From Dilbert.com:
See also Felix Salmon:
The most expensive lottery ticket in the world
No Exit, the new book from Gideon Lewis-Kraus, should be required reading for anybody who thinks it might be a good idea to found a startup in Silicon Valley. It shows just how miserable the startup founder’s life is, and raises the question of why anybody would voluntarily subject themselves to such a thing.
A large part of the answer is that Silicon Valley is gripped by a mass delusion, compounded by a deep “fake it til you make it” attitude toward success. Why do so many people in Silicon Valley want to be founders? Because every founder they meet is always killing it, crushing it, having massive success, just about to close a huge round, etc etc. At some level, they must know this is impossible: if 90% of startups fail, it simply can’t be the case that all of the startups they know are succeeding. After all, failure is not something which just suddenly happens overnight, when you thought you were doing great all along. But people tend to believe the evidence of their own eyes, and what they see is a combination of two things: the founders they know all seemingly doing great, and also a steady stream of headlines showing other founders cashing out for millions or even billions of dollars....MORE
