

The factors of entrepreneurship - drm237
http://troutgirl.wordpress.com/2007/11/04/the-factors-of-entrepreneurship/

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pg
_the people who are telling you to go off on your own are also financially
interested in the phenomenon of selling teams of young engineers to big
companies_

I can't believe people still write stuff like this. Doesn't anyone stop to
think how little investors make when that happens, compared to the returns if
a startup keeps going?

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Goladus
_One of the ways I know that we're in a bubble is the frequency with which I
am now meeting intelligent young men who sincerely and with every appearance
of unselfconsciousness tell me that they want to be founders of startups as an
alternative to joining the workforce and learning their trade._

This is really the only comment I have a problem with. Do they really say "as
an alternative to learning their trade" as if the workforce is the only place
to learn?

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mxh
Workforce experience reminds me of the old story about the shoe salesman who
goes to look for a job:

    
    
     "I have 20 years experience", he says to his prospective boss.
    
     "No you don't.", the interviewer replies.  "You've had 6 months of experience 40 times over."
    
    

The corporate trenches are sort of like that. You do learn some stuff, but not
much, and you learn it awful quickly. 90% of the interesting aspects of my
"trade" that I've learned have been on my own.

Corporate work (for developers) seems ok (but not great) for gaining domain
expertise. It is a great way to _meet_ people with domain expertise. Other
than that, it's not good for much. Large organizations seem considerably less
than the sum of their parts.

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nolanbrown23
Overall a good article that brings up many great points. I find her first
requirement of Substantial work history on a large well known product or
hundreds of thousands of users or a PhD to be kind of ridiculous. She's saying
in order to do a VC-backed company you need to have already "made it" in some
way. That toiling in obscurity doesn't "qualify" you for running a company. I
find that to be a load of bullshit. In a perfect world, in perfect
cicumstances, everything will go perfect. Since this isn't perfect world, in
the end only two things really matter; can you build it and are you smart
enough to make it survive.

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nostrademons
That part is basically true - to a VC, a person with "substantial industry
experience" means an ex-founder or key employee that has already taken a
company to tens of millions in revenue. That doesn't mean that only rich
founders can start new successful companies (if it did, it'd disqualify Apple,
Facebook, Microsoft, HP, etc). It means that you'll have a really difficult
time getting VC funding if you don't have that track record, unless you
demonstrate some other factor, like massive traffic or stellar recommendations
from a founder who _does_ meet those qualifications.

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gigamon
I agree. I found her article pretty spot on. Keep in mind that she starts the
article by focusing on those whose financial plan is to get VC money from the
get-go. I wrote about my own experience with VC's and I basically said the
same. It is very difficult to get VC money unless you have a track record.

\--Denny--

Denny K Miu

<http://startupforless.com>

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hwork
Good stuff. Very relevant for our crowd.

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eusman
wow she must hate men

all that needless offensive intro to her readers and that pointless ending.

she should follow her own advice starting from the "written communication
skills" one.

what's the purpose of her article anyway if she hates 20ers-something that
want to become founders?

anyway, just another web page in my block list added

