
Any startups following the philosophy of the book The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris?  - gasull
Tim Ferris, in this book The 4-Hour Workweek, provides a guide that seems to be the opposite of Paul Graham ideas:<p>* You don't need to work long hours.  The title of the book makes it clear.<p>* Going solo is fine.  You don't need a soulmate for your startup.<p>* Outsource everything.<p>I've read the book and it makes a lot of sense, but I'm not aware of any startup that follows this philosophy.<p>Do you know of any 4-hour workweek startups?
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shabda
I read this book around 2 weeks, you need to take parts of it which make
sense. For example, I think his "Low Information Diet" makes a lot of sense.
(Essentially he says that, don't, don't partake any information, unless you
need that to use it that day). Last week, I logged out of all IM, stopped
coming to news.yc, and all social sites, and got done about twice of while I
get done in a week. (But its hard, so here I am back on news.yc!)

~~~
randomtask
I never managed that for more than about a week either. Glad to know I'm not
the only one :)

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cbetz
I highly recommend the LeechBlock add-on for Firefox
(<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4476>). You can tell it to
only let you read X minutes of HN (or any other site) in a day, and then it
will block you.

This add-on has really helped me get through my current project. In fact I had
better finish typing this quickly before my HN/Slashdot/gmail limit runs out.

~~~
thorax
I use 8aweek.com for a similar benefit.

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jon_dahl
I started the book but didn't finish. With that caveat, here's my take:
Ferris's approach is great for side projects, but no so great for a main
project. His ideal is not having to work hard, so he can travel the world and
kickbox. Personally, my ideal is to build great things that people love, and
have fun doing it. I want to work hard, not kickbox (though I think I could
get used to a 4 _day_ , not 4 hour, work week).

That said, the book made a lot of sense for side projects. I'd love to have a
few sources of income trickling in that don't require much of my time. If
nothing else, that would enable me to build the things I want during the rest
of my time.

~~~
randomtask
Actually, his ideal is not having to work hard at earning a living so that you
have more time to do the things that you love, whatever that is. If you are
doing what you love and earning a living off it anyway, then fair enough, but
his book is probably aimed more at people who dream about escaping the rat
race, but don't think that's possible.

~~~
qaexl
Continuing on that vein, the outcome Ferris's model is different from Paul
Graham's. The Paul Graham model involves the growing of wealth in terms of
stock value, with an exit strategy of selling those shares to an outside
company or possibly an IPO. The main goal is increasing shareholder value and
building net worth.

Tim Ferris, on the other hand, is talking about a business asset that
generates income with the least amount of personal time in its day-to-day
operation. You _don't_ want to sell the asset because it is generating cash
into your pocket. Instead the exit strategy involves leaving it running --
exactly like setting up a headless server with background daemons, instead of
hooking up a keyboard, mouse, and monitor and babysitting it 24/7.

There's also a big misunderstanding about "working less". If you actually read
the book, the initial setup still requires patience and effort, particularly
if you're coming from a regular 9-5 job background. The other "track" in the
book are for people who already own a small business, but they are doing the
mom-and-pop thing and need to be _owners_ of the business, and not merely
self-employed. These people essentially own their own jobs, often work
significantly more hours than regular corporate jobs, and don't have the
upside of startup since these people want to keep their small business. This
idea, by the way, is not new, and has been written about by other authors,
such as Michael E. Gerber in his book, E-Myth.

By the way, once you created one income-generating asset, there's no reason
not to go on and create another one. The time that is freed up from one such
asset lets you go on to the next asset. The payoff isn't as large, but you
only need to generate enough income to meet your expenses. At which point, you
are free to pursue anything you want, including a proper startup -- just that
you would not have to worry about mortgages and food at that point.

In short, Paul Graham writes about _startups_ and Tim Ferris does not. One
strategy is about net worth, the other is about income-generating assets. They
are strategies should be used consciously, not blindly.

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hassy
A business reselling French sailor shirts (one of the examples in the book)
would not require long hours or a co-founder and you would be able to
outsource pretty much everything.

You see, Tim Ferris does not talk about startups, he talks about what he calls
"muses" - small businesses that generate income with as little input of your
time as possible. A web-based shop that resells something seems to be the
exemplary muse.

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utnick
In interviews he makes it clear that you he doesnt think you should literally
work only 4 hours. Especially when u are starting up a business.

Its more about building a business that can be run on autopilot. Its a lot
harder to build a business while on autopilot.

~~~
mattmaroon
I have a couple side businesses that do pretty well and run on auto pilot. I
don't even spend 4 hours a month on them. I could work full time on them and
double the profit probably, but it wouldn't be worth it.

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jrsims
Links?

~~~
fbailey
not his example, but I made sth like 5000€ last year from this site
<http://lottoliste.de/> which is basically a list of german online lottery
offers, I just did a price comparison and bought some adwords. Since all these
sites offer lifetime affiliate payments I make like 100€ a month for 0 hours.

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cvinson
Ferris likely made a lot more money from his book than from his "dietary
supplement" business he is very vague about -- in the same way the "Rich Dad,
Poor Dad" author skims over his own business results and sells a lot of books.

They are both easy sells -- not working much and generating tons of money --
but I would like to see examples of businesses that do this in the real
world.* I work 60+ hours a week on my app (work I enjoy). I am convinced it is
impossible to outsource and not put in the hours without competitors eating
your lunch.

*plentyoffish being the only example I can think of.

~~~
kingkongrevenge
I don't remember the name of the supplement business, but I did find the site
at one point. It was total snake oil bullshit. He was even selling the same
thing as two brands, one to "sharpen your mind" and the other to "focus your
athletic strength", or something like that.

The other thing is, in the book he plainly admits he worked very long hours
while building the business. It was only once it was an established concern
that it was possible to remove himself from the picture so much. Well no shit,
owners of successful businesses don't need to work all that hard. Who knew?
The trick is building the business.

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inovica
I think like any book or 'plan' that you should take from it what works. I've
read this recently and it kind of works if you're single, but if you've a
family or other responsibilities then there are a couple of elements that just
don't work. Take from it what you can and adapt to suit your needs. I also
enjoyed the book The e-myth Revisited as that told me about systemization and
also Rich Dad, Poor Dad for being an 'investor'. I actually like to work,
though I have a few businesses that generate good regular revenue
(www.sourceguardian.com, www.europeantenders.com and www.ukscrap.com) and I
hardly touch them. What they enable me to do is experiment with other 'stuff'
and to build other businesses without the concern of paying the mortgage, food
bills etc. Oh, I outsourced nearly everything 8 years ago and built the above
using outsourced programming talent (who I subsequently made partners in the
venture after we launched)

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sonink
The rules are not for a startup. The rules are if you think of your real
'life' (like travel) as outside work and would hence like to spend as less
time as possible for work and enjoy life for the rest.

In a startup your work is the biggest part of your life, and many would have
said that it should be done only if you are absolutely passionate about your
'work' to not mind its taking over your 'life'.

Specifically incase of a startup:

1\. You do need to work long hours. 2\. Startups run best with atleast 2
founders. 3\. Cannot outsource the most critical parts. More often than not
almost nothing at all as money is scarce.

The books is nice though but refers to a different lifestyle. The only things
that work for also for a startup life are his thoughts on GTD - handling email
etc.

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wallflower
4HWW is a classic example of how something can be simple but not easy

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kingkongrevenge
4HWW is first and foremost a book on marketing. The lesson is on how Ferris is
fantastic at self promotion and promoting his snake oil business. The title of
the book is nothing more than clever provocative marketing, not a literal
recommendation. The hammock and palm trees on the cover are a proven marketing
formula that someone has used every few years for ages, for example
<http://www.lazyway.net>. I saw some self improvement book from the sixties
with the same graphic.

I read some interview with Ferris a while ago where he revealed that he
deliberately went around making semi-hyperbolic, controversial blog posts to
draw attention to himself and incidentally his book. He sequentially targeted
the online tech community, the health business community, and so forth. It
worked well.

The guy is just very, very good at marketing and promotion and is worth
studying in that respect. The rest of what he has to say is fairly valid and
worth reading (minus the hyperbole), but it can be reasonably reduced to very
little. It really boils down to an application of good executive management
principles to your own time:

-Measure your productivity such that you're carefully considering meaningful outputs as they relate to personal goals/needs and not "work done."

-Track the real marginal returns on time invested and don't throw hours at a low marginal return: minimize time invested appropriately. Focus on the few high return things you do. Consider dropping altogether the low return things.

-Eliminate activities that waste your time or clutter your mind and break flow, e.g. always-on email. Minimize information inputs to that which truly matters.

-Do a proper analysis on the hourly value of your time, consider opportunity costs, and outsource tasks appropriately.

I think all the salient points in the book fit under these bullets. There's
also a lot of fluff about international travel and so forth. As I say, the
book has merit and is worth a quick read, but the main thing to take away from
Tim Ferris is how far good marketing can take you.

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nir
After a while, (n<10) hour workweeks aren't that much fun, for most people.
You can only kickbox/travel/party for so long before life become meaningless
and unsatisfying.

Personally I much prefer 37signal's "4 day workweek", where you have plenty of
time for yourself but are still working and creating something of value which
you care about.

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rapind
Well, it looks like the answer to your question is no. A lot of different
opinions though. I think it and the many similar books are a good read though.
It doesn't hurt to manage your time better. It definitely doesn't hurt to make
a foray into outsourcing on your own, if only for the learning experience. And
I honestly believe you should spend the bulk of your time on something your
passionate about, and if it's not your day job, then it's a great idea to cut
down on those hours.

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vegashacker
This book just rubbed me the wrong way. It was so soulless, that I found it
hard to take it seriously.

The book itself was also clearly an instance of the theories he was proposing
in the book. While clever in a recursive kind of way, this made me like it
even less because I kept thinking, "You can't fool me with the slimeyness. I
know what you're doing."

~~~
durana
I found it funny when half way through the book I realized what I held in my
hands was a product of exactly what was described in the book.

Whether you liked it or not, it sounds like you read it and I'll assume paid
for it so that's proof that the theory can work. Even with skeptical people!
;)

~~~
mmelin
Well, I remember that he actually almost explicitly says this in a footnote in
the part where he talks about choosing the right kind of product to sell,
where selling information is best because the markup can be thousands of
percentage points. Nevertheless, although Tim Ferriss absolutely makes a ton
of money from his book and speaking gigs, all of the things he describes in
the book were accomplished, by definition, before he earned a cent of book
royalties.

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sidsavara
I don't know if I would call 4HWW the opposite of Paul Graham. Consider YC
itself - they give you money, access to VCs, etc - your job is to make
something that is cool. This isn't outsourcing everything, but it is very much
a capitalist division of labor, which I see as the main message of the book.
Focus on where you add value, outsource everything else. The cofounder versus
soulmate debate I think is different - it's more of a morale thing than
anything else, I think Tim's point is about productivity, not morale.

The title of the book similarly refers to the 4 hours of actual value adding
work being done a week - in a startup, you're working 50-80 hours a week
because you're adding value all those hours that couldn't come from someone
else (or, that you don't want to necessarily for team morale purposes)

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tstegart
I skimmed the book and it made no sense. Almost everything I read skipped at
least one step in logic. "You can work less and be rich. I worked less and
became rich." The "how" seemed to be left out of many of his examples.

Anyways, to provide a real answer and not to just diss the book, I doubt many
start-ups work a 4 hour work week. The fact is, there is a lot of work to get
done in a start-up. If you only worked 4 hours a week, and you needed 2000
hours to get it done, well, that would take you over 9 years to get done. You
can't magically make start-up work go away. Outsourcing only works if you have
capital to pay for it. So if you don't have capital, and 9 years is too long,
then you might just need to work harder, longer, and with more people to get
it done.

~~~
kapitti
> The "how" seemed to be left out of many of his examples.

If you purchased the book, the how should be self explanatory.

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tstegart
Ok, that doesn't make sense.

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reeses
The point of those late night "here is my yacht, here is my house, here is my
trophy wife. Call now and be like me!" infomercials is that they're making
money from selling the money making system, rather than from real estate or
chinchilla farms.

Skim less, understand more. :-)

~~~
tstegart
But aren't you skeptical? Sure, those infomercials are selling the system, but
if you'd bought it, you'd expect the system would explain how to do it, right?
I'd expect the book to explain how to do it too.

But I found it very conclusory. It never really explained how. It seems like
almost everything I read was "I saved more money and did less work, thats how
i did this." But there was no explanation exactly how he did it. Most of the
examples I read did not fully explain the nuts and bolts of how to do it.
Sure, if you want inspiration, go ahead. But you don't need a whole book to
say you work less and earn more. He can say that in one line and be done with
it. I expected more, and I found it lacking. To me it was the equivalent of
writing a book on stocks and filling up 300 pages with "I bought high and sold
low, thats how I'm rich."

I'm quite confident my skimming did not result in a lack of understanding, but
more. I skimmed a lot, and each part I skimmed lacked substance. If it
consistently lacked substance, it told me not to waste my time.

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christefano
That's funny, our startup has a 168-hour workweek.

It's admirable that it works for some people (I have read the book, by the
way) but the 4-hour workweekers that I've dealt with professionally seem to be
out of touch with the industry.

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steveplace
_You don't need to work long hours. The title of the book makes it clear._

That actually wansn't the original title of the book. It was something like
"Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit," but it didn't fly with the publusher.

He's already said that the "4-hour" part of the book is only a portion and is
more about focusing on your core work and stripping off all extraneous parts.

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time_management
As already said, this doesn't apply to startups so much as a certain type of
lifestyle business, that almost certainly can't be _started_ on a 4-hour work
week. For Ferris's sort of thing, partners become an undesirable hassle, and
the work involved doesn't require the level of detail-oriented talent that
tech startup work does.

It would be interesting to know if his advice is practical. We tend to be the
type who prefer to attack hard and risky problems, but if there's a lot of
low-hanging fruit out there that we fail to see, it'd be nice to know where it
is and how to find it.

