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Comment by condor | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure there are many 'ways' to start a company and live off the net income, and there may even be an optimal way. Historically the way a lot of business owners have achieved freedom and security is 1) love what they do, so that the work isn't a chore (their work is what they would do if they could do anything in the world, which is one definition of freedom) and 2) spend/live within the constraints of the net income generated. Seems pretty simple to me since both can be chosen. This also solves the main disadvantage of you 'hav[ing] to keep running it', because you actually want to keep it running.

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I agree. I think PG addresses that issue when he says it's difficult for the market's and the founder's needs to coincide. That is, to find something that (A) you love to do, that (B) a market also loves. It's hard enough to find something you love; or to find something the market loves - to find both is not just twice, but squared as hard. It's easier to find those two things independently: find something the market loves, get rich; and then find something you love.

But if you can find both (and people have), it's GREAT.

I hear you and do understand pg's point. While the first part 'doing what you love' is really easy to do, one simply chooses it, the second part 'finding something the market loves' (which is the 'security' point of pg's essay) is basically out of your control. The only thing you can do to be happy about that 'market love' is decide what your reaction is, keep your expectations completely elastic and be able/willing to live within the constraints of 'the market' reaction. The problem comes when there are preconceived expectations of what the market should return, or a sense of being entitled to a level of success (that the market may not grace you with) which leads to unhappiness on that second point. But there is a solution, since you set your response to the market, its easy to reset, simply chose to be happy with what the return the market is giving you (ie. support your life with in those means, though it can be more difficult if you're supporting a family), and scale appropriately.

I like your model. You're seeing the 'doing love' as input, and the 'market love' as output from a function you can't control. I agree that "entitlement" can create unhappiness with that output.

Getting away from PG's essay, there could be options other than to accept that output - we could change the input, and not necessarily selling out our 'doing love' for 'market love'.

The 'doing love' could be a set (not a single thing). Some members of the set just being tweaks on a theme, others being entirely dissimilar themes. By experimenting with our set of 'doing loves', we might stumble on the one that also gives 'market love' - without compromise. Like a breakout novel, giving overnight success, overdecades.

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