I Don't Want to Be a Founder

I remember as I was starting my company, I reached out to a founder of a company you&#x27;ve likely heard of for advice. We grabbed drinks, and he practically begged me to not start a company, for my own sake. I thought he was a dick.<p>But he wasn&#x27;t wrong. Write down a list of why you want to start a company. I bet the list involves things like &quot;building something nobody else has,&quot; &quot;getting to program and design and do a bit of business-y stuff&quot; or &quot;freedom to work on what I want&quot;. That&#x27;s only true when you start. Pretty soon, you&#x27;re spending all day in meetings, and only a small portion of your time will go to the things you currently enjoy doing... and you&#x27;ll feel guilty because there&#x27;s something more important you should be doing. (Me? I&#x27;m currently procrastinating on an investor update, an H1B application and two performance reviews.) You&#x27;ll spend more time writing emails than writing code. You end up bogged down in organizational issues, not dreaming up cool new features. Rather than having one boss, you now have dozens... investors, customers, employees, etc.<p>Oh, and the rejection. The non stop rejection. Every single day, hour, minute. Investors, customers, employees, potential employees. It&#x27;s not personal, but it sure feels personal. Even when things are going great, there&#x27;s tons of little micro-rejections, non-stop. I wish someone told me that.<p>It&#x27;s really hard. I don&#x27;t know a single founder who hasn&#x27;t had relationship problems because of their company, or suffered from depression. Hanging out with founders is less like the TV show Silicon Valley, and more like group therapy.<p>This isn&#x27;t to say you shouldn&#x27;t do it. But just be prepared for what being a founder actually entails. Talk to a few founders of medium sized companies about how they&#x27;re doing. If you&#x27;re still on board, then maybe you&#x27;re right for the job. For me, I wouldn&#x27;t change a thing... I love it. It&#x27;s incredibly hard, but there&#x27;s a reason I haven&#x27;t even thought of leaving. If you&#x27;re the same way, then go for it!<p>But don&#x27;t do it because you want to do it. Do it because you literally can&#x27;t imagine not doing it.<p>(If you&#x27;re doing it now and things are getting hard and you need someone to talk to, my email is in my bio :) )

I enjoyed this article, but I think it glosses over a very important part of my (and my cofounders&#x27;) own motivation for starting a company: vision.<p>Sometimes you see or believe something that others simply can&#x27;t or don&#x27;t, and you want to do something about it. Trying to find a (usually narrowly-defined) job that lets you work on these things can be very hard because there usually has to be someone looking for solutions to these hard-to-see problems, and you sacrifice a bunch (more) of your autonomy in the process.<p>Founding a startup is a great solution to this problem; convince some capital that you have deep conviction and competence to make a material change in the world and put in your own elbow grease to prove it. If you are willing to work hard you don&#x27;t need very much money to amplify the impact of your own decisions and efforts and the snowball grows, attracting more resources along its path.<p>It&#x27;s still really hard to do, but founding a startup remains one of the best ways to prove out a hypothesis in the real world and achieve actual change, while still allowing for a decent income even in the event of failure. It is worth it if the mission is compelling.

I successful founded startups since 20 years, starting in the age of 16. In none of them, I founded together with partners that I realy trusted like I trust my wife. However we worked together on a professional level and figured it out everytime.<p>Why could we do that? because in the end it is a work for roughly 5y and if you stop even thinking about working 24x7x365 you have enough free time for recreational activities. I&#x27;m on vacation around 6 times a year, but available to the company on critical stuff.<p>Yes sometimes it&#x27;s hard, sometimes you have so much work that even 24 hours a day wont be enough, but then again you need to focus on the important work and think about yourself.<p>Btw I only did the bootstrap way with every company founded on 25k€ and no VC&#x2F;Angle&#x2F;Bank&#x2F;External money and very low income in the first years (I hire people ASAP). As of today, in average over the last 20y this gave me more then 500k€ yearly salary with the exit money. Not bad and definitive much better than I would have had in in any Employment.<p>For me it is absolutely no choice to be employed or working in larger companies. I want my own freedom :)

It&#x27;s refreshing to see somebody stop and evaluate what they actually want, rather than just doing what they think they people like themselves should do.<p>Places like HN tend to come with the expectation that you should be building a company rather than working for one. That&#x27;s a &quot;thing you need to signal&quot; if you want to be here. But watching discussions here, it&#x27;s clear to me that most people just don&#x27;t want to be entrepreneurs. And it&#x27;s also clear that many of those people don&#x27;t realize it.<p>Pull up a discussion thread on an article about bootrapping a little SaaS company. You&#x27;ll find all these people coming out of the woodwork to explain how nobody could possibly build a software business today, listing three or four reasons that those of us who <i>have</i> built SaaS stuff never even considered, never ran into, or addressed on the day it came up. It doesn&#x27;t really matter what the reasons are. The important part is that Building A Software Company Is Impossible So Nobody (Inclucing Me) Should Try (Though Note That I&#x27;ve Correctly Signalled That I Would, Were It Possible).<p>You&#x27;ll get whole threads of people talking themselves out of trying, and congratulating themselves on not believing anything the author said because clearly his success was some fluke combination of luck and influence that could never be duplicated by anybody else.<p>Meanwhile, people who actually <i>are</i> interested in building a business will nod along to some bits of good advice, maybe comment about some of the less good bits, then get back to building something.<p>I wish it was more acceptable here to simply not want to build a business.

I like the article but I honestly have never even stopped to think &quot;should I create a startup?&quot;... is that a common thing?<p>Maybe it&#x27;s because I&#x27;m still young or because I&#x27;ve never actually been in huge financial distress (which I realise is a privilege) but I don&#x27;t have the desire to make a lot of money or sell my dream idea&#x2F;company. All I want is to make enough to cover my living costs and in my spare time work on side projects, code or tinker around. You know, do things that are actually fun to do and allow me to learn new stuff. If I have an idea i&#x27;m very passionate about I&#x27;d like to just share it with others because they might find it interesting, not turn it into financial profit for me.<p>Why is it that it&#x27;s almost a societal expectation that you must always push to level up financially and professionally? In all honesty, I haven&#x27;t even used my salary for more than rent and food in the last few months because there is simply nothing new that I really need... I haven&#x27;t had to buy new clothes in at least three years but if I had to I could also do that cheaply at a second hand store; that&#x27;s just one example. As for my hobbies, even on very dated hardware one can pretty much work on whatever the heart desires and learn, the only thing that is needed is an internet connection.<p>Why is there always a desire not just to make the money invested back but to make a huge profit? I think in this field we have pretty good wages, now can&#x27;t we focus on more pressing issues that concern us and future generations?<p>I don&#x27;t get it in general... I&#x27;m satisfied with what little I have, I don&#x27;t need anything else because I can already do all the activities that make me happy.

Dave McClure had a pretty aggressive talk about why not to do a startup[0] back in 2012 and it resonates with what&#x27;s written here.<p>Startups are hard and we love to parade those who made it, struck it rich, but the reality is the vast majority don&#x27;t. It also requires a skillset&#x2F;discipline&#x2F;constitution that is very different than what most people want to do.<p>In the very large group who don&#x27;t make it, lies burnt relationships, heartache, debt, lawsuits, depression, even suicide&#x2F;death. Which on closer inspection, the success group has a lot of the same traits. Only they made it out with IPO, sale, merger, self sustaining business to show for it.<p>It is scary. It is hard.<p>But to me, you won&#x27;t know until you know. And if you want to know, the only way is to try.<p>That is reason enough.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vimeo.com&#x2F;15799330" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vimeo.com&#x2F;15799330</a>

For me, the way I thought about it was a bit different. When I did YC I had already worked at Google for a while, and the question I was asking myself was less &quot;do I want to be a founder?&quot; and more &quot;is starting a company something I ever want to try out, in a career that will probably span decades?&quot; If you&#x27;ve had jobs you liked in the past, and you figure that you can probably find those jobs again, and you don&#x27;t immediately need the big company salary, what is a startup really risking? The worst case is that you work on it for a year or so, it goes nowhere, and you go back to work somewhere else. You miss out on some money but you&#x27;re going to learn something new in any case.

Could someone please explain to me what the value in this article is?<p>It&#x27;s written by a 18 year old who has never started a company<p>So, as someone who has started multiple companies and currently running a profitable albeit small startup, what insights should I get from this article?

Title should be: I don&#x27;t want to take VC money and I don&#x27;t think you do either

For me the main reason to try it is the frustration of having been working for 20 years as a freelancer or as en employee.<p>In both cases I&#x27;ve been investing my time and blood in exchange for money. Then the money runs out and you start all over again, and again. I want to invest my time into something which hopefully can grow so that I can keep investing more of my time instead of just giving it away. I want to plant a forest that will produce on its own instead of having to plant and harvest again on each season.<p>Freedom is another important aspect. I&#x27;ve been frustrated during my professional career with clients and bosses making the wrong decisions again and again and living with the consequences of those decisions.<p>I might totally fail while building what I&#x27;m building (see my profile) but that&#x27;s better than waking up one day and realizing I&#x27;ve wasted my life. Thankfully I&#x27;m in a position where I can invest a couple of years of my life without earning money and I don&#x27;t have people depending on me.

My take on this is: the only people who should become a founder are the people who can&#x27;t bear the thought of not doing it. Anyone with less than &quot;Give me libertly or give me death&quot; levels of commitment should not even bother.

I think what most of us want is to be free of the tyranny of employment. And I don’t think founding a company is best way to mitigate that if you aren’t completely into it, you could just go become a freelancer or start a small services Center in your locality.

Why is it that starting a tech start up is seen as an uber difficult task often resulting in burnout while starting a business in a technical occupation such as electrical or refrigeration is (seemingly) less risque? Surely there are a plenty of opportunities where rather boring software can be applied to business problems. Does it always need to be a monumental technical accomplishment to create a success?

The commitment point is very true, and extends to employees and clients if you&#x27;re in certain spaces and want to maintain a clean record in civil or moral court.<p>The rest of these arguments seem like bad framing. From a certain school of thought, entire point of a startup is to leverage your risk taking ability relative to incumbents in the market and your economic peers. Working at a startup forces you to learn more, faster; and you&#x27;re challenged by real market factors, not artificial incentive structures created by a large org or academic institution. You also wear a ton of hats that you have no access to early in your career at larger orgs or in academia. Hiring, management, sales, accounting, taxes, finance, product ideation and refinement, etc - early years at FAANG or medium sized orgs will not expose you to all of these. Even an experimental team that lets you play with cool technological toys.<p>&quot;Not being at school&quot; is an silly way to describe, &quot;4 years of school is sometimes a poor choice of use of the best risk-taking opportunities of a person&#x27;s life&quot;.<p>&quot;Your VC is not the one at risk here&quot; is a reason to avoid VC, subvert some of the incentives that VCs give you, or ignore a subset of the advice they they give you, not a reason to avoid risky ventures.<p>It&#x27;s important to note that the author here is an 18 year old and has no significant real-life perspective on either running a company or being part of a larger org. Nothing about that affects their ability to accurately pontificate on the pros and cons of running a startup, but there also isn&#x27;t a lot of skin in the game or experience to back up that perspective. The bayesian prior here is negative.<p>If you&#x27;re partway through a uni degree or similar learning program, or an incumbent engineer at a small or large org, then you should look at starting or joining an early-stage startup as a great way to take risks that you will be less able to every year (because of increasing costs of living, commitments to a new generation of your family if you marry and have children, incentives to purchase real estate, etc). The payoff will hopefully be huge and will be distributed across potential exits, experience, and personal growth.

Not really mentioned by the author, but my own experience is that you need to strongly consider the 80&#x2F;20 rule for founders. If you start a business, you will spend 80% of your time doing the business things <i>you don&#x27;t want to do</i>, and only 20% of your time doing the things you enjoy.<p>What this means in practice is that if you want to start a company because, for example, you just want to build products without dealing with manager&#x2F;team bullshit, you are going to have an awful time. You need to be very honest with yourself about your ability and dedication to do all the things that actually get a business off the ground, not just the things you want to do and imagine you&#x27;ll spend all your time doing.

Reacting mostly to the ending&#x2F;conclusion here.<p>I don&#x27;t know about other founders, but for me, startups are basically the only vehicle for solving big problems that nobody else will&#x2F;can solve.<p>Often the reasons that (nearly) nobody else is trying to solve your exact problem are 1) it is risky&#x2F;unlikely to monetize well, 2) it is hard, grueling, or boring work that may not even function right in the end, 3) might believe it to be impossible or not worth it.<p>But if you have a big problem in front of you and you strongly believe it can be solved and should be solved, then what other choice do you have but to start a startup?<p>There are lots of people (maybe myself? I dunno.) who feel strongly about solving a problem but also feel that they don&#x27;t have &quot;what it takes&quot; to be a successful startup founder. I have a failed startup in my past. The failure process wrecked me for years, emotionally, socially, financially, the whole thing. I&#x27;m okay now, don&#x27;t worry.<p>But are there any other reasonable options for &quot;trying to solve a big problem that is otherwise being ignored&quot; other than starting a startup?<p>I want to solve big problems I care about. I have that ego discussed in the article; often I find I do believe I have the right combination of things to solve a particular problem better than other people. So I feel like it is my responsibility to do it.<p>But being a startup founder is <i>hard</i> and if your personality or circumstances aren&#x27;t a good fit, then, what do you do? Just stay frustrated that the problem isn&#x27;t being solved?

This made me sad to read. Not everyone should found a company. Frankly, in school, the people who annoyed me most were the ones who vowed to be an “entrepreneur.” Always sounded pretentious. But, as someone who has garnered wealth and happiness from creating something from scratch, I do hope we continue to celebrate, if not idolize, that. And, I hope, we remember the humble beginnings of Yahoo, eBay, Google, Dropbox, Facebook, AirBnB, Cloudflare, etc. Not everyone needs to be a founder to be successful. But I hope everyone will continue to believe they can be one. Not for themselves, but for what they can build for the world.

Is software startup by solo founders still viable anymore? Today the age of apps&#x2F;SaaS seems ending. It is oversaturated, and the low hanging (low technical complexity) fruits are already taken left and right.

Title is a bit misleading, 3&#x2F;4 of the arguments against being a founder in the article are conditions that may not apply.<p>1. Reliance on a co-founder is stressful 2. VC vs founder risk profile 3. Don&#x27;t dropout to found a company<p>I think these all apply more to the &quot;get rich quick&quot; approach and sure, I agree that is a bit of a moonshot.<p>But instead of writing off founding, why not look at ways to mitigate risk? Complete an education, spend some years working in an industry, or start a bootstrapped company in a niche that you learn from the industry. Or any combination of those that fits your risk profile.<p>And have an exit plan in mind, for either the success story or the failure. That solves the sense of self- a calculated business plan that didn&#x27;t work out does not have to be devestating.

She misses the most important difference between owning a startup and owning a project in a company: actual ownership. You don&#x27;t own the profits in a company. I mean, really??<p>Anyone can write articles like this. Be careful who you learn from.

I don’t think the point about making more money in industry is particularly compelling. I feel like I would be mostly losing opportunity cost and would be pretty confident I could get at least as good a job, if not better, with the lost experience. Further, in what way is joining an early stage startup financially advantageous to being a founder? The only benefit is it being easier to walk away, but the upside is greatly reduced, and the worst case is not much better (perhaps a higher salary).<p>I also don’t really agree with the point that being an employee engineer can be just as ambitious as being a founder. You can do great things as an engineer but you won’t capture even close to all of its value, and for better or worse will likely not get as much recognition or influence for it either.<p>There is nothing wrong with not wanting to start a company, and maybe there are people who feel compelled to do it for the wrong reasons. It seems to really boil down to risk tolerance and whether you would actually be comfortable running a business

It is definitely hard and stressful, but when you have your own company, it is up to you to decide how you want to run the company.<p>You don&#x27;t have to have co-founders, you don&#x27;t have to take VC money. You don&#x27;t have to do anything period.<p>It is your company, you run it and if somebody else wants to run it, they can either fire you if they have means to do it or buy you out.

I liked the article, but it just seems like a way to justify whatever self-doubts come from being a founder. It seemed like the author was just reinforcing the doubts they had about succeeding. A big part of being in a startup is belief in one&#x27;s self. They said they became more confident than they thought was warranted through &#x27;self-hypnosis&#x27; , but in reality that just means they had a ton of self-doubt and listened to that little voice of doubt in their head. Sometimes you just have to take a chance and realize that nothing is irreversible; you will learn from your failures&#x2F;successes. You don&#x27;t have just one chance, you have as many chances as you&#x27;re willing to take.

At first I wanted to add some smart-sounding comment to this, but then I took a sneak peak at the author&#x27;s home page, and realized she&#x27;s 18 only years old.<p>This made me think: even if she might not be 100% right, or she might have missed some important detail, etc, it&#x27;s really impressive that at this age she&#x27;s able to articulate this concept quite well. I was way dumber when I was 18. Heck, when I was double that.<p>To be clear and to avoid being misinterpreted: being 18 to me simply count as not possibly having several years of experience as a founder, which makes her thoughts even more impressive.

You don’t need a cofounder.<p>You don’t need a VC&#x2F;funding.<p>You don’t need to over identify self with business.

I’m a former VC-backed founder and I liked the post, but this part made me cringe:<p>&gt; To be ambitious often means things like wanting to do a Ph.D, become a medical doctor or an astronaut.<p>Why should it be considered ambitious to do a PhD or become a medical doctor. Those are just slogs that most people can get through if they stick it out... Something is very wrong with our cultural preconceptions around ambition. It’s like real ambition is now so taboo we can’t even talk about it or something... Can anybody explain it to me like I’m 5yo?

Interesting thoughts Carol, thanks for sharing. It&#x27;s important to have this sort of conversation with yourself when considering the foundations of starting a company. The fact that you&#x27;ve expressed it in such a way that others can tap into may be valuable for those like you at or approaching this crossroads. Fascinating thought process!<p>Not enough entrepreneurs&#x2F;founders are able to have such a pragmatic and mature dialogue up front about the pros and cons. It&#x27;s imperative that they do for the sake of their time and emotional well being - at the least. Kudos to you for going through it and making a decision which suits your needs.<p>You&#x27;ve said: &quot;Setting goals like working at a certain company, promotions (up to positions like CTO) and building a specific type of thing aren&#x27;t less ambitious than building a successful startup.&quot; ... and I would ask you to elaborate on that, like is there anything more &quot;ambitious&quot; than building successful startup or how do you perceive the scale of ambition in the context of say business&#x2F;professional pursuits?<p>PS - I didn&#x27;t know that hey.com was considered a &quot;huge, groundbreaking&quot; product...certainly captured some hearts and minds of the early adopter meets anti apple&#x2F;establishment crowd but is it (yet) recognized outside of that bubble?

You may not wish to be a founder if you believe the only way to succeed is to chase venture capital.<p>If you value freedom over becoming a billionaire there&#x27;s an alternative and that&#x27;s bootstrapping. Plus your odds jump from under 10% to as much as 50%. If you don&#x27;t quickly reach product-market-fit it&#x27;s a short journey. Sometimes having that pressure early brings clarity to the mind.

I really liked the article which raises many valid points. You should not start a company without thinking those through. And have a cofounder who sees those in a similar fashion.<p>On a flip side working for a large company has different challenges and limitations. They tend to be bureaucratic and have been moving in the direction of avoiding risk and increasing control over employees. Once this reaches a certain level, dancing to the HR tunes while in the straitjacket of 20 policies can get very taxing.<p>Separately, I wonder why the 14-hour workday is the norm in startups. What would happen if founders try to get somewhere in four months instead of three and have a firm agreement between founders of &quot;no more than 10 hour work days; at least one, preferably two days a week of no work&quot;?<p>It seems everyone agrees that &quot;it does not work this way&quot;. Can someone explain?

&gt; A lot of people claim that startups are less money, but I find for signicant number of founders, that&#x27;s not true -- not because they&#x27;ll definitely have a good exit, but because they&#x27;re skilled in ways that allow them to raise enough money to pay themselves like they would at a big company. If that applies to you, then going to a startup probably is your best shot at getting rich! For other people, the expected value of industry (particularly joining a well-founded early-stage startup) is usually higher.<p>I&#x27;ve never heard this before. Raising enough VC money to pay yourself a corporate salary (i.e. 6-figure or beyond) sounds like fraudulent use of VC money?

Ugh, come on, for the vast majority of people, marriage and family are the best things in their lives.<p>From what I can gather from the article, the author has neither been in a startup, nor in a marriage, yet they feel qualified to mentor people on both :-)

Mostly valid arguments. Founding a startup with a co-founder can be like being in a marriage, and there are a lot of frustrations on the path to success (or failure).<p>That said, she doesn&#x27;t seem to realize how privileged she actually is, having to choose between a high-paying job at a SV company or accepting to join one of the most famous startup accelerator programs... I don&#x27;t think she does that on purpuse, just seems a bit out of touch (but then again this is HN so maybe not).

I worry about the people who want to start companies. I think that&#x27;s a terrible motivation that more often than not leads to failure (and drags others down with you).<p>I have personally never wanted to start a company. I have seen something I&#x27;ve wanted to change in the world, and failed to find a way to change it without starting a company.<p>Not starting a company would have been quite a bit less painful. I would 100% take that option if it were on the table.

I think the commitment aspect of a startup is mostly underrated by people<p>Freedom? Closing the work laptop at 6PM is freedom. Not having to worry about office rentals, trash collection, bathroom cleaning is freedom. Fine, you could go WeWork for that, or just stay at home (aren&#x27;t we all) but something will go off at night, or your future self will regret your past self decisions.

It is really a choice between wanting freedom while accepting the troubles that come with it or sitting under the shade of employment with the occasional bug bites. Most of all, I am glad that there is this awakening that one questions their situation and wants to change things up. That to me is growth. Thanks for sharing this.

&gt; The VCs are your &quot;bosses&quot; as you answer to them (though much less than a regular &quot;boss&quot;) and to the ones you hope to raise capital from in the future.<p>Isn&#x27;t this based solely on the equity makeup? If an investor only has 10%, but me and my co-founder share 90% then what absolute power does the investor really have?

The value of starting a company is you can hope to accomplish something which other people have not. It is a bit like being an explorer finding new lands like Columbus. It is an adventure. But you might end up marooned.<p>Whereas if you just work for someone else you accomplish some income. You can pay your rent or get a mortgage maybe even buy a sports-car! But you don&#x27;t have real job-security and in the US you don&#x27;t even have the security to know if you get fired you could still keep your health insurance.<p>You are serving someone else&#x27;s goal which probably is to maximize their financial profit. When you work for them you are their opponent. More for you is less for them. It&#x27;s not full zero-sum of course but if they are the kind of person who just wants money they will view you that way, as somebody they can make money from. It&#x27;s a game and they can win big, but you really can&#x27;t. Your benefit is you learn things but after some years you start thinking you are wasting your life that way taking orders from some clueless greedy business-person.<p>Just my feeling at the moment.

There are a lot of bootstrapped founders, actually the vast majority of them since the percentage of companies that VCs fund versus the number of pitches is tiny, so this doesn&#x27;t seem that accurate. Just look on www.indiehackers.com for more info on these types of founders.

Not sure about being a founder. I rather be a entrepreneur and if that means that at some point i end up founding a startup, so be it. But the term “founder” seems like a unnecessarily limiting word and i don’t understand why it appeals to some people.

Being a founder requires a bit of insanity or a belief in one’s self beyond the negativity that will be incurred by the effort.<p>For many, the suffering is not worth any vision. For some, like myself, doing nothing is a greater suffering.

Using the word &quot;founder&quot; is ridiculously narcissistic when you are simply starting a business just like millions of people have done before. I try to stay away from people who call themselves that.

Only be a founder if you:<p>A) Think you are better than what your resumes&#x2F;work history says. B) Are better than what your resume&#x2F;work history says.<p>Most people with a strong enough resume&#x2F;work history to get funding fail both.

I had a funny experience where a friend was trying to recruit me to be part of some venture.<p>We met up and got in a car with another lady who he was trying to recruit as well, and he kept talking about it as if it was already a done deal that we were in.<p>At one point, she and I looked at each other and were like &quot;Excuse me. No offense, but I don&#x27;t know who the hell you are.&quot; We didn&#x27;t join his thing, but ended up starting three companies together, so we <i>were</i> compatible business partners.<p>You need some time to get to know each other. I find it&#x27;s better if you don&#x27;t consider it like marriage, investing a lot of emotion in it. It either works or it doesn&#x27;t, and you can leave as friends.

this is personal. doesn&#x27;t apply to me. I founded my first company 10 years ago. now in my second company. I enjoy it very much. I am in contact with many happy founders.

Your co-founder is not the same as with your wife, because you will spend MORE time with your co-founder than with your wife.

Off topic to the content of the article, but this is a really slick looking blog! Is this a template or something custom?

Don&#x27;t tell me what I do and don&#x27;t want. I hate articles like this.

Cool, so best to do a bootstrapped solo-founder thing ;)

This article has such a strong mental bias towards the Bay Area worldview. It assumes so deeply that the two types of people in the world are VC-backed startup founders and engineers at top tier tech companies. This is so completely off. Many people (including me) decided to start bootstrapped companies that are profitable on day 1 (or soon thereafter), with richly rewarding work. Many folks literally can’t get a job because they have no marketable skills and their only solution is to create something brand new. Other folks just want to have a good story to tell about trying to change the world. It’s really in this small bubble that you can create an equivalence between tech founder and tech employee.

I don&#x27;t even want to work, but unfortunately food and shelter cost money.<p>It&#x27;s all a trade-off. Don&#x27;t be a founder, but then you have to put up with crazy company politics, feeling of meaninglessness, having a boss, and so on.<p>Personally I don&#x27;t think anybody is entitled to a job, though. Hence my &quot;I don&#x27;t even want to work&quot; statement. People have to do something to survive, that is just reality.

The biggest reason: Some of us would be horrible to work under. One day VCs will get it.

Don&#x27;t want to be a founder? Good, you don&#x27;t have to be.