"I don’t care if you succeed or fail, if you are Bill Gates or an unknown entrepreneur who gave everything to make it work but didn’t manage to pull through. The important distinction is whether you risked everything, put your life on the line, made commitments to investors, employees, customers and friends, and tried – against all the forces in the world that try to keep new ideas down – to make something new."
Frankly, I don't care if Chris Dixon cares. I've got a 'hunch' he probably wouldn't care if I care.
"The important distinction" in his mind is being 'a founder'. Plenty of early-stage employees "risk everything", "put their life on the line", "make commitments to investors, fellow employees, friends and family" and try against all the forces in the world to make something new. It's just that as 'employees' they didn't 'found' it, which seems to be the distinction he's drawing. In certain circles, a 'founder' is actually risking less, because they're the ones out there pressing the flesh, networking, and being in the public eye.
Even if that project fails, they've had months/years of networking with the movers and shakers in their industry, while the other nameless schmucks toiled away in relative obscurity to get absolutely 0. "Fail fast" is a mantra that would be respected enough by many in startup circles to give that founder a second, third, fourth chance at more funding or other opportunities. The opportunities are much less open for someone who's bounced between startups, chasing the dream from founder to founder, but never worked anywhere with any real cachet ("sr lead developer on team of 2 on bijengo.com"). They'll hurt their career later when they go back to 'job' (because funding keeps drying up and they can't live off credit cards forever), and much of the corporate world looks down on job hopping (that's a whole other story).
I've got loads of respect for the doers out there - people who make things happen - regardless of whether they're the 'founder' or just one of the initial core team that made the founders' vision a reality.
EDIT: Argh - the more I think about that post, the more miffed I get. Who the hell works for this guy? Why would you want to work for someone who - by their very public postings and pronouncements - holds the entirety of your chosen life path in contempt? You can say I'm reading too much in to it, but "the important distinction" part of that post - just over the top. How about, "the important distinction" being whether you gave life your all, and used whatever talents you have to create the best possible life for yourself and those around you, "founder status" be damned? hunch.com could not succeed with 50 "founders" running around making pronouncements - any successful company requires the very types of people Chris seems to look down on.
WAY too preachy of a post, and it would make me extremely wary of ever wanting to do business with him. But I'm sure this sort of post rallies the faithful who may be honored to spend $1000 to sit with him at a conference or charity lunch. :)
Back to 'working for myself' now. :)
"As a leader, you should nuture your first few followers
as equals, so it's about the movement, not you.
Leadership is overglorified - it is really the first
follower who transforms the lone nut into a leader."
'The important distinction is whether you risked everything, put your life on the line' -- CDixon
Really? I think you might be confusing "lifestyle" with "life" - soldiers, police officers, fire fighters... They put their _lives_ on the line. Until there's gunfire in the boardroom or the need to run through a burning building to plug in a server? You don't have any idea what putting your life on the line means if you think it fits in with being a startup guy.
Putting your life on the line means risking you life - last I checked, not a lot of "oops sorry Bob - the market took a wrong turn and it killed us... So here's your poison pill, hare kiri knife, gun with just one bullet... We know you'll do the right thing."
I've been the kid of the successful start up parents - even when they were off with new partners. It's no noble, heroic, the-music-swells-at-the-end scene where the kids clambour around the conquering parent saying "Yes! Yes! Who cares if you missed every school play I was ever in! You built a company from the ground up and won!"
No, actually, your kids will have the dual issue of hating that they never had you around and have sworn never to do that to their own kids along with this knowledge that the only way you'll approve of them is if the do the same thing to their kids.
Some day we'll hit that paradigm where success doesn't require the sacrifice of you family - but apparently not today.
If you're talking about software engineers, I don't think there's much risk there other than opportunity cost. When a company folds, other startups generally swarm pretty quickly to snatch up the team.
Chris is absolutely right that there are two types of people in the world, but isn't necessarily saying there aren't THREE types of people in the world. Or a whole spectrum. But his point stands-- a founder suffers through everything this post describes PLUS working for free/debt for months.
Let's get one part of the post out of the way first. The OP talks about missing family events for the company. Not wise, but understandable. I've taken similar decisions very early in my life and wouldn't do it again whether as a founder or employee. Not wise, but understandable. That aside, what the OP experienced as an early employee was likely the tip of the iceberg that the founders experienced on other instances.
The OP mentions not getting paychecks for some stretches. I applaud him for doing that but what he didn't experience was that 6 months prior, the founder probably took out a 2nd mortgage to keep up with everything and that they might be taking no salary or deferring it. What they didn't experience was the haunting thought of telling the employee that they might not be able to make payroll or worse, playing out the current situation 6-12 months out and seeing that you (the founder) might have to do the most painful part of your role and tell them that you can't afford to keep them.
I've know friends who've taken out that 2nd mortgage and truly given their all. When I started, I didn't own a home so I had the fortune of not having that option. However, I've had to do that last part the first year that I got in business. It hurts like hell even till today, 8 years later. The stress that you face, day in and day out... it's bad. Now I don't discount the work or the sacrifices that my initial employee made. He'll always have a brother in me and he has my greatest appreciation & respect. But it's just not the same.
I think that's what Dixon was saying. I'm curious though what prompted his train of thought.
That is what pissed me off. I was not a founder. I did not have a house and I was not going to take any more CC debt. But I put everything else I had on the line. And Chris is telling me that unless I founded a company everything I gave up meant nothing. Even founders draw the line some where right. After that second mortgage? Similarly I had my line drawn some where too but it was pretty deep.
Being an early stage employee takes guts, it's respected and often they are going play a ginormous role in the success or failure of the company.
But's not the same as being a founder. There is nothing to get bent out of shape about. It's just different.
Similar to how the President bares the ultimate responsibility and stress even though the brave soliders in the field and the generals that command them pay the ultimate price at times.
Here in Australia, particularly, you can't swing a cat without hitting a half-dozen rich kids or mid-life Accenture employees looking to jazz up their comfortable lives who have founded tiny, pointless companies that will wander around for a while then comfortably expire.
This makes them a 'founder', and thus somehow in a different category to employee #5 or #3 or whatever of Google, Facebook or Microsoft. Big. Fucking. Deal.
The fact is, the world needs both. Early stage employees may not bear the risk, but they'll certainly bear much of the responsibility. Without smart, hard working, and extremely dedicated team members the day-to-day stress of building a company would kill me. That I can offload some of that stress to a unique set of people that make up my team... is huge.
I think they're both right. Maybe there are three types of people in the world? Founders, doers, and all the rest?
That nails it.
But OP used the same lens as Dixon. And if we're going to settle with that lens, well, Dixon is right – it's tough to beat the guys who put their nuts on the line while everyone calls them crazy. No matter how crazy their followers (that is, employees) end up being.
I say we all agree that the world is too interesting and nuanced to divide people up by a single bit.
============
You wrote a post saying there are “two kinds of people in the world” putting founders in a different plane than everyone else including the early employees who put their lives on the line to work with you.
There are more than two types of people. And when you say that you undervalue all the early employees at a company who are putting their careers on the line working for a no name company that may fail any day. It undervalues every engineering manager who went without a pay check the last two months but has to hustle to hire an employee to get product out the door on time. It undervalues every early employee who lived in the office all week to get your product out the door. It undervalues every business dev guy who is being asked “who do you work for again?” and puts on a smile to sell your product. it undervalues every engineering manager who is working their ass off to hire good people when the top companies are hiring like crazy.
I didnt found a company but I wanted to make the one I joined as an early employee succeed at all cost. And I gave it 8 years of my life. I got a pay check but I gave it much much more than I got paid for.
* I skipped both my brother’s and my sister’s weddings in India.
* I visited my dad who had a stroke once in 5 years as I was working non-stop.
* I did long distance for 5 of the 8 years I dated/married to my wife.
* I travelled non stop for 2 of the 3 years we lived in the same apt.
* I went without a pay check for months at a stretch to keep the company going when times got tough and I hustled to get the company back on track.
So Chris please dont tell me that only Founders matter.
Too many of the VC asset class problems today resemble the need to make assumptions not borne out by experience with some those VCs never having had their own decision making forged under real conditions.
I can now understand why older VCs sometimes give Mr Dixon the yelling treatment.