

The Empty Nest - ivankirigin
http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2007/09/the-empty-nest.html

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mattmaroon
I'm sad that the summer is over too. I'll miss the Tuesday dinners quite a
bit. I obviously don't have much time to dwell on it, and I'm excited about
the future, but I'll always look back fondly on the Y C experience. The
atmosphere there was something I'm pretty sure I'll never encounter anywhere
else.

I'll probably drop by the dinners in Mountain View so frequently that half of
the new founders will think I'm in their batch.

~~~
danielha
I've already worked in free Tues. meals as part of future budgeting.

~~~
mattmaroon
Doesn't it cost you way more than the cost of a meal to get there from the Y
Scraper?

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ivankirigin
After a bit of thought: this seems pessimistic.

When you say goodbye to someone with the expectation that you'll never see
them in the same way, it's sad. Parents will never have their kids back when
the kids go off to college. They'll trade the kids in for adults. The empty
nest feels empty in part because parents know it will never again be filled
with children.

But business isn't like that. People that fail can and should continue to go
off and try to do other great things. It's cyclic.

Even if all the companies in the current batch die, all the founders can
continue to go and do good things.

They might be a bit less wide-eyed and optimistic, but that is probably a good
thing. You only really die off when you stop working.

The mathematician Paul Erdos took this a bit too literally, and would lament
the death of colleagues who retired. He also called children epsilons.

