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by seehafer 4996 days ago
Posts like this always essentially boil down to one statement:

"The startup (in the pg sense of the term) lifestyle is not for me."

And that's ok. For most people, making a dent in the universe is not an existential need.

3 comments

I always forget the name of that startup where Torvalds wrote Linux ... he couldn't have made a dent without a startup, could he?
But the same reasoning applies. What was Torvald's "expected value" at the time he wrote Linux? Probably -XXXXX$ if we factor in opportunity cost.
you don't have to have a startup to make a dent, but if you make your goal "work 30 hours a week with a nice salary" to doubt you will achieve anything close to creating Linux
OR, most people realize that building a wildly successful photo app / car sharing service / daily deal site does not 'make a dent in the universe.'
"wildly successful" is usually a good proxy for "make a dent in the universe" (assuming he/she didn't literally mean physically denting the universe).
99.9999% of startups are not denting anything, or really even trying to.
I'd agree that most aren't, but that doesn't mean they're not trying to (laboring under mistaken assumptions and the like)

This also depends on what making a "dent in the universe" means to you.

Personally I use Steve Jobs' definition. And yes some may "think" they are.