{"id":464,"date":"2011-11-23T21:52:03","date_gmt":"2011-11-24T01:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.payne.org\/?p=464"},"modified":"2011-11-23T21:52:03","modified_gmt":"2011-11-24T01:52:03","slug":"followup-dont-start-a-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/followup-dont-start-a-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Followup:  Don&#8217;t Start a Company"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I usually blog by value, but now, I&#8217;m <a href=\"http:\/\/onstartups.com\/tabid\/3339\/bid\/72696\/DON-T-start-a-company-yet.aspx\">blogging by reference<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>With that bad piece of geek humor out of the way, I want to thank Dharmesh Shah for graciously publishing my article on his <a href=\"http:\/\/onstartups.com\/\">OnStartups <\/a>blog.<\/p>\n<p>The comment stream was very interesting. \u00a0I&#8217;m going to experiment and reply in bulk to the major themes, using one comment for each theme:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>After 5 years at this company you may have a lot more responsibilities that will make harder time leaving to start your company, like a mortgage and a family. \u00a0 (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.angelfunder.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Don Tarinelli<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While it is easier to put in 80+ hour weeks as a young, single entrepreneur, most entrepreneurs start several companies during their career. \u00a0Plus, a few years first at another startup doesn&#8217;t put most people into mortgage and family territory.<\/p>\n<p>I think many recent graduates treat their first startup like college: \u00a0&#8220;if I don&#8217;t do it now, I&#8217;ll never do it&#8221;. \u00a0That&#8217;s a mistake: \u00a0startups <strong>aren&#8217;t<\/strong> like college &#8212; many entrepreneurs will do 3-6 over their career.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;There&#8217;s just nothing like learning on the job, in context, from those with more experience than you. &#8221; \u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">(then hire them)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>(John Hadings)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>My blog post is really about learning, and it&#8217;s very, very hard for young, inexperienced entrepreneurs to hire more senior, more experienced managers. \u00a0Most people want a boss they can learn from, and it&#8217;s a hard sell when your prospective boss has no experience. It <em>can<\/em> happen (e.g. Facebook), but it&#8217;s extremely rare and it almost always follows a business traction breakthrough.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you wait to start your business you will probably never start it. Rarely have I heard of somebody that gained experience in someone else&#8217;s business to learn how to start their own and actually did it. \u00a0 (Bob)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>My experience is the exact opposite: \u00a0most startups I see are by entrepreneurs coming out of another company, striking out on their own for the first time. \u00a0This is practically the venture capital investment recipe in CA: \u00a0investing in\u00a0entrepreneurs\u00a0with early stage experience in other startups (e.g. Facebook, Google, etc.)<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>recent grads are better off jumping right in as a CEO of a startup rather than getting pegged as a low-level lackey in an existing company.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/118394368341946391864\" rel=\"nofollow\">Warren G. Lewis<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is the mindset that gets many young entrepreneurs into trouble. \u00a0Sometimes people get more focused on &#8220;being CEO&#8221; than building the experience for success. \u00a0The CEO job is the toughest there is, and very few are successful jumping in with no prior experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I usually blog by value, but now, I&#8217;m blogging by reference. With that bad piece of geek humor out of the way, I want to thank Dharmesh Shah for graciously publishing my article on his OnStartups blog. The comment stream &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/followup-dont-start-a-company\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}