Comment by dkrich | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dkrich | Hacker News Reader

Without finishing the article, or knowing anything about the author, I knew that this couldn't be somebody who has ever tried his hand at starting a business.

The fact that he repeatedly quotes Eric Ries and Steve Blank makes this article a little hilarious to me as well. I for one am only really interested in hearing stories from actual entrepreneurs who have tried and failed or tried and succeeded. Both are equally interesting to me. Academics who have spent their life in office jobs or espousing theories and quotes about how difficult it is do not interest me. Anybody can write about how hard something is from a hundred miles off the ground, but unless you have actually tried, you don't know what you are talking about. This applies to pretty much anything.

It also seems strange to me that he suggests hopeful entrepreneurs should jump from running a business to something useful, like, learning to code. How original. I have been coding half my life. Coding is a means to an end. It solves some particular problems in one particular way. It is not an end-all be-all panacea that picks you up from poverty and moves you into the upper class. Despite what many people think, particularly in the Silicon Valley startup world, knowing how to code is not required to start a business. It is a trade, just like construction, or plumbing, or welding. The only difference is that coding tools are basically free and relatively new. But the law of supply and demand still governs which products succeed.

Both Eric Ries and Steve Blank are actual entrepreneurs who have tried on multiple occasions and have both success and failure in their experience.

Eric Ries founded CatalystRecruiting as an undergrad, worked as an engineer for a few years, and then co-founded and was CTO of IMVU, which had a string of internal failures followed by perseverance and success. His experience there seems to have formed the core of the Lean Startup book.

Straight from Steven Blank's personal bio: "After 21 years in 8 high technology companies, I retired in 1999. I co-founded my last company, E.piphany, in my living room in 1996. My other startups include two semiconductor companies, Zilog and MIPS Computers, a workstation company Convergent Technologies, a consulting stint for a graphics hardware/software spinout Pixar, a supercomputer firm, Ardent, a computer peripheral supplier, SuperMac, a military intelligence systems supplier, ESL and a video game company, Rocket Science Games. Total score: two large craters (Rocket Science and Ardent), one dot.com bubble home run (E.piphany) and several base hits."

Don't write somebody off as an academic just because they've written a book.

Who said I wrote them off? I am writing off the author of this article. This article is about 5% substance, 30% quotes from other people, and the rest is a mixture of vague personal opinions and forewarnings about the realities of the odds against entrepreneurs from a guy who, from what I can tell, has never had the guts to start a business.

I personally don't find much value in Eric Ries advice and think he capitalized on the brand value of his education and a couple of minor business successes to write a highly successful and oft-cited book. I feel the same way about Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, and Tim Ferris. More power to them for building their personal brands and book sales through the insecurity of people just starting out, but I wouldn't spend too much time studying their prescriptions for success, because in reality, there is no such thing.

My point in the original post was that any author spending so much time citing startup gurus can't himself know too much about what he is talking about. It is like writing about new technology by reblogging Engadget articles.

I agree. Seth Godin made Squidoo, which is considered to be a content farm. Guy Kawasaki.. what has he even made lately? AllTop? Both of them are examples of good personal branding, but not entrepreneurs you want to imitate.

I disagree. Your opinion was largely derived just from your experience. There are reasons why academics and intellectuals are better at explaining phenomena compared to individual experience. They research and aggregate the experiences of hundreds if not thousands of people, thus making their contentions universally applicable.

Here's my take on it- if you are reading for personal accounts or advice on whether to start a business, the best advice comes from people who have done it. To me, that is the target audience for this author's advice, and precisely the reason I find fault with it.

If you are reading to learn a new skill, then academics are great. For example, if I want to learn how to set up an LLC, the intricacies of employment law, or accounting methods for a small business, learning from academics is the best way.

In either case you are learning from people who know from experience. I tend to take advice from those most experienced in the advice they are offering. Who is this guy to explain the difficulties of starting a business? Would I be qualified to write about the difficulties of becoming a physician if I have never gone through the process myself? Probably not.

To take that a step further, if I am looking to open a bakery, I want to talk to people who have opened bakeries. They know better than anybody what to expect and can paint a vivid picture of what my life will look like if I choose to proceed. What applies to other entrepreneurs in other fields is largely irrelevant. Which is why it is so ridiculous to try to boil something as complicated as starting a business down to "it's really fucking hard and you probably won't succeed, so be realistic." While that may be true, it is not particularly helpful. Nor is advising people to go learn to code.

Well I agree that it's better to talk with people who did the exact same thing you're planning to do. The experience is more detailed. But her article is about entrepreneurship in general, not a specific type of business. That's why one of her advice was to work for a company that specializes on the industry you want to get into.

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