Similar to the coffeeshop fallacy is something I described to a friend over dinner the other night as the "ambulance fallacy" ...
He was telling me about his startup ambitions and about one particular business that he said sounded like a ton of fun (it was an alcoholic beverage business) - he loved the lifestyle potential of being "that guy".
I told him a story about how I wanted to be an EMS worker when I was 12 years old. Why? For a single, simple reason -- I thought it was _extremely_ cool to be able to drive around with lights and sirens blaring, blasting through traffic. That was it.
Then a family friend who actually was an EMS worker told me one day what the job was actually like - sure, for about 10 minutes you were driving like a madman through traffic, but the rest of the time you had to, you know, actually BE an EMS worker :)
And the same goes for startup life -- you have to actually BE a startup founder for 99% of the time. Don't get caught up by the lights and sirens.
This is similar to how I talked my brother out of his brief thoughts of becoming a professional pilot. It sounds wonderful, but in reality the pay is poor (unless you're one of the lucky few able to work their way up to a good long-haul route), a lot of it is boring, a single relatively harmless medical problem can end your career, etc. etc.
You have to look at the bad parts of any job when considering a career or starting a business, and it seems to be something that people are bad at doing.
"Don't get caught up by the lights and sirens." - this is great.
That being said, if you know about the lights and sirens and still choose that path, maybe that's the path for you after all. i.e. - you can't build a business without doing the boring stuff as well as the fun stuff.
Firemen have a similar lot. Sure, you think you get to drive a firetruck, and pull women and children out of burning buildings. But most of your calls will be extracting mangled teenagers from mangled cars.
And even if you get to go to a house fire, there's only a tiny window when you can enter the building, because modern homes are filled with plastic, which burns very quickly. And if you do enter a burning building, you'll smell like burnt plastic for the rest of the day (despite all your protective gear).
He was telling me about his startup ambitions and about one particular business that he said sounded like a ton of fun (it was an alcoholic beverage business) - he loved the lifestyle potential of being "that guy".
I told him a story about how I wanted to be an EMS worker when I was 12 years old. Why? For a single, simple reason -- I thought it was _extremely_ cool to be able to drive around with lights and sirens blaring, blasting through traffic. That was it.
Then a family friend who actually was an EMS worker told me one day what the job was actually like - sure, for about 10 minutes you were driving like a madman through traffic, but the rest of the time you had to, you know, actually BE an EMS worker :)
And the same goes for startup life -- you have to actually BE a startup founder for 99% of the time. Don't get caught up by the lights and sirens.