Ask YC: So, why are you doing a startup?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=104063

by hhm • 19 years ago

25 82 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

This is a simple question: why are you doing your startup? why did you quit your job, or maybe even why didn't you get any? What is your motivation for doing this?

Mine is a personal motivation: I want to do something worth, something interesting. I don't want to look back and see I wasted my time doing worthless projects for money. I believe we have to do some kind of (Spanish) "obra", just like writers, musicians and scientists do: we have to be able to look in the past and say: "I did X, Y, Z, and this has my signature on it".

So, why are you doing a startup?

mixmax• 19 years ago

her: "wow that's a really great site"

me: "yeah, I think it's OK"

her: "wonder who did it.."

me: "well, me and a couple of guys.."

her: "take me to bed you stud.."

:-)

nextmoveone4• 19 years ago

That's what my girlfriend says to me all the time...

aston• 19 years ago

Got downmodded because people didn't believe you?

imsteve2• 19 years ago

Mine says that she is jealous of my computer, that I spend more time with it than her, and she doesn't even let me use it at night when I could be sleeping next to her. She's going to kill it one day, I know it.

nextmoveone4• 19 years ago

After showing my girlfriend this thread she said wants to start a news.yc girlfriends club...

david9272• 19 years ago

I felt I had a better way to do something, and that it would be wrong not to find out if I was right.

terpua• 19 years ago

Building something cool and useful is just doggone fun!

edw5198• 19 years ago

Because the guy who wrote this:

if (MonthNbr == 1) {MonthDesc = "January"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 2) {MonthDesc = "February"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 3) {MonthDesc = "March"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 4) {MonthDesc = "April"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 5) {MonthDesc = "May"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 6) {MonthDesc = "June"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 7) {MonthDesc = "July"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 8) {MonthDesc = "August"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 9) {MonthDesc = "September"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 10) {MonthDesc = "October"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 11) {MonthDesc = "November"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 12) {MonthDesc = "December"} ;

is a retired millionaire while I'm still cleaning up his mess.

I think I can do better.

hhm5• 19 years ago

But really, is that it? Are you in a startup for the money, or is there another motivation?

mrtron2• 19 years ago

Money is not a bad reason.

With money comes freedom in aspects of your life, you no longer would need to work a normal job to get by.

edw5198• 19 years ago

No, I'm not in it for the money. The money is a barometer of something else. If someone can make money in this business (not that hard to do), then something they wrote is successful at some level.

I can confidently say that 90% of the code I have ever had to maintain is total garbage. I am often stunned that it even runs and I used to wonder how it ever made it into production. (I don't wonder any more, now I know, hardly anyone QA's source code anymore.)

(Another example: Today I refactored 1200 lines of code that edits credit card numbers down to 46 lines, removing 4 bugs in the process. This has been running in production for 18 years. This is not a joke.)

I realize that what I see is not a random sample of all code. I never get to work on the good stuff; no one does - that's the whole point.

My work, OTOH, has been wildly received by my customers and users for many years. I love what I do and love providing value to others. I can't imagine doing anything else.

I am currently working on my ultimate start-up, one that produces so much value that no one ever has to put up with garbage like my OP. For some reason (my internal metaprogams or something), I am much more highly motivated by seeing someone else's garbage doing well and thinking, "I can do WAY better than that," instead of people saying, "That was good." I don't know why.

Also, it's my experience that most people do not see the possibilities for truly excellent software (present readers excluded, of course). They believe they have to put up with my previous example. I can't wait to show them otherwise.

My OP was somewhat in jest, but not really. I hope you now understand why. Thanks for asking.

david9272• 19 years ago

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/07/get-famous-by-not-pr...

"Can programming make you rich? Well, let's figure it out: think of all the fantastically rich programmers you know. Not a very long list, is it? And did they get rich by virtue of being incredible programmers?"

"A startup that manages to get acquired doesn't have to have had great code; they simply had to either establish a lead in a new market, or put on a damn good road show."

pius2• 19 years ago

It's worth noting that the programmer who wrote this string-based numerical rounding procedure:

# round to one decimal place and

# separate into whole and fractional parts

parts = str(round(star_sum/num_raters, 1)).split('.')

whole = int(parts[0])

frac = int(parts[1])

if frac < 3:

___frac = 0

elif frac > 7:

___frac = 0

___whole += 1

else:

___frac = 5

# recombine for a star rating rounded to the half

stars = float(str(whole)+'.'+str(frac))

is running a pretty famous startup.

edw5198• 19 years ago

Please do tell.

(All motivators are appreciated.)

stcredzero3• 19 years ago

The semantics of that are no different than a case statement. (Unless this is in a performace-critical loop, and you'd gain something though a compiler optimization of the case statement.) You're equating using case statement syntax to good programming? That's the best example you have of a "mess?" That makes me suspect that you don't think about programming at a very high level and that you like making largely arbitrary changes to code for (unacknowledged) ego-driven reasons.

edw5198• 19 years ago

"You're equating using case statement syntax to good programming?"

No. I'd prefer something a little closer to:

Months = ['January','February','March','April','May','June','July','August','September','October','November','December'];

MonthDesc = Months[MonthNbr - 1];

"That's the best example you have of a mess?"

No. Just what came to mind.

"That makes me suspect that you don't think about programming at a very high level"

You suspect wrong. Don't suspect. Ask and find out.

"you like making largely arbitrary changes to code for (unacknowledged) ego-driven reasons"

If only I had the time, that would be my dream come true!

gibsonf1• 19 years ago

My "hair was on fire" for a tool I desperately needed for my architectural firm that was not available anywhere, and I realized the tool would be equally powerful for any business.

Neoryder• 19 years ago

Money And to escape the Boredom !

sanj• 19 years ago

Two big reasons:

1. Right now the leverage that a small group of talented technical folks have is huge. Much more so than I expect it will be in 10 years, or it was 10 years ago. I don't want to cede that to the PHBs.

2. A really useful web startup is a way to touch a lot of people's lives, and ideally improve them in some small way.

#2 is hugely motivating for me.

pmjordan2• 19 years ago

I love creating stuff, especially through programming. I almost started my own "Web 2.0" site while at university, but my study time eventually took over. Then, no longer funded by my parents, I needed a job. I worked for a games company which, one year later, was slowly draining the passion for coding out of me. So I quit, moved country (again) and now I'm living off savings and odd jobs while building a prototype and hunting for co-founders. Woo!

neilcauldwell• 19 years ago

I'm looking for co-founders too! I finished Uni last year, been working on prototype since. It isn't the money, it isn't proving other apps are bad; I'm just doing because I can't imagine doing anything else. I'm all consumed by the startup excitement!

copenja3• 19 years ago

Could you elaborate on why you didn't like the gaming industry?

What title(s) did you work on?

I just switched to the gaming industry so I hope the same doesn't happen to me.

So far though, I've just been stoked having an xbox360 on my desk...

pmjordan2• 18 years ago

> Could you elaborate on why you didn't like the gaming industry?

Whoa, Pandora's box! :) I'll try not to break any NDAs and still be informative. Apologies if this degenerates into a rant. A lot of this stuff depends on the developer/publisher pairing you happen to work for, although I talked to quite a few people at Rockstar and it seemed even worse there.

* The publisher is always right. Even if they request illogical, stupid things, which clearly won't work, you have to implement them, only for them to withdraw them later. I spent weeks on stuff like that.

* Even 'obviously' good development practices seem to be considered purely theoretical, at least at the studio I worked at. The code was terrible, the bug count was astronomical throughout the project, because there was never time to fix them, everyone always had to add new stuff. The whole thing didn't even get any serious QA until AFTER the original intended release date. (which eventually slipped by almost a year; I blame all of the above for that)

* Uncompensated overtime is bad enough, but the attitude with which it was handled was the worst part. "No, I'm busy this Sunday" was treated as a serious problem and you had to have a 1-on-2 "chat" with senior management where you'd effectively be bullied into agreeing to working yet more overtime. They even tried to talk one guy out of being best man at his friend's wedding.

* There was always promise of that vaporous concept of bonuses, but to me it was pretty clear that the publisher had no interest in promoting the game, or even in it being a good game. I think everyone else was either lying or wearing their industry-standard rose-tinted-glasses. I left shortly before it was released in the US but as far as I can tell, it never made it into any top-10 sales list. It's not even out in the ROTW. (yet?) I suspect that nobody is getting any bonuses. (if the studio is even still alive by then)

* At least in the UK, game industry jobs are terribly paid compared to other programming jobs; specifically, about 30-50% less. And that's baseline salary, many "real" jobs pay overtime or give TOIL. Non-programming game jobs pay even less; my salary wasn't even enough to cover cost of living, even after being promoted pretty rapidly.

Sure, some of it is pretty cool.

* I personally really enjoy engine programming, which is what I was hired to do, even though I only did that until the engine/tools work was done.

* You tend to work with some pretty smart, if highly cynical people.

* I got to play with a Wii devkit a couple months before the Wii was out.

* You're making games!

I think I'd only work in games again if it was either for a very small company, or it was a company that has made >50% really awesome games that I personally enjoyed in the past. I'd definitely "test drive" the company before I stayed there, i.e. quit within the probation period if it felt iffy. EDIT: Yes, it's possible to be that choosy if you're any good. The industry greatly overhypes how hard it is to get in. Having been involved in the key parts of the hiring process (CV screening, interviews) at the company, I know how difficult it is to hire programmers.

Published game I worked on: Battalion Wars 2.

YMMV.

davidw• 19 years ago

I want to work for myself, and with the right people (I'm always on the lookout), and I want to make things that don't suck.

brlewis3• 19 years ago

Because no other photo-sharing site does what I want.

http://ourdoings.com/2007-12-19

hhm5• 19 years ago

I visited ourdoing, and I really liked it. Nice job!

falsestprophet• 19 years ago

Your work has come a long way. Congratulations.

brlewis3• 19 years ago

Thanks, and thanks for your feedback way-back-when.

pchristensen• 19 years ago

Bruce, I like your style. Create something valuable to you, then help others reap that same value. Kudos!

ALee• 19 years ago

I'm young and have nothing to lose.

I want to change the world (by making something people need).

I'm nerdy and think there is always a solution in technology. People just haven't found it yet.

I'll learn a lot.

I see through the veneer of "traditional" paths of employment.

PG says it all. I send this out regularly: http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html

paulhart• 19 years ago

Because I believe I've come up with a novel method of handling user participation in a relatively mature market; it's far stickier than many sites currently in the space, and avoids some of the issues that other 'unconventional' sites have.

marcus• 19 years ago

Because I got tired of retirement after a year or so...

Because every evening before I fall asleep I ask myself "What have you built/learned today?" and when the answer is nothing for too long I go crazy.

Hexstream2• 19 years ago

Yeah, I can't wait to get rich and retire so I can finally work more (on projects unconstrained by financial considerations)!

imsteve2• 19 years ago

It's the most fun I could possibly have while working and I feel that I have a lot of power while doing it. Since I'm not rich, I've got to work so this is the natural choice.

Were money no issue then I might focus on some exciting programming/engineering projects that aren't as certain a way of making money but would certainly help change the world.

jyu• 19 years ago

Doing a startup is more pain, stress, and trouble than the alternatives. Unfortunately, after trying a majority of the attractive options, I found myself unable to work on anything else except in start ups and my own personal projects. Even if I had billions in the bank, I couldn't imagine myself deriving greater self-fulfillment than pushing myself to the limits in a start up environment.

mdemare2• 19 years ago

People were willing to pay $100 per hour for me (of which I got to keep about 20%) while I was working on projects I did not believe in, using a language I found completely unsuitable, using frameworks that were a configuration nightmare, while reading blogs for 30% of the time. And they were happy with me!

Now imagine how much happier I can be and how much more I can earn while working on projects I passionately believe in, using the most suitable language and framework I know. I'm working 2 or 3 times as much per week as I used to, but I don't mind.

nkohari• 19 years ago

Ouch, billed at $100/hr and got paid $20/hr? You got the shaft.

I agree completely with what you're saying. This is what is driving me away from my job at a software consulting firm at the moment.

pkaler• 19 years ago

If you think that is bad. The ladyfriend gets billed out at $250/hour by Ernst & Young but she is paid out on salary. She's estimated that she is making about $13/hour with all of the overtime.

mdemare2• 19 years ago

That's after dutch income taxes.

But my point was that people were paying 5x more for my services than I need to live on, even though I was working at less than 10% of my potential (due to language, tools, motivation, working hours...).

There must be a more efficient way, and I hope this is it.

cellis• 19 years ago

word.

jmzachary• 19 years ago

Because I've always wanted to. I love software and the idea of creating innovative things that people want to use. Becoming a professor at a research university was one goal I achieved, and doing a startup is the other.

My situation: I'm 38, I saved up enough money to live on for a year with no other income, I quit my job, I have two kids, and my working wife is 110% supportive. As they say in the casinos, I am "all in".

sharpshoot• 19 years ago

to make an impact on humanity

icky• 19 years ago

A positive one, I hope! ;)

Hexstream2• 19 years ago

1. Acquire knowledge; 2. Develop technology; 3. Have fun; 4. Maybe change people's lives for the best; 5. Maybe get rich.

Even if my startup proved to be an utter commercial failure, the 3 first points apply. I can't lose, I've already won! Of course I can win even bigger than now...

Those are my kinds of scenarios: a win for everyone and/or a success no matter what.

cperciva• 19 years ago

I wanted efficient and secure remote backups, and nobody else was providing them.

npost• 19 years ago

1. Ego 2. I relish the idea of creating something new 3. I love the idea of serving a unique niche and helping promote startups and entrepreneurs 4. Ego 5. Working out of coffee shops, drinking decaf mochas all day long is my idea of LIVING it up 6. Because I never want to have to say "I wish I had!"

robmnl• 19 years ago

I enjoy making computers better.

JaredRad• 19 years ago

Perhaps I'm more selfish than the rest of you, but I am starting my company because I want to Win. I want to make a better product than you, have my users love my product more than yours, make more money off it than you, and get more positive press than you. I want to Win, and unlike most people, I really believe I can Win.

edw5198• 19 years ago

I hope you do.

And here's the dirty little secret that makes programming startups the best "sport" of all: we all can.

bayareaguy• 19 years ago

I currently work for a startup where I'm not the founder. The company's success is important to me for multiple reasons but I don't have nearly as much at stake as the founders do. Their opinion is that there are lots of things we have to "own" and so I currently spend a lot of time creating new technical things. I don't think this is the best way but I don't question it too seriously. Right now I'm more motivated by flexibility.

That said, when I get around to doing my own startup I plan to create as few new technical things as I possibly can until it is safely out of the startup phase. To me creating new technology is more often than not a huge risk which you only want to do when you know the reward is worthwhile.

ardit33• 19 years ago

it is all about the money, and doing something fun at the same time.

If you do something you like, at home, it is a hobby. If you do something you like, and try to get rich, than it is a startup. If you do something you don't like, just b/c to get rich, you will either fail, or be miserable and quit.

endlessvoid94• 19 years ago

I write code that does convenient things for myself. Then, if someone happens to see me using said tool, I think "maybe i can get other people who would also use this".

And it happens. It's wonderful. I'm glad to be in a field where hobby projects can blossom into business.

iamelgringo• 19 years ago

I'm in a job that I hate.

I'm tired of working for other people.

I have an insane need to build things.

I get bored very easily.

I want to be the decider.

I love computers.

I love programming.

I want to automate boring tasks.

I want to retire early.

It's an adventure.

I like to hack things.

If I'm not infront of a computer at least once a day I get nervous and irritable.

It's about building wealth.

It doesn't make sense to work my tail off so that someone else can make money off of me.

I want to travel after I'm retired, and I don't want to travel with a wheelchair.

I like working with geeks.

I like to tinker.

gotta go, I need to tinkle...

paul9290• 19 years ago

1. To work around like minded individuals, where I learn invaluable skills and we jointly create cool things! (bummer my most desired goal even amongst my startups relative success is still not fulfilled! ) 2. Create technology that enriches our daily lives 3. Have enough money to continue creating new things and enough to own middle class income type property & goods.

bsaunder• 19 years ago

Because I believe I can create much greater value (through programming) than I'm allowed to at my current day job. In a very pasionate way I need to do this. I'm tired of wasting my time and efforts in a corporate environment.

I can get more done in a day on my code than I can in a month of day job work. Also, (at least in the initial stages) I can structure my work in efficient manner so that I'm accomplishing more and more every hour I spend working.

mattmaroon• 19 years ago

To make the world a more fun place, and hopefully make a boatload in the process.

rms• 19 years ago

We want to do scientific research. We need to make a bunch of money to be able to run a private research lab and cure AIDS, and working for the man will never pay off well enough.

(to cure AIDS, midway through this post) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47751

twoghost• 19 years ago

To speed up the coming singularity.

wumi• 19 years ago

Guy Kawasaki once said that the number one goal of any startup (or any organization for that matter) should be to "make meaning."

I wholeheartedly agree

He also goes on to say that you should be able to fill out this blank with your company.

If ___________________ did not exist, the world would be a little worse off.

pistoriusp• 19 years ago

I read some advice from a lot of people, one of them that made the most impact was Steve Jobs:

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something...almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

Ask YC: So, why are you doing a startup?

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