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People are ripping on the OP, but I think his advice is good. VC-istan is corporate life. Corporate life, for most people in most organizations, is depressing. All of it, whether it's a startup or some dead-end subordinate position at a Fortune 500, is pretty awful. The natural human tendency toward work has been perverted through subordination, inadequate rewards, wasted efforts, and capricious evaluation. The difference is that the former is often all-consuming, while the latter tends to be, although miserable, limited in scope. If you tend toward depression, you're more likely to have it flare up in a 90-hour VC-istan gig than a 40-hour corporate job. The problem isn't that business formation itself is detrimental, but that VC-istan is an ecosystem where (a) economic life dominates a person's existence, crowding out everything else, and (b) there's extreme volatility with no safety net. If you're a grunt, your startup might acqui-fail and dump you into a subordinate position that makes no sense, or you might get fired on day 364 with no severance and no equity because of the "cliff". If you're a founder, your investors hold all the cards and you're just there to do the legwork until you burn out and fall to pieces (and will then be replaced either with one of their friends, or another young, clueless, idiot). It's not startups that are the problem, though. It's unhealthy work environments. |