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Comment by readme | Hacker News Reader

Your post is inaccurate on two levels:

1. You assume because a "korean immigrant" can do something, that it must not be intractable (hard). Immigrant entrepreneurs are usually highly motivated, especially the kind who start small businesses. I would rescind that comment.

2. You are comparing a dry cleaner to a startup. The failure rate of startups is several order of magnitudes worse than a dry cleaner. Figuring out the potential numbers for a dry cleaner is simple math that you can base on the local population, income/employment stats, and # of dry cleaners. Most startups would kill for that kind of estimate.

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I read the "Korean immigrant" comment slightly differently. Not as a "if that schlub can do it so can you!", but rather as pointing out that immigrants to most countries generally face all the same business challenges of any citizen plus the burden of being an immigrant in a society that may not always be welcoming. If someone can succeed facing all the same challenges you would face plus a few more it can show you that your challenges aren't insurmountable. Or maybe the person is just so head-and-shoulders above you that you shouldn't even compare, but that is less likely in my experience (i.e. variation amongst people in sub-groups, say entrepreneurs, are generally not as vast as people think, mostly because most people only compare against the outliers).

> 1. You assume because a "korean immigrant" can do something, that it must not be intractable (hard).

Or he assumes that integrating yourself and your family into a new culture, quite possibly while learning a new language, are both difficult problems which the OP would have the benefit of not having to overcome.

1) Intractable means infeasible, not hard. 2) I'm focusing on the "family obligations angle." Having a spouse and kids makes it hard to devote time to a startup. But starting a dry cleaner isn't a less time-intensive thing than starting a tech company.

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