In What I Did this Summer, Paul Graham describes how hard the young entrepreneurs worked at his Summer Founders Program:
People this age are commonly seen as lazy. I think in some cases it’s not so much that they lack the appetite for work, but that the work they’re offered is unappetizing.The experience of the SFP suggests that if you let motivated people do real work, they work hard, whatever their age. As one of the founders said ‘I’d read that starting a startup consumed your life, but I had no idea what that meant until I did it.’
I’d feel guilty if I were a boss making people work this hard. But we’re not these people’s bosses. They’re working on their own projects. And what makes them work is not us but their competitors. Like good athletes, they don’t work hard because the coach yells at them, but because they want to win.
We have less power than bosses, and yet the founders work harder than employees. It seems like a win for everyone. The only catch is that we get on average only about 5-7% of the upside, while an employer gets nearly all of it. (We’re counting on it being 5-7% of a much larger number.)
Paul Graham strongly believes in the agility and speed of small entrepreneurial firms:
Here’s a handy rule for startups: competitors are rarely as dangerous as they seem. Most will self-destruct before you can destroy them. And it certainly doesn’t matter how many of them there are, any more than it matters to the winner of a marathon how many runners are behind him.“It’s a crowded market,” I remember one founder saying worriedly.
“Are you the current leader?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Is anyone able to develop software faster than you?”
“Probably not.”
“Well, if you’re ahead now, and you’re the fastest, then you’ll stay ahead. What difference does it make how many others there are?”