This is a great writeup. I have also come to disagree with the specific PG essay mentioned in the post.
Entrepreneurship needs to be more sustainable than what is made out in the current literature. It shouldn't really be a 2 year binge in the hope of a cashout. The biggest companies take a lot more than that and if you really love doing it there is no reason you should be looking for an exit. A long term commitment also requires entrepreneurship to suit your other life requirements.
Seems like in this case, the founders can "exit" into the new, big company that grew out of the seed they germinated and nurtured during their two years of insane coding and sacrifice. The seed grows roots, and the roots find purchase, and the leaves unfurl, and the thing grows like kudzu, and the founders (if they don't just want to retire) get to manage and shape the growth, and hire lots of people to help them, so they can stop sacrificing their existences so completely, and resume enjoying life.
A startup isn't really worth its exit.
Do you know this from experience?
I guess what I'm saying is that the steady state of "sustainable" work is unlikely to produce great startups; and the steady state of complete self sacrifice is probably a waste of one's consciousness. The real, productive, and fun dynamic may be in pursuing a set of punctuated equilibria -- brief epochs of spastic productivity, which punctuate longer spans of "sustainable" exploration of the results of the last round of spastic effort.
Then, when you get bored of exploring the ramifications of the last round of effort, get spastic again! Shake it up, and see what the new world you've made for yourself means.
Couldn't disagree more on his statement: "Never start a company just to start it. You start a company because you have an idea that you think will be great for some customer and great ideas are always worth doing"
IMHO the biggest reasons to start a company is just to start it. The biggest companies have started that way - most famously HP. Ideas are mostly incidental and most of the time the first ones rarely work out. The biggest ideas are not really that clear early on - Writely was only a great idea because it got acquired by Google.
I did a course on randomized algorithms which referenced the book on the topic he wrote. The man was almost a genius, The book is as ground breaking as the knuth series.
Yeah, it doesn't know what happened on April 12, 1961 and can't answer some other trivia questions. That's not a big deal though, feeding information into the system is far easier than building the system in the first place.
I agree it's generally best to not "play prostitute" to most anyone.
However, regarding "balls": I think VCs are in the "balls business". It is a hard/risky way of making money. (Personally, this is why I'm always looking for reasons to say "no", versus why to say "yes"... I'm looking to be compelled.)
Something to consider:
Entrepreneurs have their one horse.
VCs have their stable of horses.
So, one view is: VCs don't "have balls" because they don't commit. Whereas the entrepreneurs are "all in". In this view point, the "balls award" goes to the entrepreneur because they're the ones taking the all the risk.
But: the VCs aren't in complete control of their destiny. They may be backing many horses, but they're not ever truly riding one. For highly capable and smart people this also takes large balls. You have less risk per venture but not necessarily across all your ventures.
Side-note:
The point Dave is trying to make with his presentation is how to communicate in such a way as to get above the radar while trying to keep the VCs attention (meaning, they've stopped thinking about all the reasons to say "no" and moved to "maybes"... )
Dave is good at this - look at his presentations compared to others. Generally people don't talk about VCs and raising capital this way :)
Not to counter your argument against H1B visa, but parts of your arguments are based on inaccurate prejudiced data.
1. "people who are smart enough to get jobs in some of the top corporations" - Not all H1B's work in top corporations, not all H1B's who work in top corporations do 'smart' work, not all employees of top corporations do smart work.
2. "I want get a job doing smart stuff for a smart employer[2], and I don't expect to get that job in India." - Most 'top' corporations have offices in India - where a lot of smart people do smart stuff. Not all of them do it because they dont have an option of going to the US. A lot of them do it because they are happy staying in India. Please stop twisting facts to rationalize your motivations.
Big counterexample : Trilogy E-Business - took 3 years before the first sale, made somewhere in range of $30mn in the 5th year.