awful for all kinds of reasons. Let’s make good backup software.” That’s a big
project. I want to have the organization that I don’t have yet where, when we
Joel Spolsky 359
get those ideas, we can produce the products. Because the capital is sort of endless.
Capital is not a problem for us. Even if it was a problem for us, there’s VC.
The real problem is how to deploy that capital to create software, and that’s
something that we want to make the machine that is able to do.
Livingston: What advice would you give to a programmer who’s thinking about
starting a company?
Spolsky: I’ve got a lot [laughs]: Don’t do it. It’s going to suck. You’re going to
hate it.
Can I steal one from Paul? Don’t start a company unless you can convince
one other person to go along with you. If you don’t have two people (or I would
even say three) that you’ve convinced to devote their lives to doing this, it’s just
going to be a different thing. There are a lot of programmers that are very tentative
about starting their own companies. There are a lot of working programmers
doing something they hate, with some company that they hate, but they
need money to pay the mortgage. So they figure, “I’ll develop something in my
spare time. I’ll put in 1 hour every night and 2 hours on the weekends and I’ll
start selling it by downloads.” And you say to them, “Who’s your cofounder?”
And they say, “My significant other—husband or wife. My cat.”
But because they never really take the leap and quit their job, they can give
up their dream at any time. And 99.9 percent of them will actually give up their
dream. If they take the leap, quit their job, go do it full-time—no matter how
much it sucks—and convince one other person to do the same thing with them,
they’re going to have a much, much higher chance of actually getting somewhere.
Because they either have to succeed or get a job. Sometimes “succeed”
seems like the easier path than actually getting a job, which is depressing.
So quit your day job. Have one other founder, at least. I’d say that’s the minimum
bar to getting anywhere

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