Highlighting Matt Maroon’s “Why Not To Do A Startup”
Add comment April 11th, 2008
Matt Maroon wrote a very thought provoking post on “Why Not to Do a Startup” a little over four weeks ago that I have been meaning to write about. I went back today with the Awesome Highlighter–an appropriately named product for once, unlike those damned “sea monkeys” and “X-Ray specs“(see Postscript)–and pulled out what I thought were some of his key passages. Here they are in context in the highlighted version and now in cross examination mode:
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about startups lately, and I’ve come to realize that they’re really not for most people, probably even most people who attempt them.
I am reminded of Sramana Mitra’s quote in the Real VCs of Silicon Valley that “The truth is, start-up-land is littered with mavericks, iconoclasts, drops-outs and misfits.” (As I read that quote again I think to myself, yes, that’s me, these are my kind of people).
There are a number of people floating around the Valley whose lives are a pretty sad story. Every startup they joined tanked, every one they passed on went public. They went without salary for years, and even when they had one, it was pretty low.
It’s always the one that got away that is successful (probably because so many can get away for every one you take part in).
Even sadder are the people whose startups succeeded but still aren’t happy, because they never learned that there is more to life than making money.
Perhaps we should introduce the first group to the second. But this affluenza isn’t limited to startup founders.
The biggest problem with startups..is the variance. Startups tend to be fairly binary, with you making either a very large amount off of them or nothing at all.
I think this is actually not true, and while many fail, there is a large spectrum of outcomes. Even among founding teams. Even among venture backed founding teams, which I think is the population Matt is describing. Matt’s entire post should probably be required reading for all YCombinator, TechStars, etc.. applicants, because it makes a lot of points that will make founders uncomfortable but that have to be acknowledged and managed.
Some folks win big, but many do well, especially when coupled with:
[B]enefits to startups other than the money..Working for yourself.
We see a lot of bootstrappers who run “small successful” software firms who are about as happy as they would have been in “a real job.” Some break out and some fail, but many fall into a fairly large middle ground: they achieve modest success but stay below the radar screen of most observers. It’s one of the reasons we facilitate the Bootstrapper Breakfasts as a service to the startup community.
Postscript April 12: After an e-mail alerted me to the fact that the final highlighting link drops some of the text I contacted the Awesome Highlighter team and exchanged a couple of E-mails. The app is very early stage and doesn’t work on many web pages, just like my X-ray specs after all.
Postscript April 14: The Awesome Highlighter team has fixed some of the problems.