I have huge technical respect for Mr. Hillegass (bought and read several of his books). I also respect the crux of this post, which for me was the following sentence:<p>"Being smart and hard-working got me to seven employees. Luck took me the rest of the way."<p>The funny thing is that I don't want to be an entrepreneur for the money. I'm also not interested in the hockey stick. I wonder if the odds are better if one is just aiming for a lifestyle business.
Best part of the article was almost a sidebar:<p><i>When you have Enough, the extra money means very little. I’ve been broke, and being broke sucks balls. Having Enough is awesome. How would I define “Enough”? Enough means that you can take a friend out to a nice lunch and not have to worry about how much it costs. I have hung out with a couple of billionaires—my experiences indicate that being a billionaire is just incrementally better than Enough.</i><p>Exactly.
I have a friend who works for BigNerdRanch here in Atlanta now. It seems like a really great company, led by a smart, hard-working guy who has, as he notes, both earned and lucked into success. They have a great company culture where they value results over presenteeism and time clocked, and they build truly innovative solutions for a variety of different clients.<p>If I desired to work with Ruby or Apple technologies it would be a delightful place to work.<p>As for his recommendation, I would add the caveat that if you have an idea you want to get off the ground, treat it as a hobby or side-project and jump to full-time working on it if you can get either investment or profitability. There's no reason to wholesale discourage people from starting a small company, but be responsible!
When you work for a company, like our client Procter & Gamble, they will present you with a problem. “Here,” they will say, “is our problem and a big bucket of money. Please create a solution.” There is no need for guessing.<p>Ummm i want the best of both worlds... how can I (a person with no contacts in the company) go to procter & gamble, and say "hey I'm pretty good at tech, let me solve your problems"?
Fuck it! If people have the balls and drive to go after what they perceive to be doable, why stop them? Failure is part of all our lives. That failure will lead them towards a) bettering whatever they thought was going to make it big or b) settling for conformity. I say let them fail, it will bring life lesson not learned any other way.
It hurts just thinking about it:<p><pre><code> You will spend a large percentage of your energy on stuff
that will eventually be thrown away.</code></pre>