
Entrepreneur porn is a dangerous fantasy - williswee
https://www.techinasia.com/disconnect-entrepreneur-porn-dangerous-fantasy-talking-success-rates
======
ideonexus
> _1\. It’s almost never rags to riches_

This is the point that has really started to become clear to me in recent
years, and not just for startups but for artists, authors, athletes, and all
the other dream jobs we idolize: so many of these people are either (1) not
really making that much money or (2) already had a trust-fund or come from a
wealthy background so they can spend all of their time writing, painting, or
engineering. Most authors make below the poverty line [1], and Facebook's
success was the outlier, not the norm.

I did the start-up thing in my 20s for about 3-4 years (in the 1990s). My
income was about the same as my salary would later be when I went to work for
another company, but my stress-levels dropped significantly when I started
working for someone else. The constant uncertainty was gone, I was watching my
savings grow instead of decline, and I _do_ regret not going for that
stability sooner.

I see a similarity between tech-kids in their 20s chasing start-up dreams and
the poor kids from my old neighborhood chasing hoop-dreams. The tech-kids have
better options to fall back on, but the chances of becoming that rockstar
million/billionaire CEO/professional athlete are about the same.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/15/income-for-
us-a...](http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/15/income-for-us-authors-
falls-below-federal-poverty-line-survey)

~~~
porter
The odds of a smart middle class entrepreneur making a successful business are
actually way better than making it to the NBA or NFL. To say these are equal
odds is misleading.

~~~
rmk2
A successful middleclass business does not equal billions or necessarily even
millions, so I fail to see how the gp's comparison is off? What he is saying
is that you are as likely to be the next Bill Gates as you are to be the next
Michael Jordan, not that you are just as likely to be the next Bob Smith who
runs a 40-people tech consultancy shop.

------
bobby_9x
"Money won’t make you happy"

I disagree with this. I've been running my own company for a little over 5
years. Not having to worry about my rent and being able to live a comfortable
lifestyle has made me really happy.

If I made $100 million and didn't ever have to worry about money again, I
definitely would be happier. It's the peace of mind that I'm working toward.

But, the money isn't the main thing that makes me happy. The development
challenges and systems that I build to run my company is what I really enjoy.
The money is just a nice side-effect.

I agree with the rest of the article. I had an ex-business partner that got
his idea of a startup from the stories he sees online. Everything we did had
to 'change the world', regardless of the business model or practicality.

I had many hours of discussions about this and had to continually convince him
we needed some sort of business model. His response was always: "We will get
funding"...with no users, traffic, business model, or a decent MVP.

At some point I finally convinced him and as soon as it got down to the hard
work, and he didn't see immediate results, he got discouraged. He thought that
somehow if we just built something, we would have thousands of users in a
couple of weeks.

I realized that even if whatever we worked on succeeded, he probably wouldn't
be a good fit in the next stage of the company and I would be spending more
and more of my time fighting these ideas. I had to end the partnership and he
ended up getting a job.

Not everyone should own a business.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_Money won’t make you happy_

I have always hated this saying because it's worthless without the context of
who is getting the money.

I grew up poor - money definitely made us happy because we could afford to
move out of my aunt or my grandmother's house.

Everyone loves to cite the study that "above $75,000/year money doesn't make
you happier" \- without realizing that it's simply saying that there are
diminishing returns above that point (standard economic marginal utility
concept), not that overall happiness goes down.

The reality is that more money gives you _different_ problems, not _more_
problems and in fact opens up a world of opportunities that can keep
generations beyond you above that $75,000/year mark.

Money is about what it _enables_ and that is where happiness comes from. As a
wise man once said:

 _" Money can't buy happiness [but it can buy] a WaveRunner. Have you ever
seen a sad person on a WaveRunner?"_

~~~
the_af
> _without realizing that it 's simply saying that there are diminishing
> returns above that point_

But I thought _everyone_ got that point. It's not as if people thought every
additional dollar brought them misery. People who quote this understand that
you don't _need_ this additional money, and that the effort/sacrifices to get
it are not worth it.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
>and that the effort/sacrifices to get it are not worth it.

Not quite. Marginal utility means the _increase_ in benefit from an extra unit
of some value, is some percentage less than 100% of the benefit gained from
the previous unit.

Stated mathematically, its a logistic function.

~~~
the_af
Again, you're stating things people already know (maybe not in terms of
marginal utility, but they do). You say you grew up poor, but the money you
needed in order to be happy weren't millions or billions. It was a lot less.
Beyond this, more money doesn't mean happiness, which is what people mean when
they say it... but you already knew this, didn't you?

If the return in happiness/peace of mind you get beyond $75K (or whatever
number) is close to nil, those all-nighters and cheap noodle lunches are
simply not worth it by definition. Unless you _enjoy_ living like that, of
course, but the implication is that most startup founders don't, it's just
stuff they do because they see the gold pot at the end.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_Again, you 're stating things people already know_

I don't think that's true. I think a lot of people want to find a way to think
that billionaires are worse off than someone making 75,000/year. They cite
that study and incorrectly come to the conclusion that more money past 75,000
means increasing unhappiness under the "mo money mo problems" doctrine. People
in this thread doing that in fact.

Your broader point though is uncontroversial that for the vast majority,
working an extra hour per day for 100k more a year wouldn't be worth it.

I argue that's because the vast majority of people wouldn't know what to do
with ungodly amounts of money, likely because they don't have ambitions that
would require it, and thus see it as superfluous or as you state not worth the
effort.

Most people, just want to play with their kids, take a vacation and zone out
on netflix. That certainly doesn't take billions.

------
tajen
I was under HN influence when I started my solo product. I had designed it as
bootstrapped: There is an opportunity, I fulfill it, then I don't go after the
x1000 scaling. It worked at the end of year 1, and we're 2.5 years later, and
I'm happy, not millionaire, but I have my own work schedule.

There are several kinds of startups. The article mentions huge ones. Or you
can start a consultancy, very classic business, low risk. Or you can
bootstrap[1]. Use the one that fits your profile.

Other than that, I approve the cautionary tale of the article.

[1] [http://37signals.com/bootstrapped](http://37signals.com/bootstrapped)

~~~
mtberatwork
> Or you can start a consultancy, very classic business, low risk.

Low risk? Consultancy/freelance businesses are very high risk. Easy to start,
very difficult to maintain.

~~~
BjoernKW
I can't imagine a lot of businesses that come with lower risk attached than
consulting:

You don't need equity. Profit margins are high. Depending on your particular
expertise your services will be in demand for years to come (anything
software-related). If you do it right you can work for several clients at the
same time. At least you can always have a full sales pipeline so losing a
contract won't be an end-of-the-world event for you.

Growing a consulting business beyond yourself, not selling your time but
results, those are more of a problem but risk? Not really. At least not when
compared to other businesses.

~~~
rday
I would love to see your consulting model. You speak as if keeping a full
sales pipeline while making multiple clients happy is a simple thing.

I'll agree that a single person consultancy is 0 risk. I can accept a job
offer tomorrow and stop accepting new clients.

But growing your consultancy is just as risky as any other business, if not
more so. You don't have a wide range of low paying clients, like a SaaS model.
You have a few high paying clients. Any one of them leaving (or not paying)
directly affects you and your employees.

I live in Washington DC, so I see this constantly. A large government
contractor loses a re-bid on a contract, and they fire the team that was
working on it. Fire them!

Not speaking for anyone else, but having to fire people every time a contract
goes away sounds risky to me.

~~~
samsonasu
Firing people is risky for the person potentially being fired, not for the
owners of the firm. Growing and shrinking over time is part and parcel of
running a consultancy. That's why you see it all the time, and I'll bet if you
look closer at the ownership during layoffs you'll find that they very rarely
miss a paycheck and usually escape unharmed.

The fact that it's an unpleasant reality doesn't make it any more risky than
e.g. having to pay taxes.

~~~
rday
I agree with what you're saying, and this is probably why I don't hold a
management position anywhere.

This also mirrors my experience with startups. I've been lied to about money
many times to get me to keep working. The only things the owners care about is
how they look to investors.

------
jgeada
To me, the worst part of the fantasy is that we then consider the people that
actually do make it to the "money shot" as if they were management geniuses,
instead of lottery winners.

Mostly the success has more to do with luck, timing and personal connections
than the individual technical merits of the management team, but that is never
what you read afterwards. And so you end up with all sorts of ridiculous
management, methodology or market segmentation advice that bears little to no
chance of ever working again. The same lottery ticket may win again, but it is
highly improbable.

~~~
rcarrigan87
In terms of building a fortune 500 company, yes a lot of luck is involved. For
mid-sized businesses there are guys who do it over and over again.

~~~
vonmoltke
In most cases, the reward for building a mid-sized business is not much
greater than working your way up the food chain at a large business. It just
becomes a question of whether you value independence or not.

------
vinceguidry
I may become an entrepreneur some day, but I will have to have climbed the
social ladder to the upper class before I even attempt it.

Being middle class in the US in a second-tier city is just totally freaking
awesome. The corporate job I have now is night-and-day better than the
lifestyle I had in my twenties. Breaking through to the next level is so far
down the list of my current priorities that it could never happen and I'd be
totally fine with it.

What else do I do with my time? Learn to make music. Date. Cultivate good
habits. Plan trips abroad. Have dinner with friends. Eat right and lose
weight. Actually get better at programming instead of just scrambling to Get
Shit Done. Read. Try out hobbies like Rubik's cube. Sit at the coffee shop on
weekends and chat with random people. Go to the bar in the evenings and
cultivate a social life. Work on myself and become a better person.

You want me to throw that all away for a vague promise of more money, sometime
in the future? I already have, right now, vastly more options for improving my
life right now.

~~~
beachstartup
_> I may become an entrepreneur some day, but I will have to have climbed the
social ladder to the upper class before I even attempt it._

it sounds like you've been blessed with the temperament to not actually want
either of these things.

you probably don't want to buy expensive stuff or exhibit control over other
people or be written about either. that's also a blessing.

none of this stuff 'just happens, someday, maybe'. people who are driven by
these urges are totally different than you. they wake up with the
uncontrollable urge to do these things. when they see/think about something
they want they are consumed by some kind of positive or negative emotion. you
obviously don't experience any of this stuff because you're a normal person,
but don't let yourself believe that you 'might do it someday', because you
probably won't.

~~~
vinceguidry
I am interested in expensive stuff and in leadership. I have to moderate my
ambitions to those I can realistically try out. Two years ago I bought 3
custom suits for $3000. These days I'm happy browsing clearance racks and got
a nice three-piece for under $150, a pair of secondhand Italian leather shoes
for $14. I'm better dressed now than I was then because I have more variety to
choose from.

Instead of begging for more responsibility at my job, I cultivate community
relationships and put together deals. I'm currently doing a website for a
musician friend of mine. I took my side of the fee and gave it back to him in
exchange for a guitar.

I scratch most of the personal development itches that an entrepreneur seems
to be after, and have a lot more fun (to me) doing it.

------
amorphid
Can confirm. Tried startup. Worked hard. Ran out of money. Ended up homeless.
It sucked.

~~~
helpfulanon
Same here.

Also would add a compounding series of negative results including depression,
being almost shadow-banned from the business due to lack of optimism (no
joke), then alcohol problems etc

I'd take a bet there are many many others on HN that can attest to this
outcome, but lurk due to shame or emotional pain. Losing everything because of
misjudgment is not an easy thing to admit to publicly, especially in a
community so warped with the cult of survivor bias

~~~
cableshaft
I've worked for two failed early startups. Gained a lot of knowledge in a
short period of time, wore a lot of hats, did work I was passionate about, but
also stressed out about making the right decisions or the company could shut
down (the final decisions were made by the management, but I had influence
over their decisions), extremely long hours, no social life, rapidly
deteriorating health, screwed up my finances, etc.

But I'm a few years away from it now, and I don't mind admitting it. The
startups failed for reasons outside of me for the most part (although it feels
a little funny knowing you're at least partially responsible for a company
losing two million dollars), and I don't regret having that experience.

If anything, working for a corporation again and working on stuff I'm not too
passionate about makes me itch for going back to a small company again, but I
still need the stability to get my finances back in order and start losing the
weight I put on during that time, plus I have a social life now, which is hard
to give all that up for someone else's 'grand vision'.

As for misjudgment, from my experience, a lot of the "bad decisions" made in
those startups actually made sense at the time and with the information
available at the time of the decision. It was only with the benefit of
hindsight and perspective that you can see why ultimately they were bad
decisions.

------
helpfulanon
I'd add that the industry really does not celebrate nor embrace failure the
way that we're told it does. For those of us without the cushion of prior
success or financial runway, repeating attempts to "get back on the horse" is
an embarrassing exercise in futility.

With a failed enterprise, you lower your value in the eyes of many gatekeepers
and peers, especially those who never tried running their own business.

But after repeatedly attempting to jumpstart businesses without capital, and
subsequent failures, eventually you are more or less cast as foolish.

And god forbid you start to become pragmatic or slightly cynical in the world
of tech startups! Because the moment your idealistic optimism comes into
question, your "cultural fit" is permanently deemed negative. And bonus
catch-22, having led startups also puts "cultural fit" into question for big
cos as well.

Basically the personality changes that result from repeated business failure
can begin to taint and poison your business relationships, and that can follow
you around forever like a little dark cloud you just can't shake.

Psychological stamina is something nobody tells you about needing as a
prerequisite for being an entrepreneur, but most of us don't learn that lesson
until it's far too late...

------
kelvin0
Glad to see this piece posted on HN. I realize now when I first came to HN I
felt somewhat 'ashamed' that I was not working towards being the 'next
unicorn'. It took some time for me to realize that there are many more avenues
that suit me and ultimately will be more fulfilling.

~~~
w1ntermute
> when I first came to HN I felt somewhat 'ashamed' that I was not working
> towards being the 'next unicorn'

HN was created as an interactive advertisement for YC (and startups in
general), and it's important to understand that before getting sucked in.

~~~
headgasket
this bias is something that has been creeping up more and more; if another
unbiased forum for hackers-entrepreneurs does emerge I'd love to hear from it.
I'm finding myself back on slashdot often these days, which has less of these
("unicorn x" for "<insert ill-defined market that will mushroom here>) story-
press releases. Or polemic-y time wasting topics that have nothing to do with
hacking.

------
hkmurakami
I remember a slew of articles mid 2015 that raised the criticism that founders
came from privileged backgrounds. The article also mentioned "the cult of the
entrepreneur" and the idolization of these characters.

I am born and raised in SV and yet I frankly do not understand the
fetishization of entrepreneurs and the idea that this line of work is somehow
holier than any other. Isn't that the root of the problem, rather than the
privilege of the founders? After all, Wall Street is littered with nepotism
and privileged family backgrounds, yet that isn't seen as much of an issue but
rather just business as usual.

(perhaps the industry attempts to gain good will for its own gain through this
portrayal, and this is the price they pay for this deceit though)

~~~
rwhitman
There's a narrative we're told about entrepreneurs that we're not told about
Wall St. One of the founding values of America is that anyone with innovative
entrepreneurial drive can start their own business and build wealth from
nothing. It's what brought so many immigrants to this country, and is even
taught to us in school as being the backbone of capitalism.

Most people in America have never actually met a successful entrepreneur. The
shop keep down the street is usually under water with loans, and the big
successes are corporations headquartered far away, the founders living in
expensive seclusion. Heck, in my case it wasn't until I arrived in the Bay
Area in my early 20's before I actually met someone who ran a successful
business in person.

The successful entrepreneur is this key person in our social mythology, and
stays very much a myth to most people. Their success gets spun into compelling
stories that give a lot of hope to those who want a way out of poor
circumstances. And in an effort to spin stories that sell, journalists (and PR
people) often omit key facts, to match the "Self-Made Man" narrative that the
people want to hear.

So, learning that yes it indeed is mostly myth and that no, not everyone can
get a shot at being "Self-Made" \- is pulling the curtains back on a long
standing cultural deceit. The truth that success is mostly limited to a tiny
subset of the population based on mixed factors like wealth, education,
location, social values, generational cohort, parental upbringing etc, is a
bitter pill to swallow.

Eager, but disadvantaged, entrepreneurs have been entering the tech market
with this key information being withheld, aiming their sights on holding out
for mega VC rounds when they should have been focused on earning a living.
This leads to painful failures that could have been prevented. Had these
founders been given the right narrative to begin with, they might have been
better aligned to scale of business success that's reasonably within their
grasp. That's the issue here

~~~
stuxnet79
Yes, I mostly agree with your point. I have been reading a lot of biographies
of successful entrepreneurs lately and have discovered that quite a lot of
spinning and outright fabrication occurs in how their backgrounds are
presented.

Like right now I am reading Elon Musk's biography. It's said he had a "tough"
upbringing. Yet he had access to a "Commodore VIC-20" in apartheid-era South
Africa and further was able to easily immigrate to Canada and later America in
search of further opportunities because he was a Canadian citizen via his
mother.

~~~
rwhitman
Elon Musk's dad was an engineer, and his mother was a model. Even if assuming
he wasn't crazy wealthy, he was at least partially exposed to engineering, and
brushed with educated people from an early age.

Not to mention, from Wikipedia _" In 1995, Musk and his brother, Kimbal,
started Zip2, a web software company, with US$28,000 of their father's (Errol
Musk) money."_

I adjusted for inflation, that was $44k in today's dollars - quite a
substantial amount of money to be gifted from a parent. Plus in 1995 the very
idea that the web not only existed but had investment potential was still
limited to tech geeks.

So at a time when I literally spent 2 full years furiously arguing to my own
dad about why he should simply allow me to hook up my modem using the
household phone line, somewhere else in the world is Elon Musk - smart,
exceedingly well educated, born in a year with a small generational cohort,
along with his also ambitious brother - cashing a generous $28k check from his
engineer dad to build, at the exact perfect time in history, a website
business in a space that has been duplicated literally thousands of times
since, and later sells it for $307 Million. How many people even have the
opportunity to nail a combo like that?

------
louprado
> If their startup fails, they can go back to their corporate job

A major challenge of a start-up founder is managing their own psychology. This
much easier to do when you are/were upper-middle class and gives those
founders a significant advantage.

------
jackarbitrage
The worst part is that I don't know if I will be viewing inspiring
entrepreneurship stories, or pornography involving entrepreneurs

~~~
surge
"Why not both?"

~~~
elthran
Entrepreneurship Illustrated: Swimsuit Edition

------
EGreg
Actually, moving to Thailand and sipping mojitos doesn't cost as much as
living on your parents' couch in NYC.

As that joke goes, the businessman sees the native sitting under a banana tree
and asks why he doesn't work, so he can make a lot of money, retire and sit
under a banana tree.

The natural pleasures in life don't cost that much, with today's technology
and productivity. And they will continue to become more affordable.

The goal of a startup is to organize people and resources to change the world
for the better!

------
cm2187
In France, the fantasy is civil servant porn... At least this promotes
entrepeneurship.

~~~
borplk
can you elaborate on that?

~~~
cm2187
When I was at university (a few years ago but not that long ago), the majority
of the other students only had one idea in mind, becoming a civil servant,
doing 9 to 5, job for life, no pressure, lots of holidays and free time to do
other things, and early retirement (I am not even kidding, 20yo students
looking forward to retirement).

Working hard, creating jobs, professional success clearly wasn't on the list.

I'd rather be in a society that glorifies entrepreneurship.

~~~
mgkimsal
The people I know that have fallen in to the "entrepreneurship porn" trap all
focus on the "no pressure, free time to other things, early retirement" based
on the millions they'll earn. No one who's really fallen hard ("we're gonna be
the next Facebook") is heading in that direction because they're interested in
"creating jobs". And... they may say "working hard" but often the real hard
stuff comes up... they fold anyway.

I've also known some successful entrepreneurs who aren't afraid of working
hard, but even then, professional curiosity, a bug to 'build' and other
factors were at play. No one's stated goals were _ever_ "I want to create
jobs". The goal is the business. Couple friends of mine run small businesses
pulling in a few million/year. Each would be just as happy if they could do it
with 5 employees vs 40 employees - "creating jobs" was not their goal -
"solving a need in the market" was.

~~~
cm2187
Yeah but be your own boss is often at the top of the list for entrepreneur
porn. It's not just the money, also the lifestyle.

------
rcarrigan87
The most dangerous part of Entrepreneur Porn, especially of the TechCrunch
flavor, is the idea funding equates to success. Funding won't fix an
unsustainable business model, it will just enable you to waste more time.

~~~
sosborn
> the idea funding equates to success

This never made sense to me. I've always viewed funding as a last resort.

------
Mendenhall
I knew I was an entrepreneur when I realized I would starve to death, suffer
great pain and be a social outcast rather than simply work for someone else.

------
salmonet
For some reason, even when I hear "there are plenty of good businesses that
aren't startups and it's ok," those businesses still seem like second class
citizens.

It's easy to forget that "taking money to grow fast" often means "Try this
really risky strategy in a winner take all market where you will most likely
die."

------
padobson
_2\. You don’t need to be Facebook_

This should be number one - or even just the whole article.

Any startup, or a career in general, should not be an end unto itself, but a
vehicle to A) fulfill your basic needs and B) get you what you want. While I
believe entrepreneurship is often the best way to get both of these, shooting
to be the next Facebook is unnecessary. You could keep that corporate job,
build your credit, and then buy a McDonald's or a gas station or an apartment
building. There's no reason to make a dent in the universe if all you want to
do is put your kids through college and travel abroad once a year.

9 out of 10 startups fail. While these odds are better than many other paths
to wealth (being born rich, winning the lottery, becoming a rockstar/movie
star/pro athlete), you're still likely to fail. If wealth is what you want,
you need to ask yourself why you want to be wealthy. If it's because you want
nice things or want to travel or even because you want to feed starving
people, there's a path to get there that has much better odds than building
extreme wealth.

~~~
hawkice
>You could keep that corporate job, build your credit, and then buy a
McDonald's or a gas station or an apartment building. There's no reason to
make a dent in the universe if all you want to do is put your kids through
college and travel abroad once a year.

This phrasing I think minimizes the positive impact you can have with those
endeavors. Displacing temperamental landlords with professional landlords
makes the world a better place, and I've found having property be their only
source of income ratchets up the stakes so much that many landlords explode
over nothing (I've had a landlord threaten to evict an entire house of
unrelated tenants because someone -- unbeknownst to her, her son in the middle
of normal maintenance -- had made a very slight mess in the kitchen).

More important than "you don't have to be Facebook" (as if everyone who tried
could be even if they "had to") is: with proper diligence and care, running a
business well DOES make a dent in the universe, with very few exceptions. It
makes the lives of yours customers (and vendors, hopefully) better in ways
that are tangible and appreciated.

~~~
padobson
_This phrasing I think minimizes the positive impact you can have with those
endeavors._

This is well put. It's almost as if I'm saying you don't need to make a dent
in the universe if you want to make a dent in the universe.

Ultimately I'm saying there's no need to build a massive company for the side
effects - material wealth, political influence, financial independence. Don't
spend all of your time and energy working on something for its side effects.

------
ilvnvtoomuch
People need to work in industries they enjoy, but, yes, everyone should have a
good understanding of the labor market (salaries, demand). Re-location should
be an option too. Lower salaries in a low-cost region might work out.

------
greggarious
"Money doesn't make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy
when I had $48 million."

\- Arnold Schwarzenegger

