31–40 of 110 posts
Which brings me to the question - If Einstein was alive today, how would he fair in a World more curtailed by patent trolls and over-zealous application.
That in itself makes you wonder, what constraints do we have today that was less of a restriction in Einstein's times.
I really like the idea behind this, but I take issue with the fact that if someone does start a company, Pioneer will take 3% with the option of buying 5% more of the company for $20,000. That seems pretty unfair. I would be inclined to participate if this term didn't exist, or if it were either more financially generous or took less equity. But I wouldn't want to develop any idea through Pioneer if any future idea (…
I agree and I disagree. I agree if you're a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur who knows they can raise a seed round together. If that's you, you shouldn't take our offer. Raise the seed round; you'll get great terms. There are about 7.4 billion people who aren't Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs. Most of them do not have a convenient line to investors, because investors don't happily fund writing the next great Americ…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"We expect a fraction of Pioneers to start companies. In exchange for the investment and benefits below, Pioneer will retain 3% of any company you found over the next eight years. Pioneer will also have the option of investing an additional $20,000 for 5% in any of those companies. These conditions apply if you already have an incorporated company." yeah, as an outsider looking for entry into startup - it just doesn'…
If you have the opportunity to join other programs, go for it! Our hope is that this model enables us to reach the billions of people that are outside the network of Silicon Valley. They might not even be sure if they have a "company". They just want support on whatever project they're pursuing. We're hoping that becoming a Pioneer vastly increases the odds that you turn your "shower-thought" into something real, eve…
1) I'd be less apprehensive about giving away 8% to any (!) company I found if I knew the network/guidance/community were proven.
2) You need track records of success before the network/guidance/community is seen as worth it. Right now, it's a gamble since you're new.
So you need a population of people willing to take a lower amount of money with a gamble on community quality.
Given that, it seems better off to wait.
I like the stated mission, but this approach concerns me. Silicon Valley has ingrained in our shared consciousness the idea that genius or potential for societal contribution == creativity == (usually) a business or project. Having a thing you want to make and then problem-solving a way to get there. There's nothing wrong with that approach, but it's one of many, and for an organization that's claiming to seek out all flavors of human potential, it's extremely limiting.
Many - possibly most - of the world's greatest thinkers didn't have a "project", or at least that wasn't their primary activity. They didn't follow the model of
1. Have an idea
2. Execute on it
They lived, experienced, researched, contemplated, discussed, expressed. The literal "Einsteins" - the rockstar intellectuals who made it all the way into the popular consciousness - might have had a single big creation that made them famous. But they didn't set out from the beginning with that vision, and they make up a minority of the world's successful geniuses.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"We expect a fraction of Pioneers to start companies. In exchange for the investment and benefits below, Pioneer will retain 3% of any company you found over the next eight years. Pioneer will also have the option of investing an additional $20,000 for 5% in any of those companies. These conditions apply if you already have an incorporated company." yeah, as an outsider looking for entry into startup - it just doesn'…
Without hitting on whether or not this is the right company to do this, I don't think the idea is itself at all unreasonable. By the time you're concerned about 8% equity, you've basically already 'made it' in the sense that you have likely have enough capital to start to more independently pursue your other ideas, or alternatively seek more favorable funding with some history for more traditional venture capital typ…
Similarly, those few % of equity means less equity later for future rounds of funding or for paying out to employees.
A 9-5 job is going to take up 50-60 hours per week, including prep time and travel (possibly less or more in some scenarios). 50 hours for sleep. That leaves a very solid 50-60 hours per week, that is left to allocation by priority (some will go to food, life maintenance, etc. - that all has a blend of choice and priority to it).
How can you not shave off 15-20 hours per week out of those 50-60?
Pursuing something like this should be assumed to be difficult and brutal. The world will fight you (the world, made up of people, does not like change), people close to you will reject your efforts (you'll be lucky if 5% of the people close to you are openly supportive) and you will suffer. A world filled with a crab mentality will try to kill what you're doing. Conform, give in, give up, quit, stay in your miserable 9 to 5 that you don't like, be one of us. It's part of the deal: you will have to suffer immensely for what you want, in most cases. If you want it, you have to absorb that.
So how do you handle it? You must want the thing you're pursuing more than the pain it's inevitably going to entail.
Steve Jobs has one of the great quotes on this matter, from the D5 conference in 2007 (say what you will about him, he plainly understood what he's talking about on this subject):
"People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing and it’s totally true. And the reason is because it’s so hard that if you don’t, any rational person would give up. It’s really hard. And you have to do it over a sustained period of time. So if you don’t love it, if you’re not having fun doing it, you don’t really love it, you’re going to give up. And that’s what happens to most people, actually. If you really look at the ones that ended up being “successful” in the eyes of the society and the ones that didn’t, oftentimes it’s the ones [who] were successful loved what they did, so they could persevere when it got really tough. And the ones that didn’t love it quit because they’re sane, right? Who would want to put up with this stuff if you don’t love it? So it’s a lot of hard work and it’s a lot of worrying constantly and if you don’t love it, you’re going to fail."
Brian Eno: "I was an art student and, like all art students, I was encouraged to believe that there were a few great figures like Picasso and Kandinsky, Rembrandt and Giotto and so on who sort-of appeared out of nowhere and produced artistic revolution. As I looked at art more and more, I discovered that that wasn’t really a true picture. What really happened was that there was sometimes very fertile scenes involving…