Comments on The Rational Entrepreneur: Request for Feedback: scaling up to a larger found...

@John is your programmer friend heads-down on prog...

2009-11-17T21:41:36.305-08:00

@John is your programmer friend heads-down on programming all the time? If so, I wonder if varying tasks more and having an explicit strategy for reducing mental fatigue would help (for example, spending more time talking with users). Of course, if his main goal is to be happy, he may very well be pursuing the right strategy anyway in terms of hours worked.

I'm not particularly keen on the prospect of w...

2009-11-17T21:08:38.149-08:00

I'm not particularly keen on the prospect of working 70 hours a week; I suspect I would run out of juice some time before that, and have to pretend to work to maintain my stake in the startup. One programmer I know who is fairly productive (gets paid $180K/yr) says that he actually gets sharply diminishing returns when he works more than 36 hours a week.

I guess I might somehow be tempted to work on a startup like the one you describe if I thought I'd end up significantly richer, but I think I'd do much better psychologically working with a few friends I trusted thoroughly, operating on a consensus basis.

I think more than 3 founders is crazy for most sof...

2009-11-17T19:24:48.740-08:00

I think more than 3 founders is crazy for most software startups. I haven't seen that many software teams of senior people produce really coherent good code when scaled much larger than three or four senior members. Six founders is a lot of chiefs. Do you need, say, your entire executive staff on board as founders to start out?

And the attitude toward manager as authoritarian is truly off-putting in a start-up. Simply making decisions quickly does not mean making them well. Shipping software without consensus of senior people or even them necessarily feeling well heard or consulted (the authoritarian part) is a formula for disaster.

Random screenshots don't mean a damn thing to many types of early development. Assuming that everyone does their best work or that you want them to work at less than their best for 70 hours is insane. A start up should be concerned with quality, not quantity.

And what is this about dictating founder's personal habits? Are you aware of how much of Silicon Valley resulted from the effort of techno-hippies? You can stuff your idea of how founders should work. I would never ever work in this kind of BS setup and certainly not when taking on the major challenge of being a founder.

At this point I don't see what is "rational" about your comments.