[loudandskittish]

Yeah, this is one of the things that drives me nuts about these "inspirational" stories where some millionaire/billionaire talks proudly about how their first business failed, their car was repo'd, bank foreclosed on them, etc... but I've never heard one talk about what they did between that and the successful business. Where did they sleep? How did they afford food?

[SoftTalker]

Varies but mostly you go get a job for a while.

[moralestapia]

The secret is that sometimes you just have to ... sigh ... work.

[jollofricepeas]

Of course.

We work jobs and do our thing on the side like most traditional American entrepreneurs do until their business gets off the ground.

Who the hell is bootstrapping businesses without a job besides rich kids?

1. Get a cheap apartment in a slightly sketchy neighborhood

2. Work 7-8 hours at work and every other waking hour on your business. Take meetings during lunch.

3. Focus to the point of cutting out sports, video games, bars and other frivolous shit until you’ve made progress. Don’t date if you can.

Discipline wins the race.

And when you fail; which you will.

Do it all over again until you find success.

[oxfordmale]

There is a parable I can't remember. The gist is as follows.

A man/woman has a nice life, a cheap apartment in an okay neighbourhood. Their 9-5 job isn't particularly exciting or well-paid; however, at the weekend, it allows them to enjoy sports, video games and other frivolous activities, such as dating and hanging out with their partner or children.

A stranger approaches them and says they make a much better life for themselves. He tells them they just need to get a cheap apartment in a sketchy neighbourhood, work all waking hours of the day, and give up any fun until they make it. They may fail five times until they succeed and may be declared bankrupt.

After listening, they ask what their life looks like after they make it. He answers it allows them to have an okay apartment in a more expensive neighbourhood, and they can enjoy sports, video games and other frivolous activities, such as dating and hanging out with their partner or children.

They smile at the stranger, and say "But I already have most of this right now". The stranger walks off wearily.

[jollofricepeas]

…And that is the difference my friend.

This is life.

Life is inequality.

Not everyone is meant to be an entrepreneur or has the desire to do what it takes to become one.

Trying to convince someone to become an entrepreneur is like trying to convince someone to become a professional athlete or musician.

You must sacrifice frivolity for excellence.

But excellence can always dabble in frivolity.

The choice is ours to make.

[oxfordmale]

It is a misconception you need to sacrifice frivolity for excellence.

[altdataseller]

The parable is about a fisher

[oxfordmale]

Do you happen to have an URL to the parable?

I was confusing it with a man sitting below an olive tree, maybe a variant of the fisher one.

[doetoe]

> Do it all over again until you find success.

For which you may have to be somewhat lucky

[berniedurfee]

Sounds like fun?

[dieselgate]

Indeed. I’m not an entrepreneur or anything but liken it a bit to having a good initial poker hand - you can win with one good card but it is helpful and gives one more options to have two good cards.

So in the context of bootstrapping a company it’s helpful to have a legit fallback (way to suck it up and find an OK job) when things don’t pan out.

Edit: maybe this is obvious for CS/software folks but the extracurricular work I’m involved with is not exactly tech related, though my day job is coding

[SamReidHughes]

> Where did they sleep?

Maybe at least one of their parents had a sofa.

The trick is to have parents who aren't homeless.

[starkparker]

Here's how I fare on that. Each checked box is something I have.

[X] "The trick is to have parents",

[ ] who are alive,

[ ] "who aren't homeless",

[ ] who have housing that is safe and functional,

[ ] who have room for you not already occupied by other family members in greater need,

[ ] who "had a sofa",

[ ] or if they're dead, at least left you with enough money as an equivalent

[klipt]

Who live nearby. If you're an immigrant and your parents live another continent, hard to live on their sofa and then get a new visa to come back.

[unactionintel]

I'm never sure what to do with this class of comment - it reminds me of guys who say they can't get a girlfriend because they're 5'8".

(Also, you forgot people whose parents are able-but-unwilling. This also sometimes makes some things harder than they would be, compared to, say, being given fistfulls of cash each weekend by your rich parents who have a sofa AND a bed.)

[bcrosby95]

Having a strong support group in your life is probably one of the most important things to success.

Few paths go straight from a to b without a misstep.

[dragonwriter]

> Having a strong support group in your life is probably one of the most important things to success.

This. “It's not what you know its who you know.” Though often the people who give that advice privately are the most invested in maintaining the illusion of meritocracy publicly.

[chasely]

This works a lot better if you have parents that live in Palo Alto or SF compared to Tulsa, OK.

To the original post, I generally agree. There are some fundamental lessons about business you can learn, and if you follow them, have a better chance of success. But the magnitude of that success largely comes down to luck. There's plenty of thought leaders out there that just happened to join the right company at the right time. Much of their success is "beta" rather than "alpha", but they are treated like they have unique insight to drive amazing outcomes.

[mock-possum]

right, also we don't like hearing stories about all the entrepreneurs who failed to find success, and slipped into impoverished obscurity. How many kids are sitting in the back seat of the car, lamenting "I could have been a contender" you know? You don't hang out with the ones who failed to keep their heads above water, because you're afraid they're going to drown you too.

[bboygravity]

They do talk about that.

Elon Musk cleaned out manure tanks for a while in Canada if I'm not mistaking. There are some interviews where he talks about this (and showering at the gym across the street and sleeping under a desk and having no money) in quite some detail.

[logisticpeach]

He also had substantially wealthy parents if I'm not mistaken. Same with Gates and others. This is the ultimate safety net.

It's easier to take risks when you have an out when it all goes really wrong. Doubt he'd still be cleaning manure today if he hadn't had a success...

[loudandskittish]

I'm reminded of the song Common People by Pulp:

"But still you'll never get it right/'Cause when you're laying in bed at night/Watching roaches climb the wall/If you called your dad he could stop it all."

[mock-possum]

This was basically Memnoch The Devil's [0] argument against the legitimacy of Jesus Christ's sacrifice - it didn't count, because he did it with full knowledge of his own immortality. Through crucifixion he suffered and died, but he never faced the existential dread that plagues humankind, and therefore giving up his own life was an inauthentic act.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memnoch_the_Devil

[the-smug-one]

The album in general holds up well, good stuff.

[bilqis]

He comes from emerald wealth in South Africa for christ sake. Maybe he cleaned manure, but not out of dire need

[bryanlarsen]

Given that the mine was worth 40,000 pounds and stopped producing in 1989 it wasn't exactly a great source of wealth.

[monocasa]

It's more that he came from such wealth that his family could acquire a nontrivial share in an emerald mine on what amounted to a whim.

> Standing with the cash in his hand, Errol was made another offer he couldn't refuse: Would he like to buy half an emerald mine for half of his new riches?

> "I said, 'Oh, all right'. So I became a half owner of the mine, and we got emeralds for the next six years."

https://www.news24.com/news24/bi-archive/how-elon-musks-fami...

[bryanlarsen]

Anybody who considers 80,000 pounds to be riches is not very wealthy.

[monocasa]

It's 80,000 pounds dropped on a whim, not that they simply had 80k total. That is wealthy.

[Swenrekcah]

Doesn’t he come from a South-African diamond family or something?

[lovecg]

If Wikipedia or Snopes are to be believed on the matter (and I really don’t know anymore), this is way overblown. Mines (emerald, not diamond btw) are cheaper than you think. If my dad buys half of a tiny mine in his retirement I’ll start walking around claiming I’m from a mine owning family!

The story of how he even got to own the mine sounds pretty wild:

“According to the story, in the mid-1980s, Errol and a copilot landed their plane near Lake Tanganyika in Zambia, where "a group of Italians" offered them 80,000 pounds in British currency in order to buy the plane.

Standing with the cash in his hand, Errol was made another offer he couldn't refuse: Would he like to buy half an emerald mine for half of his new riches?

"I said, 'Oh, all right'. So I became a half owner of the mine, and we got emeralds for the next six years."”

It proceeds to say he made about $400000 from the mine in total - hardly a billionaire villain level money.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-min...

I think the null hypothesis that Musk got lucky in the dotcom era is pretty reasonable, lots of people did. I don’t get all the conspiracy theories.

[dorkwood]

> It proceeds to say he made about $400000 from the mine in total - hardly a billionaire villain level money.

Just to clarify for anyone else wondering, that’s 400,000USD inflation adjusted for 2021. Converted to South African rand, it’s about 7.2 million.

To put that in context, the average home price in South Africa is about a million rand. So at most they would have been able to buy 7 properties. If they bought in an expensive area, they likely would have only been able to afford 4 or 5.

[dragonwriter]

> Converted to South African rand, it’s about 7.2 million.

> To put that in context, the average home price in South Africa is about a million rand. So at most they would have been able to buy 7 properties

That’s... not how averages work.

[dorkwood]

If a house costs a million rand, and you have 7 million, then you can buy 7 of them, right? What am I missing?

[michaelmrose]

His family was rich he is as self made as Trump.