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- Hacker News
- I mostly stayed clear of the SV world while building and exiting my startup, but people like this came and went through my network constantly. They were always easy to pick out based on how much they glorified certain SV personalities and were desperate for their approval.by yesimahuman
- This gets to a point my dad always made when I was neck deep in startups; so many of them felt unserious. People go to the most expensive west coast city, raise money, and then move to the next most expensive east coast city and open a second office. A lot of founders are clearly inexperienced, and to defend their inexperience, hire under experienced teams. It all sort of gets back to the root of the issue, which is that the hardest part is never the engineering, it’s networking and finding product market fit. Finding people who actually get up and do meaningful things is hard, and so Jim’s sneak in under the guise of being an outsider who understands a market and can make things happen.by guywithahat
- >and to defend their inexperience, hire under experienced teams
It's also a bit of "I like you because you're like me" thing plus some "it's useful to me that you're like that".
I've seen plenty of startups where the CEO/CTO has been trained to fit under one specific stereotype (common ones these days are: the asian twink, the athlete, the nootropics guy, etc.), and then lots of their friends/hires happen to be of the same or adjacent/compatible stereotypes.
by moralestapia - There's more truth to the "Forbes 30 Under 30 to prison pipeline" than people give it credit.by xmprt
- this is just an empirical factby make3
- Real bummer of a story.
> He approached me because he was really into startups and wanted to become a tech entrepreneur, and make the big bucks
It's a shame that so much of tech culture has become about money. Money was always a part of it, but living in the Bay in 2010, there was more of a focus on building things. But once people started getting rich, especially off bitcoin, it brought in a whole host of people whose primary passion seemed to be money. We moved out in 2018. Still bums me out, SF was my favorite city, and I hoped to live there for a long time, but the values weren't my values anymore.
by egonschiele - As long as there is money people will come just for that. That's where we got tech bros, like finance bros, instead of just a bunch of nerds making cool stuff.by s0rce
- Tech startup is one of the few remaining ways still allowed for plebs to build wealth unless they're born into it, because digital stuff isn't influenced by real estate feudalism.by carlosjobim
- A bummer? Jim, even whilst failing, is living a life better than 99.999% of humans that have ever lived, and surely better than 99% of humans alive today. He has access to SOTA medical care, pharmaceuticals, ideal human weather, healthy and nutritious food on demand at the push of a button, etc.
Let’s keep it in perspective.
by sneak - It’s always been a travesty, it was just harder to see through it because back then morals hadn’t been completely dismantled by the last 15 years of whatever the US has become
- I think the real watershed wan't bitcoin, it was the internet bubble, before that the rule of thumb was you couldn't go public without 5 consecutive quarters of profit - you really had to build something real - suddenly you could do it on hype alone and the focus turned to thatby Taniwha
- > Money was always a part of it, but living in the Bay in 2010, there was more of a focus on building things. But once people started getting rich, especially off bitcoin, it brought in a whole host of people whose primary passion seemed to be money.
This is funny to read because I remember hearing someone complain about the exact same thing in the Bay Area, but their dates were shifted by about 10 years before yours.
I think it's kind of like Burning Man, where everyone's favorite experience was their early days when they were young. As you get older, you complain it's gone downhill and the new generation is going for all the wrong reasons.
by Aurornis - Interesting. I am sure there are Jims outside of startup world too. There will be finance Jims and entertainment Jims.
Is having a couple of pets and a ridiculous table lifestyle creep. Maybe. I think of lifestyle creep more in terms of you are not saving any money at all.
I think that comment is more telling of what is expected of founders and engineers. At least from authors point of view.
No life allowed. Definitely don't reproduce. You work, and work so you can work more.
by hahahaa - It's really hard for me to understand that people who have the chance to achieve basic financial independence (say $1M net worth) don't take that chance and make sure to stay financially independent forever.
If you do that, you're almost guaranteed to stay in the top 2% globally for the rest of your life. You've made it in life, at least financially.
The approach of not taking advantage of the lucky and privileged situation exposes you to a huge risk that your NW will go down to zero and you never get a second chance.
by RivieraKid - Silicon Valley bats for 0-to-1 startups. If you swap "Revenue" for "Risk," that is culturally the same. People who don't have a "1" full-risk-on mode by default self-select themselves out of this game.
A toy model game is poker. If opponents know you'll never call an all-in/go all-in, they will always outplay you on the river.
And so, let the market pump funny numbers, and matriculate the lucky survivors.
by saucymew - I don't think these people NW ever goes down to zero.by polishdude20
- Some people can't get enough of yachts and other really expensive thingsby nunez
- > don't take that chance and make sure to stay financially independent forever.
What means do you see? Buy some S&P500 ETF and live off the interest rate? That seams easy but without investing in AI, you’re at risk of AI making the existing economy irrelevant, it’s the same as having all investments in local craftsmanship in 1700 and the steam machine happens, except much faster.
And move to [insert home country]? (What if I want to keep my friends)
by eastbound - $1M invested in a reasonably diversified portfolio gets you about $3,000/mo lifetime at ~3.5% safe withdrawal rate. That might be quite restrictive in the more expensive cities.by fouc
- I think $1M net worth in the US these days is a nice little nest egg, but not anywhere near financial independence. Unless your needs are simple, you can relocate somewhere to live very cheaply, and you don't have any dependents.
- I don’t trust anyone who has the general, abstract goal of being a “founder”. If there’s no great idea to go with it, it just seems like vanity. And sure it does work out really well anyway sometimes, but it’s just something I can’t get behind aesthetically.by daishi55
- that's 99.9 of them. the ones with the strong feelings towards ideas most of the time is already post-idea-du-jour narrativeby iririririr
- > I don’t trust anyone who has the general, abstract goal of being a “founder”.
The goal isn't abstract - read it as - goal of "not being a wage-slave" and have a shot at being more. It's an ambition type of thing.
by Johanx64 - I met a number of really successful founders who came in just wanting to build a business and found a niche later (sometimes waaay later). I suspect majority of founders with “great ideas” discovered them after the company was started and the great idea they started with wasn’t actually that goodby dilyevsky
- Founder culture definitely has fraternity vibes - people with no other discernable talent other than being above average looking and having connections with other similar people end up in positions they have no real idea how to do.
In other words, there are a lot of people "playing startup" in the valley - some of the VC money flows too easily and there is always going to be an ecosystem of people to try to put it to work.
- main personality trait i want to my kids to have is being a confident extrovert that loves ppl and ppl love. Also make sure to marry for looks if you are not that great in that department.
Nothing else even comes to close to these attributes in having a comfortable sucessful life. introverts and cynics get crushed.
by dominotw - Most people start businesses for tax reasons, and to mitigate financial risks.
People dumping discounted equity to hyper-scale on debt is not a business, but just another IPO over-valuation scheme. =3
by Joel_Mckay - Bit of an aside but I found it somewhat amusing that one example the author uses of Jim’s financial recklessness was getting into home brewing.
Home brewing is one of the cheaper hobbies available (though like all hobbies you can spend as much as you want). The only real requirements are a bucket and a pot.
by Carrok - How much more likely does becoming a home brewer make you to develop alcoholism, especially for someone who sounds a bit predisposed like Jim?by schrodinger
- Not if you have a contract brewery make your "creations"by fnord77