Comments on: Startups for the rest of us

By: Ethan

Ethan — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 09:31:34 +0000

Pablo: You’re absolutely right. I’m from the Philippines and I can understand where you’re coming from. Plus, it’s harder to hire “qualified” developers from our location (at least for me).

By: Mike Taber

Mike Taber — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 02:31:39 +0000

Riddle me this: Since when was becoming a doctor considered a ‘chance’ at success?

Source:
http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/CareerBytes/0505highestpay.htm?cbRecursionCnt=1&cbsid=67d2ee844db344e69cbe08a1c9f0415a-214093556-w9-2

Careerbuilder.com puts a doctors’ average salary at nearly $150k in 2003. Doctors tend to be paid more than most other professionals. With medical school, there has been the expectation for years that you will need to take out loans to make ends meet, both in terms of tuition and in terms of living expenses.

People who go to medical school also go into debt with loans to get them by knowing that when all is said and done, their salaries will have increased dramatically when it is over, thus allowing them to pay back those loans and then some.

The people applying to Y Combinator have no such guarantees and are truly taking ‘a chance’.

By: Silence Dogood

Silence Dogood — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 23:39:08 +0000

Right on! The Y Combinator is like Medical School. It sounds good. Then you realize that there are vast numbers of students who simply couldn't participate in Medical School, even if they wanted to. The entire program is geared towards people who are young and don't have anything to tie them down. If you have a mortgage, it will likely be difficult to manage an apartment near whichever medical school accepts you while still paying your mortgage. And to get that mortgage, you had to have a job, which you will need to quit in order to take this chance. And don't delude yourself; you are taking a chance.

Are you married, or involved with someone? Well, you're going to be studying for the next three years. You'll be gone for much longer if you don't wait. If you're married, it's going to be a hard sell to the wife (or husband) that you intend to spent night and weekends at the hospital. I suppose this might be a good time to get divorced if you were seriously thinking about it.

All of this begs the question that myself and thousands of other people have probably asked themselves.

"What about me?"

I'm going to let you in on a little secret since I believe I've found the answer. You don't need Medical School.

By: Klas

Klas — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 12:32:48 +0000

In my experience doing consulting work combined with a startup is at least in the early phase an excellent combination. Good luck to all of you!

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 04:22:42 +0000

Actually, I wouldn’t say that. In fact, I don’t think that it’s completely necessary to have a partner. Most people do indeed find partners, but the myth that a partner is a requirement for a successful business has been perpetuated for so long that it is difficult to be sure where it originated.

In any case, I wouldn’t say that you need a partner to succeed. Read my other article on Startup Myths Debunked for more on that.

By: Shawn

Shawn — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 03:27:27 +0000

This is a great post. I’m living the day job and .com start-up at night (Quotiki.com). I partnered up with a strong programmer, since I’m stronger on the web design side of things. I think you could add a fourth point called ‘Find Someone Who’s Strengths Are Your Weakenesses’

By: Fezbucks

Fezbucks — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 06:23:22 +0000

Andy C -

It's 6k for three months per person!

That's only like $2k per month (per person!).

Even at age 25, that's too low for me. (when you make $60 per hour doing consulting... working for $2k per month is not all that appealing)

The only thing I would say though Mike is that, you're 100% right. Do you have friends pushing you to try to get into Y Combinator or something?

Personally I'd much rather take $100k from angel investors in Silicon Valley for 10% of my startup.

That way you have at least 1 year (if you manage your funds correctly) to get something out the door.

While keeping a full-time day job... I've managed to get my side projects (95% automated) generating ~ $4,500 per month. Keep up the hard work, man.

By: Tawani

Tawani — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 17:59:54 +0000

Great article. I’ve always thought the same thing.
Does anybody know how old Paul Graham was when he started his lisp company before selling it to Yahoo!

By: You don't need Ycombinator

You don't need Ycombinator — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 02:36:59 +0000

Unless you want to be exploited, you don’t go to Ycombinator. They are leeches.

By: Pablo

Pablo — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 15:05:07 +0000

Nice post. Really.

But I think you missed a point. You also need to be at the right place.

I live in Uruguay (imagine Miami...but 6000 km south). We are not Indians. We do not live in tents. We have a decent education, a stable democracy, freedom of speech, nice weather even and cable tv with HBO.

I (like the mayority of the developers), consider myself an above-the-average developer, wanting to retire early. But you cant imagine how hard it is to build some kind of successful Internet-based business from here. All kinds of limitations arise when you want to start. Buy cheap servers on eBay..no way, your credit is not accepted. Wanna accept Paypal/Google payments. No way to bring the money in after you collected it on your account. Want to promote your product using word-of-mouth with some nice pals from a nice University? Negative, you don't have any pals in the states. And a long etcetera.

I'm not stating that is not possible. Some successful companies here live by making nice software and sell it overseas. But the path is just a few miles longer.