"But it’s worth a read to understand the perspective of a vocal minority in the tech industry."
That statement is a bit off-putting. First of all, this 'minority' is the majority. Most software businesses are indeed small, and are not aiming for venture capital and outsized returns. It would not even be mathematically possible to be otherwise.
Secondly, the 'vocal' people are the people trying to make you start a big business. Almost all blogs and writers cater to the startup crowd, not the mISV crowd. Most people writing country specific tax software or inventory sorting software are not blogging at all.
Maybe I am misunderstanding what he means - but to me it seems like he is deep in the bubble, and can't see out of it. That's why the article he reacted to would have been so disturbing to him.
"Secondly, the 'vocal' people are the people trying to make you start a big business."
As a guy who respects both paths (and has gone down both), I'd say I see more people advocating against a swing-for-the-fences path ("VCs will eat your babies, take control, force you to take insane risks, make you work insane hours, and you'll die penniless 99.9999% of the time!") than advocating against a happy-lifestyle business path. In fact, Alex's post is the first time I've ever read anyone actually saying, "If you're smart, DON'T do a small business that makes you happy! Aim higher."
The lifestyle zealots, to me, seem a lot more vocal/angry. The go-big zealots honestly just seem puzzled... If you're going to quit your job and start something, why wouldn't you attack a huge opportunity? They just don't get that some folks have different motivations than money/fame/world-changing.
The idea that EITHER group tells you what you should do with your life is disgusting to me. For what it's worth, raising venture capital and working VCs made me perfectly happy. My first bootstrapped business actually made me pretty miserable. For the right startup, I'd raise money again in a heartbeat. Whether you raise money or aim big depends entirely on what you care about and how much cash you need to pull it off.
We are more vocal because we are in a tiny minority, constantly trashed (e.g. "lifestyle business"), and most of the people who are "living the life" are too busy running their own businesses to blog. Or they don't see it as a movement, like I do.
Yeah, it's the "constantly trashed" that I never see. "Lifestyle business" isn't an insult-- it's a perfectly valid label for a lot of businesses (those that prioritize lifestyle over growth). Bootstrapped is another good label-- for those that don't necessary avoid growth, but don't (or can't) raise or borrow money.
And other that Alex's post, I can't recall anyone taking the time to write a post trashing lifestyle businesses or bootstrapping or whatever you want to call it (I guess the latter could imply more ambition while the former might imply maximizing reward for as little effort as you can get away with).
Granted, we celebrate "go-big-or-go-home" folks (in the news and on HN)... That's nothing new-- humans have celebrated daring forever. It sells newspapers and generates pageviews.
On the other hand, I feel like I can rattle off a long list of "VCs will eat your baby" bloggers. Yours, 37s, the LessEverything guys, the folks at Jackson Fish Market, etc. I love all of your blogs and all of your products-- but I just don't get the rage (though I think you were perfectly justified in blowing up at Alex, btw).
It's a Blue Honda problem -- or whatever the name was. You buy a new car, suddenly you see them everywhere. A type of selection bias. You probably don't see it because you aren't tuned into it.
Yeah, it's truly bizarre that Alex is at Amy Hoy's throat about this. Amy is utterly dedicated to encouraging more people who don't feel safe starting a business to GO DO IT. That seems like something Alex would be into.
Maybe because he's shooting for the stars right now with BankSimple (which I am SO excited about) he's feeling a little nervous about that strategy. Being pre-launch on something so anticipated and ambitious must be at least a little scary!
I guess I can understand Alex's perspective when I consider he's one the lucky few to be on the 0.0001% side of the equation and raised $2.9 million first round funding. (Must be nice.)
I think the idea that only %0.0001 of people who enter into startups walk out with their lives improved is absurd.
It's a myth that we're all in this game for an FB payout, and it's a myth that that's the reason we want to play the game.
Most of my startups have had payouts to me personally, via either stock buyback (to retain control of the company while securing more funding), or exit deals (in the case of powerset). And even for the cases where I didn't get a big payout, my experience and skills were improved dramatically by the environment and demands placed on me by the job.
I went from working a dead-end job at Lockheed Martin and getting less than 3/4 the fair salary for someone with my skillset to courting jobs and turning people down. Anyone who knows me will tell you I am not a lucky person, and I am not a brilliant star amongst the constellation of smart people that fill the Valley. I simply play the game and move to jobs that balance my personal improvement with my chance for a payout.
I really like your ideas here! But the thing you do where you take what someone else said, and then turn it into something absurd, and then call them out for being absurd... it doesn't really move the dialog forward.
jv22222 said "Alex [is] one the lucky few to be on the 0.0001% side of the equation and raised $2.9 million first round funding"
You translate that to "only %0.0001 of people who enter into startups walk out with their lives improved"
He might also be financially independent (at least on paper) thanks to Twitter stock. That could completely excise one's interest in lifestyle businesses.
Agreed. There's plenty of room in the world for both Alex and Amy's approaches to work, to be valuable, and to make people happy. They don't preclude or cancel out one another. It's all good.
Payne is not deep in the bubble. He just has a very, very firm grasp of what makes him happy. Consider:
"As above, I’m not talking about size or scale, or about maximizing profit."
"What matters is how you can help the most people with what you do."
"That said, there’s nothing wrong with starting small (we all have to, inherently), or even with staying small if that’s what best suits the mechanics of your business."
His argument is more nuanced than "start up and grow big." He explicitly says as much in his article.
You mean like posts about not following your passion? Or following the money? Or telling everyone to chill the fuck out? [0, 1, 2] Are you seriously complaining about sanctimonious blog posts?
A quick peek at your blog suggests Pot and Kettle are having a conversation right now.
Let's take a look at the difference between my writing and his:
1. I don't tell people what to do.
2. I don't tell people that they should do what I say -- FOR THE GOOD OF THE WORLD -- because doing what makes them happy is "not living up to their potential" (paraphrase)
3. I don't rip apart any individual's work, or finger them as a case study in what not to do -- or, much worse, accuse them of "duping credulous customers into overpaying for..."
Take my "Don't Follow Your Passion" post. What do I say? I don't tell people they have to do anything. I give them options and scenarios to help them seek their own happiness.
Example:
"Likewise, if you love slinging code, but hate interacting with people who don’t understand you immediately, then you’re going to be miserable doing training or providing support of any kind. If you love creating dramatic illustrations of people and places, but chafe at people who tell you what to do, being a freelance illustrator is going to rub you raw."
Or here's the whole thesis from "Chill The Fuck Out":
"Make things. Help people. Be happy."
And my actual prescription for people who need to chill?
"If these simple, deeply mundane ideas make you feel challenged and insecure about what you do or what you want, make you feel like striking out, go back to Hacker News. Go read the 98% of tech media that supports your viewpoint.
In other words: Chill the fuck out, Dominant Paradigm. This is not for you."
In other words... unlike what al3x wrote, I gave multiple different paths for people to choose.
There is a huge difference between preaching passionately -- and actually, honest to god telling people what to do, insulting their work, telling them their little dreams are not good enough for THE WORLD.
The only difference between you and Payne is the density of your startup advice. He jammed it all into one post, while you've diffused it over XX entries. Otherwise, the spirit of your posts and Payne's post -- namely, that you and him both have Great Advice To Offer -- is the same.
I don't know, I think the article was off-putting to Alex for the reason that he states: it focuses on achieving personal happiness rather than improving the lives of as many people as possible.
Come on. How many of these companies improve anyone's lives? I doubt the world is any better thanks to Twitter, or Facebook, or Foursquare, certainly not thanks to the various clones, mashups and "me three" companies you see in TechCrunch every day.
Whether or not any of the companies you mentioned (or other vc companies) have made the world better is irrelevant to the question of "Why did Alex react as he did to Justin and Amy's articles?"
Alex provides enough information about his beliefs and about why he thinks those articles conflict with them that I, at least, trust he knows why he reacted the way he did.
What is the point of questioning his level of self-awareness anyway? How does it further the conversation? Really, I don't understand the point of maxklein's comment.
First, he takes issue with the phrase "vocal minority". OK, mISV people are either in the minority or the majority. Why does that matter either way?
Then he ignores the major premise of the article (which I find interesting), and instead psychologizes Alex from behind his computer. What's the point?
The main issue which Alex brings up is far more interesting. What should we value more, personal happiness or improving as many as lives as possible? What organizational structures are most suited to these different goals? Are these goals mutually exclusive, as Alex seems to assume they are?
> Alex provides enough information about his beliefs and about why he thinks those articles conflict with them that I, at least, trust he knows why he reacted the way he did.
Really? I've never met him, but I know plenty of other people who despite providing a lot of information about their beliefs aren't completely candid with themselves about why they're reacting the way they do.
That is a good point, but is it really worth it for a bunch of strangers to debate the issue based on a blog post? I don't understand what anyone has to gain by examining his personal psychological makeup.
On the personal level I know almost nothing about these people (I heard a Mixergy interview with Hoy which was great). My reaction is to the notion that a big company necessarily improves the world more than a small one.
The world is not better because of Twitter or Facebook? They played a role in the recent revolutions and help people connect with family and friends. Why do you think these governments tried to shut down the internet?
They may not have been helpful to you but to others they are.
This is really mostly MSM/blogosphere hype. These revolutions started when people set themselves afire, and risked their lives confronting the army/police. FB might have helped (Youtube probably even more, Twitter almost trivial) but in the same way that a cellphone would.
Governments are now using social media to track dissidents as well, so it's not at all clear the net effect it positive.
Agree with your second point. But Twitter helped spread the YouTube videos so I doubt Twitter is trivial. Communication, whether it's the Internet or cell-phone, helped the revolutions by connecting people and organizing them. But yes, we don't know the net effect and I think it's impossible to know.
There are a lot of people who spend a lot of time on Twitter and breathlessly tell everyone that it's great. Apparently it's not useless to them (although I've never used it, and you probably didn't either), and I don't think there are many big downsides to Twitter. (I'm not so sure that the "no harm done" applies to Facebook, in particular wrt privacy.)
A lot of people are breathlessly excited about Lady Gaga. Does her existence improve the world? Maybe, for them. Would they be worse off if they never heard of her? Probably they'd find someone else to be breathless about.
Note that the smaller Freckle/etc apps are the ones people actually pay for.
Are you seriously disputing the ability of music to make people's lives more enjoyable?
By the way, Lady Gaga is something people actually pay for. If I recall right, her personal income was $60M last year. Presumably people paid a lot more than that for her music/entertainment.
I read that as disputing the exclusive ability of any specific performer to make people's lives enjoyable, while all others will not be able to do so.
Before Gaga, people were paying for Madonna. After Gaga, people will be breathlessly excited and pay for someone else. If there was no Gaga, people would be breathlessly excited and pay for someone else yet.
That's exactly what I meant. I love music. I just don't think "people are breathlessly excited about X" means "X is valuable". A lot of people are excited about reality TV.
Being someone who's trying to live by something close Alex's mantra with my startup (CloudFab, in the digital manufacturing space), I actually think all those companies (Fb, Tw, 4sq) provide very societally valuable things.
How awesome is it that I can talk to old friends on Facebook (which does lead to in-person convo!), get great socially-vetted info on Twitter, or find local tips on Foursquare when traveling.
Okay - maybe Zynga is where I draw the line... ;-) it really does seem like like they're hacking our brains like that fluke* that causes ants to get eaten by animals to spread itself.
But still maybe that knowledge helps all of marketing by example...
People had friends and met significant others before the internet. I'm not saying these apps are bad (they are both bad and good) but that in the bottom line the world isn't necessarily better or worse.
Terrible example by me, sure. But do you know of any Middle Eastern revolutions supported by AIM? Long form journalism ala @MayorEmanuel? Any academic studies examining mood on AIM and how it correlates to stock market performance?
Let's say I buy a box of doughnuts and go down to the street corner and sell them.
For each doughnut I sell, somebody gives me money and I give them a tasty treat. They are happier because of our exchange, if only for a short while, and I know that I have "done some good" for that hungry person.
Now I could just as easily stay home and try to invent the uber-nut, a killer replacement for doughnuts that costs half as much as lasts twice as long. A treat that will change the snacking world as we know it! I can build a factory to make uber-nuts, I can design complicated equipment, I can go on the web and talk about how earth-shattering uber-nut is going to be.
But none of that sells any uber-nuts. It's just me spinning out an imaginary architecture and vision of world domination and using my skills to construct this fake world where it all is going to happen.
For every guy who makes an uber-nut and changes the world, there are thousands of failed attempts. For all of those attempts, most of them result in making the world no better at all. It's a long, bitter experience. As opposed to the guy who actually buys the doughnuts and goes and sells them, where he knows he is doing some small amount of good in the world. For every 20 or so guys just looking to make a difference, any difference, only one of them makes it happen.
Those are some amazing numbers, and you'd be a smart person to take some time and think about them.
What folks are saying is simple: Go make a difference. Right now. Some little, _real_ difference. Sell a doughnut. Find a small niche and improve people's lives in it. Because even if you do one tiny, unimaginative, boring thing that only helps one person in some really small way? You've actually done something. As opposed to imagining you are creating the next earth-shattering invention and then flaming out. Because even if you created the uber-nut that changes snacking as we know it? You're going to do that by making a box of uber-nuts and going down to that street corner and making one person happy at a time. You roll out huge changes by picking one small niche at a time. It's the same difference. The key question here is how much self-bullshitting you want to do versus how many doughnuts you want to sell.
Some people are happy being an employee. Some people are happy starting a business just big enough to support themselves. Some people want to "swing for the fences" and make a fortune and/or change the world.
Just because the majority of those swinging for the fences fail doesn't mean it's not an worthwhile choice. If only 1 out of 20 of those people do make a difference, but the difference is 20x more than 20 small businesses combined, then that group is net ahead in difference-making.
All are valid paths in life. It's simply a matter of choosing the best option for yourself based on your risk profile and ambitions.
> All are valid paths in life. It's simply a matter of choosing the best option for yourself based on your risk profile and ambitions.
Unfortunately, something reasonable and uncontroversial like that doesn't get people to link to your blog.
Furthermore, the whole thing is not a zero-sum game: it's not like every person who decides to go for the VC/big route is someone "taken away" from a happy life with a small business (maybe they'd be bored by that), or that people doing small businesses are making the world poorer by not aiming for the stars (maybe they're not able to or interested).
The idea that Payne is looking for hits is ridiculous. He's managing a company with tons of media coverage--one blog post won't change a thing for BankSimple.
This is a good analogy, but it misses the very important bonus that a profitable doughnut vendor is also in a good place to fund the development of the uber-nut.
This part of the argument feels strange to me. The average self employed person works more hours and makes less money than their employed counterparts. Building a business that covers a mortgage is one thing. Building one that throws off enough cash and spare time to disrupt an industry seems like an order of magnitude harder. As PG said in the one of the other threads-- empirically, we just don't see this happening very much at all.
"The key question here is how much self-bullshitting you want to do versus how many doughnuts you want to sell." <- This.
One of the best comments i've read on HN.
What you just said knocks it out of the ballpark.
The thing that is wrong with the lifestyle business though is that at some point the founders intend on stopping their value creation beyond what they need to survive.
It's inherently selfish while the startup is inherently (mostly unintentionally) unselfish.
That's what, i think, the OP was trying to say with his post.
I have almost never met a "lifestyle business founder" who fits this description:
"The thing that is wrong with the lifestyle business though is that at some point the founders intend on stopping their value creation beyond what they need to survive."
And I run in circles with lots and lots and lots of people who have the "lifestyle business" label applied to them. As a slur. Including me! Everyone I interact with -- whether they make software or write ebooks on how to market and launch products -- cares about their customers, and their total impact on the world.
"Lifestyle business" is used against any business which does not seem suitably ambitious for the labeler's prejudice du jour -- whether that means they don't want to revolutionize banking, take funding, or they don't want to grow big and go public or get bought. "Lifestyle business" is just nasty, petty shorthand for "I'm serious and YOU'RE NOT, because you don't look like me."
We're not talking people who resell white label "nutritional supplements" or sailor shirts, here.
I, for instance, create tools and educational material. My software, Freckle, that Alex Payne [who wrote the essay] slammed so nastily, explains right on the front page how it creates value: http://letsfreckle.com/ -- it helps thousands of people every day run their businesses, & earn more money, with less pain and more joy. On top of that, I teach JavaScript programming in a way that reaches people who otherwise have trouble learning, and I teach entrepreneurship.
But Alex singled me out for criticism because he deems my efforts inadequate by his standards.
The whole point of Alex's original essay is that helping 1,000 customers isn't enough for "the world." And he thinks it's wrong to prioritize your own personal happiness if you have the unbelievably rare gifts of being able to program effectively or design nice things.
He actually told me in a tweet that he was disappointed in me, because in his eyes I should be doing something so much "bigger." That I was wasting my talent.
The whole thing is absolutely ridiculous. And pompous beyond belief!
Now, all that said, I ask you:
Even if somebody was just selling white label vitamins or sailor shirts, where do you get off thinking you have the right to tell them that they aren't allowed to make themselves happy? To pursue their own goals in life? Why do you think that they owe you?
So I don't fit the "lifestyle business" description as you put it, but I'm damned sure that nobody is going to tell me that the way I live my life isn't good enough for them. Remove the plank from your own eye first.
I find this notion that small businesses mean small impact downright bizarre in the Internet age. BCC is pretty freaking small. I have hundreds of thousands of users and thousands of customers. I wanted to go into teaching back in the day. I taught more lessons to more kids while sleeping last year than I would have been physically able to in a several lifetimes.
A time tracking app with a thousand customers improves the life of enough people to pack a stadium. Their businesses improve, their families make more money, their customers see less deadweight loss dealing with them, their communities see the benefits of economic growth, etc etc.
If I can give 1,000 people an additional 15 minutes of pleasure a day -- or 15 minutes less of stress & self-recrimination -- then that is 250 hours of additional happiness added to the world. Or 3,800 days of additional happiness per year.
I think that his comment about AmyHoy's app was childish and his comments in this article are both naive and megalomaniacal ("I'm trying to touch more people's lives than you, so I'm better!").
I get the feeling that he doesn't understand the different types of glue that hold together the various scales at which society operates.
This coupled with yesterday suggests a childish acting-out of sorts.
I prescribe a healthy dose of spending time with people instead of trying to change the world from your computer desk.
When you look back on your life, do you want to be the person who got by and lived for your own happiness, or the person who brought happiness, security, and prosperity to countless others?
I think this is a false dichotomy. If not, then the word "countless" is important.
Most of these small businesses are "lifestyle businesses" because they purposely limit their market by focusing on a specific niche. This is one reason they're supposed to be a "safer" bet -- you address a need that you either already know well because you are a part of the market, or it's small and accessible enough that you can get a firm grasp of its needs and provide value.
Yes, these businesses provide value. That's what their customers are paying for. Is it not noble (or at least, not self-serving) to provide value to a few thousand, say, occupational therapists who need a particular service that they're willing to pay $10 a month for? Or is it only worth venturing to help "countless" people?
My father is a doctor, and his lifetime number of "customers" is probably a lot lower than a largeish web app serving some good purpose, but I wouldn't call it a wasted life.
> My father is a doctor, and his lifetime number of "customers" is probably a lot lower than a largeish web app serving some good purpose, but I wouldn't call it a wasted life.
I really like a quote from Einstein for situations like this:
"There are some things in life that can be counted that don't count. Other things that count can't be counted."
"My father is a doctor, and his lifetime number of "customers" is probably a lot lower than a largeish web app serving some good purpose, but I wouldn't call it a wasted life."
I would disagree. Doctors help save and improve people's lives. Those people then go on to continue to impact people. Doctors most certainly help "countless others" :)
I think there's a really strong disconnect here that is really common around HN - basically, do you really want to change the world? It seems like people have a tendency to answer "yes" to this question because the alternative makes you look dispassionate.
This line of thinking makes the assumption that ambition is a necessary prerequisite for efficacy. I'm not exactly in a position to qualify this statement, but I would guess that the people who make the greatest positive changes in the world weren't necessarily setting out to have a huge impact, they were just doing what they knew to be right.
Because everyone loves statistically unproven case studies, I offer Penny Arcade. PA launched a webcomic in 98. Five years later, they launched Child's Play - a charity that has raised ~$9M to fund research and facilities for children's hospitals.
When asked about it, Mike mentioned that, when they started Child's Play, neither of them were parents so they didn't know how effective their efforts would be, they just knew it was the right thing to do.
> I would guess that the people who make the greatest positive changes in the world weren't necessarily setting out to have a huge impact, they were just doing what they knew to be right.
This is exactly the same conclusion I have come to. I don't want to change the world. I even gave a Toastmasters speech on this topic - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkct9OcTKRI
Putting your focus on changing the world puts way too much pressure on me. Instead I just want to do the things I enjoy and hopefully they'll be of use to someone else.
Besides, who I am to tell what is good for the world? Does dictactor-like thinking really help people? In all cases I can think of, people in dictator roles who have had the ability to mould a place to their wishes and have had the power to "change the world" have just made things worse off.
Perhaps you could say that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs knew Microsoft and Apple would be world-changing companies, but there are probably countless entrepreneurs that think the same thing before their company fizzles and dies.
If you develop something and it goes on to be a huge success that provides use to hundreds of millions of people around the world then great. If it only impacts a few people then that is great too.
I don't think ambition to change the world plays any part in actually changing the world. It might just only lead to superiority complex.
I agree. Which type of story resonates more with would-be entrepreneurs? The "I want to help others via my business" story, or the "I hate my crappy job, and want to seek what I perceive to be happiness via my own business" story?
I'm not saying that you can't have a mixture of both, or transition from one motive to the other, but most people's first thoughts are about themselves, others tend to come afterward. We are afraid to admit this in public, but I think we can all agree it exists.
So what's wrong with seeking personal happiness first? Does that preclude you from being more altruistic later in life? If you can put others' needs first, more power to you, but that doesn't make those who cannot worse people.
Very good points. To which I'd add, happiness is a social contagion. Happy people make people around them happier. They are nicer, more generous... they give more to charity. Etc. etc. etc.
But woe be unto the selfish, lazy person who seeks personal happiness. Somebody out there is ready to school him/her on what he/she really ought to be doing!
When I read through your post it was all going well until the part where you say:
"At the core of the pro-micro business argument is an idea that I find hard to swallow: that merely being happy should be purpose enough for a person."
Wow.
Doesn't everyone have the goal of being in an non-state of pain and suffering. Which, is basically the same as being happy/content/satisfied.
If _your_ "non-state of pain and suffering" = you need to be a billionaire... then, there was NO point in my original article that said "you can't be a billionaire". So what relevance does that point have to the article?
The main point I was trying to make (and it's my lack of good writing that didn't get this across) was absolutely nothing to do with what your post talks about.
I was proposing that we would all have a better ultimate chance of fulfilling our entrepreneurial goals if the very first thing we did was to build a micro business.
Build a micro business. Make it successful. Then swing for the fences.
The advantages are:
- You will have a more rounded understanding of "business"
- You will be financially free and able to pursue your other big risk ventures
- You will loose less % in any future investment deals you cut because you will have proven yourself
- You will ultimately have more control and less people to answer to
"The waste" that I was referring to was that by taking the other route (chasing after golden ticket investment) is a waste of potential real world business learning.
Sure we all learn with every route we take, but the faster and more immersed we become in dealing with ALL aspects of business - the better we get.
The beauty of a micro business is that it's far easier to see all the facets of business. Any other route... there are bound to be some facets that we miss out on compared to a microcosm of a total business experience.
Boy is this thread boring. I was about to write that it's like a thread about politics or religion: huge angry comments that teach one nothing. Then I realized why. The whole question of startups vs "lifestyle businesses," while a neutral topic for most people, is for many of the users of this site a matter of identity (http://paulgraham.com/identity.html).
I find your comment even more obnoxious that what al3x wrote, just for its sheer disingenuity.
This isn't a neutral topic for you either, not in the slightest, but declaring the discussion to be as useless as /r/atheism is simply petulant.
The top level of comments in this thread (barring yours) is full of some of the most helpful and insightful comments I've ever seen on HN. A respected member of the community flames out and people are earnestly helping him figure out where the disconnect was. Given that he chopped down his blog post in response, it looks like al3x really appreciated them and is understanding that the flaminess of his argument wasn't what people were really upset about.
Actually it is a neutral topic for me. I know there have to be both types of companies, and no one is more aware than I am that startups aren't for everyone, because every 6 months I have to pick, from a huge pool, the people I think are suited for it, and it's painful for all involved when I pick wrong.
If you're going to be so nasty, you should be sure first you're right. Though frankly, if you're right, you don't need to be nasty.
You just reframed the debate in the light most favorable to your argument. The issue isn't whether there should be lifestyle companies or not. The issue is, for a hacker equally capable of and equally armed by circumstances to starting either a "lifestyle" business or a shoot-the-moon startup, is there a "right" choice?
Ironically, the part of us that insists so strenuously on its uniqueness is a rather boring, standard-issue part, kind of like our livers if the liver were concerned about itself. I think that's why these discussions are so predictable: they're all the same because our egos are all the same. Not on the surface, of course -- we put care into how we clothe them -- but structually and behaviorally.
This ought to lead to a tremendous efficiency in life: the minute you detect an ego reaction you can know what you're going to get and react accordingly, i.e. bail. Unfortunately the seduction of getting embroiled in these useless things is hard to resist.
In buddhism, when speaking about ego and being egoless this is partly what they are talking about.
Regarding the scientist example, I think the generalization is that for good identities we need to search for meta-identities. A scientist is one. Another might be a meta-identity of being someone who can easily change point of views or identities.
I was going to make this a blog post, but to honor the hacker news way I'm posting it here.
I don't believe the micro-business discussion is just about identity. I think the micro-business approach is the future of the start-up world.
Micro business will force the inevitable disintermediation between entrepreneurs, VC's/Incubators, and starting businesses.
My feeling is that 5 years from now micro-business start-ups will be the primary and dominant way that entrepreneurs start business life - without any thought (or requirement) of seed funding or VC's.
VCs/Incubators will have the same relationship to the start-up world - that record labels now have with the music industry.
Sure, they play their part, but the relationship is very different.
Disintermediation is a consistent pattern that the internet brings to us. There are way more entrepreneurs than there are positions at YC or funds available from VC's.
Like water finding cracks to flow through, entrepreneurs will flow around today's centralized funding paradigm and get started on their own. In essence the internet has made it possible to commoditize startups. The peer relationships that YC & the like bring will become less and less important as groups break away and form their own smaller microcosm venture networks.
It's a pattern that's been repeated again and again. Client server moves to peer-peer. It's happened in the music industry. It's happened in the newspaper industry.
It's not about identity, it's about choice. Alex has made his choice, now he's trying to force it on others as if it is in fact gospel.
I don't care what people call me. I don't care personally that Alex slammed my business. I know what I'm doing is right for me, because I get to reap the rewards every day.
But what I do care about is that this further stifles the discussion of choice. There is so little presented about bootstrapping. There are so few role models. It's an information wasteland, like I wrote in "Drawing Back the Curtain":
Most people don't realize that "tech business" and "funded startup" aren't the same thing. Most people truly believe that they couldn't start a company on the side. They may believe that they are a caged lion because they have a job (as per your metaphor [1]), but that there is nothing for them between being a caged lion forever and having to have some kind of earth-shattering idea that will get funded by somebody so they can develop it full time just to see where it goes.
THAT is what Justin Vincent is railing against: the lack of choice, the "soaking in it" issue, the conflation of "tech business" and "funded startup". The lack of apparent choice. That's what I write against, too.
Justin never wrote about "This is what you should do," he said "This is what you see everywhere but look, there's a totally different way." Alex, on the other hand, slammed my work as an individual. And told us all that merely seeking happiness is not enough for the world, because he's a secular humanist.
Tack-y. Chilling effect. Just like labeling somebody else's business a "lifestyle business" just because it is bootstrapped.
That is the core problem: the attempt to discredit anyone who does things differently. The attempt to stomp out anyone trying to pull the "norm" over from one extreme. Labeling -- such as "oh, that's just a lifestyle business" -- is a way of trying to shut down the discussion.
And witnessing THAT behavior is why everyone is so engaged.
[1] By the way, if we're talking about matters of identity... caged lion? Hackers are like painters? If those aren't appeals to identity, I don't know what is.
I think an apology to Amy, even just one sentence, would have been good. Calling her out seemed really unnecessary. Otherwise, it seems like a more well thought out comment than the original: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2338911. I still disagree, however.
> Some readers found my comments to be anti-small business. This was not my intent.
Then you should have avoided statements like "There's nothing wrong with being a small software company.... It's boring, but there's nothing wrong with it. Don't expect anyone to celebrate you for doing it, though."
I don't know what your intent was, but it comes across as very hostile to small business.
I'd be a lot more sympathetic to this argument if I thought the people "swinging for the fences" were really creating something of lasting human value. Maybe I'm in the minority on this, but it's not clear to me at all that things like Twitter and Facebook empower the man in the street nearly as much as they empower entrenched interests.
Just yesterday I was privately lamenting all the energy young people today are pouring into gimmicky, me-too social networks and into chasing dollars. I'd love to see that energy redirected into something more artistic and creative and, yes, personal.
So it's morally superior to use your rad skills to get rich and make the world a better place than by simply using your rad skills to have a good life? Sure.
Are 99% of the people really swinging for the fences doing this? No.. they are trying to get fame and fortune for the fun of it. Nothing wrong with that; but let's not get confused about what we are talking about.
I am 28 and will probably never have to work more than 20+ hours a week doing things I enjoy for the rest of my life. I imagine far less than that in not too many years. I could really swing for the fences and bust my ass until I am 45; but that is 17 years of not engaging with my life in the same way I would if I weren't "working" all the time.
The first priority should be finding out what is right for yourself. Ultimately, no one can tell you what is right for you.
Hacker news is a good place to reflect, but hopefully you can read things without having your whole mental framework being disrupted by one article with a different perspective.
Uh, I think microbusinesses may be more oriented towards "making a difference" than some businesses that go the V.C. route.
It would be unfair to tar all V.C. funded companies with the same brush, because many of them really are trying to create something awesome and make a splash in the world. However, when times get bubbly, people come out of the woodwork who are more concerned with making a fast exit than they are in building a business.
Whereas, if you're bootstrapping a microbusiness, you need to find some market where you're making something somebody is willing to pay for right away, so you're definitely "making a difference" for somebody, even if you're not changing the world.
pg seems to have said something alex'ish elsewhere:
"I once sat in a crowded hall and listened to Paul Graham give a keynote presentation about going big, doing it quickly, and getting tons of funding. During Q&A, someone asked what was wrong with instead of trying to go big with big money backers, you just went for profit and kept ownership to yourself and Graham said something like "you want to run a little business? Go run a shoe store then"
Alex Payne is a self-professed afficionado of minimalism and good design - not just in software, but in physical products.
I'd venture to say that a great deal of good design work is done by small studios which would count as 'lifestyle' businesses by his description.
Is he claiming that by trying to make real but incremental improvements to relatively mundane things, these designers are wasting their lives? Should they give up their practices and instead concentrate only on the most world changing ecological projects, or trying to create the next iPod or Dyson?
If not, why does this apply only to digital goods, and not physical goods too?
Accusations of 'hoodwinking' aside, A successful lifestyle business implies that you're doing something that other people value. A failed 'shoot-for-the-moon' business does not.
I like this post, even though I disagree with it, because it gets at the fundamental moral motivations and justifications behind starting a business. Alex is an altruist, and from that perspective it indeed makes sense to try and go big. If it's your duty to improve as many lives as you can, why not try and go big? What's interesting is hearing it from that perspective rather than a more selfish perspective.
From a more selfish and individualistic perspective, I think a small business makes sense if you consider your moral duties to only go as far as producing more value than you extract from the world. From this perspective, it might be praiseworthy to try and provide as much value to as many people as possible, but it's not obligatory to be much more than a net positive contributor. And I think a lot of people go about as far as living up to their moral obligations and then satisfy their own desires after that.
Yesterday when I saw his comment on twitter I almost fell into the "someone on the internet is wrong!" trap, but today I feel I can't resist.
Almost everything about this angers me. It's presumptuous, arrogant, intellectually lazy and fallacy driven. And worst, Alex not only thinks he's correct, but morally right! Absurd!
Lets start at the top.
1. "If selling subscriptions to a small web application to cover my mortgage and subsidize my hobbies is “freedom”, then I’ll happily risk incarceration." - All Alex is really saying is that he defines "freedom" a different way than x person. You can't really judge that. Perhaps be perplexed, maybe inquisitive, but don't judge. In this regard, to each their own. And please don't confuse what makes you happy with what makes someone else happy. Alex is saying that obligation makes him happy. Great! Go for it. Someone else is saying that taking care of their family and living a simple live makes them happy. Cool...
"Seek first to understand, then be understood".
2. "When I read statements like this, my secular humanist streak flares up. ... We should endeavor to improve the lives of as many people as possible in a lasting and significant way, making the most of our own skills in the process." - Uhm...wow? This is nearly a nonsensical statement, saved merely by the fact that I _think_ I know what he is trying to say. Several problems arise from this statement, the first being that he brings in Humanism. Humanism, meant to enlighten perspective, only clouds the statement with doubt. Secondly, "should" is a word that will always get you into trouble with regard to other people. "Should" implies "I know better than you" or "let me tell you why you are wrong" not "hmmm..interesting perspective but I've always been of the mind that " which is a conversation, not an attack.
Lastly, it is worth noting that the statement is cute in that it provides an ego boost for the person espousing it, the statement itself is nearly worthless alone. I suspect that the statement serves to boost ones ego more than it serves to guide ones life. It also smacks of a statement made by someone with very little life experience.
3. "Building a business around maximizing your individual happiness is not particularly useful or admirable. That is my position, and I’m well aware that it may be unpopular with some." - Equivocation. Alex is not using the "term" happiness to talk about this side of things, but that is what it is. He is striving to find meaning/happiness on his own terms in his own way: by going big and making an impact. Deriding someone for doing the same thing in a different way is, at best, silly, at worst, narcissistic.
I would like to leave with a story about a country doctor I knew. He worked for 40 years in the bush in Australia. He loved living there and it was where he grew up. He was able to make a good living working there and being the small town country doctor and generally found happiness doing it. He told me about when he did a rotation in the UK and was offered a job starting a new hospital. He would have been able to reach massively more people in one year than he could in his entire work life in the country, make tons more money and have a hugely beneficial impact. He turned it down and went back to Australia. His reasoning "someone other than me would have taken and done that job, but that same person was unlikely to help these people in this town."
I had a reply that said a few things along those line, deleted it. Yours is much better.
Just wanted to add a few things:
1- some contributions in this world are only accidentally world changing (see various open-source software). They were not done with some zealous ambitions. Their instigator merely had an itch to scratch and it turns out that the rest of the world appreciated it so much that it just took a life of its own.
2- I am a notoriously trashy person, yet I love a clean space, but I'm also notoriously slow to clean stuff. There's this little lady who has a business cleaning apartments in the neighborhood and she comes once in a while to clean up my place for 30$ (takes her about 30-45min). By some people's standards she's only making herself happy with her business. But I'll tell you, when she leaves my place my brain starts functioning again. The place is spic and span. I produce some of my best code and sometimes throw in new features for my clients for free. I'm pretty sure it might make their own clients happy. This is the butterfly effect of small contributions. You don't need to change the entire world to make a difference.
In one line: the classic dichotomy of opinion just degenerated into a vitriolic debate.
If only sanity prevailed, most commentators would probably dismiss this entire conversation with a "to each his own".
Dwell on the entire conversation for a couple of minutes, and it's immediately apparent that it smacks of religion. I'm ashamed to say a lot of individuals I have a tremendous deal of respect for, have dropped their guard in an unabashed attempt to proselytize the masses.
Yes, I get it. You feel strongly about it, and your unequivocal about how you feel. That's why it's called religion. Just don't shove it down other people's throats.
If there were ever an embodiment of Paul Buchheit's words "ADVICE = Limited Life Experience + Overgeneralization", this would likely be it.
A healthy economy needs a balance of small and large businesses. Today's technology is making it easier to make incremental improvements to existing ideas, which are usually small businesses. This is a safer strategy and people could flock to it like they flock to safe corporate jobs today.
It becomes a problem when there is an imbalance. Many domains/markets are crowded. Today we have too many CMSs, fart apps, MVC frameworks etc.. At one point we had an abundance of word processors.
It wouldn't be healthy if every programmer tried to make his own word processor, progress in the domain would flat-line. It's only after the dust settled and people had time to think about the concept that we have some genuine innovation, like the no-distraction trend.
Too many small businesses in the same niche is just as bad as a monopoly if your goal is technological progress. The money is distributed differently of course, so if your goal is to create a healthy middle class, small business overcrowding is better than big business monopolies.
It's hard to judge what the right balance is. People working on ideas that don't scale don't crowd the space for ideas that do. Like all matters of complex systems, it's complicated. We won't get to the bottom of it with essays alone.
Doing enough to 'get by' is not failure. Sometimes you do what is necessary to make ends meet to feed you and your family, and helping others in significant ways has to wait.
A large hole would be left in most modern economies without the 'lifestyle' business and 'solo-preneur'. If you believe in this so strongly, is BankSimple going to reject anyone who is 'wasting their life' by your account?
For example for reporting fraud in the Iranian election which wasn't being reported otherwise. Enhancing free speach in 'Trafigura' situation in the UK. Numerous other examples at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_usage
> We should endeavor to improve the lives of as many people as possible in a lasting and significant way, making the most of our own skills in the process.
"Even if one’s contributions are comparatively modest, we should admire the individual who tries to help others in significant ways."
Effect should be judged more highly than intention. We all know what the road to hell is paved with. And the vast majority of the improvement in the human condition has been unintentional, as a side-effect of selfish actions in the free market.
That was really uncharitable towards small businesses. The article makes a false dichotomy between wanting your freedom and helping other people. Surely my ability to do the latter is maximized once I'm free of the need to go to a soul-sucking, exhausting 9-5.
Oh, come on. How many successful startups can you list that are benevolent world-changing businesses versus how many are simply solving some technical problem or a fun distraction.
There is a big difference between people who tell you what you CAN do, and people who try to tell you what you SHOULD do.
I can't decide which is more aggravating -- that somebody many people respect is out there, in public, trying to shame me by claiming that I'm not living up to my potential... (that my dreams aren't big enough, that what I do isn't good enough for the world, blah blah blah).
Or that the person doing it seems to be ignorant of what I'm actually about and what I actually do, and why, and what my future plans are.
Should I defend myself by explaining myself, or should I just fight the very idea that anyone should expect me to explain myself -- especially after insinuating something so rude, that I was "duping credulous customers" into buying trendy crap?
After some reflection, I'm going to stick to the latter course.
By the way - why me? Wondered that? Me too. I wonder if it had something to do with the fact that, many moons ago, al3x approached me to design the first preview version of BankSimple. It didn't work out, and I always figured that's because they really wanted a full-time designer and I was definitely unwilling to devote more than a little bit of consulting time to it, because I was committed to my own products.
KirinDave is going to come on here and try to skewer me, imply I'm lying and that story is untrue, etc., etc., so I'll just pre-empt it here and state that that is his viewpoint.
FTR: I think BankSimple is going to be really awesome, as well as beautiful, and that al3x is very, very, very smart. Yet this whole brouhaha is extremely confusing to me.
- I understand how it hurts to be unjustifiably attacked for doing what you love. But I believe you'll only benefit from this, because your work will be exposed to more people as a result of his attack. No one here seems to believe that you are duping people.
- I don't have any way of knowing this for certain, but from the way how Alex writes, I get the impression that he doesn't really know what it means to be broke as hell. If he did, he'd probably consider lifestyle businesses as the saving grace for many people out there, rather than a manifestation of small ambition.
- Lifestyle businesses can become empires with time. It's just a different approach to reach the same end goal of creating stuff you love, and doing something that matters.
What bugs me about Alex's post is that he started at twitter what -- 9 months in? I think I read that somewhere. So it's not to hard to imagine that, given his early start date, and given Twitter's amazing valuations, and given that some employees have cashed out, that he also has taken some money off the table. So my apologies if I'm wrong, but your perspective totally changes even if you make, say, $1MM in cash. That certainly isn't fuck you money, but it does really allow you to be very selective about what you do for the rest of your life and insulates you from lots of downsides. The fact is, if he has a million dollars or so and he shoots for the moon on try 2, his worst case scenario is he has $800K after not taking a salary for 2 years and not even trying to conserve cash. Whereas the downsides facing a different person without a large cash cushion are much worse.
Just my .02, and obviously, if Alex hasn't cashed out, he still holds a decent chunk of Twitter stock that is probably relatively easily converted to cash. That's not to say I don't respect him, because I do, but I think that -- as the 37 signals people have beaten to death -- if you have a 10% chance at $1MM or a .0001% chance at $1B, you'd probably be a fool not go for for the easier, more likely money. Try to shoot the moon try two.
I've seen good points on all sides of this debate. What I think hasn't been emphasized enough is that one goal/philosophy does not preclude the other. You can do both. For example, you can first aim to make a small exit, and/or a small recurring revenue from a lifestyle business, then, move on to try a larger exit, or add additional revenue streams. I do think the "let's go for a huge exit, and change the world!" on one's very first attempt, especialy if you come from humble financial background, or have significant financial dependents, is probably not wise, in the general case. You should crawl before you walk before you run. Plus if you are going to fail, don't let anybody kid you into thinking it's better to fail using millions of dollars of other people's money than to fail with just a few hundred of your own. It's nice to have the ability to quietly bury your mistakes. You still get the upside of learning from them, but with less of the downside.
Side note: Ack, just got bitten by the "Unknown or expired link" flaw with HN. Paul, man, what is with that? Bad user experience. Don't tase my flow, bro! :)
That statement is a bit off-putting. First of all, this 'minority' is the majority. Most software businesses are indeed small, and are not aiming for venture capital and outsized returns. It would not even be mathematically possible to be otherwise.
Secondly, the 'vocal' people are the people trying to make you start a big business. Almost all blogs and writers cater to the startup crowd, not the mISV crowd. Most people writing country specific tax software or inventory sorting software are not blogging at all.
Maybe I am misunderstanding what he means - but to me it seems like he is deep in the bubble, and can't see out of it. That's why the article he reacted to would have been so disturbing to him.