
Now is the time to do a startup - jaf12duke
http://42floors.com/blog/if-youve-ever-wanted-to-do-a-startup-there-is-simply-no-better-time-than-right-now/
======
onion2k
"Social media has created the potential for viral distribution."

In theory, certainly.

In reality, not very likely.

The 'network effect' is one of those things that is devastatingly obvious when
it happens, and so powerful that it can carry something like Facebook, Twitter
or Foursquare to amazing heights very quickly, that everyone thinks they can
copy it. But, as is so often the case, it's very, very rare. If you think your
startup is going to get to revenue (let alone profit) on the back of
'virality', think again. As a marketing strategy the probability of 'going
viral' is so small it might as well not exist.

If you don't have marketing knowledge, capital to buy marketing knowledge, or
the resources to go for a very long time without marketing, your startup will
very likely fail..

~~~
quaffapint
Oh boy are you right. I read and read about marketing and promotion for
startups and they all seem to say how simple it is to just use your
connections and social influence to get lots of initial signups. When you
don't have that card to play, you are just another piece of sand in the ocean
trying to get noticed. It's been a frustrating experience trying to get people
to my startup to even check it out. I commend all those that were able to do
so.

------
Breefield
Startups should be based on an opportunity to solve a problem, not "wanting to
do a startup." Check your motivations.

~~~
Xcelerate
> Startups are based on an opportunity to solve a problem, not "wanting to do
> a startup." Check your motivations.

So, I have an opinion that runs counter to almost everyone on HN, but I
disagree with this. I see nothing wrong with wanting to do a startup for the
sake of wanting to do a startup. That's a great motivation in itself for many
people.

There's no magic or scientific principle that says startup success must be a
direct function of the _type_ of motivation of its founders. Perhaps there are
some correlations; Paul Graham could perhaps provide more insight into that...

There are many highly motivated, hard-working people who have failed with
startup ideas that elegantly solved novel problems, and then there are only
somewhat-motivated people who just wanted to create a website that ended up
taking off into something. Of course, once it "took off", if they didn't
suddenly become motivated, of course their idea would go nowhere, but it's the
kind/type of motivation in the initial stages that I think too much value is
being placed on.

It's nobel to think that everyone should want to start a company to solve a
legitimate problem, but in reality I see absolutely nothing wrong with other
motivators being the impetus for starting a company: boredom, money,
curiosity. In the end, it's the result, not the motivation that ever mattered.

~~~
nostrademons
True, but you're much more likely to get that end result if your motivations
align with it. If you just want to start a startup, you will likely _start_ a
startup, and...then what? If your goal is to "do a startup", you will probably
_do a startup_ , with all the networking events, hackathons, coworking,
fundraising, PR drama, and emotional rollercoster that entails. It's the
startup mythology you read on Hacker News, after all. And then your company
will fail because you're not solving some actual market's problem.

While if your motivation is to "solve a problem", you will likely _solve a
problem_ , and that's what people will pay you for. When startups succeed
despite their founders just wanting to "start a startup" (eg. PayPal), it's
usually because the founders managed to zero in on a problem they really
wanted to solve before they ran out of money. That doesn't always happen.

~~~
mindcrime
_And then your company will fail because you 're not solving some actual
market's problem._

I think you're imagining more of a dichotomy than really exists. I mean, I
don't disagree that you need to solve a real problem, but if your motivation
for _starting_ is rooted more in the desire to build a startup, and then you
go out and _find a problem that you 're legitimately passionate about_, does
it matter that you started from the desire to build a startup, and then
navigated to the problem, instead of the other way 'round? I will posit that
the answer is "no", and that it does not matter. What matters is that, at some
point, by whatever means, you reach a point where you are working on something
that you are both legitimately passionate about, AND that solves a real world
problem.

Some people just _know_ they are meant for the startup world, and know that
they are driven to build _a_ company, before the necessarily know _what_
company they will build. Maybe they just can't stand having a boss, maybe they
relish the idea of building a company, maybe they just want to be rich, maybe
some combination of all of the above. But I don't see a problem with starting
from "I want to start a company" as opposed to "I want to solve problem X" as
long as you ultimately arrive at both in the end.

~~~
Xcelerate
You stated much more elegantly than I did what I was attempting to convey.

------
niuzeta
I've felt this way for some time here in HN.

It feels as though the culture is that you're _expected_ to have ambition to
create your own startup, thrive to do better, if not the best, and _make
yourself matter_ , except in this case, there's always an unmentioned
postscript "in startup world"

I don't even want to discuss the _Red Queen Effect_ , but hear me out. I am a
recently graduated developer, with little ambition in technical side. I find
some stuff very neat, and am working on a side project that has more caveats
on writing than technical.

Whenever I find things that bother me in a day-to-day basis, I can whip up an
application for myself. Integrating MSN chat logs into Skype logs has been my
recent project(ongoing), because I've used MSN auto-logging very extensively.
I am content with what I will have and I intend to share to people who'll miss
MSN chat logs, and who value them as ostensibly as I do.

Why do I feel like I should be compelled to feel I'm not thriving _enough_?
I've got a decently paying job, I'm learning(SICP is my current project), I'm
relatively content doing what I love(writing), and enjoy my free time(gaming,
writing and some side short projocts).

Sure, I'm learning but not researching the _most important research in my
area_ , I'm content doing what I love but I'm not _thriving to achieve the
best and make the world better place_ , I enjoy my free time playing games,
but I'm not _using the time to better myself_.

A couple of my deeply respected friends, who I believe without a doubt have a
chance of looking at this comments here, keeps telling me that I need to
_thrive_. I want to tell them, please, just to leave me alone.

I know this comment isn't probably the ideal response to the article. It
however is my response to _why aren 't you more like me and improving_
undertone of which the article deeply suggests.

Perhaps in a decade or two(or in smaller period) I'll come across an idea
niche enough that future Me will think would work, and start work on it. I,
currently, am too content with what I have and its prospects to think of
anything better. I have some ideas but what good are the ideas? The work is
the most that matters, and I am not motivated enough to do them yet. Please
accept it. "Wanting to do startup" should not be _the_ reason to do it, in my
humble opinion.

~~~
md224
Here's a basic fact: what matters in life is that you're happy.

It's a simple idea (figuring out what makes you happy is the actual hard
part). If you're happy, then you're already thriving; it doesn't make sense to
say "I'm happy, but I'm not thriving." What's the point of thriving, after
all, if not life satisfaction?

I think your friends have a narrow-minded view of what makes life worth
living. I'm not saying they're wrong about their chosen path; they're just
generalizing from their experience to everyone else, and that seems foolish.
Everyone has to find their own happiness. For some, it's building a company.
For others, it's learning, writing, etc. Neither way is objectively "better"
than the other.

There was a great Onion article recently that parodied the fallacy of assuming
others are failing if they don't share your goals:

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/unambitious-loser-with-
happ...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/unambitious-loser-with-happy-
fulfilling-life-still,33233/)

~~~
niuzeta
I _do_ have something that I have in mind that I think will appear in my
obituary. I've known it since late teenager, and I knew it won't earn me
bread. That was why I came into CS, because I knew it would earn me bread,
and, well, I was good at it and enjoyed it.

Some of my peers in university never liked that I acknowledged blatantly that
I've come to CS _for better job prospects_. Sure, I do find CS very neat and
enjoying. I love solving problems, making things from the scratch, but _the_
problem that I will dedicate my life into has already been found, in early
stages of my life.

What I don't understand is why my existence in the field with _impure_
intentions infuriate them.

I plan to keep myself educated and learned to keep coding until my retirement.
I actually enjoy developing. I don't consider development as _boring day job_.
It's my passion, just not _the_ passion of my life. I'm sick and tired of
perspective that views my attitude as _impure_ in the tech world.

------
seiji
This post seems to be targeted to our favorite NTWTFK archetypes. No ability?
No problem. No knowledge about computers? No problem. No experience? No
problem. After all, we have cloud social viral app store now. School?
Worthless. Learn rails in two days and sell your company for $50 million
dollars. (That gets a qualifier added in a footnote of "just kidding,
everything I said above isn't true, you'll actually need to know things. I'm
practicing being a motivational speaker. How am I doing? Vote on HN.")

The "just quit and do imaginary things" equation changes rapidly when you have
a talented engineer giving up $250k/year at google to play fantasy startup
land.

As much as we read about up and to the right success, happy luck after moving
to The Bay Area, and becoming multi-millionaires after two years (or just six
months if you're great at tricking people), it doesn't happen so magically.

At least you're keeping the dream alive?

------
dingaling
Excuse Number Five: who is going to pay my mortgage for the next 18 months?

Unfortunately, the Western world's mindset of house ownership means that most
people who _want_ to do something different generally can't do so until their
50s.

Solving that might stimulate innovation and start-up creation.

Imagine an environment where basic accommodation and sustenance was available
to everyone. People would have the freedom and opportunity to do exciting,
novel things.

~~~
mason240
Replace mortgage with rent and the issue is still the same.

If you are single you can probably move in with parents or a friend to save on
costs, but that is almost impossible if you have a spouse and kids.

There is a very good reason behind home ownership: After 30 years of mortgage
payments, you own a house. After 30 years of rent, you have nothing.

~~~
refurb
The thing that a lot of people ignore in this equation is that you might end
up owning the house, but you paid a lot more for housing than you would have
if you just rented.

~~~
zecho
That's most likely untrue unless you find a rent controlled apartment or you
compare apples to oranges in housing. Sure if you compare an $800/month
1-bedroom flat to the mortgage on a quarter million dollar home, there will
not be parity, but you need to compare apples to apples. In my area,
$800/month is standard for a very modest 1-bedroom apartment with maybe heat
paid. $800/month can also pay the mortgage and utilities on a small 3-bedroom
rambler.

Rent tends to increase exponentially at around 2-3% per year. The difference
is that generally homes are a store of money in relation to inflation and rent
is not. On a fixed 30-year mortgage, that $800/month will only fluctuate with
the cost of utilities and taxes.

The obvious tradeoff is that it's easier for a renter to become mobile to
follow jobs and presumably increased pay, but really it's a lifestyle choice.

Here, the NY Times made this all into a graphic awhile back.

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-
calcula...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-
calculator.html?_r=0)

~~~
refurb
Rents don't always increase for a couple reasons:

1) Landlords often delay rent increases to keep good tenants. Of the
apartments I've rented over the last 15 years, this has been the case.

2) Even hot markets have down periods in terms of rents. SF saw decreasing
rents in 2009.

------
OhHeyItsE
Excuse Number 5: I don't have an idea. Everyone loves to tout how 'ideas are
shit!'. But, when you spend a lot of your time trying to spot problems, only
to find out every one of them has been done already...

Excuse Number 6: Health Insurance. I've saved enough to cover my mortgage &
living expenses for a year. What I haven't saved for is an insurance plan that
will not bankrupt my family if one of us has the unfortunate timing of getting
in a car accident or gets cancer while I'm trying to start a business.

~~~
jlees
I was scared by #6 (being new to America and having a great plan from my
former employer), but between COBRA and individual plans, I was surprised how
easy it is to be covered. My COBRA was terrifyingly expensive (more than my
rent), but I got a very affordable individual plan to cover myself and my
spouse despite having a recent accident in my medical history. Or you could
move to a country where it isn't a problem ;)

~~~
timr
Important note, if you're not familiar with individual plans: be _very_
diligent about reading the fine print, and (if at all possible), finding
someone who has direct experience with billing large medical expenses on the
plan.

Individual plans often have so many hidden loopholes and exceptions that _when
you actually get sick_ , they're totally useless. It's nasty to discover that
your insurance company is going to drop you for some bureaucratic detail ("you
had acne once? Oh, you didn't _tell_ us that on the application. We're not
going to cover your heart surgery.") the first time you really need the
coverage.

------
vinceguidry
The harder objection the author doesn't acknowledge:

I don't want to destroy my life, relationship, and peace of mind by devoting
multiple years of 4-6 hours extra a day on top of my current job to squeezing
a stone until blood runneth forth.

Then quitting my job on the basis of that tiny flow of blood to devote 16
hours a day to squeezing that stone even harder until the flow turns into a
river, at any point from zero to money I might be sued or the market might
evaporate, or the federal government might decide to step on me. If you don't
have a safety net, any of these things can ruin your life.

Starting a business, even in tech where the barriers to entry are effectively
limited to time, is still the exclusive province of the well-heeled. If you
can throw three to five years of your life away and have nothing to show for
it, you are either well-heeled or extremely driven.

------
davidjgraph
Yes, it's never been simpler, especially in terms of the technology. And
that's exactly why proportionally more people are doing it. In fact, there is
an explosion in the number of people doing it.

So as it gets easier to implement, the quality bar of what you have to
implement is going up and up, some markets are saturated with startups,
there's a high noise to signal.

It's becoming simpler, not easier. After lots of people chanting "do it" over
and over today, tomorrow you'll be faced with the same cold, hard reality.

Don't just do it, think carefully, double check your idea, don't collectively
waste your life savings on heating cloud infrastructure for 18 months before
getting back on with your life.

Unless the idea is good, of course 8-).

------
johnrob
Crowd dynamics is a factor missing from the list. In my opinion, the best time
to do a startup is when few others are doing them. I actually think now is
relatively bad, because pretty much every endeavor has become difficult due to
competition: hiring, paying rent (in silicon valley), getting users, getting
press, etc etc.

I agree that a lot of the grunt work has been streamlined, but I think the
outcome is influenced more by resource competition than by operational hurdles
(e.g. processing credit cards or allowing users to share with friends).

UPDATE: I should admit that, while there have been better (less crowded)
periods to start companies in the past, there's no guarantee that we'll ever
have less crowded times than now.

~~~
nostrademons
Ideally you'd wait until the next downturn then. All the infrastructure
remains in place - developing it was a sunk cost, and then they'd have fewer
customers to generate a return on that investment and so they'd likely offer
discounts to drum up business - and yet the competition is swept away by the
general macro climate and sentiment against risk-taking.

------
moron4hire
"Platitudes are meaningless." \- Benjamin Franklin

These sorts of articles start to annoy me after a while. It's a lot of noise
and very little signal. Everyone has 15 bullet-pointed list articles for 10
ways you can start your startup, but they're all just platitudes that don't
suggest any real, actionable information.

The best one in this particular bunch is the "I can't quit my job" one. There
are many ways in which a person could quit their job and still get by to be
able to work their project, but nobody ever bothers to _say_ what that is. And
actually, the point is meaningless if you never ship. You can have all the
runway in the world and you'll still go nowhere if you don't know how to
release a product.

And releasing is not easy. It's not as simple as just saying "put something
out there." That's another platitude that these sorts of articles talk about.
You don't just go from A to B without obstacles in the middle. The whole idea
of the weekend hackathon release of a minimal viable product first rests on
knowing exactly what you're building and the tools with which you're building
it. If it were as easy as opening a kit labeled "startup snax", then everyone
would do it.

My advice: don't start a startup, not yet. If you don't know how to make it
happen, then you're not ready. Do start a project, though. Do whatever you can
in a particular field.

If you're not technical, find an open source project to try to advertise,
market, grow mindshare. Get involved with your local independent arts scene
and work on film projects that want to Kickstarter their projects. You have to
find ways to prove to YOURself that you can do what needs to be done, in ways
that aren't going to destroy you like quitting your job. You'll meet people
who are capable of making things from raw materials this way. Make those
people your friends (real friends, not acquaintances you hope to exploit one
day). Pay attention to what they are working on, and apply your skills to
maximize their reach. Converse with them about your ideas, and maybe one of
them has had a similar idea and you can be off to the races together. If you
don't know how to make things, you cannot just hope they will show up. You
have to actively find these people.

If you're technical, the necessary skill that you will need to learn that will
be hardest for you is giving up. Giving up if the project is too hard to go
focus on something easier so you don't stagnate. Giving up on enhancing the
current project so you can release it. Giving up on trying to be the be-all,
end-all of your project and letting other people in. Yes, you can market your
project on your own, but it's a lot of fucking work and you have other work to
do. Go meet people in the world and find a guy who gets as jazzed about social
media as you get about code. If you don't know how to market things, you
cannot just hope people will find it. It just doesn't happen. The secret is
that you have to steal other people's traffic for your own. Or share, whatever
you want to call it, point is that everyone's internet attention is currently
saturated, so you need to find a way to make them more efficient about
absorbing data to be able to include YOU in their stream, or you need to
replace something else in their stream. There are socially acceptable ways to
do this and there are ways that are not socially acceptable. The easiest way
to ensure that your project is not tarnished by bush-league tactics is to find
someone who knows the game already that you can trust to keep everything above
the board.

Keep everything you've ever worked on. Keep a diary of your work on your
projects. I have a private GitHub repo that is specifically for storing all of
my project ideas that aren't developed in any way yet, it's just for note
taking and it's only private because they just aren't fleshed out for human
consumption yet. Any project that I've ever worked on that is in some
semblance of working I have as a public GitHub repo. The importance is more
the backup than it is the sharing, but there is a certain charity to it as
well: if I'm not going to get value out of it, maybe, just maybe someone else
will. I would switch to GitHub pages to publish things but I do a lot of art,
too, and I have a growing followership on Tumblr right now. But publish,
publish, publish, and keep, keep, keep. Because in a year I want you to go
back over everything and see how far you've come. I look over my projects and
I think about what I could do better now that I have a year of experience
under my belt.

I have one particular project that I have been working on for 7 years. It's
small, it's simple, and I've probably only put a total of 3 months of work
into it over the last 7 years. It doesn't even solve a unique problem, there
is tons of work in this space already. But it is actually extremely useful for
me and because I know it intimately, it makes me extremely productive. It is a
culmination of my knowledge of programming, and I have a rule that only 20% of
my time on it is for adding features, the other 80% of the time is to refine
it, simplify it. If I had known it would take 7 years to get it to where it
is, I probably would have never started on it. But I never had a preconception
of where it was going to go, and the latest features were only possible
because I had laid the ground work so many years ago. Because I've just kept
at it, reviewed, refined, and let it be what it was going to be. In another 3
years, it might actually be a viable product. Who knows, the only way I will
find out is if I don't give up on it.

Then, at some point you'll wake up and realize you have a lot of skills on
your hands, you have a lot of people who are very skillful at your disposal,
you're NOT deeply in debt because you didn't quit your job, and you have the
startings of 3 or 4 products on your hands that you would have never imagined
you'd even _want_ to work on 5 years ago. _That_ is when you get your friends
together, quit your job, and put out your own shingle.

Because otherwise, this talk of "you don't need a whatever-you're-not
cofounder right away, you'll just find them," that is all get-rich-quick
scheming.

~~~
quaffapint
Agreed. It is astounding when you go look in the app and web app directories
how much there is and how many come out each day. To be able to rise above
that will never come from a 10 points post.

Now I just have to figure out how to meet these marketing magicians.

~~~
moron4hire
I've found the best way is to get involved in a diverse group of people who
are gathered for a shared interest other than work. If you go to Marketing
MeetUps, you'll meet networking cheese-heads. They're in pitch mode and they
are trying to get what they want out of you. If you go to craft-brew beer
clubs, video game enthusiast clubs, film clubs, etc., you'll almost surely
meet someone who does some kind of work you need (eventually, one day), but
you also get to know them as people. The type of work that it takes to build a
company requires a lot of trust between you and your cofounders, so I think
it's just best to start with people you already know.

------
debacle
Out of all the ways to verb the concept of creating a high-velocity, high-
agility, growth-oriented company, "do a startup" might qualify as one of the
worst.

~~~
jaf12duke
What would be the best?

~~~
marcosdumay
I dunno, but "do a startup" is verbing a substantivated verb.

------
magickastle
Hey hotshot. How about less blogging and more work on your darn company? I
tried using it to find office space repeatedly.. No good.

~~~
jaf12duke
I would love to see if I can help you with your office search. Contact info is
in my HN profile.

As for blogging. It's core to who I am. I did it before 42Floors, and I'll
continue to do it for as long as it brings me meaning. I've long since
understood not everyone appreciates it. But I do.

~~~
rismay
This is why I love HNs: When people make stupid snarky comments, they get a
response. BTW: jaf12duke - I'm finally doing it. I'm hoping to start at the
Flatiron school this month after switching from finance.

The 4 reasons you listed were the exact reasons I was waiting to take the
leap. I've finally found enough ways to mitigate the "risk" of starting.

Let me know if you can chat some more.

