[matrix]

While the author does quote the very low odds of success, I think he does readers a disservice by minimizing that risk. Very few people have the right disposition, the right partners, the right idea, and the right skill set to launch a startup. Being a freshly minted PhD doesn't change that. Failing at a startup sucks, and sucks really hard. But of course, its not in a VC's interest to tell you the pain that comes with a startup.

Better advice: if you want to do a startups, get some experience, find some good partners, test out ideas in your own time, and when you have enough runway and something that looks solid, only THEN make the leap.

[__mbm__]

> Failing at a startup sucks

This. I have a PhD and a failed startup. It felt real bad, and I didn't get that far with it (9 months before calling it quits). Creating a successful startup requires significantly more energy and stress than most science jobs, even for pre-tenure professors.

It requires different skills than science. Few introverts will succeed at founding a company, for example. Moreover, you have to produce actionable results quickly, and you have very different success metrics.

I'm one degree of separation from a PhD startup founder that literally killed himself as his startup imploded, when the company was 5(?) years old. Severe depression, loss of all semblance of a life... these are standard in the world of startup founders. The risk that you destroy your life is real.

[pb]

Many of the most successful founders are introverts. Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Bill Gates, none of them are very extroverted, but they've started some of the most valuable companies in the world.

Of course if you are so introverted that you are unable to make eye contact or talk to people it will be a problem, but most of us are not that extreme.

[brightball]

I hear things like this about Zuckerberg all the time and he did one singular thing that made Facebook take off more than all of the other social networks that were out there at the time (Classmates, High School Alumni, My Space, etc).

He made it exclusive. You had to have a .edu address to sign up so the people ON the network were initially only your peer group. You couldn't get in without that .edu address and therefore you WANTED to get in if you couldn't.

This created a steady user base that didn't have to be EVERYBODY (as long as people at your school were on you didn't care) and a natural spam filter as there were controls on access to those email addresses. Once those people graduated from college they got to stay on the site.

Zuckerberg succeeded specifically because of the exclusivity that Facebook grew from during a time where every other service was just a spam mine.

[encoderer]

You don't give him enough credit. From an engineering pov alone, Friendster, myspace and twitter were often down or terribly slow.

Also, the foresight to launch a platform.

Launching news feed despite howling criticism.

Taking the company public with little investor surplus, taking heat on CNBC for a year until the market caught up to what they were doing.

Not putting ads on the site in numbers that turned off users but Having enough to run profitably from an early era

Great hiring.

Edit: Also, I think most people misunderstand the primary benefit of school-by-school rollout. By the time people without .edu addresses wanted into Facebook it was already successful. Their growth plan was premised that if you can get 50% of the people in a network to use something, the other 50% (or close to it) will pile on. You can't do that everywhere all at once across the country, let alone the world. The cliche goes... How do you eat a whale? Bite by bite.

[amyjess]

Let's add: clean, simple theme and layout that doesn't allow users to customize how other people see their page.

MySpace was a trainwreck. The default layout was horrendous, and each user had their own themes, many of which were unreadable (I remember having to select text just to read it).

[noobermin]

Not that they didn't want it, Myspace glits moved onto tumblr, although it is "cleaner" there I suppose.

[skewart]

You're absolutely right. Though I'd argue the real value in that exclusivity was not only exclusivity itself making people want to join (though I'm sure that was part of it), but also in enabling a culture of honesty about names, interests, and life. That honesty was only possible at the time through exclusivity. When FB started there was a long-standing cliche about social interaction on the internet: everyone lied about or exaggerated who they were. Facebook encouraged people to use their real name and share real information. Of course that honesty made it all the more fascinating to look at - you got to see who people really were. The honesty was only possible because it was a small network of more or less peers with a high level of trust.

[amyjess]

> He made it exclusive. You had to have a .edu address to sign up so the people ON the network were initially only your peer group. You couldn't get in without that .edu address and therefore you WANTED to get in if you couldn't.

Don't forget that each college's network was segregated from each other's.

You couldn't view the full profiles of people at other schools unless you were friends with them, but by default, you could view the full profiles of everyone else at your school (you could set your profile to friends-only, but most people didn't back then). I know that I didn't care that everyone else on my network could see my home address and my phone number on my profile, because I knew that they were all classmates (or professors, but very few of them were on Facebook). After I graduated and networks became less prominent, I locked down my profile to friends-only.

Groups were restricted to single schools (and Pages didn't exist): this kept group sizes small and made them feel cozier. Pretty much every school had a group for most fandoms, and it was a big deal if you were able to be the person who got to create your school's group for your favorite subject. There were a number of groups that were basically memes; I forgot what they all were, but no real discussion happened in the group, and their only value was to be listed on your profile. They were classified as "Facebook Classics", and what would happen was that the meme would take off at one school, then the members' friends at other schools would notice them on their profiles and create versions at their schools, and so on. Again, there was some prestige in being the first person to spread the meme to your school.

And there were some college-specific things on your profile, too. There were fields for your class schedule, and you had a separate "mailbox" field for colleges that had dorms.

[hvidgaard]

Tell me again how exclusivity helped Google+ take off.

What he did right, was providing something that no other service did.

[collyw]

Funny that, because I was signed up to two or three other services at the time that seemed to be doing the same thing when Facebook appeared on my radar. Facebook seemed to gain a larger share of my friends which had a snowballing effect.

[brightball]

How was Google+ exclusive?

[jandrese]

When it first started out you needed an invitation. Gmail had the same thing. Google does this fairly often to prevent still developing services from being crushed by an onslaught of signups.

G+ never gained traction because it was always the nerdier also-ran to Facebook. Everyone was already on Facebook and G+ didn't really offer anything compelling to make people want to switch. It had (has?) somewhat better segregation of your friends but keeping track of all of that is too much hassle for most people and doesn't really buy them much. Trying to decide if only your family would appreciate this witty cartoon or if you can also include your work colleagues is not something people want to do on every post.

[elmar]

it confirms the strategy to make happy a small group of users and them try to scale.

[cbhl]

This eventually became a liability for Mark Zuckerberg; some of his earliest TV interviews went really, really badly. IIRC, Zuck hired a public speaking instructor, had Jesse Eisenberg open various internal and external speaking events for him (such as the keynote for F8 around this time), started having lunches with employees to practice talking to them in Chinese, etc.

[kornish]

Sorry to nit; it was actually Andy Samberg from The Lonely Island who opened F8, which was actually hilarious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_vz6Me_TIY. Jesse Eisenberg played Zuck in The Social Network.

[beachy]

Introverts often perform brilliantly when pitching or persuading. Being out in front of others is not their relaxing place, so they focus, pour their energy into it and succeed at it.

Then they withdraw to some solitude to recharge.

[Ma8ee]

Or they panic, or blank out, or more likely, find a way not to be in front of others in the first place.

[ssharp]

I think with all the real and pop science done the past few years on introversion and it's subsequent rise in awareness, far too many people conflate social anxiety and introversion. They may be related but they're not the same thing.

[gohrt]

Why do you think they are not extroverted? Bill Gates was a famously in-your-face person when dealing with employees, partners, and competitors.

[jomamaxx]

'Introversion' and 'Extroversion' are basically defined as where you derive your energy from, to put it crudely.

If you like to be alone with your thoughts, and feel 'exhausted' after interacting with people - you're an introvert.

If you like to always be around others, and get 'charged' from it, and don't like being along - you're an extrovert.

Personally - I have no problem being around people, no problem giving public talks - but I prefer solitude and contemplation to being around crowds.

Introverts I think are more direct and less socially attuned than extroverts, who are very high in EI usually. Salespeople know how to handle people and would never yell and scream at anyone - ever - in any situation - they're personality won't allow it - because 'yelling' is burning massive amounts of 'social capital'. It's the opposite of being 'popular'.

As far as 'public speaking' - I think both could be equally good because it's not really a 'social' thing per sey. It's not 'interaction'. Public speaking is interacting with an 'object' - the crowd.

My bet is that introverts are more direct in their demands - possibly being aggressive. An extrovert narcissist will stab you in the back politically without ever doing anything to make them dislike you or burn political points. I find extroverts will avoid direct confrontation as though it's an instinct - again it burns social capital.

I'll also bet 90%+ of HN readers tend introverted. Extroverts would see absolutely no value in commenting/discussing with people with whom they have no relationship.

Introverts are more likely to value 'ideas' - extroverts value 'relationships'.

Depending on what you are hustling - often - people will buy something or not mostly depending on how charismatic or 'likeable' the person hustling it is. 90% of business relationships are based more on the personalities than the underlying mechanics of the deal because most businesses really are commodities of sorts.

[lukeHeuer]

Being an extrovert or an introvert has nothing to do with shyness. You can certainly be introverted and not very shy. Bill Gates is a great example of that.

[fsloth]

Introvert vs. extrovert has more to do how much energy being with a crowd gives or takes, or do you prefer your own company over that of others if given the chance. Any social skill, unless natural, can be acquired.

[wolfgke]

> Any social skill, unless natural, can be acquired.

How?

[jomamaxx]

Wolf - you can be sociable. Trust me. Anyone can.

It simply takes practice.

Popular kids have been 'honing' their social skills literally since they were 4 years old. They have been paying attention to other people.

Notice how the sociable kids might have done more poorly in class, whereas the introverts maybe did better? The sociable kids are attuned to relationships. While your thoughts were on the math problem, theirs were on 'how xyz is not paying attention to me, and why'.

There are people you can hang out with. If you try to stay 'in the present' and actually practice paying attention to their thoughts and emotional signals, they will like you.

Unless you literally have autism, there's a 100% chance that you can be sociable. Also - take heart with the fact that most people find it difficult to interact with others. Want to know a secret: many extroverts, who are socially attuned, are actually quite nervous among others, always watching what they say, being deliberate with their actions. So don't feel alone. You're in the majority.

[xj9]

The same way all skills are acquired: practice.

[fsloth]

Ouch, that's a complex question. I can only say it can be done. Each has his or her own path - I can only tell my story on this matter. It might sound silly to anyone else but I'm still telling it here.

I'm past 30, grew up as a archetype semi-aspie geek kid with little interest in social matters, preferring books to social settings. My preference is to my own company, still, but I'm comfortable in social settings, I'm a fluent communicator and commended for my presentations when I give them out. I'm also blessed or cursed with a complexity that makes me look perpetually 15 years old - and I'm short. Yeah, goodbye professional credibility based on halo-of-appearance. The upside is I can introduce my two kids early in any conversation, thus signaling my actual age and status - which usually results in a sudden episode of massive cognitive dissonance to my amusement.

So, there are handicaps, and, there are social skills. The dynamics underlying social skills can actually be learned from books - but, like any craft, actually acquiring a functioning ability takes practice. For me, I would split matters under "social capability" to three categories: 1. Self-confidence and Dealing with anxiety 2. Individual interactions 3. Group dynamics.

1. Dealing with anxiety and acquiring self-confidence. For me this is first and foremost a physical activity consisting of a) good posture b) calm and friendly air and c) deep breathing for calming the nerves. A corollary to this is the functioning of mirroring in any social setting - you start to behave, as others percieve you to be [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirroring_(psychology)]. So, if you appear first as mousy, people treat you as mousy, making you feel more moysy. If you appear as confident and amicable, people treat you as confident and amicable, and you start to feel more confident and amicable.

I actually had to take a few months of personal trainer lessons to fix my posture and gain some physical fitness (I requested a program consisting of mostly of body weight exercises and I can't recommend them enough).

If you don't have a good physical posture, and don't have at least a minimal exercise routine, these will actually help a ton. I can give some references on materials if anyone likes.

On anxiety and introspection - zen meditation helps. "Sit down and shut up" by Brad Warner was a good, no-nonsense, introduction. No mystical crap.

2. For me the best resources have been interaction with colleagues and friends, Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people" and the courses http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/how-conversation-work... and http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/negotiating-the-best-.... The last is about self-confidence -as some interactions are confidence plays, it really, really helps a ton to be aware of the rules.

The hardest part for me, still bugging me, but the most important one as well: remembering people's names! This is absolutely the fundamental cornerstone of every interaction.

3. Group dynamics is a bit different. The simplest rule is: do what everyone else is doing. Go sit at the same table. If there is someone you don't know, introduce yourself. Here also comes the "how conversation works" great course into play. There are different kinds of conversations - learn what they are.

One of the secrets of human relationships that I only got recently that the relationships are things that are in peoples head's. There is no "single relationship" - each relationship is composed of the presentation of the interaction in the head of each participant. This means, that although you may feel awkward, the other person might feel the interaction is natural and pleasing. This is where mirroring, and keeping confident pose comes into play. If the interaction goes on for a long time, you start to mirror the other persons view of the relationships. But, there are still two copies of the relationship - in both of your heads.

So, I would suggest, step 1: air of confidence - good posture and smile. Wait for serendiptous things to happen. Make sure you are dressed neatly and so on - this is part of the mirroring dynamic.

Someone might feel "But that's not authentic me" - sorry - you can't change the humankind or basic psychology of those around you, you can only adjust and learn.

[fma]

I think they aren't extrovert because Bill Gates himself says he's an introvert.

http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/05/bill-gates-how-to-succe...

President Obama is a self proclaimed introvert, as is Warren Buffett.

Essentially, the two riches men in America and the leader of America are self proclaimed introverts.

[BinaryIdiot]

To be fair you cited a pretty tiny sample size; I'm not sure if anyone actually has compiled the appropriate statistics to prove whether or not introverted people have a harder time creating a successful company. Those could be the outliers. Or maybe not I'm not sure as I lack the data.

[maxxxxx]

Don't confuse introvert with shy. they are different things.

[jasoncchild]

>Many of the most successful founders are introverts. Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Bill Gates, none of them are very extroverted, but they've started some of the most valuable companies in the world.

And none of them were/are phds

[noobermin]

pg has a PhD but is not an introvert.

[jasoncchild]

I stand corrected :)

[leksak]

Out of the Fortune 500 companies I'd argue that most of their founders are not introverts, but some of them comes from money which helps.

Just because some introverts have seen success does not mean that all introverts starting a company will share in the same amount of success. It can, just as being an extrovert can, enable you or inhibit you.

[rl3]

>The risk that you destroy your life is real.

Especially so for PhD recipients. Unless they're from money, they've probably already spent their post-grad years living very modestly. Starting a startup just extends and amplifies that, which can be dangerous.

[vintermann]

> Few introverts will succeed at founding a company, for example.

This is comically obvious when you look at some successful startups... My brother joined one (not technically as a founder, but he left the same company as them to join as a day 1 employee). They occasionally post PR pictures of themselves. They all look ridiculously like successful, smiling, talented and dynamic people, the kind of people a VC probably likes to see. Except my brother, who looks totally like the bookish introvert that he is.

Well well, I figure smart VCs knew that they have good reasons to have that one guy around.

[meowface]

On the bright side, at least you didn't spend 3+ years on it like some people do before realizing their idea or model is fundamentally flawed.

That fear is one of a few reasons why I don't think I'll start a startup any time soon.

[alimw]

I'm sorry to hear about your friend-of-a-friend†, but it's crazy to suggest that's meaningful data in isolation. Most of us have known people, or know people who have known people, who have killed themselves; they come from all walks of life. († I suppose that's what you mean by one degree of separation?)

[michaelchisari]

the right disposition, the right partners, the right idea, and the right skill set

Or the social and economic safety net.

[leksak]

I agree, going after a professorship after getting a PhD is unlikely to cause you personal bankruptcy but creating a start-up might.

Also, if your product is similar to another you may get caught in costly legal battles but this is unlikely to occur as a scientist. It will most likely "just" tarnish your reputation.

While the monetary rewards of creating a successful company exceeds a good academic career it is, as the author points out, high risk.

I wouldn't call a high risk gamble that has possibly detrimental long-lasting effects over your life and your co-founders life "sensible". I'd call it a gamble, as that is what it is.

[drbojingle]

I don't disagree with you completely, but as a guy working for a start-up I would say that no matter if we find success or failure I'm going to personally walk away with good memories and a hell of an experience. There's more to it than success.

[monkmartinez]

How many times can you afford to be unsuccessful? I am not advocating an aversion to risk, mind you. I am simply asking the question. My guess is that it is deeply personal and has more to do with life goals than that of work/career goals.

[bdcravens]

So if you were faced with a nice fat exit, or could continue running the company with the day to day grind, would you continue to pick the journey over the destination?

[truth_sentinell]

You may want to look up Gary Vaynerchuck on youtube for that

[bdcravens]

I'm well aware of Gary's attitudes on the subject, but I wasn't looking for general thoughts, but what an individual thinks. In general, I've found that that those critical of the financial rewards typically sing a different tune once success becomes an option.