

Early epiphanies as a late cofounder - cijdl584
http://blog.jeffzchen.com/post/36985464694/early-epiphanies

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EdwardMSmith
I fear this is going to be taken poorly, but this really made an impression on
me. This is not a criticism of the author, nor really a condemnation of the
lifestyle depicted - but only an observation. I find the "Myths of The Valley"
both very interesting and very frustrating. This is about the Myth, not about
the author.

This reads like a religious testimony, or a classic Campbell myth.

It begins with scripture from one of the prophets, "Running a startup is like
being punched in the face repeatedly, but working for a large company is like
being waterboarded. - Paul Graham" then moves to the (self-acknowledged)
epiphany where the author expresses how his eyes, once closed are now open. In
monomyth terms, its a mix of "the ordinary world", "call to adventure", and
"the refusal":

"I’ve learned more and done more in the last four days than I have in the rest
of my 22 years of existence." "Until last week, I was pretty convinced that I
was a lazy, talentless fuckup." "We are so good at it that we can easily
convince ourselves that we are happy doing something when in fact we are not.
... Then I woke up."

We then bring in several of the common Valley mythical elements:

The "all-nighter" - "This week I worked 15 hour days and was disappointed when
I got too tired and had to sleep."

The "garage" - "On day one, I ... slept in a garage next to my motorcycle.

We then have, in monomyth terms, the "meeting with the mentor": "On day two I
met with one of the biggest investors in the valley."

Testimony as to how life prior seems trivial: "There’s not not enough time to
argue about what movies to watch or what restaurants to go to."

And the conclusion where the author warns about being led astray on the
journey: "Between the time that I left Facebook and the time I joined Pixlee,
I received a literal metric fuckton of advice, from respectable, well-meaning,
intelligent people. I compiled all of the advice and in the end, went with my
gut."

We're now at the beginning of Act II, I'm honestly (really!) excited to read
the next part where we have "tests", "allies" and "enemies" and "the ordeal".

I think the whole startup experience fits with the monomyth quite nicely, and
we already have a few epics coming out of the Age of the Valley - the Jobs
myth and the Zuckerberg myth, among others - both of which fit the classic
pattern pretty well.

Anyway, I wish the author well, it really is an amazing experience!

~~~
cijdl584
That was incredibly interesting! The blog is mine, by the way. I'm incredibly
flattered that you made such an in depth analysis; frankly I wrote it as
nothing more than a happy rant and wanted to share with some fellow hackers
and entrepreneurs.

I agree with the sentiment that the Myth of the Valley is interesting and
frustrating. Mainly though, I think it gives many smart people a strong sense
of purpose (not unlike the prophets and religion in general), and I definitely
think that's a good thing.

~~~
aheadofthegame
A sense of purpose is generally a good thing. If it is determined by social
pressure, conformity, uninformed emotions, etc. then it is risky. If it is
determined by deep introspection in light of a well rounded understanding of
human nature, then it is much more likely to last. It is difficult to be very
introspective, however, without some life experience. Most people, I think,
are not prone to figuring that stuff out totally in the abstract.

------
yajoe
Unrelated to the blog article, I hadn't heard of Pixlee until now. The company
appears to scrape Instagram and try to measure brand
awareness/usage/trends/______ by analyzing the pictures. Probably advertised
as "Twitter-like sentiment analysis for Instagram." Image recognition is a
hard problem. Good luck to them.

Scraping Instagram? Wow, that just gives me more pause about putting too much
personal info on social networks. Will people create a startup that measures
risk profiles for insurance companies based on how many beers or cigarettes
appear in pictures? Or pictures that include known felons or people with
police mug shots? It will be interesting to watch this space.

------
herval
"This week I worked 15 hour days... I believe everyone has something that will
motivate them to this level"

Working crazy hours is not a synonym of motivation. You can be crazily
motivated and _still_ have a life...

------
huggah
What precisely is a "literal metric fuckton of advice"?

~~~
tfm
Well, we can take as a lower bound for information/energy equivalence as the
k.T.ln(2) from Landauer's principle[1], and mass-energy equivalence as e =
m.c^2; there would presumably be some inefficiency in converting energy to
fuck-energy (call the efficiency epsilon), so that gives us

    
    
      information =  epsilon . mass . c^2 / (k . T . ln 2)
                  =~ epsilon * 3.13e43 bits
    

or about 3 billion billion yobibytes assuming peak fucking-efficiency. Bear in
mind that this is assuming the advice was delivered at room temperature of
300K, which is unlikely given how hot Instagram startups are at the moment,
and of course no-one should work in a vacuum, so this is just an upper bound.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauers_principle>

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sobbybutter
Good read. I especially enjoy the part about smart people having an "idiot
mode". I've found that some of my best ideas were derived from silly ones, and
the silly ones only came about because I was with friends I could trust.

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tsm
How is this any different than "epiphanies as a hacker at a multi-person
startup"? The post was well worded and concise, but didn't contain any
insights that aren't standard HN rhetoric.

------
001sky
_I think I can say with fair confidence that I’ve learned more and done more
in the last four days than I have in the rest of my 22 years of existence._

\-- Isn't this a classic display of cognitive bias?

