
An experiment: Can desperation drive success? - tylermenezes
http://vutran.me/blog/desperation.html
======
steve8918
Personally I would spend all this excess emotional energy and put it into
either your startup, or a relationship with a significant other. Or exercise.

Sure, there are plenty of stories about people who were desperate and became
successes. You never hear about the hundreds of thousands of people who were
desperate and became abject failures. There are also people who are successful
who were born with silver spoons in their mouths. So I would not make any type
of correlation between some extreme emotional state and being successful. If
anything, it might make you squirrely and detract from your obligations at
your startup.

~~~
vu0tran
Yeah, you may be right. I wrote up the blog post and considered withdrawing it
before anyone read it but it somehow managed to get its way here anyways
because my co-founder thought it'd be funny to post.

If it cuts into my ability to work at my startup, I'll stop immediately as
that's my #1 priority. You'll be surprised though that even putting in 60 hrs
a week into a startup, exercising and having a significant other, if you work
efficiently you still have time left. (168 hrs in a week - 60 - 8 hrs a day
for sleep = 62 free hrs left. 1 hr a day for exercising and 2 hrs a day for an
SO leaves 41 hrs left. )

But really though, I don't know. This might turn into a lesson about how
distracting side projects can be while running a startup. Or how to optimize
your time more efficiently. Or even how to run a bad experiment. If this turns
out to be a really bad idea, I'll learn from it, share it with you guys and
move on.

Thanks for watching out for me though. I appreciate your concern.

~~~
ph0rque
Hopefully your SO knows that they only have 2 hours per day of your time...

~~~
Xcelerate
Huh, it took me a while to realize you meant "significant other". I was
thinking "stack overflow" but that didn't fit the context well...

~~~
markyc
ahhaahahaa!

man.. we're such geeks

~~~
afaict
Suggestion: combine with another little experiment…
<http://www.bulletproofexec.com/bulletproof-sex/>

Should make your desperation (& success) even better.

------
sliverstorm
The experiment seems flawed. It seems, at least to me, that desperation would
tie in to success through simple things like the ol', "I've got nothing to
lose". Someone who is desperate is, basically by definition, someone who will
do just about anything to secure X.

It doesn't seem like you can produce these behaviors in yourself with a few
self-imposed "ground rules". Heck, "self-imposed rules" and "desperate" are
almost mutually exclusive.

~~~
outworlder
I was going to post basically the same thing.

Desperation doesn't mean being unable to hang out with friends and share
beers. It means paying for gas to return home with pocket change - because you
have no money and no credit anymore. And considering selling said car - which
wouldn't even be enough to offset the debts. And not being sure if you will
even have food in a month without having to borrow money from friends.

And even after the money starts flowing again, you don't hang out with friends
until the debt is paid for.

However, this is a partial experiment and might provide the necessary
incentive to launch something. But it is an experiment, not the real thing.
Might be useful as a vocational exercise.

~~~
krapp
Looking around your apartment for something to pawn for food money.

~~~
sliverstorm
By the point of "desperate", you've already sold everything worth more than
$10 that can be spared.

~~~
krapp
If I wasn't there, I was certainly close while I was in school. I remember how
embarrassed I was to have to pawn the tv my mother got me for Christmas, when
it was the last thing in the apartment I thought I could get something for.

------
SatvikBeri
To bring some statistics in: _The Talent Code_ cites a study that shows that
people who were famous enough to appear in the Encylopedia Brittanica in 1970
were disproportionately likely to have lost a parent at a young age.[1]

So there appears to be a correlation between losing a parent at an early age
and extreme success. (That doesn't mean that your expected value is higher-
it's more that the variance is greater.)

[1]: [http://dheart.tumblr.com/post/305580832/orphans-rule-the-
wor...](http://dheart.tumblr.com/post/305580832/orphans-rule-the-world)
(excerpt) or check _The Talent Code_ chapter 5

~~~
sliverstorm
And, of course, who could forget Bruce Wayne? :)

------
fleitz
Desperation does not drive success. Everyone can smell desperation and no one
likes that smell.

What drives success is generally concerted effort over a long period of time.
Startups can take on massive risk because they are minimally capitalized.
Taking a chance of some Obama-Os is a smart play because the risk is minimal
(some photoshop time) and the pay off decent ($25K). Obama-Os aren't
desperation, it's smart business. If they printed $10K of boxes before testing
the market then it would just be stupid.

What the OP is doing is what every business book does, take a bunch of
winners, find somethings in common and attribute those things to success.

To me it sounds like the OP has decided to go down the MVP path by eating what
he kills. It's not desperation, it's a good way to get on track to making
money because you have to abandon VC fundable ideas early.

Caesar feared the hungry man, not the desperate man.

~~~
xiaoma
As long as we're quoting platitudes, I'd say that the flip sides are that "
_desperate times call for desperate measures_ ", or as Titus Livius said, "
_In difficult and desperate cases, the boldest counsels are the safest_ ".

Desperation changes the entire game theory. Yes, in many cases people will
give the desperate a wide berth. Sometimes, that is just the opening they
need.

During John Elway's heyday, I saw the Denver Broncos reach the Super Bowl
three times. He was an unbelievable talent. I saw "the drive" of NFL lore from
my living room and I saw the Broncos lose in the Super Bowl to larger city
teams all three times. And then, years later when both he and the team had
been in decline, I saw the most desperate thing.

After his career should have been over, when he was pushing 40, Elway and the
Broncos made it back to the Super Bowl. He played the game of his life. And
I'll be damned if there wasn't a steely look of desperation in him. At long
last, they won. And the next year, they did it again. In his final game, with
the clock of not only the game, but of his _life ticking_ down, he did
something insane. As a comparatively fragile quarterback hellbent on securing
his legacy, he _ran_ it in for a touchdown against heavily muscled men who had
a 100 pounds in him. And it was just desperate enough that they didn't see it
coming until it was too late to stop him.

That's something that younger, less desperate quarterbacks just wouldn't do.
In many cases, the result is ruin. But sometimes desperate actions prevail.
It's called a Hail Mary.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzzfbflCGwg&t=4m25s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzzfbflCGwg&t=4m25s)

------
vu0tran
Wow, didn't think anyone would post my own blog post here before me. I guess I
now have no choice now.

~~~
lessnonymous
Are you accepting Angel Funding? I'll send you a WHOLE BOX of Ramen for 10%
equity.

~~~
K2h
i might send money to appear ona credits page, just for fun.

maybe he should open an auction on equity in the unknown project. that could
be fun too.

------
perlpimp
Desperation is a forward going vector. I think it is only 50% of the equation.
The other 50% is getting out of your own way - that is in terms of velocity.
Things like never feeling sorry for yourself - that can manifest in a variety
of ways. That is oft mentioned loss aversion/feeling sorry for yourself at
present or in the future. If you got both parts solved you can forage forward
pretty fast.

That is IMHO - at least what I gathered from years of introspection on what
works and doesn't.

~~~
keeptrying
Thats a really great point.

Though I think if you put yourself in desperation mode for a while and you
observe the pain and suffering that happens to others in life then you will
most likely stop feeling sorry for yourself.

But you're right - creating an environment is only 50% of the problem (maybe
less). Changing one's own internal structure is the crux of the problem.

------
graeme
Highly anecdotal, but desperation helped me succeed. I left law school and cut
ties with my previous path. To go back to it would have been humiliating, and
dispiriting, because I didn't want to do it.

So it was succeed, or go back to something that I didn't want to do.

That drove me onwards for a good nine months. I wrote a book which freed up
time to focus on long term projects rather than short term cashflow.

Looking back, it's the most boring thing I've ever done. I constantly thank my
past self for letting me live a more relaxed life now, doing things I want to
do.

I don't think I could have done it without my poor alternate options. But
purposefully forcing yourself into desperate circumstances is risky.

------
peacemaker
How do your co-founders feel about you working on another project at the same
time?

~~~
tylermenezes
We're all in agreement with Vu's thoughts in the "Before We Begin" section.

There's a nice benefit to it besides personal happiness; every side-project
we've worked on so far has ended up getting worked back into our product in
some way.

~~~
peacemaker
That's good to hear. I'm trying to convince my current boss that promoting
side-projects (via hack days etc.) will be beneficial to the company but so
far no luck!

~~~
vu0tran
Yeah, for us, it's kind of like 20% time except you still do it on top of all
of your work and don't get paid more. 120% time?

~~~
lanstein
So, the same as at Google?

------
OldSchool
Contrived desperation?? I don't think it's possible. If you're going to be
genuinely desperate you can't have any choices. Desperation involves a lot
more than money. You can't fake yourself into fear, hurt, depression, anger
yet these drive many successful people. That's why a lot of them either a) are
never satisfied or b) get even more messed up when excess money enters their
lives.

Always being honest with yourself and developing continuous and methodical
discipline that leads toward your goal is the best approach I can think of.

------
bootload
_"... I wonder... is there a correlation between being desperate and great
success? ..."_

No. Desperation implies stress and stress inhibits good decision making.

    
    
       "When business and life is anything 
        but usual, we do not rise to the 
        occasion. We sink to the level of 
        our preparation." Adam O’Donnell [0]
    

[0]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv_rHrVQTh4&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv_rHrVQTh4&feature=youtu.be)

------
realrocker
Left job 3 months ago, 5k USD of debt, have no savings, to build an email
client. Earning a bit by giving android classes and loaning petty cash for
food and rent from my folks and friends. Pretty desperate.

Is it working? Well it's complicated.

The main problem I faced the first 4 weeks was to break out of the inertia of
being given a task to perform. The second problem I faced was the daily work
routine. Took 4 weeks to get that right.

Last 4 weeks have been really productive though.

Did I have a plan of what to do from the start? Yes. Written down in an excel
sheet.

Did I follow the plan? No. I don't why. Just woke up every morning to find
myself staring at the plan, scribbling notes and writing random code snippets.
On the other hand, it also gave me a lot of extra knowledge base about the
problem I am solving. Too early to say whether it was good or bad.

Did I tell anyone about my plan? No. I guess that was my mistake. Some kind of
external/peer monitoring would have helped.

So what changed? How did I finally get productive? Desperation. Spent 2 months
without anything solid to show for it. One nice morning, I had this ache in my
heart to get something done and things just started working out.

So does desperation drive success? I don't know about success but desperation
does improve productivity. But desperation also gives you a tunnel vision and
you might miss important things that actually make you successful. That is
also my greatest fear.

Takeaway: Do what this guy is doing. Get peer monitoring before you start.
Send that excel sheet to someone who can spare a few minutes a day/week to
keep you in line.

------
jcampbell1
I don't disagree with the philosophy here, but the examples given are deeply
flawed.

Ben Silbermann kept working on Pinterest because he didn't want to admit to
failing. His parents are both specialist doctors who could certainly afford to
pass him $50k/year to make sure he was "okay". There was no desperation, just
the fact that he kept perpetuating the lie that everything was okay with his
business, thus by telling this lie, quitting would make him feel like a
dishonest person (I have told the same lie as well. Thank god it worked out.).

The AirBnB founders sold cereal because they are hustlers, not because they
were desperate. I'd be willing to be it was more of a drunken idea backed by
"fuck it, let's do it", more than desperation.

If there is startup lesson to be learned from these two examples, it is that
never giving up, and "fuck it, why not" are beneficial. Desperation may be
helpful, but I think the author needs to find better examples.

~~~
orangethirty
_If there is startup lesson to be learned from these two examples, it is that
never giving up, and "fuck it, why not" are beneficial._

Well put. In terms of never giving up, I think its necessary to explain that
it does not mean sticking to one idea per se. But to the goal of growing one
succesful business (whatever it may end up being). One can iterate over many
ideas, failure after failure, and not need to give up in the grand scheme of
things. Sure, it is a bit demoralizing, but some of us manage to get back on
the horse and keep going.

The fuck it let's do it attitude is very important. Nothing happens until you
make it happen. Nobody is going to serve you your startup on a silver platter.
Nobody.

 _Desperation may be helpful, but I think the author needs to find better
examples._

Desperation is helpful, but in my experience it is not a good driving force.
It clouds judgement and is usually aimed at short term success.

------
konradb
As other people have said, if you really are desperate then it masks your
worldview. One can tend to act differently, because the resources/outlook is
limited. Sometimes this works, but more often it doesn't, because typically
your desperation makes you focus on getting the next meal, the next bit of
money coming in. This takes you away from giving all your focus to something
great without distraction.

There are obviously counterexamples where it can be used as the fuel to do
something and that works out, and those can be inspiring. But if you want to
do something great you actually want to do something great, there's your fuel.
So then cutting away anything that takes you away from your goal helps
enormously.

------
felipemnoa
Sounds too much like confirmation bias [1]. I would be surprised if most
businesses that failed did not become desperate at some point.

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

~~~
steve8918
I think another term that is appropriate is "Survivorship bias". That is, you
always hear about the success stories, but you never hear about the failures,
so you think that the chance of success is higher than it really is.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias>

------
juanbyrge
When you fail and the depression knocks , make sure you have enough to see a
psychiatrist

------
Noxchi
>It's actually something that makes a lot of sense. A really good idea is
pretty much a shitty idea that no one knew could be good. It's kind of like if
you hid a diamond that may or may not be inside a huge pool of poop. You ask
most people and they'll be like, "Hell naw. I'm not jumping in that big pool
of poop".

Your reasoning of good ideas and their implementations are wrong like most
people.

If something is a good idea, it DOES NOT mean "everyone would be doing it".

You see, there is a thing called "barrier of entry" to ideas.

If someone has an idea for, say an app, there are a million things to do to
proceed with that idea.

They need to learn how to

* design apps

* code apps

* market apps

Or if they want to hire people to do all that, they need to

* have experience hiring people

* have a lot of money, or a lot of experience getting funding (crowdfunding won't work if they have no experience)

* actually, forget this list - if you don't know anything you will die.

There are _years_ of knowledge required to execute an idea, so you really
limit yourself to only a handful of people who have the ability to, and
thought of the same idea as you. And most of those people will probably not
follow through either, so to execute an idea you really need to believe in it.

Now for your challenge, I would suggest you do something a little bit
different. Instead of coming up with an idea and going the whole 9 yards with
it, you can just leverage other peoples idea, and just make money marketing
it. This is known as _affiliate marketing_.

There are networks (called CPA [Cost Per Action] Networks) where startups or
companies plug in their various sales pages for things they offer, and you as
an affiliate get people to complete those offers. The most common way to do
this is buying ads to those offers.

By doing this, you eliminate all but the marketing work of running a startup.
Marketing is almost always what determines if a startup fails or succeeds. You
gain experience in marketing, and you can do a lot with the inventions you
code.

~~~
derefr
> You see, there is a thing called "barrier of entry" to ideas.

Just to give people a strong, striking example of this, before they try to
argue the concept away wholesale:

Banks. Starting a bank is a good idea. Everyone _would_ be doing it... if they
knew how, and had the connections, and the starting capital, and etc. etc. for
a huge list of qualifications.

~~~
willholloway
This is a good suggestion. Affiliate marketing worked out really well for me.
I did a ton of it back in 2009. I got a $100 fb ad coupon and before I was
done with it I discovered a profitable facebook ad campaign. I then scaled
that basic concept across the English, Spanish and French speaking worlds. It
was long before anyone would pay me as a consultant, and it financed a cross
country adventure.

------
noonespecial
That's deprivation, not desperation. You have to be afraid you'll be homelss
next week if you don't find a way to make some money this week. That's the
only desperation thats likely to really work.

------
willholloway
You have a YC backed startup. That is an incredible opportunity, with
intangible strategic advantage that a bootstrapped side-project can never
have. Startups are war.

Two founders fight each other in battle. One has side project. The other does
not. Founder without side project wins.

What you are embarking on is a distraction. I believe that you are hurting
your ability to raise funding in the future. I would not want to fund a
founder with this mindset.

Best advice. Recant this post. Do the right thing by your co-founders, and
funders.

~~~
willholloway
I understand your ADD mindset, but keep in mind this zen saying I picked up
from playing Civilization IV: 'He who chases two rabbits will catch neither.'

------
georgemcbay
Virtually all business go through an early life-cycle with the oft-talked
about "trough of sorrow", AKA "desperation". Some make it past this stage and
succeed, most fail miserably. Why would anyone think desperation is something
that they have to (or even could) introduce themselves? Or that it would be a
success factor, when it is something virtually every business experiences at
some point naturally (and the vast majority fail anyway)?

Also, this is a very first world definition of "desperation".

------
ojbyrne
I remember a quote about entrepreneurship which I would paraphrase as "It's
not hope for success that provides the best motivation, it's fear of failure."

------
nedwin
This sounds like madness - if you think this won't be a distraction then you
are kidding yourself.

Coding to destress, I can understand that. So code something that's related,
but non-core, to the business and that's not tied to what you're doing during
the day.

Or maybe I'm totally wrong. In my experience any amount of split focus is to
the detriment of both projects/startups - and you need all the help you can
get.

Would be curious to see what PG thinks.

------
ary
So to be clear; you have a startup, so you have a company to work on that
could bring financial gain, but you want _another_ startup?

------
pirateking
I will conduct the opposite experiment: can laziness drive success?

For what it is worth, the deep end of laziness does draw out a certain kind of
contemplative, mellow desperation - an existential dilemma of sorts - which I
often find helpful for doing my best creative work.

------
sivers
Richard Branson's autobiography is filled with many examples of self-created
desperation.

See <http://sivers.org/desperate>

and <http://sivers.org/desperate2>

------
lumberjack
What are recipe for failure! Once you get a whiff of success your hope will
increase and your desperation will gradually be tamed. What happens then? You
might end up in a vicious cycle of highs and lows.

------
nodrama
from my own experience, yes it does. The way it worked for me was that I was
ready to take more risky or uncomfortable decisions.

But from reading your post I sense that you don't really want to do this (who
wants to be desperate? nobody): "The experiment starts once I do a Show HN."

For me, building something that you can show should be included in the
experiment. So you should start right now!

------
evim
You are not desperate, you are playing.

------
001sky
Rephrase: can hunger drive success? yes.

Now, compare the use of words.

------
albemuth
Title made me think of my dating, made me chuckle.

------
freeslave
this is called starting a business.

------
bravoyankee
_Can desperation drive success?_

I don't know, but I'll find out soon!

