What Startups Are Really Like

I’m in the unusual position of being able to test the essays I write
about startups. I hope the ones on other topics are right, but I
have no way to test them. The ones on startups get tested by about
70 people every 6 months.

So I sent all the founders an email asking what surprised them about
starting a startup. This amounts to asking what I got wrong, because
if I’d explained things well enough, nothing should have surprised
them.I’m proud to report I got one response saying:

What surprised me the most is that everything was actually
fairly predictable!

The bad news is that I got over 100 other responses listing the
surprises they encountered.

There were very clear patterns in the responses; it was remarkable
how often several people had been surprised by exactly the same
thing. These were the biggest:

via paulgraham.com

Great stuff – thanks @dapunster