> Founding a business requires considerable access to capital.
Not necessarily, especially not with software.
Not necessarily, especially not with software.
That would actual make risks smaller, as the investment and risk is spread across more people.
>Furthermore, you are founding a small business that you hope to eventually grow in some direction. That is very different from a whole set of workers founding a business where they wish to continue doing the same work they were doing before, only on a coop basis.
That's both not accurate (in the first part) and a shifting of goal-posts.
Who said Walter founded a business to try whatever and "eventually grow in some direction"? He had specific things in mind for the business to do, and pursued those.
Second, and inversely, who said people doing co-ops are against pivoting and trying stuff? That they "wish to continue doing the same work they were doing before" is a new, arbitrary, constraint.
Heck, people could start co-ops a) without having worked before, b) with people from different backgrounds, where the "same work they did before" doesn't apply, c) with people wishing to do something different than what they were doing before, not just with a different organizational model (e.g. build software of type X instead of working on mindless features upper management demands).
I think the parent has in the mind the more traditional (but still widely present outside the VC echo chamber) model of a company writing some software package and selling it.
(Of course some people don't believe making $5 or $10 or $100 millions a year, as successful such companies do, qualifies as a success, but that's another story).
There's a very well worn path from consultancy -> productized consulting -> success in software or day gig -> side project -> success in software. Patio11 bangs on about it incessantly, because he's completely right - the majority of HN readers are more than capable of launching a successful SaaS business without quitting their day job or taking a huge lump of VC.
Tom Preston-Werner, Chris Wanstrath, and PJ Hyett spent quite a bit. You may not care about the amount here on YC, but it's a non-trivial barrier, regardless.