
Wannabe entrepreneur symptoms and cures - jasonlbaptiste
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/07/wannabe-entrepreneurs-symptoms-and-cures.html
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lukev
> [...] or learn how to code yourself. It's not that hard, and if you think of
> startups as a career, it's a great skill to have even if you just manage
> tech people.

I disagree strongly. Coding is a great skill and just about everyone should be
familiar with it, but telling starry-eyed entrepreneurs they can learn to code
well enough to launch a successful tech startup on their own in a short
timeframe is extremely misleading. Coding and design are the core competencies
of any tech/web startup, and you can't hope to succeed if you're essentially
an amateur at your core competency. Because the fact is, coding may not be
hard, but coding well and being responsible for the software infrastructure of
a successful project _is_ hard and isn't something you can pick up overnight.

By all means, learn to code. It will help you in innumerable ways, and maybe
after a few years of practice you can start to think about launching a cool
project on your own. But don't be deluded into thinking you can pick up "Ruby
for Dummies" and have a hot new web startup 6 months later without some real
technical expertise.

~~~
cabalamat
> _Because the fact is, coding may not be hard, but coding well and being
> responsible for the software infrastructure of a successful project is hard
> and isn't something you can pick up overnight._

This might be a good place to point to Peter Norvig's essay Teach Yourself
Programming in Ten Years -- <http://norvig.com/21-days.html>

~~~
EasyCompany
Yes, that is one of the first articles i read along with....Hot be a Hacker -
Eric Steven Raymond, Great Hackers and Undergraduation-Paul Graham. I agree
with the long-term approach or 10 000hrs according to Outliers-Malcolm
Gladwell. Also in Talent Is Overrated-Geoff Colvin, you get a good idea on how
to become an expert/outstanding performer in any discipline. But....

In Entrepreneurship(Particularly web apps), i disagree that you need to be an
expert, i believe that you need to be able to get something built and manage
whatever traction you get from there to make your business solid. Such as
getting top talent to do thinks the right way. The key is just get something
built first......in my opinion.

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mixmax
_Symptom: you now just need a programmer to code up your site._

The last startup I did failed miserably. When I looked back to see what went
wrong it was obvious that if I could have coded it myself I would have been a
lot better off, and it might have worked out.

So I started learning how to program so that I would be better prepared next
time around. Best decision I ever made.

I can now get an idea, and straight away do something about it instead of
first having to convince someone to do it for me. As an extra bonus it's now
trivial for me to see things that weren't at all obvious before such as why
one feature is much more demanding to code than another, why seemingly simple
things take so much time, and much more.

I'm by no means a good programmer: I can't do a high scalability clustered
scheme app, but I know enough to actually _do_ things. And really that's all
that matters.

If you're into startups and can't code follow Gabriel's advice and learn how
to do so. Right now. It's the best decision you'll ever make.

~~~
christonog
Agree. If anything, you'll exercise your mind, learn a new skill, and can add
it to your resume.

Learning how to program gives you a better sense of what it takes to build
something. I personally believe that if you're in startups, you should at
least be somewhat knowledgeable in the technologies used.

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10ren
> you don't understand your startup's assumptions.

The cure reminds me of what Fred Brooks said in _The Mythical Man-Month after
20 years_ , at p.258-9 ( _MM-M_ , 2nd ed.) about defining the user set (ie.
who the users are), as a population assessed along several attributes, with a
frequency distribution over each (my eg. how much RAM they have; their largest
file - but the most interesting ones are app-specific). He says you should
_GUESS_ the set of attributes and distributions:

1\. you will think about it carefully;

2\. they will be debated by the team, revealing differences in how each member
sees the user set;

3\. it _"helps everyone recognize which decisions depend upon which user set
properties. Even this sort of informal sensitivity analysis is valuable. When
it develops that very important decisions are hinging on some particular
guess, then it is worth the cost to establish better estimates for that
value._ "

He summarizes: " _It is far better to be explicit and wrong than to be vague_
"

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Alex3917
"Symptom: you've written more than a 5pg business plan."

The design brief for our website was seven pages if I remember correctly.
First we described who our customers were, along with their psychology and
values. Then we described the vibe we were going for and why it would resonate
with them. Then we described 10 or so design elements that sent signals
consistent with what we were going for, and listed five or so examples of each
element being used on various sites across the web. Now I realize that this is
different than a business plan, but if you haven't done more than five pages
worth of thinking then you probably don't understand what your assumptions are
or how to test them.

~~~
notahacker
I agree, but I think Gabriel's main point is in the parenthesis - "Symptom:
you've written more than a 5pg business plan (intended for others)"

You're more likely to find someone to invest in or collaborate with you based
on a prototype than a detailed rationalisation of the thought behind the
prototype you're thinking of building.

Putting your thoughts on paper is one thing. Putting your thoughts on paper as
a substitute for trying to put them into practice is another.

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micaelwidell
I think it is fairly normal to go through the wannabe-phase. We all do it
until the moment that we realize we aren't getting nearer any goals, and
decide to become a doer instead of a talker/planner.

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ccarpenterg
I've had all these symptoms excluding calling myself a CEO and writing a
business plan. Luckily all symptoms are cured except the 10-25k investment.
Now I'm looking for a job to save 30k for the first investment (living costs,
services, travel, servers, etc.)

However I think most of these 'cures' are 'easily' achievable, but having
enough time to cure these symptoms and looking for a co-founder are the
hardest parts of becoming an entrepreneur. In my case I took advantage of
having been laid off in 2009. So I've decided not to look for a job until I've
got some stuff done.

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erikstarck
Wow. It almost hurts reading that, it's so spot on.

It least we did our own coding.

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keeptrying
I think you have to be a wannabe entrepreneur for at least a little bit. It
helps in a bunch of ways:

1\. Gives you an idea of what your friends will think about you after you
become a real entrepreneur.

2\. Gives you hope that you can and will change your circumstance.

3\. It consumes you till you make the jump.

4\. Plus you get to practice a very important skill - how not to worry about
what people think of you :).

5\. Gives you chance to evaluate whether you really want to be a founder.

6\. It makes you go to real entrepreneur events so you can meet and mingle
with them and get to know what its really like.

This is a great article to break out of wannabe mode but I dont think being a
wannabe is necessarily a bad thing.

Hey - fake it till you make it :).

~~~
jacquesm
(4) contradicts (1).

Being an entrepreneur is not something you 'fake' any more than you could fake
playing the violin (well, you could but it would not get you any closer to
playing one), you either do it or you don't. You could do it badly though, and
most entrepreneurs do that for a while until they've racked up enough
experience to make a go of something. That's called practice.

Wannabe entrepreneurs usually stay that way, entrepreneurs get up and do
stuff, they don't 'want to be something'.

~~~
keeptrying
Being an entrepreneur is very different from picking up an instrument
essentially because of 1 thing - you need a strong network.

Putting your intention out there and building that network even before you
start will always help.

Infact that act of creating that network might be the one thing that would
force you to make the jump into being a real entrepreneur.

~~~
jacquesm
It is perfectly possible to be an entrepreneur without a network of other
entrepreneurs, you're better off concentrating on your customers initially
anyway.

I see a disturbing trend in my environment where people will spend more and
more time 'networking' and less on developing their product and / or their
business in general. They're all backslapping each other what great
entrepreneurs they are, they organize events and so on. Meanwhile the real
entrepreneurs run off with the contracts.

Networking has its uses, but don't overestimate it.

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vaksel
there is only one cure. Just do it already. Entrepreneurship is something,
where you'll always have to learn on the job.

