This falls under what I call "just" philosophies. They are quick summations ("A is just B") that can radically misrepresent the facts on the ground, and easily leave their adherents desperate for tools to solve a problem that they previously defined away with a hand wave.
In reality, it is the case that people often care deeply. Many of those hired by or paying for a business are in fact excited to be able to help write its story. Many aren't though, sure. Maybe they're just in it for superficial competitions or comparisons. But you'll never know who's who if you don't start an active dialogue and analysis process.
What's super helpful as an outcome of work in this area is to understand who cares about what, which incidentally helps you create a model for getting them to care more about what you care about.
If nobody really cares, we're all screwed. But that particular thought model only works on that darwinian level, the one that sadly operates as the kind of unspoken shadow of many who work in tech today. We get together and bash ideas together and somehow when our feelings come to a head we reach for a "just" philosophy.
People do care though, and that means we each need to find a way to work in that caring world and explore it just as well as the uncaring one.
Consider each one of these as important truths: 1) Nobody cares, 2) Some people care, and 3) All people care.
The original poster is saying that as founder, no one cares to the level you do, no one else has as much at stake, others care but to a point.
The original posts point is that as founder it’s really up to you and no one else.
If this fails, as founder you lose all the things you risked, possibly everything you have. No one else is likely to have as much at risk as you. This means you care in a way and to a depth no one else does.
Of course others care, of course your grandma cares, of course your momma cares, of course head of marketing cares and of course the investor cares, but none of these people have everything on the line.
Everyone else except you can walk away. No one else is going to relentlessly hit this problem till it’s solves except you.
In my opinion, you're fundamentally mis-interpreting the original post. The author is NOT saying that you as a founder care more about your success than, say, your stakeholders. If you fail, they care, and a lot, because you made them lose money.
What the post is saying is that they don't care about you having a story about WHY you failed. Nobody else cares about that.
To stay in the metaphor, if you lose a game and your story is "well we have a lot of injuries", the only thing other people will hear is "yep, here's someone who's trying to find an excuse for why he failed".
They don't care you have a nice little theory about why you lost. They want you to win. So focus on finding a way to win, not to explain your loss.
Whether that's wise advice I don't know. I feel that knowing why you failed is important per se, even if other people don't care.
I agree it’s important to know individually why you failed, this goes along with self awareness which is critical in all facets of life.
That said, after working with a lot of people in problem solving careers you’ll tend to see that the excuse vs adjustment response is not purely situational; different personalities will tend to one or the other. There’s sometimes a thin line between honest analysis of failure and reflexive ego protection. Whether founder or not you don’t want to be on the wrong side of that line.
This is only true where the founder has the most risk relative to the rest, but I'd say that's often not so. Founders can have a career stream to fall back to, additional capital, Etc. Some people could risk being on the street if they lose their job.
There are also numerous ways the founder can walk away
Isn’t the lack of equitable outcome a major driver in this? Of course head of marketing will not care as much - they will not be compensated as much if they solve your business problem’. Both in status and money.
As a counter example - we can look at organizations which have goals that are not only monetary in nature - spacex, nasa in the 50s, the red cross - organizations where there are plenty of people that care about the goal alongside the founders to a great extend. Plenty of people there outside of leadership also care a lot.
A startup that picks a worthy goal like that can in fact attract those types and do so regularly. People do care.
Individual founders that are most likely to be a current or past employees, and not someone that has climbed into the C-suite.
There is no golden parachute for a new private company. If it fails, the founder will likely have to go back to regular employment (much more difficult if he exited stable employment to work full time on his project). Whatever money is used up (usually personal) is lost forever and any plans of retirement must be pushed back.
I agree that the post is simplistic. A charitable interpretation might be that it's a naive version of the approach advocated by some existential philosophers where you consider that everything that happens to you is "your fault", so you're constantly figuring out ways to make your situation better rather than just giving up, or thinking of ways in which you could have made a situation in the past better so the next time it happens you make a better fist of it. The difficulty is not to think any less of yourself if you fail despite continuing to try. I think the thing that's lacking in this post is that clearly people do care, and if you recognise that you can ask for their help. Even if you approach things as if everything is "your fault", doesn't mean that you can't collaborate with other people to improve your situation.
Yeah, some of these VC blogs are terrible. At least Stratechery tries to provide some actual quantitative analysis. A16Z looks like so much blog spam. Disappointing.
Disagree. You may listen to all this advice and follow through with engaging with your people productively only to find you’ve used up your budget or runway and have to lay them off. As you move up the ladder, reasons matter less and less. But outcome always does.
A nice side effect of thinking that nobody cares is that you don't feel guilty about taking most of the rewards when you come through with success at the far end. After all, nobody else cared enough.
In reality, it is the case that people often care deeply. Many of those hired by or paying for a business are in fact excited to be able to help write its story. Many aren't though, sure. Maybe they're just in it for superficial competitions or comparisons. But you'll never know who's who if you don't start an active dialogue and analysis process.
What's super helpful as an outcome of work in this area is to understand who cares about what, which incidentally helps you create a model for getting them to care more about what you care about.
If nobody really cares, we're all screwed. But that particular thought model only works on that darwinian level, the one that sadly operates as the kind of unspoken shadow of many who work in tech today. We get together and bash ideas together and somehow when our feelings come to a head we reach for a "just" philosophy.
People do care though, and that means we each need to find a way to work in that caring world and explore it just as well as the uncaring one.
Consider each one of these as important truths: 1) Nobody cares, 2) Some people care, and 3) All people care.