81–90 of 188 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Translation: why don't many normal people have trust funds, expensive educations, the disposable income and lack of financial responsibilities to be able to work for free for extended periods of time, friends in industry, investor class connections, or some combination of all of the above plus a shitload of luck.
If those things are required, then why do so many immigrants become entrepreneurs?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So why don't many normal people successfully grow a business?
they do. you just don't read about the successful entrepreneurs that grow their business from 1 gas station convenience store to 4 gas station convenience stores.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So why don't many normal people successfully grow a business?
Translation: why don't many normal people have trust funds, expensive educations, the disposable income and lack of financial responsibilities to be able to work for free for extended periods of time, friends in industry, investor class connections, or some combination of all of the above plus a shitload of luck.
-trust funds - no
-expensive educations - university, but it's subsidized here so it's cheap. Almost anyone who can use a uni education can get one in western nations now.
-the disposable income and lack of financial responsibilities to be able to work for free for extended periods of time - I earned this working at a corp job and saving 30% of my income for about four years
-friends in industry - no
-investor class connections - no
-shitload of luck - hard to say. Probably yes.
You don't need the above; internal qualities beat these externals every time.
Countless trust fund babies have tried to start companies and done nothing but fritter away Daddy's money.
Anyway entrepreneurship isn't really about tech giants. Most entrepreneurs aren't starting giant tech corporations. They're just normal people trying to start a lawn care company, a plumbing outfit, a local chicken restaurant chain, a barber shop, etc etc. These kinds of businesses actually do have strong growth potential if targeted and run well. It's just that very few of their proprietors have the business acumen or desire to do it. I can name several always-packed local businesses in my town that could grow quite easily, but they just... don't.
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I'm pretty sure people are going to continue to be pissed off about some lucky assholes winning the birth lottery and cashing in their ticket to further profit off the labor of others less fortunate regardless of what kind of media spin you try to put on it.
What do you attribute the success of Bruno Mars too?
The way I look at it, there are two kinds of CEOs. There are the ones that founded the company and have led the company according to their own personal vision. Many of them hold stock worth billions and they're generally looked up to as "captains of industry". The other kind is the CEO who is hired by the board of directors. They're usually very well paid and given a lot of stock, but aren't wealthy the way, say, Bil…
It is an interesting exercise to take a moment and write down what you envision would fill the time of a CEO at the office over the course of a month. What problems would arise? Who would ask for their time? When they were investing time what would it be toward? Etc.
Ask yourself, what does the CEO actually do? And given what they do what determines how difficult it is to do that? And finally how would you evaluate their performance relative to the requirements for the job?
The above analysis casts the CEO as the 'decider.' This defines the CEO as the person who makes the decisions that could not be made by people that report to them. I have had the opportunity to ask some CEOs how they spend their time and deciding critical questions is always part of the answer, but it is usually a very small part, typically less than 20% of their time. I have also noticed it confuses the heck out of people who are CEOs of small companies and this is a big part of their time, and their company grows and it becomes less and less of their time (or worse they continue to try to make decisions that would be better off made by their staff) and they panic because they have no idea what their job is any more.
In a wider context at a larger company, the CEOs role moves away from decisions and into choices. Which path, of all the paths available, does the company proceed along. Those choices, and navigating those choices, has an inordinate effect on the long term success of the organization.
Tom Mendoza, who was the VP of Sales at NetApp and later President, used to turn everything into a sports analogy. It was so common that people would sometimes jokingly ask "How can I explain this to Tom in terms of sports?" But the reality is that sports can have a lot in common with business at the higher levels. When you look at the performance of a football team like the San Francisco 49ers across coaches and players, it is startlingly clear that the coach has a huge impact on the overall success of the team. But unlike sports teams, which get a sort of 'natural reset' each season, companies do not.
The CEO position is perhaps the single largest point of leverage on the future success of a company. And while it is impossible to know when you hire a CEO if they will have a positive, neutral, or negative effect on the company, it is clear after a while how it is going. And having it be that important to hire a good one, ones that have a 'proven' track record are going to be able to command a much better salary than one who doesn't. Not because their decisions are more employee focused or shareholder focused, but because their decisions are the ones that are good for the success of the company as a whole.
And then how do those decisions effect the company? Well in three obvious ways; they affect the effectiveness of the company at getting things done (its productivity), they affect the number of markets in which the company can complete, or they affect the company's focus. What is worse, in the midst of all these company critical factors they are trying to balance, they will have directors and VPs working for them who are actively sabotaging other directors and VPs efforts in an attempt to 'get ahead.' It would be like playing chess where sometimes a pawn just decides on its own to capture the piece it can see to make itself look more important to the other pieces on the board with no appreciation for where those other pieces are situated or what part they are playing in the current board strategy.
The bottom line is that there is a spectrum of 'CEO' from 'CEO' of a 10 person startup (which is indistinguishable from a line manager) and 'CEO' of a 100 person, 1K person, 10k person, and 100k person companies. Each order of magnitude changes the role in many ways. The one thing they all have in common is that they can destroy the company they are in charge of if they screw up or simply aren't up to the task.
The way I look at it, there are two kinds of CEOs. There are the ones that founded the company and have led the company according to their own personal vision. Many of them hold stock worth billions and they're generally looked up to as "captains of industry". The other kind is the CEO who is hired by the board of directors. They're usually very well paid and given a lot of stock, but aren't wealthy the way, say, Bil…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you attribute the success of Bruno Mars too?
I don't know who that is but I strongly doubt their career in any way dismisses the lack of class mobility in the US. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you attribute the success of Bruno Mars too?
I don't know who that is but I strongly doubt their career in any way dismisses the lack of class mobility in the US. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The caricature of investors as "the wealthy" is not connected to reality. If you are interested in having a retirement, you have a stake in the game - even if your entire plan is to rely on social security, someone has to make the money that will be taken and given to you. If you have an interest in a high standard of living or low cost of living, efficient investment decisions are vital to you. When you hire someone…
Investors in early-stage, non-public companies is pretty much limited to "the wealthy" in the U.S. due to regulatory restrictions.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-07/you-too-c...
Reasons why CEO's make millions and I don't: - Business Network: If I had a billion dollars, I would never have been able to acquire Instagram. I wouldn't even be able to get a seat at the table. Zuckerberg closed it in record time while talking to a company that wanted to be on it's own - Market Knowledge: I thought the iPad was the stupidest device ever, Steve Jobs didn't. I now have 4 at my house along with two of…
I would assume that people in such positions (i.e. people who are thinking about long-term strategic decisions nearly all day long) have some ideas in store for what they could do after their current gig. And they have the wealth to get their next company off the ground more easily.