Hacker News Reader

Comment by GoRudy | Hacker News Reader

I also sold my startup. same story as far as revenue, exit etc. I'm not sure that selling your company was the reason for your social issues.

I've had the best year of my life post acquisition - spending more time with family, friends and thinking what's next. constantly thinking about what's next, it's actually annoying that I can't turn it off.

The "how much did you make" question is super annoying and it happens but generally those around me are respctful and understand that I still plan to work and in many ways will need to. Not enough to do nothing, enough to choose something meaningful and not waste our precious time.

My only advice to you is don't be afraid to reconnect with some old friends and embrace new ones, especially friends of friend who don't know much about your exit and ask to hang out with you because of who you are when they interact with you sans knowing your financial history.

View on HN

I also, also sold my startup last year and am sitting on a nice pile of FU money.

The pace I'd wound myself up to over the past 10 years of building culminated with a truly awful 2016 where I did little else but road-show, due-diligence, and try to hit targets required to close.

I haven't spoken to some friends in years, and I'm having trouble connecting with current friends & other parents in my community who are mostly "professionals" with 9-to-5s.

So I can identify w/the article, but my experience more closely mirrors GoRudy's - since we sold, and I started recovering from the chaos life has been great.

The two things outside of family that brought me back into balance:

1) Going to entrepreneur meet-ups and HELPING! I love diving in and helping other people on the path, making connections that are hard to find, etc. I would never have made it without people helping me, I use them as a model for helping entrepreneurs now.

2) Charity. Not "go to a donor party / write a big check" charity but meaningful, directed contributions are an amazing thing for the soul.

May we all have such high quality problems!

Do you know of a good way to search/find such entrepreneur meet-ups? I find myself craving this sort of interaction more and more as time goes on.

If you are in the US, your local SCORE group might hold regular meetups. [1]

[1] https://www.score.org/

I think this was a pretty shallow article. The author comes off as somewhat abrasive personality-wise. He's a natural born leader - we are reassured multiple times - but he seems to repeatedly annoy people in his life and can't figure out how to get 3 or 4 band-mates to follow him. OK.

A lot of the money troubles are more about wealth inequality than anything specific to the startup world. When you're wealthy, you need to learn to be sensitive to the everyday financial concerns of those who aren't. You could be subjected to this as an entrepreneur, a physician, a lawyer, or countless other professions, not to mention heirs, lottery winners, or folks who marry into money. Planetary coexistence 101.

Friendship is a two-way street. As I became wealthier through successive exits there were some people from my childhood who I stayed friends with, thanks to conscious effort from both sides. These are very valuable friendships.

He says 'material things don't matter' but doesn't expound much, leaving us with the implication that money doesn't matter at all. Money is the freedom to spend your time however you want to, and that's pretty damn valuable. The author's real problem may be that work became his sole identity - and that now having earned some freedom, he has no idea what to do with it. I wish him well.

Interesting. I didn't have that reaction at all. I grew up in a ridiculously wealthy community, and saw the exact problems with wealth differences that he described. And I think he identifies an important truth: most of time, successful businesses are built by people who really love doing the business, and cashing out means giving that up. Sure, some people are lucky enough to recreate that feeling in a new situation. But lightning doesn't always strike twice. The author is just advising us to realize what we give up as well as what we gain.

I think conceit and entrepreneurship are often bed fellows. I know it's something I personally struggle with from time to time, especially a kind of meta-conceit where I convince myself I'm not over-proud and all the more awesome because I'm aware of it.

That's a real catch-22.

Somehow the writing style sort of reminded me of the way Thoreau talks to the poor Irish family in Walden.

"Learning to be sensitive" is a bit of a cure all. Your best bet is to move somewhere else and pretend to be poor.

I know we like to put poor people up on a pedestal, and if we just act the right way, they'll accept you as one of there own, but a millionaire will never be accepted as intimately into a group as a person with similar financial status as them.

Unless someone grew up poor and then made their money very quickly, they'll probably have a very different cultural background, which makes "pretending to be poor" extremely difficult. Poor people will notice that they're different even if they don't know it's because they're rich.

The poor may know they are different but they'll be more likely accepted than a rich person. There are a whole lot of poor people that are odd in some way, it's not hard to blend in.

People seek understanding, not necessarily similarity. Also, like it or not, jealousy plays a big part as to whether someone is accepted or not.

Besides which, the story is about an entrepreneur, who was trying to connect with the type of people he was around when he was not rich.

> The "how much did you make" question is super annoying

Do you live in the Bay Area by any chance?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com