> I also didn't quite follow your interpretation, why does avoiding working 40 hours a week lead to spending more man hours to pursue an opportunity?
Disclaimer: my interpretation is in the context of the SV mantra under discussion, I have no horse in this race.
Working 80hours/week involves making a lot of sacrifices with respect to family, friends and (often overlooked) one’s health, so the people who do so think of the (outsized) reward at the end to drive their work ethic that is unsustainable for most people over the long term.
Also, there is only so much code one founder can write, ditto for sales, which is why hiring more people is a sensible strategy.
I think the mental test could have been framed better using the IMHO far more intuitive framing used by Don Dodge in his 2008 article about how to assess a fresh batch of YC startups.
Is your product a vitamin (nice to have) or a pain killer (a must have to improve quality of life)?
> Is the only reason to create a startup to experience exponential growth and get really rich and have your own stock symbol?
The answer is yes, if your working definition of entrepreneurship agrees with the one used by Lori Greiner: ‘Entrepreneurs are the only people who will work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week [like everyone else]’.
People who believe in putting in twice the effort to reap exponential growth rather than (the less exciting) organic growth do so under the assumption that they can compress time.
For tasks that are amenable to time compression like running a startup, the only reliable way to compress time is to increase the number of man hours spent tackling the (perceived) opportunity, which of course means hiring people as fast as your war chest permits.
And because the size of your war chest determines the number of people you can hire per week or per month to allow you attain exponential growth, it is no surprise that a lot of founders seek out VC funding.
The person you replied to tried to highlight why that particular framing a bad metric to highlight in an OSS project.
People respond better to something like:
this repo needs $500/mo to achieve X;
$1000/mo to achieve Y and;
$2000/mo to achieve Z. We have received $200 in funding for this month."
rather than the example given above:
"this repo receives $500 per month"
The first framing emphasizes your needs, the second framing emphasizes your current situation. The first is better because it gives any potential donor actionable information to decide whether you need a donation or not, and more importantly, how much impact their donation will make if they choose to donate.
A donor can make an out-sized impact on a project with a stretch goal of "$2000/mo to achieve Z" that has only received $200 in donor funds by providing the $1800 balance for instance.
Thanks for adding your perspective to the discussion though I'd argue that your experience might not have been representative of the larger population.
Honest question: if Microsoft didn't bundle IE and the user hadn't received a copy of those ubiquitous AOL CD-ROMs which came in the mail/magazines (and sometimes carried the Netscape Navigator installer), how is the user expected to consume content on the web without a web browser?
Surely, you'll at least need a decent web browser to get online to download a different browser of your choice, no?
I’ve seen Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems book recommended here a few times before, but your review really pulled the trigger for me, so thanks!