The Siren Song of Startups

cacm.acm.org

13 points·sharksandwich··2 comments

Seems like a very gloomy view of start-ups. I'm not quite sure in what kind of universe the founders are last in line to take in profits from a start-up. If that is the case anywhere, I'd strongly encourage those founders to get out of there and come to backwards old England and start a start-up without professional investors. However, I don't think that's the case. The evidence doesn't support that idea.

Certainly, joining a start-up as an employee "to get rich" would be the wrong idea. But I imagine many of us here are founders, and though we're not doing our start-ups for the sole purpose of getting rich, the fact that it's a possibility is certainly important. Would you bother working on your start-up if you knew for sure that it would never make you more money than you could make burger-flipping? (directly or indirectly)

Actually, I think this is a pretty realistic - and appealing - view of startups, but it's also very much a description of what the experience of a VERY small startup is.

I think it's important to note that there are different stages of a startup's lifecycle. It's been my experience that venture funded startups aren't nearly as risky as people make them out to be.

My guess is that the typical venture funded startup has a lifespan of at least 4 years. That's probably close to how long the typical college grad will want/should stay at their first job.

Bottom line: join a startup, don't start one.

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