worst case scenarios.

> Running a startup is stressful, but don't try to pretend that there aren't
> enormous upsides. You can do whatever you want, you can work with whomever
> you want.

If what you want to do is work and focus on success, then you can do whatever
you want, but there are plenty of moments where you will want to be doing
something else. This is called self-discipline, its just like the discipline
normal people are subjected to, if you ignore it, you lose your job, or your
startup fails.

> How many other people in the world can do that?

Not as many as I would like. There are organizations like Kiva that aim to
give those less fortunate an opportunity, and hopefully more pop up that make
it even easier.

> The guy earning minimum wage in his factory job, spending all his salary
> just to keep out of poverty- if he fails, he is fired, and he and his family
> are screwed. He is the person whose face is much more likely to be covered
> in actual dust and sweat and blood.

He can also get another factory job. Try failing a startup and just starting
another, its going to be a lot harder than pounding the pavement and
submitting resumes.

> Being in this industry is a position of extreme privilege. Harping on about
> it as if it's a heavy burden to bear is utter nonsense and only helps the
> perception of "startup folk" as deeply out of tune with how the rest of the
> world works.

Anyone harping on it as a burden has the wrong attitude, and frankly I would
be surprised if they lasted.

It is definitely not extreme privilege. These companies don't just start
themselves and adopt whoever has the winning ticket. You have to have a good
idea, and you have to be willing to act on it.

Many people have good ideas, and could grow a successful business out of their
idea, but they have the wrong ideas about what is stopping them, so they never
try. These people come from the same communities as any startup founder. The
difference is a founder dares to challenge the beliefs that have been crammed
down their throat, even if everyone around them insists its a bad idea.

~~~
scotch_drinker
All success is largely dependent on luck and culture. Where you are born, who
your parents are, etc. Being in a position where you can take charge of your
life is also largely dependent on the same luck and culture. I think this is
what the parent is stressing.

~~~
n3rdy
> All success is largely dependent on luck and culture.

All success?

> Where you are born, who your parents are, etc.

This is only true up to a certain point. Obviously if you were born in the
ocean and your parents are dolphins, you're going to have a hard time starting
and running a coal mine.

Every time I hear someone talking about the role luck has with success, they
are usually giving examples of how _bad luck_ makes success impossible.

Nobody here insisting that there is more to success than luck is trying to say
something like "people in North Korea just need to tough it out". We're
talking about the millions of people who have every opportunity to be
successful, but don't do so, because they are unwilling to commit to what they
perceive to be too risky, and too difficult. The attitude you and the parent
stress is the attitude that keeps so many people lower than they should be.

Successful people usually are not successful on their first try either, how
many times do they have to fail before you would attribute their success to
their efforts and not that "well, 3,847th time is always a charm"?

~~~
scotch_drinker
Yup, all success. It's a combination of luck and hard work. Rarely are there
success stories that involve either no luck at all or no hard work at all. But
the work almost always follows the luck, i.e. if you are born an inner city
black child in say the poorest parts of Baltimore, no amount of hard work may
make a difference. And it may in fact be that being born into that scenario
renders you unable to see that hard work enables success because your culture
doesn't teach you.

I'm not saying that successful people were only successful because of luck.
But they were successful because they were born in correct circumstances and
cultures that allowed them to become successful.

I don't disagree that lots of people have every opportunity to be successful
and choose not to. But I'm talking about the ones who are actually successful
and how luck and circumstances are very important.

------
wooster
Original title: "After a year of reading HN, this is how I view the successful
entrepreneur"

New title: "Citizenship in a Republic"

~~~
tomrod
Huh. It really makes no sense why I posted this after the title change. What
gives?

------
jkeesh
Thanks for sharing this link. As it related to HN, I think you have to applaud
all of the people who go out on a limb and share their work-in-progress side
project, new startup, or anything else that they've created---knowing that
half of the community will "point out how the strong man stumbles, or where
the doer of deeds could have done them better."

I still am a relative beginner to the space, and I do find it frustrating when
people dismissively point out such "obvious" problems with our project, or
things we should be doing, but I think it comes with the territory.

~~~
tomrod
Yeah! He even refers to the "critics" as such, those on the outside of the
arena.

------
tomrod
It appears a lot of people talk about what it takes to make a successful
startup and the like. Reading through this today just reminded me of the fight
many startup entrepreneurs take every day.

