Pathik Shah

Startups are Hard

An excellent post on startups and what it means to be an entrepreneur by @jazzychad of Notifo and PicAFight.

Startups are Hard

Startups are hard. No, startups are damn hard.

Contrary to popular belief, there are no clouds of money that float around Silicon Valley and rain on anyone that utters the phrase, “I’m a founder!” Unfortunately, starting a company and raising money is just as hard as ever; it’s just that the investors don’t have as much leverage as they used to, but they still have a lot.

Most reporting on startups suffers from a terrible case of success bias. Nobody wants to report on a dying startup unless it is to highlight another company that has come along to kill them, but that actually turns into a piece about the better company and not the dying one.

Startups that die rarely talk about it publicly because it is frustrating, embarrassing, and most of the time the people involved want to forget the whole mess and move on rather than sit around talking about the fact that they failed.

Most people don’t want to admit that startups are hard, either, because to admit something is hard is to admit that you don’t know everything there is to know about a certain topic and to display weakness. If there’s one thing you do not want to do as a startup, it’s appear weak. Only the strong survive.

But guess what: startups are hard. At times they are soul-crushingly hard. I am not afraid to admit this anymore. I am not afraid to talk openly about it with peers anymore. So, this post serves as a counterpoint to all the recent postings alluding to the fact that anyone can suddenly decide to be a founder and the next week find themselves swimming around in a kiddie-pool full of angel/VC money.

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Entrepreneurs and Nontrepreneurs

There are two kinds of people – entrepreneurs and nontrepreneurs.

I’m currently a nontrepreneur, aspiring to be an entrepreneur. And here’s an awesome post by Chris Dixon on the subject.

There are two kinds of people in the world

You’ve either started a company or you haven’t. ”Started” doesn’t mean joining as an early employee, or investing or advising or helping out. It means starting with no money, no help, no one who believes in you (except perhaps your closest friends and family), and building an organization from a borrowed cubicle with credit card debt and nowhere to sleep except the office. It almost invariably means being dismissed by arrogant investors who show up a half hour late, totally unprepared and then instead of saying “no” give you non-committal rejections like “we invest at later stage companies.” It means looking prospective employees in the eyes and convincing them to leave safe jobs, quit everything and throw their lot in with you. It means having pundits in the press and blogs who’ve never built anything criticize you and armchair quarterback your every mistake. It means lying awake at night worrying about running out of cash and having a constant knot in your stomach during the day fearing you’ll disappoint the few people who believed in you and validate your smug doubters.

I don’t care if you succeed or fail, if you are Bill Gates or an unknown entrepreneur who gave everything to make it work but didn’t manage to pull through. The important distinction is whether you risked everything, put your life on the line, made commitments to investors, employees, customers and friends, and tried – against all the forces in the world that try to keep new ideas down – to make something new.

via Chris Dixon

Best Essays on Startups and Entrepreneurship by Paul Graham

Paul Graham is probably one of the best writers in the world. All the essays he has written over the years are excellent, and should be read by every aspiring entrepreneur, but these are the ones which I think are the top essays / best articles by Paul Graham. All of them are about startups, entrepreneurship and everything in between.

Top Best Startup Essays by Paul Graham

1. How to Make Wealth

2. How to Start a Startup

3. Hiring is Obsolete

4. Inequality and Risk

5. Ideas for Startups

6. How to Fund a Startup

7. How to Do What You Love

8. The Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn

9. How to Present to Investors

10. A Student’s Guide to Startups

11. The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups

12. Why to Not Not Start a Startup

13. The Hacker’s Guide to Investors

14. How Not to Die

15. You Weren’t Meant to Have a Boss

16. Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy

17. Startups in 13 Sentences

18. How to Be an Angel Investor

19. Ramen Profitable

20. What Startups Are Really Like

If you liked these, you should definitely read all his essays. Check them out at Paul Graham – Essays

A Message to Graduating Students and Aspiring Entrepreneurs

This is the transcript of a talk given by Brad Feld, an entrepreneur and angel investor, to a class of graduating MBAs. So awesome, that I had to post it.

Imagine that you are 45 and are looking back on your last 15-20 years. Is your work, and life, full of meaning?

Don’t worry about money right now. You can always get a job that pays you plenty of money. Don’t worry about your resume. Don’t worry about “am I positioning myself the right way for something five years from now.” I know way too many 45-year olds who have plenty of money, have done all the right career things, yet are unhappy with where they are in life, where they live, and what they do. Don’t be that guy or gal.

Start by choosing the place you want to make a life. If it’s Boulder, figure out how to stay here. If it’s New York, there’s an easy United flight that gets you there in under four hours – take it the day after you graduate. San Francisco? That flight is only two hours long. Just go and figure it out when you get there. Don’t talk about “I’m going to live there some day” – go get in the middle of wherever it is that you want to build a life. Oh, and Montana’s a pretty cool place also, as is Austin, Seattle, Miami, DC, and at least 95 other cities in the United States.

Next, choose a domain that you want to dedicate your life to. If you’ve dreamed of being an investment banker or consultant to Fortune 1000 companies since you were 10, then Goldman Sachs or McKinsey is looking for you. If you want to be an entrepreneur, working at an investment bank or consulting firm for a while is pointless. Be an entrepreneur starting now. Pick that domain that turns you on the most – start at a high level (e.g. software, Internet, clean tech) but then pick a thing that you really care about and a set of problems you want to solve. If you aren’t technical, go find a technical co-founder right now – there are hundreds of them on this campus. Get your ass out of your chair and just get started.

Finally, make sure you are living your life. You are young and hopefully have plenty of time on this planet. But don’t wait because you never know when the lights are going to go out.

via Fortune

Ben Affleck’s ‘Boiler Room’ Speech

An awesome speech by the head of an investment bank / broking firm in the movie “Boiler Room”. One of the best I’ve ever heard.

>> Ben Affleck in Boiler Room – Speech – Video

Text Transcript

Okay. Here’s the deal.

I’m not here to waste your time. I hope you’re not here to waste mine.

So I’m gonna keep this short.

If you become an employee of this firm, you will make your first million within three years.

Okay? I repeat that:

You will make a million dollars within three years of your first day of employment
at J.T. Marlin.

There is no question whether or not you’ll become a millionaire here.

The only question is how many times over.

You think I’m joking?
I am not joking.

I am a millionaire. It’s a weird thing to hear, right?

I’ll tell ya. It’s a weird thing to say.

I am a fucking millionaire.

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