One thing that bothers me with advices like this is the overall negativity. Yes, we all know creating a profitable startup isn't easy, but hearing over and over again "You will fail many times", "Its get harder not easier" and so on is really demotivating. Seriously, are there no entrepreneur stories that had a great idea from the beginning, executed them smoothly without any outside financing and achieved success? And by success I mean satisfying income that allows them to work full-time on their startup and live on a decent level. Not everyone wants to build The Next Great Thing, acquire hundreds of thousands users, generate mutli-million revenue and so on.
Seriously, are there no entrepreneur stories that had a great idea from the beginning, executed them smoothly without any outside financing and achieved success?
Of course there are, but what use is telling people that they can execute smoothly and be successful (without outside funding) and everything will be great when this isn't how it works for the majority of people. I understand that being told that its hard and you will fail is demotivating, but telling people otherwise isn't going to help them because it is hard and most people will fail many times before they become successful. Maybe it should be seen as a perseverance test - if you can still stay motivated after being told these demotivational things, then its an indicator that you might just have what you need to persevere and make it.
The 90% of startups failing thing is true - I see it all around me, I even experienced it myself. You may think it doesn't apply to you (as I did in my previous startup), but chances are it does. I think its best to prepare people for this reality and help them persevere and learn and become stronger. Even if its demotivating...
In my view, being told "it get's harder" and "you will fail" etc is the opposite of demotivating. When things are going great, what use is motivation anyway?
When things are tough is when you need motivation. And the type of motivation you need is motivation to be stoic. That's exactly what this type of advice is.
It would be a very tough world for founders if "great ideas", smoothly executed, led to living at a decent level. Startups make sense because of the chance of a 10000x outcome. Otherwise, it's a losing proposition to begin with, there are much much better ways of living at a "decent level".
Of course that's only the financial part of it. There are other, better reasons to do a startup.
I don't think this is intended as negativity, even if it comes across that way from the outside. I'm the founder of a company that meets the criteria you've outlined: we're bootstrapped, profitable, and I pay myself enough to live on a decent level.
Before we hit profitability, I thought "If only we can hit profitability, it will be smooth sailing - all our problems will go away." It's anything but. Two things do change: the type of problem changes (often to bigger, scarier problems), and you start facing more and more problems you can't talk about publicly.
I wish I had heard other entrepreneurs say "It gets harder not easier" when I was in some of my darker times. It would have raised my spirits to know that I wasn't alone in feeling like things kept getting harder when I thought they should keep getting easier.
Starting companies is very hard. Even overnight success stories have had many dark hours. If you're going to YC and asking for outside money from people looking for home runs, by definition you are going to have push very very hard.
If you want stories about small businesses that don't require outside funding, the articles about the YC experience probably aren't for you. (Nothing is wrong with small self funded businesses, it's just a different genre)
