Unless you mean "you will be the wrecked shell of the person you once were", I don't think that making a startup actually changes who you are. We glamorize it, but a lot of people set up their own business every day and don't change a bit.
To the contrary, I think startup experiences brings profound changes in the way you live. At least that happened to me in the following ways
1. Your free time is limited. You try to make the most of it. Something like work hard and play harder
2. Your emotions go through a sine curve. You can deal with stress better than most others. That could also mean you get numb to common day problems. You stop working yourself up for small issues. And on the other extreme, you start to think anything is possible if you start applying yourself. Almost everything looks like an optimization problem with 2 or 3 variables.
3. You can no longer say things like "Oh, I don't do that, a sales/PR/designer person does that". You get to do other stuff and realize you might like doing them too.
4. People fail you or you fail people - deals don't go through, you miss dinners/meetups etc etc. It hurts you in the beginning but you get used to that.
May be most of it applies only to young startup people like myself but I sure did learn and change a lot over my time at startups.
That's not with respect to start ups, but any 'testing task' in general.
People emerge totally changed individuals during and after times of hardships. During disease, financial difficulties, tough assignments, chasing near impossible goals, during times crisis, turmoil and difficulties.
You get to see who is jealous of you. Who envies you , who admires you, who is ready to help, who discourages you. You learn not just about work, but also a lot about people, places, things and life in general.
That is why some people who go through life threatening diseases, fatal failures, harsh financial conditions are so successful, resilient, self sufficient, motivated and hard working.
A start-up changes a person in the same way a war does - trauma, triumph, battle, and blood. If you aren't changed after you start up, it probably wasn't your first time.
That's just insane. People working on start-ups do not, as a matter of course, risk their lives in the same way soldiers in a war do. I'd challenge you to point to anyone doing a tech startup who has lost a limb due to an IED.
A start-up may very well change a person more than spending the same time at a job would, but to compare it to going through war shows an incredible amount of naivety about how horrible war actually is.
You're not replying to what he said, you're replying to what you think he said. He didn't say that founders "risk their lives in the same way soldiers in a war do"; he said, "A start-up changes a person in the same way a war does."
Sure, war can change a person in ways that a start-up never will -- if a soldier loses a limb for example. But do you really, honestly think that andrew was trying to imply that start-up founders might lose limbs? Or do you think he could have been just speaking to the point that the constant stress and frequent highs and lows of running a business can have a powerful effect on someone's personality?
There have been a lot of threads recently on how to improve HN. Here's a good one: let's try reading other people's comments as charitably as possible, and respond to that, instead of imagining a point that they weren't making and then arguing with that.
Look, if you really want to debate this, I could try to defend what he said, but I will have to assume you actually believe that andrew -- a fellow intelligent human being -- was trying to put business owners on an equal footing with soldiers in war. I think that would say more about you than it would about him, and I don't want to think that you're that dumb. I'd prefer to believe that you're much smarter than that, that you recognize how pointless such an argument would be because there's no way that a reasonable person would really believe that business owners are just like soldiers at war.
Or, we can leave my comment to stand by itself as a simple plea for more civility.
So which would you prefer? That we leave this alone and make HN a slightly better place by assuming a charitable reading of what a fellow person wrote, or that we get into a stupid argument that makes us both look increasingly foolish until pg has to step in to admonish us to knock it off?
Over 2M US soldiers were deployed in Iraq, with ~4.5K deaths and ~21K wounded, a rate of 0.002% for death and 0.01% for wounding. Significantly higher than the rate in start-ups (I presume), but lower than climbing Mount Everest.
I know at least one person who died in 2009 due to stress caused by business problems. This happened after two years of intense pressure and suffering. Depression, not eating well, not sleeping enough and other factors converged. One morning a stroke followed by a series of heart attacks ended his life.
I have personally ended-up in the hospital with intense palpitations due to a combination of stress, lack of sleep and dehydration all as a result of business issues. There's nothing wrong with me or my heart, today I regularly swim 1500m and participate in Master's competitions and training. Over time I learned to deal with business stress in various ways (swimming is part of it).
So, yes, it isn't military service but don't make the mistake of thinking that stress-related disorders --and even death-- are monopolized by soldiers.
Also: There have been a number of high-profile suicides mentioned on HN over the last few years. Likely there have been countless lower-profile suicides never mentioned.
In a year, you won't be who you are now.
Unless you mean "you will be the wrecked shell of the person you once were", I don't think that making a startup actually changes who you are. We glamorize it, but a lot of people set up their own business every day and don't change a bit.