

SocialCam - launching hard and painful - tomh-
http://swombat.com/2011/3/10/socialcam-launching-hard-and-painful

======
jasonkester
Well said. I never understood why people associate startups with long hours.
Sure, that was the stereotype for VC-backed disaster startups back in the
'90s, but there's no reason to expect that you need to work 12 hour days just
to run a software business.

I live comfortably on revenues from my little software empire, and I can't
remember the last time I worked a 40 hour week on one of my products.

I'm like most developers in that I work in bursts. I get maybe one or two
full-day pushes in a good week, and lots of little tinkering bursts that last
an hour or so. When none of that is happening, you'll find me off living my
life.

------
wheels
While it's likely true that people who sacrifice everything are rarely
successful, I think that the people at the top of their fields almost always
have.

There's almost, but not quite, the subtext here that over the top dedication
doesn't matter. But it does affect one's potential, it just doesn't guarantee
success.

So rationally, since you probably won't get to the top of your field, it's
folly to burn yourself out trying. But then, by that same logic, starting a
startup is altogether irrational since it'll probably be a lot of work for
little money and ultimate failure.

There's a function from commitment to potential, and the area between that
line and the plot of a rational career choice is the place founders live. It's
really a matter of how far of a departure overbearing self-confidence allows
you to justify. But the biggest winners are the ones that start among the most
self-deluded. ;-)

~~~
swombat
That's a good way to put it for those who see startups (and perhaps business
in general) as a lottery ticket. I have a very strong suspicion (though not
substantiated by evidence at this point) that the chances of success (where
success is defined in the typical startup way as "fuck-you-money") are much
higher if one goes about deliberately and sustainably becoming a fantastic
entrepreneur, rather than betting everything on a single startup.

The question is, really, what affects potential more? Over the top dedication,
or marathon-like persistence?

I'm betting on the latter. If two equally bright and ambitious young kids come
up and say "I want to succeed in the startup world", and one of them continues
"I've building this one startup and throwing everything I've got in it, my
entire existence rides on it", while the other one says "I'm planning to spend
the next 20 years doing it and I'll probably start 20 businesses at least in
that time, each one better than the previous", I'd bet on the latter.

I suspect the only person who has any solid evidence that could weigh this
debate one way or another is pg, though.

~~~
wheels
The major difference in what we're saying is that you're defining success as a
step function, I'm defining it as a continuum. If we're talking about a step
function, sure, you're more likely to get over the threshold with calculated
risks and diligence. But out at the end of the continuum, where the Bill Gates
and Michael Jordans of the world live, in that league, I believe you need over
the top dedication and marathon like persistence.

~~~
swombat
Most people that I meet who run startups do so because a) they enjoy the
challenge of building something cool and useful and making money from it, and
b) they would like to make enough money to not have to worry about money.

Even if you're trying to build a Gatesian empire, I'd argue that taking it in
steps could be a better approach, more likely to get somewhere. See Richard
Branson as a counterpoint to Gates/Jobs/etc. And the advantage of taking it in
steps is that if you don't have what it takes in both personal qualities and
incredible luck to make it to the top, you're still left with something.

I don't think anything you or I can say on a website will divert a Steve Jobs
or Michael Jordan from their intentions, in any case. :-)

But, certainly, both philosophies exist and have their pros and cons. Which
one do you think is right for most people?

~~~
wheels
_Which one do you think is right for most people?_

Neither. And that's the essence of what I'm getting at. I don't think there's
a singular _this is what people (or entrepreneurs) should do_. It's widely
variable upon the person, their constitution and tolerances, and for _most
people_ , probably altogether a bad idea. It's also a false dichotomy; in
practice successful people, for either definition, do not choose between
either or, but varying degrees of both.

~~~
swombat
I like it.

"Founders! Do what makes sense! Use your brains, dammit!"

Good advice for all :-)

Worth noting that I explicitly did not judge whether it made sense for the
SocialCam team to do it this way - I'm only criticising the general stereotype
that "you have to sacrifice everything in order to make it". Imho that method
works in a very small number of cases and is dangerous in most.

------
ivankirigin
I think about this a bit because I have kids. I simply refuse to not spend
time with them. If success at a startup is predicated on spending all your
waking hours working, I'm doomed to never succeed.

I don't think this is the case. Strategy and design are two good examples of
areas where more hours doesn't necessarily mean better. It is better to be
slower and right.

Setting the tone and pace for others is a riskier part of this. Will employees
stay late if the founder is never there for dinner?

~~~
tptacek
You & me both, Ivan. And like every other controversy on HN, "hard vs. smart"
isn't a real debate.

I've got 2 kids; they were 2 and 0.5 at the end of my first company, and 11
and 9 now. And one of the people from whom I learned the most about business
was also a founder with kids. So, I'm particularly interested in the dynamics
of startups and family life.

One thing I saw work remarkably well was company culture. You can easily
create an inclusive and family-oriented culture: have the whole team be local,
do lots of dinners and offsites, have after-dinners work-hours where kids are
OK, make sure the families get to know each other.

At the first startup I ever worked for, the office was a _very_ large
apartment on the north side of Chicago. There was a full kitchen, they cooked
dinners, and evening hours were --- at least in the beginning --- of a
different character than daylight hours; people worked, but the whole
environment was more social, less button-up, and more welcoming.

I don't think they really did this on purpose. It was just very friendly and
family-oriented group of people. But I can't see a reason why it would be hard
to duplicate and extend the idea. Just set an objective, to allow people to
routinely work longer hours when necessary while causing minimal strain on
families. Then come up with practices that support the objective. I can think
of 10 ideas for that off the top of my head. I'm sure you can come up with 20.

It's kind of remarkable that so few new companies do this (if they did, they'd
be made of stupid not to advertise it). Most startups advertise a culture that
is almost the opposite of that idea.

~~~
ivankirigin
If the biggest barrier to hiring at a startup is that most people think the
situation too risky, then anything that might push normal people towards
startups is good. I can easily imagine people stressed at large companies that
choose startups for better work-family balance (which isn't the same as fewer
working hours) that would join a startup just for the family culture.

Maybe one reason big companies get slower is that as they age, the young folks
start having kids. This translates to less and worse work than before, but the
blame is on the company which didn't shift it's culture. I guess some of these
ideas wouldn't scale, but to my knowledge, they haven't been tried at scale.

------
pclark
I don't think there is anything wrong with crunch for a month or three, on the
promise that the team can wind down, relax and be acknowledged for their
crunch period after.

I find I can work intensively for three months, but then need a few weeks of
working 9-5 to recover. I think that is pretty normal, and I assume this is
what the SocialCam team did.

(swombat: got a source for the quote?)

~~~
swombat
The quote is from the article linked in the title (which appeared on HN
yesterday or early this morning, depending on your time zone):

<http://areallybadidea.com/launch>

------
justin
Thanks for writing this -- it made me write my thoughts down on some things
I've also been meaning to write.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2309723>

------
dclaysmith
I think in this case, it's more about the timing. They want to get it done by
SXSW. So it's not an arbitrary deadline, or worse just a philosophy that you
have to drive yourself into the ground. They have a real deadline that, if
they can hit it, they will likely give a nice bump to their launch and chances
of success.

While I'd agree--killing yourself isn't good strategy or a real recipe for
success--sometimes it needs to be done.

------
eunice_chen
It's not just your physical and mental energy that gets burned out through 12
hour days, it's also your passion. For all entrepreneurs there is a strong
underlying passion burning inside and we push ourselves based on how brightly
it burns, because we simply have nothing else to answer to. So if you're well-
rested or highly caffeinated or adrenaline-filled with passion, you will be
productive, because you're excited to. If you're pushing yourself to work 100
hours a week just because you think it's the right thing to do (this is the
equivalent of face time in a corporate company) then you will be less
productive, if not also resentful and discouraged. That's not to say deadlines
aren't important, but work ethics should come from a desire within instead of
from external pressure. I mean, we don't like the corporate world because of
this external pressure, right? So why bring it with us to our startups?

------
edw519
When I read yesterday's post about the sprint to launch at SXSW, I thought 3
things:

    
    
      1. Great determination, great work ethic, great job.
      2. It doesn't have to be this way.
      3. It shouldn't be this way.
      

Thanks, Daniel, for saying what I was thinking, far better than I could have.

I feel fortunate that my DNA is blessed with some sort of internal "governor".
I don't know where it came from, but I've always had it. Here's how it works:
It stays out of the way when I am enthusiastic about something, allowing me
work ridiculous hours and pursue almost anything that looks promising, whether
it makes sense or not. But when I reach a certain point, it turns me off,
completely. I don't seem to have conscious judgement of what that point is or
when I reach it, but when it happens, I know.

A few examples:

\- I have worked many times without sleep, preparing for a launch. Sometimes,
I know my judgement is failing and continuing would cause more problems in the
long run. So I stopped and apologize to everyone. I went to sleep and informed
everyone that the project would resume at x. I'm not really sure exactly what
happened, but I know I had little control over the governor.

\- I had 2,500 invoices spread across the carpet, looking for a clue about a
bug. After 8 hours, everything was fuzzy. So I just gathered up the invoices,
filed them away, and went to sleep. Three days later a lightbulb went off, I
spread out 100 of the invoices, and found the problem in 15 minutes. I know
that if I had continued that night, I never would have found the problem.

\- I worked 90 hours per week for 2 months for a big deployment. Without
telling me, my co-founder spent all of our reserves travelling to a customer
site to oversee the install. He emailed me every 20 minutes with a problem.
Between being pissed off at him and exhausted from working on the wrong
things, I realized the project was going nowhere and would never succeed. So I
just stopped working completely. I went to bed and didn't answer email for 4
days. I'm not proud of this, just one more story about my internal governor.

I'm a little frustrated that I don't have much control over my governor, but
also a little relieved that it does it's thing. After all, I've never really
been burnt out, and I'm still going strong. Thank you, governor.

~~~
dabent
I've encountered something similar to your "invoices" situation many times.
I'm actually blocked on something now, but I know my mind is hard at work to
get things straight in some background process. Once my block is cleared, I
know I'll just dive in and get things done in the same amount of time it would
have originally taken, only with better results. I know that, because that's
how it's worked for me so many times before. Every once in a while I forget
what I was working on, but it's usually in favor of a better project or
solution.

Fortunately, my blocks are usually short and resolved by letting my background
processes chew on a problem during a night of sleep.

I think the real trick is to actually attack problems that cause me to block.
If I stick with simple things I can process in real time, I'm not thinking
hard enough.

Of course, this sort of discussion here wouldn't be complete without a
reference to good and bad procrastination:
<http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html>

~~~
robeastham
The Pragmatic Bookshelf has a fantastic book that goes into some detail about
how your brain might be working in these situations. Often sleeping on a
problem and letting your subconscious do some of the work is the best policy.
Check the book out here:

[http://pragprog.com/titles/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and-
lear...](http://pragprog.com/titles/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and-learning)

~~~
vyrotek
I had a logic teacher in college who would force us to exercise this concept.
He would have us look at the very last problem on an exam on test days and
make us just stare at it (no working on it allowed) for 5 minutes. Then we had
to start the test from the beginning.

The theory being that your subconscious is working out the problem and you'll
have a better chance of figuring it out. I felt like it really did work.

~~~
khafra
Seems like he should've had half the class do the staring, the other half take
the test normally, and give as many points as appropriate. One could get a lot
of data after doing that for several classes.

~~~
vyrotek
I'm sure he had done that at some point.

He also liked to show off his many other amazing 'mind hacks' such as
memorizing everyone's name within the first few minutes of the first day of
class. There were almost 100 students in his class and after he said he was
done 'doing his thing' he would ask the students to change seats and never sit
in the same seat twice for the first week to test him.

------
djm
well said. Starting a startup is a marathon not a sprint; pace yourself or
you'll regret it later.

Everyone starting out seems to think it'll be all over in a year and they'll
be rich. It's more likely to be a couple of years and few people can sustain
intense work for that long without crashing.

------
lactoferment
There's value to the experience of being on a team of people, working towards
a goal you all believe in, all giving 100%. Agreed, you wouldn't want to do
this 365 days a year, but I think it's important to understand the state of
mind required to do this, so that you can call on it or recreate it for
circumstances that merit it.

It's definitely easier to do this if you think your team is going to "win". In
fact, if you don't think you stand a reasonable chance of winning, you may as
well just go home.

But: If people thought too much about statistics, no one would ever try
anything new. So I don't think that being able accurately to gauge your
chances of success is actually that important (never mind the fact that it's
essentially impossible).

------
JonnieCache
That's a lot of modafinil. That stuff burns me out after a week of daily use,
let alone 9 months. Mixing it with caffeine makes me crazy as well. Be careful
with your neurons people.

Can I ask what sort of doses you were taking?

~~~
swombat
At peak I was taking 1.5 100mg pills a day - one in the morning upon waking
up, half after lunch to keep me going till the evening. Plus probably 2-3
(strong) coffees.

I would _not_ recommend this to anyone.

Since this is over, I've taken Modafinil sporadically (only v. low dose... 1/4
of a 100mg pill), but I found that it doesn't really make that much
difference. I _feel_ more productive and focused when I take it, but I don't
actually get more done.

What works best is a combination of a good night's sleep, a healthy lifestyle
including physical activity, and decent discipline (in my case, with the
pomodoro method).

~~~
JonnieCache
50-70mg and _no coffee,_ taken only when needed seems optimal to me. 150mg in
a day is definitely too much, unless you're trying to pull some ridiculous 60
hour marathon, which is inadvisable anyway.

Too-large doses leave you unable to concentrate on anything for longer than
about 10 seconds.

~~~
swombat
_Too-large doses leave you unable to concentrate on anything for longer than
about 10 seconds._

That's easily balanced out by chronic lack of sleep :-) Even with that dosage,
I was still fairly sluggish.

