Entrepreneurs are the ones sleeping on the floor | Hacker News Reader

Entrepreneurs are the ones sleeping on the floor

firesomeonetoday.com

22 pointsjason_tko12 comments

I dream of the day when I can sleep on the floor because I am building something I want to and reaping the benefits. Rather than sleeping on the floor because management committed to a shitty deadline and getting nothing.

Same here. Every time I've had to crash at the office it has been due to incompetant managers. Nowadays, I just say no and go home.

I would say this is a distinction between owner and employee, not manager vs. entrepreneur. And, to be clear, ownership doesn't mean foundership, it means being emotionally invested in the success of your venture.

There are founders out there who wouldn't think twice about delegating the mattress duty to an underling. At the same time, I can think of at least a half-dozen non-founder co-workers of mine who would do the same, or more, to safeguard our place of employment.

Bottom line, promoting an ownership culture among your employees can have amazing effects.

How many of you have physically slept on the floor at your business while it was growing? I know I regularly camped out on the floor of my office when we were getting things up and running. I'd work so late it just didn't make sense to go home and then turn right around to come back in. We even had a utility closet that we set a cot up in that was utilized like an "on call crash pad" during business hours.

I would bet interested in hearing how many people have done this and how often.

I have done this for a non start up company I was working for.

We picked up a couple of couches at Salvation Army for that purpose.

This article struck a chord with me, because of this. My home became my office, and my comfortable bed had to be thrown out to accommodate the server rack. Not a lot of room in Tokyo apartments.

So, I was sleeping on a foldout bed, next to the servers. The first night, I woke up after an hour with my head about 15 degrees celsius (59 fahrenheit). The air conditioner to keep the servers cool had been pointed directly at my head, and I went to sleep without noticing.

So, I groggily switched orientation, and I moved my head up to be next to the servers. The servers were a little noisy, and my feet were getting cold, but I was tired.

I went back to sleep, and everything went fine. Until 30 minutes later, when the tape backup cycle started.

I've done it a couple of times when launching my previous startup. Just in case anything went wrong. All the founders went to the mattresses. Man, those were fun times.

The only way a thread about entrepreneurship can get any better is if a reference to The Godfather is tossed out. Nice. :)

The Dream.

Why didn't the wife just let him in the house?

I think he was saying that he couldn't get the office doors to lock, so instead of leaving it unlocked or calling an emergency locksmith he crashed a the office until it was business hours and he could get the door fixed.

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