[anamax]

> I have a ~$300k/30 mortgage, and I'm not paying less than I would for a 1 bedroom apartment in San Jose.

That may be true, but we agree that you could pay less.

"reasonable comp package" is meaningless. There's market and there's desired, but we're talking about what a founder could live on in SV.

Many people can live on something just north of what a grad student lives on. Some can't.

The former have more options than the latter. Most people can arrange to not have car payments. Some can share expenses with a partner.

Some people may choose to maintain a $100k lifestyle instead of founding a company because the latter would require them to live on $3-40k. (I lived on less while I was unemployed.) Others won't.

My point is that it's doable and I don't think that it's a huge sacrifice. Other people will disagree. As a result, some of them won't be founders. That's okay as long as they understand the consequences of their choice and that it is a choice.

BTW - SJ's $86k/$96k median household income is for households. Most SJ households are dual earner and they're not renting two one bedroom apartments.

[tptacek]

Andy, what I'm objecting to is the binary notion of living an absurdly pared down lifestyle versus starting a company. It's not a tradeoff. Apparently, it's not even currently a tradeoff if you want to take venture capital (taking VC improved my prior fulltime salary by about $40k the one time a company I founded raised it, but that was during silly season)... but I know it's not a tradeoff if you can sell.

I'm not crazy famous guy like Joshua. We bootstrapped 5 years ago. Sorry, dude, I never had to eat ramen. Or, look at Patrick. He's not living on ramen either. He flies back and forth from Nagoya to Chicago on a semiregular basis. He just launched a product. How many hours do you think he worked this week? I betcha it isn't 40. And this is his launch week.

I'm going to go way out on a limb: the $50k salary bit is just macho BS. Have at me, Andy, I can take it.

[anamax]

> Andy, what I'm objecting to is the binary notion of living an absurdly pared down lifestyle versus starting a company. It's not a tradeoff.

In some cases, that is the decision that folks have to make. In others, it isn't.

It depends on lots of things, including, but not limited to what the funders are willing to do and the founders' resources.

More power to the folks for whom this isn't an issue. I think that other folks shouldn't make the decision thinking that you can't live on less than $50k in SV. I'm not saying that anyone should make that decision, I'm just pointing out that it's an option for a lot of folks who might think otherwise.