What does it say about the question "Why do you want to work on this company for the next 10 years of your life?" when it turns out even the founders of the most successful startups in the world don't want to?
Larry and Sergey have been working on Google for 17 years. Mark has been working on Facebook for 11. Drew and Arash have now been working on Dropbox for 8 years. Brian, Nate, and Joe have been working on Airbnb for 7 years.
Things change, of course, and you shouldn't work on a company that isn't working for 10 years. But I think it's a reasonable question to ask.
If you go into something with a plan to do it for only a couple of years, you are unlikely to create anything important.
I don't buy public or private equities I don't want to hold for 10 years (I have held some Apple shares 17 years now!), and I don't do jobs I can't see myself doing for 10 years (I ran my company, which was an ok but certainly not huge success, for 7+ years).
I think more people would benefit from taking a long-term view on where they decide to spend their time and money--it's a really useful way to think about opportunity.
You're brave - talking long term on HN! But so right, in my view.
One of the benefits of the long term view is that it forces you to address sustainability, so you focus on real revenue.
Our startup is now 6 years old. We decided early on that chasing funding meant focussing on the wrong thing, and that we would suck up the pain of little income and slower growth. Being able to focus on the product instead of investors was great, but that slower growth also turned out to be healthy. It meant a better relationship with our first customers, which lead to more useful feedback, a better product, and organic growth that this year will give me 4 times the best salary I ever earned before.
And it's still fun - as well as the financial compensation, we still control 100% of the company so we can do things our own way. We employed one of our support people in a city hit by a devastating earthquake; we carried an agent for a few months while she escaped an abusive marriage; we make a sizeable donation to a kids' charity in lieu of sending out Christmas cards.
I recently saw Carl Malamud [1] speak, and he said straight out that for his projects it has generally taken a decade to get somewhere. From his descriptions, it sounded like the first years were mainly him being ignored, but that eventually his continued presence meant people with power started paying more attention. His advice to the crowd was definitely to pick projects they'd be happy to spend 10 years working on.
Exactly how I felt. I had heard the Gandhi quote, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." But knowing what Malamud has accomplished, and knowing how obvious some of his stuff seems in retrospect, it was really heartening to know that the first stage for him took years.
Not only is this a solid framework when it comes to choosing what one wants to do, in addition to being the reality of building a business, it is an increasingly important guardrail when the entire bay area buzzes with "rocketship" "unicorns" that get to $1B in ~2-3 years.
One way to counter this would be startup founders tweeting & sharing more but I know how little time you have for anything when you're building a business.
Personally I think founders should plan to do it for at least 5 or 10 years.
If a founder doesn't think a company will be worth running in 5 or 10 years what does it say about their long term plans for it? Are there many examples of successful start-ups where the founders left within the first few years?
Although I agree with you, I'd like to add a caveat: Pivots.
The idea you end up implementing is rarely the idea you started with. Almost every startup pivots several times during its lifetime. Usually they are small pivots, small tweaks to the business plan, a market that you hadn't though of opening, a market not being as good as you thought... But big ones also happen.
But even with very small pivots, the process might leave you somewhere you didn't expect. And sometimes this is good, too! You might end up with a much more solid business and doing work you love. Sometimes, this leaves you somewhere you no longer find exciting.
That's exactly my case: I started a company 3 years ago with some friends, we pivoted a few times, found what we think is a nice product-market fit and the business is growing nicely. However, I find myself in a similar position to Greg: I'm not in a critical position (all the critical work is handled by my team, I only oversee it and guide it) and the role is not something that would interest me if it was offered to me. Basically, I'm here because I founded the company, I love the ideas it was founded on and I like my coworkers.
I've talked long and hard about this with my co-founders, I've found a replacement and, if it works out, I'll leave the day to day running of company in the next few months.
I don't see how the question is informative, especially since the reframing is essentially "If you had a 250 billion dollar company would you run it for 10 years? And if you had a mediocre company would you dump it and do something else?". It's like saying that you will do whatever is in your best interest at any given time.
And in any case I don't think it would change much if an investor knew with perfect foresight that AirBnB would be a $10 billion dollar company but one of the founders was planning on leaving after 7 years (or even 4). The same is true if it was a $100 million dollar company or a $0 company.
It seems to me what really matters is whether the founders will stick with it for the first 1-3 years when things are toughest.
(edit: And Larry and Sergei tried to cash out immediately).
As a founder, that question has merits. As a potential employee, if someone asks me that question, my answer frankly is "I don't know. It is hard to predict the future. I can tell you that whatever time I am with the company, you will see 100% commitment but 10 years is too far out". I have actually used this in a real interview. It is ridiculous to even ask this question to anyone who is worth the money.
I generally reply openly about my ten-year plan, I promise that it's going to change, and I restate how large a challenge it is to maintain excitement and interest at their company for the next ten years of my life.
I feel that either you misunderstood me or I misunderstand you. I'm leaning towards the first option.
By which I mean - There's a distinction between the kind of interview that happens between a founder and an investor and the one that happens between an employee and an employer. I wouldn't be surprised if an investor asked that kind of question, but if an employer did, I would think it was rather arrogant.
There are ambitious people and people who enjoy steady income.
I feel like the ambitious people (the kind that start these sort of companies) do not feel comfortable working on the same thing for more than a couple of years. They get that itch, understandably.
