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Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

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Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#71

Post by 6stringmerc »

radmuzom wrote: post #11

Ten years back, when I was fresh out of college, I joined a startup - not as a founder but as the first employee. A lot of it was driven by reading Paul Graham's essays, and I was naive and immature enough to believe that I was doing something great (as an aside, I came from an economically disadvantaged family; and every cent of my assets today is something I have earned and not something which I have inherited or o…

Your description of being an employee resonates with me, and thank you for giving some insight into how you've approached your career and what you see in the future. Though I came from a financially supportive environment, I was (wisely) cautioned against being a risk-taker with my career due to medical issues that I can't afford to manage without good company sponsored health insurance. My parents urged me to get good skills so that I could be a valuable employee, obtain a nice standard of living, and have some security in the sense that if I had to change jobs, then I would have skills and a good background in order to get hired and retained.

Here's where the correlative kicks in: I always wanted to be a full-time musician, and I still do...but I view success in music a lot like being involved with a start-up. There's the product/service angle (quality and innovation matter, unless they don't), the investor relationship (labels), the marketing budget, and absolutely no guarantees of success. Actually, it's an offhand joke, but being a full-time musician writing originals (e.g. not in a wedding/corporate party cover band) is a lot like choosing poverty up front for a potential windfall later.

Being an employee has been a choice, and one that I'm glad to have made because with patience and investing in myself, I've been able to acquire lots of equipment and spent hundreds - if not thousands - of hours playing, writing and recording music. Because I didn't seek out the 'traditional' channel of label investment and signing away certain rights, I've been able to build a library of my own content which I consider like a savings of sorts. Maybe it's a worthless legacy in dollar terms, or maybe when an opportunity finally arises to do some business with my material, I won't be caught empty handed. The trade-off in security and health isn't glamorous, but it's certainly something I'm proud of choosing and accomplishing thus far.

TL,DR; If your goal is to get a Nolan Ryan rookie card and the guy won't trade it unless you offer the entire roster of the 1989 Oakland As Championship team in trade, then get to work building up what you need to get what you want.

Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#72

Post by adaml_623 »

totallystupid wrote: post #33

Friends! If you find someone trying to criticize your achievement as being "just because you are privileged" say "I'm now further from where I started, than where I started was from where you started. So if you couldn't even make it from where you started to where I started, how do you expect that you could have made it from where I started to where I am now?" People may choose to respond to this by saying something…

You might mean what you say so I'll just point out that your comment seems to be a bit obscure and doesn't really make it seem like you've read the article.

Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#73

Post by jasonkester »

Entrepreneurs in other industries may need family money. Software Entrepreneurs can use their own.

Working in an industry where $120k/year is considered a starting salary, and where you know for a certainty that you are roughly one Twitter post away from having your pick of three companies that will fight to get you, you can feel free to pursue any goofy idea you like without fearing much for your financial safety should things go wrong.

Yet another reason this is the best industry to be in right now.

Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#75

Post by vog »

bakhy wrote: post #44
jrochkind1 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might (or might not) be true materially; but I would not ignore the psychological effects of growing up financially secure vs. not, and what it tends to do to your capacity to take financial risks specifically. If you don't even hardly know what it feels like to have no safety net at all, if you know you do have a safety net in the form of family that will help you out if things get _really_ bad, at least to kee…

true. there was an interesting text posted here once, about how one of the worse things about poverty is that it kills the will to dream big and make plans. when you're scraping by, it's much harder, and any big plan can easily fall through due to bad luck (some unexpected expenses you cannot cover eat up your small savings, e.g., and ironically, since poverty is not healthy, unexpected expenses are more likely).

> ironically, since poverty is not healthy, unexpected expenses are more likely

Well, that's mostly an US issue, I guess. When you live in a country with even modest public healthcare, such as Germany, things are not that terrible.

Here, if you get ill, no matter how bad, you get the base treatment that you need. Of course you can (and should) pay on top of that for better treatment. But event without money, you don't have to fear to be denied important treatments. (With some unfortunate, but luckily very rare exceptions.)

Thinking of that, I wonder why we Germans are so conservative, despite living relatively secure. A large portion of our people could take a lot of risk without falling too deep. Probably this is because "falling deep" here means to have to rely on social welfare provision, of which people are afraid of. But this is not really falling deep, compared to living on the street in utter poverty.

Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#76

Post by ptaipale »

totallystupid wrote: post #46
totallystupid wrote: post #33

Friends! If you find someone trying to criticize your achievement as being "just because you are privileged" say "I'm now further from where I started, than where I started was from where you started. So if you couldn't even make it from where you started to where I started, how do you expect that you could have made it from where I started to where I am now?" People may choose to respond to this by saying something…

How can people even read this to disagree with it -- wouldn't it be too faded out? o_O

Drag your mouse over it with button depressed - the selected text will be inverted to readable colours. (If you don't mind to change your colour settings.)

Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#77

Post by manigandham »

jasonkester wrote: post #73

Entrepreneurs in other industries may need family money. Software Entrepreneurs can use their own. Working in an industry where $120k/year is considered a starting salary, and where you know for a certainty that you are roughly one Twitter post away from having your pick of three companies that will fight to get you, you can feel free to pursue any goofy idea you like without fearing much for your financial safety sh…

Not sure about the twitter post thing... but any industry that has constant demand for good workers and high wages would be conducive to this by eliminating a lot of the monetary risk of failure.

Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#78

Post by eugenekolo2 »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #5

In other words, starting a business isn't much different than it was in the past - capital and connections are essential. Sure, there're exceptions when someone with little money and hard work managed to grow their business, but they're that - exceptions. The older I am the more I realize how naive thinking "I just need to create something better than my competitors!" really is. You can have a mediocre product but wi…

I think it's quite different in the software startup industry. You usually don't need much capital, it's more that you need to have a failsafe in case you go bust to not end up unemployed and unable to pay bills.

Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#79

Post by kome »

bakhy wrote: post #44
jrochkind1 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might (or might not) be true materially; but I would not ignore the psychological effects of growing up financially secure vs. not, and what it tends to do to your capacity to take financial risks specifically. If you don't even hardly know what it feels like to have no safety net at all, if you know you do have a safety net in the form of family that will help you out if things get _really_ bad, at least to kee…

true. there was an interesting text posted here once, about how one of the worse things about poverty is that it kills the will to dream big and make plans. when you're scraping by, it's much harder, and any big plan can easily fall through due to bad luck (some unexpected expenses you cannot cover eat up your small savings, e.g., and ironically, since poverty is not healthy, unexpected expenses are more likely).

Where can I find the article you are talking about?

Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#80

Post by troels »

Since no one else is calling it out, I will - This article starts with a radical statement, but when you read it, it seems to be essentially an opinion piece with a couple of studies hand picked to support its claim. That's not very scientific at all. Which is a pity, since I suspect the claim has some truth to it.
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