Quotes from Why to Not Not Start a Startup

Some random quotes from some random friends (you know who you are), from

Why to Not Not Start a Startup

“The adult response to “that’s a stupid idea,” is simply to look the other person in the eye and say “Really? Why do you think so?””

“If you don’t think you’re smart enough to start a startup doing something technically difficult, just write enterprise software. Enterprise software companies aren’t technology companies, they’re sales companies, and sales depends mostly on effort.”

“make something great and not worry too much about making money.”

“Not having a cofounder is a real problem.”

“Find something that’s missing in your own life, and supply that need—no matter how specific to you it seems. Steve Wozniak built himself a computer; who knew so many other people would want them?”

“A lot of people look at the ever-increasing number of startups and think “this can’t continue.” Implicit in their thinking is a fallacy: that there is some limit on the number of startups there could be. But this is false.”

“9. Family to support

This one is real. I wouldn’t advise anyone with a family to start a startup. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, just that I don’t want to take responsibility for advising it.”

“ Like a lot of people that age, I valued freedom most of all. I was reluctant to do anything that required a commitment of more than a few months. ”

“If you start a startup that succeeds, it’s going to consume at least three or four years. (If it fails, you’ll be done a lot quicker.) So you shouldn’t do it if you’re not ready for commitments on that scale. Be aware, though, that if you get a regular job, you’ll probably end up working there for as long as a startup would take, and you’ll find you have much less spare time than you might expect. So if you’re ready to clip on that ID badge and go to that orientation session, you may also be ready to start that startup.”

“12. Need for structure

If you’re one of these people, you probably shouldn’t start a startup. In fact, you probably shouldn’t even go to work for one. In a good startup, you don’t get told what to do very much. There may be one person whose job title is CEO, but till the company has about twelve people no one should be telling anyone what to do. That’s too inefficient. Each person should just do what they need to without anyone telling them.”

“Perhaps some people are deterred from starting startups because they don’t like the uncertainty.”

“One reason people who’ve been out in the world for a year or two make better founders than people straight from college is that they know what they’re avoiding. If their startup fails, they’ll have to get a job, and they know how much jobs suck.”

“And since most of what big companies do is boring,”

“At first it may seem cool to get paid for doing easy stuff, after paying to do hard stuff in college. But that wears off after a few months. Eventually it gets demoralizing to work on dumb stuff, even if it’s easy and you get paid a lot.”

“And that’s not the worst of it. The thing that really sucks about having a regular job is the expectation that you’re supposed to be there at certain times. Even Google is afflicted with this, apparently. And what this means, as everyone who’s had a regular job can tell you, is that there are going to be times when you have absolutely no desire to work on anything, and you’re going to have to go to work anyway and sit in front of your screen and pretend to. To someone who likes work, as most good hackers do, this is torture.”

“If you’re a founder, what you want to do most of the time is work.”

“A significant number of would-be startup founders are probably dissuaded from doing it by their parents. ”

“16. A job is the default

This leads us to the last and probably most powerful reason people get regular jobs: it’s the default thing to do. Defaults are enormously powerful, precisely because they operate without any conscious choice.“