How should a startup founder value her time?

It's never mentioned in the article, but this only applies to the "Get Big Fast" flavor of Startup. Where you're hoping for a big payout in 4 years time if you sacrifice every waking hour between now and then building as fast as possible.<p>So when it concludes that you can't build something small and profitable, and that you can't do anything other than work yourself into the ground, it's just restating its assumptions as conclusions.<p>If, on the other hand you're looking for something to replace your $150/hr consultant gig, you absolutely <i>can</i> build something small that brings in a little profit. And you absolutely can build that thing without working "harder than is healthy".<p>I keep a spreadsheet that tracks the hours I've worked on my startup alongside the profits it has made. It tells me exactly how much my time has been worth for the hours I've spent working on the thing in the last 4 years. And it's creeping up to look like a respectable consulting rate.

This argument considers the downside risk (85% chance of not getting paid anything) but does NOT consider the upside risk (small chance of getting filthy rich but still much bigger than the chance if you work as a $150/hr consultant). That makes the math wrong, even if the idea has merit.

Why is 'her' used here, if the author is male?

Interesting tidbit for those debating the correctness of he/she/they in the title: at one (very brief) period of time, there was a school of English writers that believed 'it' was the correct gender-neutral term for living human beings of either gender.<p>The argument being that 'they' was plural, and therefore blatantly incorrect as a he/she replacement, whereas it was singular and gender-less (though gender-less != gender-neutral (at least, not necessarily)).<p>Anyone that's read E. Nesbit's <i>The Five Children and It</i> (the 'It' in the title is completely unrelated, as it refers to a mythical being and not any human) would have experienced this oddity of the English language, and &#60;strike&#62;they&#60;/strike&#62; it would have probably paused and wondered about the usage of 'it' as a gender-neutral pronoun.<p>According to Nesbit, saying something like 'A lover and its crush' or, more confusingly, 'The life of a founder, and its priorities' with 'it' here referring to the founder and not his/her's (<i>its &#60;smirk&#62;</i>) life.<p>Sounds weird? How many times have you said a sentence along the lines of "Was <i>it</i> your <i>father</i> or your <i>mother</i> that was in the Army?" Nesbit's approach was the same, taken a few orders of magnitude further :)

Actually, this reasoning is completely wrong.<p>"""<p>Your time is $1000/hour, and you need to act accordingly. Here’s why:<p>Let’s say as a consultant who normally charges $150/hour you stumble upon a weird client who asks for the following terms:<p><pre><code> “We agree your time is worth $150/hour. However, we can’t pay you for four years, at which time we will pay you in one lump sum.” </code></pre> How much should you increase your hourly rate to make these terms worthwhile?<p>But “lost interest” and a premium doesn’t solve the biggest problem with these terms. The problem is: What if this company goes out of business in four years and doesn’t pay you at all?<p>Supposing this client is an early-stage startup — even if funded — the most likely event is that they stiff you! Because they’re dead. Let’s suppose for the sake of rhetoric there’s a 15% chance the company will exist in four years and pay their bill.<p>"""<p>The article then goes on to reason that, therefore, you should value your time at $1000 per hour with this company.<p>But there's a problem.<p><i>IF</i> the company goes bankrupt, then <i>EVERY</i> hour of time you spend with them is worthless, and you should reduce to to 0.<p><i>IF</i> the company doesn't go bankrupt, then any number of hours at, say, $300/hour, is worth it for you.<p>In the first case, if you bill at $1000, the company is just as willing to use lots of your time. If it makes it, it takes off; if it doesn't make it, it's not stuck with the bill.<p>Absent all other market conditions, if you are a monopolist in what they want to do with you, and they NEED 40 hours of your time to survive, that is how much they will take at $40, $80, $120, and $150 or $1000 per hour. If they believe they can use those forty hours to raise $15million in the next 4 years, they might even "agree" to $150,000 per hour. It doesn't matter. No matter what your price, in this scenario you are out the same 40 hours if you play ball with them.<p>It's like winning the lottery. It doesn't matter if the expected value is over $1 per $1 ticket, if the chance of winning is the same. Your utility is massive if you win, you're out $1 if you lose.<p>False reasoning.