The founder's dilemmas

What Hacker News says

1. komali2Mar 2024
   > I won't read any book recommended by people like you, sorry.

   Great, so I can basically stunlock you from reading any author by just mentioning them? In that case, I highly recommend you read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, Zero to One by Peter Thiel, Founder's Dilemmas by Noam Wasserman....

   Seriously, what kind of statement is that, you think you so fundamentally disagree with my values that you will purposefully echo-chamber yourself from anything even seemingly aligned with me? Do you have any idea who Hannah Arendt even is? She's an absurdly well respected Jewish philosopher that fled Nazi Germany by the skin of her teeth. She is frequently cited.

   You just did the equivalent of "well some gross lefty recommended I read Sun Tzu's Art of War, I dunno who this Sun Tzu guy is but I don't trust him if he gets recommended by people like THAT!"

   I'm honestly flabbergasted at your comment. You're basically proving that speech alone isn't enough, if people like you will put your fingers in your ears and say "la la la, I can't hear you!" Between the two of us, apparently only one is afraid of rigorously challenging their viewpoints!

   Seriously, the irony could kill me. She's famous for her covering of the Eichmann trial, a nazi bureaucrat tried for crimes against humanity. She noted that he wasn't a monster, just a person whose morality was clouded by a devotion to bureaucracy and systems. If it's a process, it must be right. Hence "the banality of evil," a term she coined.

   > But yes I do believe in some processes, you can host an event on the campus as well to tell everyone how he is wrong.

   And his "supporters" (he has few to none) can organize a counter-protest. What's wrong with that? What inherent authority does he have? His message is all he can offer, and it's up to people to challenge it or support it. It's the 2000s, it's not like we can't possibly know what he has to say unless a college gives him a podium. Hell, he can soapbox it in the park if he wants.

   > If you were protesting in the hallway outside trying to convince people of your opinion, that is just fine but don't prohibit other people from speaking their minds.

   Have you ever actually seen a protest against a speaker? 99% of the time, it involves standing up, shouting your piece, and then being escorted out. Sometimes people shout things back. Oh well, what's the big deal? I find the idea of sitting quietly while someone says something stupid through a microphone, then signing up to give my own talk in 3 months so I can say my own stupid replies through the same microphone, absurd. No human society can survive with that level of bureaucracy throttling the free flow of ideas.

   In my experience, the only people that fear free exchange of ideas are people whose ideas depend on deeply entrenched systems to enforce their ideology. Their ideas simply don't withstand fluid scrutiny.

   Show morethread
2. romanhnJan 2023
   Based on what you wrote, it doesn't sound like you have confidence in your potential cofounder or the value they might bring to the table. I think this partnership is not likely to work out - not because of the CEO's deficiencies (however real they might be), but because you're starting out a very critical relationship with an adversarial attitude.

   Secondly, while a CTO should indeed be very technically involved at the early stages, it is a business role at the end of the day. Your goal is to build a healthy business, not code up the cleanest architecture or deliver the most beautiful product (though you'll probably need to do these as well). As a cofounder, you will be dealing with customers, with risk mitigation, with all sorts of things that are only tangentially related to technology. This attitude of "value comes from software" is something I see often from engineers, who miss the fact that code is a means to an end. There is a lot more to a successful business than writing code. To answer your question, I do think that you're likely to encounter friction with other senior/executive leadership as long as that is your worldview.

   Might be worth reading The Founder's Dilemmas by Noam Wasserman. He covers the topic of cofounding with others, and also talks about optimizing for control vs money (spoiler, if you go for the former, you will likely have a lot less of the latter).

   Show morethread
3. gervwykJul 2020
   Also, Measure what matters The Founder’s Dilemmas
   thread
4. guiambrosSep 2019
   In order of personal preference:

   1) The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, by Randall Stross

   2) The Founder's Dilemmas, by Noam Wasserman

   3) The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz

   4) Zero to One: Notes on Startups, by Peter Thiel, Blake Masters

   5) Venture Deals, by Brad Feld, Jason Mendelson (I haven't read, but heard good things about it)

   ps: title is missing "ASK HN".

   Show morethread
5. MichaelvdHAug 2018
   The Founder's Dilemmas, Venture Deals, Startup CEO
   thread
6. rgbrennerJul 2018
   IIRC there's a whole chapter on this in The Founder's Dilemmas... good book if you want an overview of the various trade offs in starting a company.
   thread