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Comment by rcarrigan87 | Hacker News Reader

Analysis like this is interesting because it assesses entrepreneurship like a career choice. Most entrepreneurs arise out of an idea. They aren't sitting on HN dreaming of becoming an entrepreneur(not that there is anything wrong with that). You see an unfulfilled need in the marketplace, believe you have the solution and can smell the money.

The thought, "is this a good long-term career choice?" isn't in the equation. That's for people looking to build a career. This is your one great idea that will make you rich, fuck a career. You are your boss from now on.

If your thought process doesn't look like that than maybe you just haven't stumbled upon that great idea. The idea that strips every rational bone out of your body, that keeps you up at night. Or may you just don't have the risk tolerance for entrepreneurship.

It's a fairly cavalier mindset, but you have to have that kind of naivete to outlive the struggles of starting a business.

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I don't think I agree with this as stated.

In my observation, entrepreneurship is absolutely a career path, and most people who start a company keep starting them, move between working at them and creating them, or else get involved at an advisor/investor level if they've already had success.

I definitely think of my startup as a career path, and while I might get rich doing it, it's certainly in my mind that the technical challenges might just be insurmountable.

It might just fail through no fault of my own (a problem with hard science startups), and I am 100% confident that the skills I've picked up in doing this will make it easier to get the kind of job I would want next -- working at a much higher than entry level at either a small company or a new startup. Having that "CEO" and prior experience managing complicated projects on my resume absolutely puts me in a different class in looking for new jobs if it comes to that. I would have been hard pressed to come by that kind of experience at Intel or another big company, even though at one of those places I would have gotten tons of great experience in doing tech development.

> Most entrepreneurs arise out of an idea.

And how did you get that idea? How did you get the experience to see that there was an unfilled need in the marketplace?

People who have experience in a field perceive their risks as lower (correctly!) and are therefore more likely to start a company. It is a perfectly rational decision and is unrelated to risk tolerance.

Exactly my point actually. You work in an industry, might even have a cozy corporate job and great benefits. You're on a solid career trajectory. Leaving that to start a company rarely makes financial sense. But most people aren't assessing it through that lens. They know their industry, have a great idea, and they HAVE TO DO IT. Even if financially it seems nuts!

Entrepreneurs are, in general, not motivated by money. This may be what you are saying - in which case I agree! What I object to is this statement:

> Or may you just don't have the risk tolerance for entrepreneurship.

Risk tolerance is at best weakly related to the likelihood that you will become an entrepreneur, and risk-tolerant entrepreneurs [perform worse](http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/85/66/06/PDF/PEER_st...) than average.

>The thought, "is this a good long-term career choice?" isn't in the equation. That's for people looking to build a career. This is your one great idea that will make you rich, fuck a career.

So building a career and being an entrepreneur are incompatible? I completely disagree with that idea. Not every entrepreneur is going for the big dollar exit.

I for one would be perfectly happy building my own company and never taking a dime of funding. Who wants to exit when you're doing what you love?

Fuck a career? No thanks, I like what I do and hope I can do it for a long time.

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