Bit of an aside but I found it somewhat amusing that one example the author uses of Jim’s financial recklessness was getting into home brewing.
Home brewing is one of the cheaper hobbies available (though like all hobbies you can spend as much as you want). The only real requirements are a bucket and a pot.
Same with a $10k tree slicer, when the actually expensive alternatives that really get people in trouble are day trading, real estate, car collecting, divorce, and starting new businesses that fail.
it’s infinitely easier to become an alcoholic by buying alcohol at a grocery store. brewing is pretty much the least direct most delayed gratification way to get drunk. i guess it can be pretty cheap if you optimize for that but it sounds like jim made enough money and high flying friends it’s unlikely to be major factor.
I mostly stayed clear of the SV world while building and exiting my startup, but people like this came and went through my network constantly. They were always easy to pick out based on how much they glorified certain SV personalities and were desperate for their approval.
I don’t trust anyone who has the general, abstract goal of being a “founder”. If there’s no great idea to go with it, it just seems like vanity. And sure it does work out really well anyway sometimes, but it’s just something I can’t get behind aesthetically.
I think much of this comes down to wanting to be a type of person vs. wanting to do the actual thing.
It’s easy to be consumed by “I’m the wealthy San Francisco founder guy” and doing everything that lifestyle requires, including things that may not be good for you.
Founder culture definitely has fraternity vibes - people with no other discernable talent other than being above average looking and having connections with other similar people end up in positions they have no real idea how to do.
In other words, there are a lot of people "playing startup" in the valley - some of the VC money flows too easily and there is always going to be an ecosystem of people to try to put it to work.
Interesting. I am sure there are Jims outside of startup world too. There will be finance Jims and entertainment Jims.
Is having a couple of pets and a ridiculous table lifestyle creep. Maybe. I think of lifestyle creep more in terms of you are not saving any money at all.
I think that comment is more telling of what is expected of founders and engineers. At least from authors point of view.
No life allowed. Definitely don't reproduce. You work, and work so you can work more.
There are different kinds of founders in Silicon Valley now. Some are more like founders from the previous generation, like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Others are more like Elizabeth Holmes and Adam Neumann.
There are lots of earnest, sincere, and interesting founders. There are also lots who probably would've been happier on Wall Street.
You really have to believe your own narrative to do well as a startup founder, even when evidence is initially scant. This likely also has a tendency to slide into self-delusion.
This gets to a point my dad always made when I was neck deep in startups; so many of them felt unserious. People go to the most expensive west coast city, raise money, and then move to the next most expensive east coast city and open a second office. A lot of founders are clearly inexperienced, and to defend their inexperience, hire under experienced teams. It all sort of gets back to the root of the issue, which is that the hardest part is never the engineering, it’s networking and finding product market fit. Finding people who actually get up and do meaningful things is hard, and so Jim’s sneak in under the guise of being an outsider who understands a market and can make things happen.
>and to defend their inexperience, hire under experienced teams
It's also a bit of "I like you because you're like me" thing plus some "it's useful to me that you're like that".
I've seen plenty of startups where the CEO/CTO has been trained to under one specific stereotype (common ones these days are: the asian twink, the athlete, the nootropics guy, etc.), and then lots of their friends/hires happen to be of the same or adjacent/compatible stereotypes.
woah woah... a bartender becomes the head of engineering at a high flying start up? This isn't the .com. Did the bartender also go to MIT?
Drug fueled founder parties? Orgies? I've clearly been doing silicon valley wrong. Or right, depending on your perspective... but not this? I've seen board game fueled parties where maybe one or two people do drugs, but it remains very nerdy? And no sex parties. Mostly sausage parties?
... so yeah. Do people really know Jims? Because I just read posts about them.
Pretty sure my choosing to work for companies ran by stable sane people is responsible for the complete lack of drug fueled orgy invites on my calendar.
Actually the one drugs + stripper party I was invited to I left because it was so damn sad and pathetic I left after a few minutes. A bunch of geeks who got rich using money to do an impersonation of the crazy lifestyle reality TV taught them they were supposed to be having.
I left the party and went back to playing board games in another wing of the hotel.
We will look back at the easy access to amphetamines - especially for children - in a similar light to the opioid epidemic. To be fair, I think they are less harmful than many opiates, but they are still serious drugs and usage has ~doubled in the last 10 years [1]. Anecdotally, it feels so common/casual for people - adults and schoolchildren - to be taking adderall, vyvanse, concerta, etc. Over 20 million subscriptions in the US [1] means thats something like 5-10% of the adult population.
Or the only thing they do in life is come to the office and then mix life with work so effectively it’s a combination of hanging out with friends, eating free food, and working, but it all goes into the work bucket when claims are made about how much they work.
Nothing wrong with that per se, I basically did that in grad school. It’s completely different than actually grinding 100 hours a week though. Also tough to be a part of if you have a life or family outside work.
Yep, that's what I thought too. I contrast it with an accident and emergency consultant I know in the UK. He actually is grinding 70 hours a week and not compensated for it. He works long hours because there aren't enough staff to cover the reality of what's needed.
Bit of an aside but I found it somewhat amusing that one example the author uses of Jim’s financial recklessness was getting into home brewing.
Home brewing is one of the cheaper hobbies available (though like all hobbies you can spend as much as you want). The only real requirements are a bucket and a pot.
Same with a $10k tree slicer, when the actually expensive alternatives that really get people in trouble are day trading, real estate, car collecting, divorce, and starting new businesses that fail.
How much more likely does becoming a home brewer make you to develop alcoholism, especially for someone who sounds a bit predisposed like Jim?
it’s infinitely easier to become an alcoholic by buying alcohol at a grocery store. brewing is pretty much the least direct most delayed gratification way to get drunk. i guess it can be pretty cheap if you optimize for that but it sounds like jim made enough money and high flying friends it’s unlikely to be major factor.
Same with the cat and the dog.
Now general aviation on the other hand..
Home brewing is one of those hobbies that are only expensive if you poast hard enough
I mostly stayed clear of the SV world while building and exiting my startup, but people like this came and went through my network constantly. They were always easy to pick out based on how much they glorified certain SV personalities and were desperate for their approval.
I don’t trust anyone who has the general, abstract goal of being a “founder”. If there’s no great idea to go with it, it just seems like vanity. And sure it does work out really well anyway sometimes, but it’s just something I can’t get behind aesthetically.
that's 99.9 of them. the ones with the strong feelings towards ideas most of the time is already post-idea-du-jour narrative
I think much of this comes down to wanting to be a type of person vs. wanting to do the actual thing.
It’s easy to be consumed by “I’m the wealthy San Francisco founder guy” and doing everything that lifestyle requires, including things that may not be good for you.
Founder culture definitely has fraternity vibes - people with no other discernable talent other than being above average looking and having connections with other similar people end up in positions they have no real idea how to do.
In other words, there are a lot of people "playing startup" in the valley - some of the VC money flows too easily and there is always going to be an ecosystem of people to try to put it to work.
Interesting. I am sure there are Jims outside of startup world too. There will be finance Jims and entertainment Jims.
Is having a couple of pets and a ridiculous table lifestyle creep. Maybe. I think of lifestyle creep more in terms of you are not saving any money at all.
I think that comment is more telling of what is expected of founders and engineers. At least from authors point of view.
No life allowed. Definitely don't reproduce. You work, and work so you can work more.
There are different kinds of founders in Silicon Valley now. Some are more like founders from the previous generation, like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Others are more like Elizabeth Holmes and Adam Neumann.
There are lots of earnest, sincere, and interesting founders. There are also lots who probably would've been happier on Wall Street.
You really have to believe your own narrative to do well as a startup founder, even when evidence is initially scant. This likely also has a tendency to slide into self-delusion.
This gets to a point my dad always made when I was neck deep in startups; so many of them felt unserious. People go to the most expensive west coast city, raise money, and then move to the next most expensive east coast city and open a second office. A lot of founders are clearly inexperienced, and to defend their inexperience, hire under experienced teams. It all sort of gets back to the root of the issue, which is that the hardest part is never the engineering, it’s networking and finding product market fit. Finding people who actually get up and do meaningful things is hard, and so Jim’s sneak in under the guise of being an outsider who understands a market and can make things happen.
>and to defend their inexperience, hire under experienced teams
It's also a bit of "I like you because you're like me" thing plus some "it's useful to me that you're like that".
I've seen plenty of startups where the CEO/CTO has been trained to under one specific stereotype (common ones these days are: the asian twink, the athlete, the nootropics guy, etc.), and then lots of their friends/hires happen to be of the same or adjacent/compatible stereotypes.
I've met a few people like that, through what appears to be pure determination, they force success to give up what it has. Very impressive.
woah woah... a bartender becomes the head of engineering at a high flying start up? This isn't the .com. Did the bartender also go to MIT?
Drug fueled founder parties? Orgies? I've clearly been doing silicon valley wrong. Or right, depending on your perspective... but not this? I've seen board game fueled parties where maybe one or two people do drugs, but it remains very nerdy? And no sex parties. Mostly sausage parties?
... so yeah. Do people really know Jims? Because I just read posts about them.
Pretty sure my choosing to work for companies ran by stable sane people is responsible for the complete lack of drug fueled orgy invites on my calendar.
Actually the one drugs + stripper party I was invited to I left because it was so damn sad and pathetic I left after a few minutes. A bunch of geeks who got rich using money to do an impersonation of the crazy lifestyle reality TV taught them they were supposed to be having.
I left the party and went back to playing board games in another wing of the hotel.
> And no sex parties. Mostly sausage parties?
Clearly you weren't cool enough to get into the drug-fuelled OpenAI gay sex orgies.
> drug-fuelled OpenAI gay sex orgies
What?! Source?
Source: https://futurism.com/researcher-openai-sex-drug-parties
More prison gay than anything else. I'd go down on a man for a million dollar OpenAI offer even though I'm into women.
“presumably under the influence of some strong chemicals”
This is a bigger problem in Silicon Valley right now than anyone seems ready to acknowledge.
We will look back at the easy access to amphetamines - especially for children - in a similar light to the opioid epidemic. To be fair, I think they are less harmful than many opiates, but they are still serious drugs and usage has ~doubled in the last 10 years [1]. Anecdotally, it feels so common/casual for people - adults and schoolchildren - to be taking adderall, vyvanse, concerta, etc. Over 20 million subscriptions in the US [1] means thats something like 5-10% of the adult population.
1. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-communications/fda-upd...
I see the "we work 12 hrs a day 6 days a week" as a euphemism for "we take amphetamines".
Whenever you hear someone say they work 80- (or 100!) hour weeks, you should understand what they mean is they had a few crunch weeks once.
Or the only thing they do in life is come to the office and then mix life with work so effectively it’s a combination of hanging out with friends, eating free food, and working, but it all goes into the work bucket when claims are made about how much they work.
Nothing wrong with that per se, I basically did that in grad school. It’s completely different than actually grinding 100 hours a week though. Also tough to be a part of if you have a life or family outside work.
Yep, that's what I thought too. I contrast it with an accident and emergency consultant I know in the UK. He actually is grinding 70 hours a week and not compensated for it. He works long hours because there aren't enough staff to cover the reality of what's needed.
A lot of people also equate "face time in the office" to "real work getting done". Especially prevalent in finance circles.
Elon
Drugs are bad, mmkay