"But it’s worth a read to understand the perspective of a vocal minority in the tech industry."

That statement is a bit off-putting. First of all, this 'minority' is the majority. Most software businesses are indeed small, and are not aiming for venture capital and outsized returns. It would not even be mathematically possible to be otherwise.

Secondly, the 'vocal' people are the people trying to make you start a big business. Almost all blogs and writers cater to the startup crowd, not the mISV crowd. Most people writing country specific tax software or inventory sorting software are not blogging at all.

Maybe I am misunderstanding what he means - but to me it seems like he is deep in the bubble, and can't see out of it. That's why the article he reacted to would have been so disturbing to him.

Let's say I buy a box of doughnuts and go down to the street corner and sell them.

For each doughnut I sell, somebody gives me money and I give them a tasty treat. They are happier because of our exchange, if only for a short while, and I know that I have "done some good" for that hungry person.

Now I could just as easily stay home and try to invent the uber-nut, a killer replacement for doughnuts that costs half as much as lasts twice as long. A treat that will change the snacking world as we know it! I can build a factory to make uber-nuts, I can design complicated equipment, I can go on the web and talk about how earth-shattering uber-nut is going to be.

But none of that sells any uber-nuts. It's just me spinning out an imaginary architecture and vision of world domination and using my skills to construct this fake world where it all is going to happen.

For every guy who makes an uber-nut and changes the world, there are thousands of failed attempts. For all of those attempts, most of them result in making the world no better at all. It's a long, bitter experience. As opposed to the guy who actually buys the doughnuts and goes and sells them, where he knows he is doing some small amount of good in the world. For every 20 or so guys just looking to make a difference, any difference, only one of them makes it happen.

Those are some amazing numbers, and you'd be a smart person to take some time and think about them.

What folks are saying is simple: Go make a difference. Right now. Some little, _real_ difference. Sell a doughnut. Find a small niche and improve people's lives in it. Because even if you do one tiny, unimaginative, boring thing that only helps one person in some really small way? You've actually done something. As opposed to imagining you are creating the next earth-shattering invention and then flaming out. Because even if you created the uber-nut that changes snacking as we know it? You're going to do that by making a box of uber-nuts and going down to that street corner and making one person happy at a time. You roll out huge changes by picking one small niche at a time. It's the same difference. The key question here is how much self-bullshitting you want to do versus how many doughnuts you want to sell.

I find this notion that small businesses mean small impact downright bizarre in the Internet age. BCC is pretty freaking small. I have hundreds of thousands of users and thousands of customers. I wanted to go into teaching back in the day. I taught more lessons to more kids while sleeping last year than I would have been physically able to in a several lifetimes.

A time tracking app with a thousand customers improves the life of enough people to pack a stadium. Their businesses improve, their families make more money, their customers see less deadweight loss dealing with them, their communities see the benefits of economic growth, etc etc.

I think that his comment about AmyHoy's app was childish and his comments in this article are both naive and megalomaniacal ("I'm trying to touch more people's lives than you, so I'm better!").

I get the feeling that he doesn't understand the different types of glue that hold together the various scales at which society operates.

This coupled with yesterday suggests a childish acting-out of sorts.

I prescribe a healthy dose of spending time with people instead of trying to change the world from your computer desk.

When you look back on your life, do you want to be the person who got by and lived for your own happiness, or the person who brought happiness, security, and prosperity to countless others?

I think this is a false dichotomy. If not, then the word "countless" is important.

Most of these small businesses are "lifestyle businesses" because they purposely limit their market by focusing on a specific niche. This is one reason they're supposed to be a "safer" bet -- you address a need that you either already know well because you are a part of the market, or it's small and accessible enough that you can get a firm grasp of its needs and provide value.

Yes, these businesses provide value. That's what their customers are paying for. Is it not noble (or at least, not self-serving) to provide value to a few thousand, say, occupational therapists who need a particular service that they're willing to pay $10 a month for? Or is it only worth venturing to help "countless" people?

My father is a doctor, and his lifetime number of "customers" is probably a lot lower than a largeish web app serving some good purpose, but I wouldn't call it a wasted life.

I think there's a really strong disconnect here that is really common around HN - basically, do you really want to change the world? It seems like people have a tendency to answer "yes" to this question because the alternative makes you look dispassionate.

This line of thinking makes the assumption that ambition is a necessary prerequisite for efficacy. I'm not exactly in a position to qualify this statement, but I would guess that the people who make the greatest positive changes in the world weren't necessarily setting out to have a huge impact, they were just doing what they knew to be right.

Because everyone loves statistically unproven case studies, I offer Penny Arcade. PA launched a webcomic in 98. Five years later, they launched Child's Play - a charity that has raised ~$9M to fund research and facilities for children's hospitals.

When asked about it, Mike mentioned that, when they started Child's Play, neither of them were parents so they didn't know how effective their efforts would be, they just knew it was the right thing to do.

When I read through your post it was all going well until the part where you say:

"At the core of the pro-micro business argument is an idea that I find hard to swallow: that merely being happy should be purpose enough for a person."

Wow.

Doesn't everyone have the goal of being in an non-state of pain and suffering. Which, is basically the same as being happy/content/satisfied.

If _your_ "non-state of pain and suffering" = you need to be a billionaire... then, there was NO point in my original article that said "you can't be a billionaire". So what relevance does that point have to the article?

The main point I was trying to make (and it's my lack of good writing that didn't get this across) was absolutely nothing to do with what your post talks about.

I was proposing that we would all have a better ultimate chance of fulfilling our entrepreneurial goals if the very first thing we did was to build a micro business.

Build a micro business. Make it successful. Then swing for the fences.

The advantages are:

- You will have a more rounded understanding of "business"

- You will be financially free and able to pursue your other big risk ventures

- You will loose less % in any future investment deals you cut because you will have proven yourself

- You will ultimately have more control and less people to answer to

"The waste" that I was referring to was that by taking the other route (chasing after golden ticket investment) is a waste of potential real world business learning.

Sure we all learn with every route we take, but the faster and more immersed we become in dealing with ALL aspects of business - the better we get.

The beauty of a micro business is that it's far easier to see all the facets of business. Any other route... there are bound to be some facets that we miss out on compared to a microcosm of a total business experience.

Boy is this thread boring. I was about to write that it's like a thread about politics or religion: huge angry comments that teach one nothing. Then I realized why. The whole question of startups vs "lifestyle businesses," while a neutral topic for most people, is for many of the users of this site a matter of identity (http://paulgraham.com/identity.html).

I think an apology to Amy, even just one sentence, would have been good. Calling her out seemed really unnecessary. Otherwise, it seems like a more well thought out comment than the original: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2338911. I still disagree, however.

> Some readers found my comments to be anti-small business. This was not my intent.

Then you should have avoided statements like "There's nothing wrong with being a small software company.... It's boring, but there's nothing wrong with it. Don't expect anyone to celebrate you for doing it, though."

I don't know what your intent was, but it comes across as very hostile to small business.

I'd be a lot more sympathetic to this argument if I thought the people "swinging for the fences" were really creating something of lasting human value. Maybe I'm in the minority on this, but it's not clear to me at all that things like Twitter and Facebook empower the man in the street nearly as much as they empower entrenched interests.

Just yesterday I was privately lamenting all the energy young people today are pouring into gimmicky, me-too social networks and into chasing dollars. I'd love to see that energy redirected into something more artistic and creative and, yes, personal.

So it's morally superior to use your rad skills to get rich and make the world a better place than by simply using your rad skills to have a good life? Sure.

Are 99% of the people really swinging for the fences doing this? No.. they are trying to get fame and fortune for the fun of it. Nothing wrong with that; but let's not get confused about what we are talking about.

I am 28 and will probably never have to work more than 20+ hours a week doing things I enjoy for the rest of my life. I imagine far less than that in not too many years. I could really swing for the fences and bust my ass until I am 45; but that is 17 years of not engaging with my life in the same way I would if I weren't "working" all the time.

I'm saying this earnestly and with care:

The first priority should be finding out what is right for yourself. Ultimately, no one can tell you what is right for you.

Hacker news is a good place to reflect, but hopefully you can read things without having your whole mental framework being disrupted by one article with a different perspective.

Uh, I think microbusinesses may be more oriented towards "making a difference" than some businesses that go the V.C. route.

It would be unfair to tar all V.C. funded companies with the same brush, because many of them really are trying to create something awesome and make a splash in the world. However, when times get bubbly, people come out of the woodwork who are more concerned with making a fast exit than they are in building a business.

Whereas, if you're bootstrapping a microbusiness, you need to find some market where you're making something somebody is willing to pay for right away, so you're definitely "making a difference" for somebody, even if you're not changing the world.

pg seems to have said something alex'ish elsewhere:

"I once sat in a crowded hall and listened to Paul Graham give a keynote presentation about going big, doing it quickly, and getting tons of funding. During Q&A, someone asked what was wrong with instead of trying to go big with big money backers, you just went for profit and kept ownership to yourself and Graham said something like "you want to run a little business? Go run a shoe store then"

Matt Haughey http://dashes.com/anil/2011/01/mom-and-pop-at-web-scale.html...

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Alex Payne is a self-professed afficionado of minimalism and good design - not just in software, but in physical products.

I'd venture to say that a great deal of good design work is done by small studios which would count as 'lifestyle' businesses by his description.

Is he claiming that by trying to make real but incremental improvements to relatively mundane things, these designers are wasting their lives? Should they give up their practices and instead concentrate only on the most world changing ecological projects, or trying to create the next iPod or Dyson?

If not, why does this apply only to digital goods, and not physical goods too?

Accusations of 'hoodwinking' aside, A successful lifestyle business implies that you're doing something that other people value. A failed 'shoot-for-the-moon' business does not.

Thanks! I wasn't aware of Amy Hoy before this but now I've got a new role model to aspire to :)

I like this post, even though I disagree with it, because it gets at the fundamental moral motivations and justifications behind starting a business. Alex is an altruist, and from that perspective it indeed makes sense to try and go big. If it's your duty to improve as many lives as you can, why not try and go big? What's interesting is hearing it from that perspective rather than a more selfish perspective.

From a more selfish and individualistic perspective, I think a small business makes sense if you consider your moral duties to only go as far as producing more value than you extract from the world. From this perspective, it might be praiseworthy to try and provide as much value to as many people as possible, but it's not obligatory to be much more than a net positive contributor. And I think a lot of people go about as far as living up to their moral obligations and then satisfy their own desires after that.

Yesterday when I saw his comment on twitter I almost fell into the "someone on the internet is wrong!" trap, but today I feel I can't resist.

Almost everything about this angers me. It's presumptuous, arrogant, intellectually lazy and fallacy driven. And worst, Alex not only thinks he's correct, but morally right! Absurd!

Lets start at the top.

1. "If selling subscriptions to a small web application to cover my mortgage and subsidize my hobbies is “freedom”, then I’ll happily risk incarceration." - All Alex is really saying is that he defines "freedom" a different way than x person. You can't really judge that. Perhaps be perplexed, maybe inquisitive, but don't judge. In this regard, to each their own. And please don't confuse what makes you happy with what makes someone else happy. Alex is saying that obligation makes him happy. Great! Go for it. Someone else is saying that taking care of their family and living a simple live makes them happy. Cool...

"Seek first to understand, then be understood".

2. "When I read statements like this, my secular humanist streak flares up. ... We should endeavor to improve the lives of as many people as possible in a lasting and significant way, making the most of our own skills in the process." - Uhm...wow? This is nearly a nonsensical statement, saved merely by the fact that I _think_ I know what he is trying to say. Several problems arise from this statement, the first being that he brings in Humanism. Humanism, meant to enlighten perspective, only clouds the statement with doubt. Secondly, "should" is a word that will always get you into trouble with regard to other people. "Should" implies "I know better than you" or "let me tell you why you are wrong" not "hmmm..interesting perspective but I've always been of the mind that " which is a conversation, not an attack.

Lastly, it is worth noting that the statement is cute in that it provides an ego boost for the person espousing it, the statement itself is nearly worthless alone. I suspect that the statement serves to boost ones ego more than it serves to guide ones life. It also smacks of a statement made by someone with very little life experience.

3. "Building a business around maximizing your individual happiness is not particularly useful or admirable. That is my position, and I’m well aware that it may be unpopular with some." - Equivocation. Alex is not using the "term" happiness to talk about this side of things, but that is what it is. He is striving to find meaning/happiness on his own terms in his own way: by going big and making an impact. Deriding someone for doing the same thing in a different way is, at best, silly, at worst, narcissistic.

I would like to leave with a story about a country doctor I knew. He worked for 40 years in the bush in Australia. He loved living there and it was where he grew up. He was able to make a good living working there and being the small town country doctor and generally found happiness doing it. He told me about when he did a rotation in the UK and was offered a job starting a new hospital. He would have been able to reach massively more people in one year than he could in his entire work life in the country, make tons more money and have a hugely beneficial impact. He turned it down and went back to Australia. His reasoning "someone other than me would have taken and done that job, but that same person was unlikely to help these people in this town."

In one line: the classic dichotomy of opinion just degenerated into a vitriolic debate.

If only sanity prevailed, most commentators would probably dismiss this entire conversation with a "to each his own".

Dwell on the entire conversation for a couple of minutes, and it's immediately apparent that it smacks of religion. I'm ashamed to say a lot of individuals I have a tremendous deal of respect for, have dropped their guard in an unabashed attempt to proselytize the masses.

Yes, I get it. You feel strongly about it, and your unequivocal about how you feel. That's why it's called religion. Just don't shove it down other people's throats.

If there were ever an embodiment of Paul Buchheit's words "ADVICE = Limited Life Experience + Overgeneralization", this would likely be it.

I live in neither the of these camps. Perhaps that's why both articles read the same to me - "here's how I think you should lead your life". Nonsense.

A healthy economy needs a balance of small and large businesses. Today's technology is making it easier to make incremental improvements to existing ideas, which are usually small businesses. This is a safer strategy and people could flock to it like they flock to safe corporate jobs today.

It becomes a problem when there is an imbalance. Many domains/markets are crowded. Today we have too many CMSs, fart apps, MVC frameworks etc.. At one point we had an abundance of word processors.

It wouldn't be healthy if every programmer tried to make his own word processor, progress in the domain would flat-line. It's only after the dust settled and people had time to think about the concept that we have some genuine innovation, like the no-distraction trend.

Too many small businesses in the same niche is just as bad as a monopoly if your goal is technological progress. The money is distributed differently of course, so if your goal is to create a healthy middle class, small business overcrowding is better than big business monopolies.

It's hard to judge what the right balance is. People working on ideas that don't scale don't crowd the space for ideas that do. Like all matters of complex systems, it's complicated. We won't get to the bottom of it with essays alone.

Doing enough to 'get by' is not failure. Sometimes you do what is necessary to make ends meet to feed you and your family, and helping others in significant ways has to wait.

A large hole would be left in most modern economies without the 'lifestyle' business and 'solo-preneur'. If you believe in this so strongly, is BankSimple going to reject anyone who is 'wasting their life' by your account?

I think most entrepreneurs overestimate the amount of "world changing" they are actually doing.

The original post was off-base, and I think this one is too.

The implicit assumption he makes is that small businesses are incapable of positively affecting a lot of people's lives.

A (slightly tenuous) example: I derive significantly more value from Instapaper/VLC/Thunderbird than I do from Twitter or Facebook.

2 of those 3 are not even for-profit ventures and the other one is very much a 'small business'.

> We should endeavor to improve the lives of as many people as possible in a lasting and significant way, making the most of our own skills in the process.

Why the qualifier?

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"Even if one’s contributions are comparatively modest, we should admire the individual who tries to help others in significant ways."

Effect should be judged more highly than intention. We all know what the road to hell is paved with. And the vast majority of the improvement in the human condition has been unintentional, as a side-effect of selfish actions in the free market.

That was really uncharitable towards small businesses. The article makes a false dichotomy between wanting your freedom and helping other people. Surely my ability to do the latter is maximized once I'm free of the need to go to a soul-sucking, exhausting 9-5.

So this is a reply to a blog comment board? Why put it on HN and not on the comment board itself?

That was a lot of writing. While you may have clarified your views I have to wonder how many will fully read them.

That being said - and having read the full piece - you have a view and are attempting to communicate it and that is to be commended.

Oh, come on. How many successful startups can you list that are benevolent world-changing businesses versus how many are simply solving some technical problem or a fun distraction.

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Do you want to impact as many people as possible because that is what makes you happiest?

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There is a big difference between people who tell you what you CAN do, and people who try to tell you what you SHOULD do.

I can't decide which is more aggravating -- that somebody many people respect is out there, in public, trying to shame me by claiming that I'm not living up to my potential... (that my dreams aren't big enough, that what I do isn't good enough for the world, blah blah blah).

Or that the person doing it seems to be ignorant of what I'm actually about and what I actually do, and why, and what my future plans are.

Should I defend myself by explaining myself, or should I just fight the very idea that anyone should expect me to explain myself -- especially after insinuating something so rude, that I was "duping credulous customers" into buying trendy crap?

After some reflection, I'm going to stick to the latter course.

By the way - why me? Wondered that? Me too. I wonder if it had something to do with the fact that, many moons ago, al3x approached me to design the first preview version of BankSimple. It didn't work out, and I always figured that's because they really wanted a full-time designer and I was definitely unwilling to devote more than a little bit of consulting time to it, because I was committed to my own products.

KirinDave is going to come on here and try to skewer me, imply I'm lying and that story is untrue, etc., etc., so I'll just pre-empt it here and state that that is his viewpoint.

FTR: I think BankSimple is going to be really awesome, as well as beautiful, and that al3x is very, very, very smart. Yet this whole brouhaha is extremely confusing to me.

What bugs me about Alex's post is that he started at twitter what -- 9 months in? I think I read that somewhere. So it's not to hard to imagine that, given his early start date, and given Twitter's amazing valuations, and given that some employees have cashed out, that he also has taken some money off the table. So my apologies if I'm wrong, but your perspective totally changes even if you make, say, $1MM in cash. That certainly isn't fuck you money, but it does really allow you to be very selective about what you do for the rest of your life and insulates you from lots of downsides. The fact is, if he has a million dollars or so and he shoots for the moon on try 2, his worst case scenario is he has $800K after not taking a salary for 2 years and not even trying to conserve cash. Whereas the downsides facing a different person without a large cash cushion are much worse.

Just my .02, and obviously, if Alex hasn't cashed out, he still holds a decent chunk of Twitter stock that is probably relatively easily converted to cash. That's not to say I don't respect him, because I do, but I think that -- as the 37 signals people have beaten to death -- if you have a 10% chance at $1MM or a .0001% chance at $1B, you'd probably be a fool not go for for the easier, more likely money. Try to shoot the moon try two.

I've seen good points on all sides of this debate. What I think hasn't been emphasized enough is that one goal/philosophy does not preclude the other. You can do both. For example, you can first aim to make a small exit, and/or a small recurring revenue from a lifestyle business, then, move on to try a larger exit, or add additional revenue streams. I do think the "let's go for a huge exit, and change the world!" on one's very first attempt, especialy if you come from humble financial background, or have significant financial dependents, is probably not wise, in the general case. You should crawl before you walk before you run. Plus if you are going to fail, don't let anybody kid you into thinking it's better to fail using millions of dollars of other people's money than to fail with just a few hundred of your own. It's nice to have the ability to quietly bury your mistakes. You still get the upside of learning from them, but with less of the downside.

Side note: Ack, just got bitten by the "Unknown or expired link" flaw with HN. Paul, man, what is with that? Bad user experience. Don't tase my flow, bro! :)