

Ask HN:  Who changed your life? - fretlessjazz

Is there an individual whom you've met that provoked or fostered your entrepreneurial spirit?<p>Anyone who caused you to make the decision to start your own business?
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buro9
Donna Matthews from a band called Elastica in the early/mid '90s.

I was living on the streets as I turned 20, and a chance encounter led me to
hang out with the band at one of their early gigs. Donna made me feel pretty
welcome and off I went on tour with them.

During the tour I started a fanzine to make money and help keep me alive. That
fanzine was assisted by her (providing material) and I sold it to the fans.

The bit where it became more was after the tour had finished. How now to find
money for food? I still had the fanzine but Elastica were on the cover and
Elastica were not playing. I removed the cover, and would make a new cover
according to whoever was in town headlining that night. Having the band on the
cover is the difference between selling 20 copies and selling 150 copies.

Something about that first transformation from being on the streets to earning
a decent wage off my own back has pretty much influenced every action since: I
won't go back to the street, and there are always new ways to approach
existing problems.

I could cite many more that are related to what we do, are more recent, are
more obvious, etc... but none provided an epiphany greater than that first
one.

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cperciva
When I was in grade 8, I took a mandatory "shop" class -- woodworking,
metalworking, and electronics. One day in class the teacher observed that
Leonardo da Vinci, while he had lots of ideas, rarely _built_ anything, and as
a result of this he never discovered that his plans were flawed.

This one remark transformed me from being someone who was content to work
entirely with theory to being someone who went out and built systems --
because however confident I was with my theory, I wanted the confirmation
offered by _seeing it work_.

This doesn't have much to do with entrepreneurialism, but it's certainly
something which changed my life. :-)

~~~
davidw
Manual labor and craftsmanship were not really popular with higher society in
that day and age. I've mentioned this before here, but it's a fun anecdote:
Galileo taught at the University of Padova, and to honor him, his students
built him a lectern _themselves_ , rather than pay to have it built, which
they could have easily afforded. Instead of some find work of art from the
time period, you can tell from a mile away that it's really _bad_ work -
sloppily put together and rough looking. You can tell they had no idea what
they were doing.

------
RevRal
Eliezer Yudkowsky and Roger Ebert.

I've never met either of them. I kind of grew up without a father, so both
functioned as surrogates who lovingly fostered two things I've dedicated a lot
of my time to -- writing and understanding intelligence.

Thanks for being awesome, if either of you read this.

~~~
Eliezer
You're welcome!

------
IsaacL
Three people, all of whom I met in my first year at university.

The first was a guy I met on my first weekend, who lived in a house next door
to mine on campus, and later became one of my best friends. He was/is working
on a social networking site in PHP and MySQL, and taught me the basics of
those two languages. Originally I planned to help him out, but soon realised I
knew enough to start my own projects.

The second was a fourth year Engineering student who was starting his own
humanitarian aid agency. He's also started a business when he was 16 (IIRC, it
provided ICT recovery to companies, eg, carting IBM servers and emergency
generators when their systems went down). Meeting someone doing something so
balls-to-the-wall ambitious, but realising they don't seem much smarter than
you, inspires you as to what is possible.

The third was a Nigerian postgrad student, who told me that he was trying to
encourage his country-people to get rich through entrepreneurship rather than
fraud, and also wanted to encourage a startup hub at my own university (he's
pretty involved in the UK startup scene). Somehow I've found myself in charge
of a campus society to bring together those working on web applications and
businesses. The community is still small, but I've already found meeting other
people working on web projects has motivated me to work harder on my own.

~~~
simplegeek
Dude, what school did you go to?

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nazgulnarsil
Eliezer Yudkowski, Robin Hanson, Nick Szabo, Paul Graham, Adam Smith, Ludwig
Von Mises, a few dozen sci-fi authors. I haven't met any of them.

PG is probably the biggest since it was due to him saying "if you don't know
how to code, learn to" that caused me to switch from mechanical engineering to
CS.

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Xixi
pg, through his writings (I never met him in real life).

I was studying in college and my AI teacher was using LISP. He redirected us
toward pg's essays... and I have to say that it was truly inspiring.

It took 3 more years before I actually started to work on my startup, but
without this teacher and pg's essays I'm sure it wouldn't have happened.

~~~
flashgordon
as cliched and toadlike it may sound.. for me it was actually PG. And what
scares me was that it was completely random. I was just googling for
entrepreneurship (more specifically on how to be an ISV) and stumbled upon
PG's essays. Man that was an eye-opener. Ive always wanted to be entrepreneur
(atleast since I was 12) but I never did anything beyond coding and PG's
essays kind of opened me to the bigger picture. I wish I found them when I was
in my teens, but could have been worse!

~~~
flashgordon
and not to mention all the douche-bag pointy haired bosses who some how loved
squashing innovation!

------
chrischen
My dad. He showed me how to setup a home web server when I was 12 or 13. Then
I realized the world was at my fingertips.

~~~
TimMontague
I agree. When I was in high school my Dad gave me an old computer and a Debian
CD. I taught myself PHP and wrote a blog. That's what got me interested in
programming.

------
oscardelben
Bruce Lee, although he was not a programmer.

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prabodh
Its not really a single person who influenced my thinking.. But every time i
read about youngsters in early 20's doing what they love and making it big so
that world can use ...It just keeps me going...

------
jgrahamc
Sir Clive Sinclair. I wrote a letter to him with an idea that I had for a way
to interface a joystick to the ZX-81 and he sent me a personal reply of
encouragement.

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Cama
Two Swedish guys called Jonas Ridderstrale and Kjell Nordström wrote a book
called "Funky Business: Talent Makes Capital Dance". They coined the term
"Fucking and Shopping" for the first time in Academic text. For the creatives
it is now money or sex. The learnings from the book still keep my on the edge.
Also Peter Schwarz a futurist had a massive effect on my optimism towards the
future of the world.

------
pistoriusp
Laura, someone who I cared for deeply, who passed away 10 days after my 18th
birthday. That made me realize that I need to do something with my life.

------
dabent
Bob Parsons.

I know I may catch flack for that, but the guy didn't attend an Ivy League or
Stanford level school, didn't live in the valley, but also started two
successful tech companies without VC money. His methods and marketing are
different, but he's bound to break convention as he grew up so far from the
web/software conventions of the day.

------
swombat
The question specifically refers to people you've met.

From an entrepreneurial point of view, I'm sure that the fact that my best
friend (and cofounder on my first business) had been running businesses
successfully for years was a major influence in convincing me that it makes
sense to make that leap.

------
bantic
Richard Feynman. I majored in physics because I was inspired by his
intellectual curiosity. "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman" is a great
collection of his memoirs: <http://tenniselbow.org/scott/feyn_surely.pdf>

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niyazpk
There is no ONE individual who inspired me. There are a lot of them.

The story of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs was my first fascination I guess. I
read a lot on and off the web and I guess I have seen a lot of fantastic
articles, lectures and advices that helped me a lot.

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coffeemug
Bhante Vimalaramsi. He showed me a different side of life, which is very
unusual in the westernized world.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhante_Vimalaramsi>

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maheshs
PG indeed in last couple of years. His changed my thoughts about startups. I
am about to start my startup and most of the inspiration guidance come from
PG's essays. Although some of his thoughts are apply for startup in India.

------
JoeAltmaier
My brother Richard Altmaier, who drove his Pacer to Silicon Valley straight
out of college and never looked back.

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sli
I never actually met him, and he died before I could, but J Dilla is the
entire reason I got into music.

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nigelfds
Randy Pausch

~~~
larrywright
If I have to face something like he did, and I can handle it with even half
the style and grace that exhibited, I will consider myself to have done well.
He was an amazing example of how to live.

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thwarted
Every bad boss I've had who had no business starting or running a business.

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lyime
Bill Gates and Dean Kamen.

~~~
buss
Dean Kamen for sure. I thought I wanted to be a business major, and then I
started doing FIRST (Dean Kamen's high school robotics competition). Now I'm a
CS student about to go to grad school.

------
edw519
Dick Pick

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system>

He was so far ahead of his time, you probably never heard of him. He was
agile, hashed, and object-oriented in 1965!

When I discovered this technology, an entire world opened up to me in an
instant. I've been thinking outside the polygon and making things happen ever
since.

~~~
ecq
remember coding in Pick/Basic 12 yrs ago.

