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Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

I guess the formula for a mildly viral blog post is just to misinterpret a popular saying so you can disagree with it. I really dislike it though.

"Follow your passion" is not advice given in response to the question "What product should I sell?" Usually it's in response to "What should I do with my life?" It doesn't help people differentiate between selling Star Wars figurines vs. something else. It's meant to help you decide between selling products online at all versus, say, writing novels or being a carpenter, or social work or some other calling.

Yes, if you take the advice outside of the context it's intended, it does become quite terrible.

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Or, as Bret Victor said once[1], you can also follow a principle:

There are many ways to live your life. That's maybe the most important thing to realize in your life, that every aspect of your life is a choice. There are default choices. You can choose to sleepwalk through your life, and accept the path that is laid out for you. You can choose to accept the world as it is. But you don't have to. If there's something in the world that you feel is a wrong, and you have a vision for what a better world could be, you can find your guiding principle, and you can fight for a cause. So after this talk, I'd like you to take a little time, and think about what matters to you, what you believe in, and what you might fight for.

[1] http://gumption.typepad.com/blog/2012/03/principle-centered-...

I think it's okay to opt out of fighting. Too much of the narrative in places like this refuse to acknowledge that it's also fine to live without trying to rub up against something the whole time. There's nothing wrong with not having big ambitions, and there's nothing wrong with the people who don't have them, either.

I'd respectfully disagree. The original context of Cuban's advice is here:

http://blogmaverick.com/2012/03/18/dont-follow-your-passion-...

..and an especially relevant excerpt related to your comment:

"Why? Because everyone is passionate about something... ... [things] that we really really want to do with our lives. Those passions aren’t worth a nickel."

His overall point is that instead of blindly following after your passions and "hoping" things will work out, you should count on effort and hard work.

Technically, you're right - Cuban wasn't talking about specifically picking an eCommerce niche. But he does make the great point that if you're successful at something - regardless of what it is - you usually become passionate about it.

The problem faced by many new entrepreneurs is that their passion-based business plan doesn't get traction, and they give up. But if you start with a effort and market based business plan, a new entrepreneur is much more likely to succeed. And when they're successful with their business, they'll become very passionate about it.

That presumes that running a business is something you want to do in the first place. In that case there's a more general passion "running a business" that you're already pursuing. Not everyone necessarily wants to do that.

I'd also disagree that if you're successful at something you become passionate about it. Cuban's basing that on what exactly? You can point to any number of people who left various high paying jobs in fields they didn't like and ended up being much happier doing work they cared about in a field they were passionate about.

I'll agree with 100% that there are tons of very successful, overworked people that hate their jobs. But I think that what Cuban is saying is that all things equal you'll be much more passionate about something you're good at compared to something you're not.

> "Follow your passion" is not advice given in response to the question "What product should I sell?" Usually it's in response to "What should I do with my life?"

Unless you are okay with living off of handouts of one form or another, "what should I do with my life" and "what product should I sell" have substantial overlap. In modern society, you've pretty much gotta sell something to someone.

If you start with "what product should I sell" and have a moderate exit you can continue with "what should I do with my life" and be really passionate. I think this solves the issue: exit once with or without passion and then follow your passion.

Problem is the exit is never guaranteed. Many people end up doing work they hate for many years, never reaching that mythical massive payout.

Sure, but "make a ton of money doing what you hate, then do what you love" seems to be the advice that "do what you love" is intended to counter.

Yea, I came in here to say this. While commenters below bring up good points about how to sustain your business being a big problem, I have to say that many of us do not derive our pleasures from just making a big company - we need to achieve something for humanity or we can't stop thinking about something.

For me - it's passion first, and then "how can I make this into a business"? Fortunately, if you're passionate about something, you tend to find things that need solving because you hit the wall with the current system.

Sure, Star Wars figurines aren't a huge market, but what about making figurines/toys in general? What are we pursuing the creation of big business for if not solving real problem? If you want to make ::millions:: selling marked-up HDMI cables with TVs have fun not changing anything...

Yet you're just feeding the same beast you claim to dislike.

Yes, the post has a bait title, but it's not entirely irrelevant and -- more importantly -- the article has real substance. It's structured lazily as a list but the overall point it's making is coherent, the arguments are fairly convincing and the writing appears to be mostly original.

You've managed to distract away from all the content and draw attention instead to the meta-trash -- all the while complaining about the existence of said "meta-trash" ! (At least you've generated a nice bit of irony for me to feel clever about spotting)

I think even interpreted correctly it is horrible advice for the majority of people. There are some passions that are just not marketable to a successful business. As an example, as a teenager one of my passions was philosophy such as Nietzsche, Kirkegaard and the like. It would be very hard for me to parlay that passion into a successful venture. (Although maybe I just lack creativity)

The end result of every passion is not necessarily a business venture. To successfully pursue a passion for philosophy, you'd likely end up as a professor and/or author, for example.

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