Why is it that starting a tech start up is seen as an uber difficult task often resulting in burnout while starting a business in a technical occupation such as electrical or refrigeration is (seemingly) less risque? Surely there are a plenty of opportunities where rather boring software can be applied to business problems. Does it always need to be a monumental technical accomplishment to create a success?
The difference is in the HN-style (and Bay Area) understanding of the word "startup", which is focused on hyper growth at all costs or bust. Starting a small business in something like HVAC is very different in that you typically start small, with relatively low ambition, and grow the business organically over a long period of time. The latter is definitely difficult and sometimes stressful, but not in the same way as when you have investors pushing you to bump your revenue up by 10x in the next year or gtfo.
There was an article on HN about extremely successful Mormon startups. Interesting that they all manage to leave the office at 5pm (because they all have 6 kids) and build multi-billion dollar businesses.
Would you mind linking? I'd love to read that article. I've anecdotally begin to notice more and more B2B startups from Utah make it onto the map that fit just that profile.
starting a startup is not the same as starting a business. By definition a startup is a type of business whose business model is not yet proven. So you end up with 2 types of risks in a startup - the normal risk of starting a business (like the electrical engineer), as well as business model risk where the model may prove to be unprofitable.
If you're starting an electrical company, you're probably using off the shelf components and using tried and trusted techniques to install them. A tech startup is more closely equivalent to a company designing new electrical components. I wonder how many of those fail?
Startup are (almost) never profitable when they "start up". Hence they need to raise money through investors until they grow enough to develop a mature, profitable product. Delivering this product can take years and require a large workforce. In the meantime the company still needs to pay the employees and creditors.
Traditional businesses like electricians start with a typical business plan. They might need to borrow some cash at the beginning but if the business plan is spot on, they'll start making money quickly, enough to cover the costs and make profit.
The author has agreed elsewhere in this thread that he’s basically writing about taking VC money.
That being said, the advice applies elsewhere. My dad was a physician in US military and then decided to open up a private practice. He spent decades running a business where he was the sole source of revenue, and as far as I can tell hated dealing with any aspect of it that wasn’t direct patient care. He eventually joined a larger physician group and was much happier in his job.
The term "startup" here implies that you're building technology to provide a scalable product or service. Starting an electrical or similar contracting company is more like going freelance than working on a "startup". You're directly selling your hours so it's very accessible and easy to bootstrap, but scaling it up is far harder.
