Safety Nets for Startups

The problem with a safety net is that somebody has to weave it. If a person want to live the life of a start-up, that's fine. Go for it. Just don't expect me to pay for your essentials just because you want to spend a couple of years of your life building a social network or recipe exchange. Sorry, it's just not that important to me or to most other people.<p>Life is not without risk. I can minimize it by being smart about things. I could get hit by a car when crossing the street. So I look both ways and then hustle across. I want to start my own business. So I read books and running a company for awhile. I find a problem to solve. I come up with a plan. Then I attempt to execute it. I may fail, but that's life. I learn. I get a job to pay off any debts I ran up. Then I try again.<p>The one thing I can say I did agree with is the need to stop favoring large established companies over smaller ones. These laws and regulations need to be tackled at all levels of government: federal, state , and local. But to do that requires a fundamental attitude change about risk. Small companies are risky. Big companies are not as risky. Ultimately it needs to be about people educating themselves and deciding accordingly.

Safety nets for startups? Please. We need safety nets for people who work for wages 40 hours a week, not for people who went to Stanford and have their parents' money fuelling their dreams.

I see the health care issue as being pivotal. Many people can't find insurance on the private market at any price.

In Sweden there are, in some cases, so many government subsidies and incentives to open a McDonald's or other business that the business can run for years without ever turning a profit.<p>I don't think that is a good thing. We frequently discuss here on HN to fail fast and try again. That seems to be the opposite.

Interesting article - but I don't think the writer gets it.<p>"We should focus on minimizing the downside of losing so that startup roulette feels less risky. After all, startups shouldn't just be for rich kids who can afford to take a chance on a big idea."<p>If more risk averse people began starting companies - would the ratio of success to failure change? My guess is that it would. Who knows in which direction.<p>There's always some BS stat in these articles about the percentage of entrepreneurs that succeed. Without a definition for what a successful entrepreneur is. How is that defined?

I love the idea of policy incentives that encourage entrepreneurship, but referring to such a framework as a "safety net" is a misnomer that hurts the author's argument.

If you're going to be working 40+ hour weeks for a boring soul-crushing job, then you might as well get a few perks out of it, such as health insurance.<p>I don't see the govt supporting people who don't want to get a corporate job and instead choose to chase their dreams.<p>It'd be great if things were different, but they're not going to change anytime soon. Why would anybody put up with dead-end jobs if they could just work on their passion their entire lives?

I like the general idea. :) A first step would be getting rid of government policies that favor larger companies at the expense of startups. At least europe is full of those policies.

There can be a safety net for startups - college. If colleges could be refocused from teaching psychology to creating tech businesses, then student loans could be the financing. Anyone, including middle aged or seniors could go to college from 1-5 years, learn tech skills while creating a company from day 1, and have the current student loan industry finance it all. Olin College in MA and Waterloo University Independent Studies Program, Ontario, Canada, are two such examples that are close to the description (although not completely, because they focus on projects and not projects with business plan attached).