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“It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

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Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#71

Post by emsy »

DevX101 wrote: post #37

They're talking past each other. Thing is, they're both right. Paul seems to be saying you don't have to be rich to do a startup. Matthew is saying lots of founder have some resources (family home, savings, great education, i.e. middle-class) that made doing a startup feasible Both these positions are true and aren't incompatible. Being middle class (Matthew's position) and prudent with savings can afford you probabl…

They’re not even talking past each other (that would require a back and forth). Matthew responds to something pg didn't say.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#72

Post by watwut »

huffmsa wrote: post #68
malux85 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a big difference between poor and zero, and a poor person betting on a startup can hit zero really quick. At zero, you cannot pay rent and are likely to get evicted. Once evicted you are potentially NFA, which means you can’t get a bank card posted to you if you have problems with your card. How can you pay for food? Where can you use the bathroom? What about the electricity bill before you got evicted? The e…

Same way my great-grandfather did it. He preferred the risks associated with going to America over the known outcome of staying in his little village.

Most of immigration happened during high risk dangerous and unstable times. Most immigrants were not bored of super safe and stable life where they came from. They were running away, because original place was dangerous.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#73

Post by huffmsa »

bubblewrap wrote: post #60
huffmsa wrote: post #56

Easier, sure. Not having a backstop means failure == death. Which isn't for the faint of heart, but that's the story of almost every Americans lineage at some point in the past. It takes a bit of luck, but rarely is it more luck than nose to the grindstone effort. My anecdotes: I have one great-great-grandfather who thought he had an office job in British Columbia, but by the time he sailed from England and crossed t…

That seems overly dramatic. Not everybody who loses their job dies. Most people seem to not die in that situation, actually. Failing at your startup would at most be equal to losing your job. You won't die just because of that. Even if you end up in debt, there are insolvency laws. You can just go flipping burgers for a couple of years and be good.

Of course it's recoverable. If you're under 35 you can join the miliary as well. There are options. Not glamorous, but survivable. Better to have tried and failed than to never have tried.

But when you're an Italian who can't speak English or out west in the late 1800s, it was a case of with your shield or on it.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#74

Post by hatmatrix »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #30
praptak wrote: post #14

A poor person betting everything on their startup is definitely good for pg - it increases the pool of people whose work he can profit from. It's not that obvious if it's good for the poor person. I guess that everybody has their own risk aversion threshold.

A poor person betting everything... a poor person usually doesn't have much, besides the time and dedication.

There is opportunity cost (of a stable industry job) that the educated but poor person is foregoing.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#75

Post by carlsborg »

He said hard, not impossible. You're playing with a higher difficulty level, because you need to spend time and effort and divert your focus on mitigating the worst case scenarios instead, and market timing is one of the big factors in getting it right.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#76

Post by huffmsa »

watwut wrote: post #72
huffmsa wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same way my great-grandfather did it. He preferred the risks associated with going to America over the known outcome of staying in his little village.

Most of immigration happened during high risk dangerous and unstable times. Most immigrants were not bored of super safe and stable life where they came from. They were running away, because original place was dangerous.

So then you're comparing the know risks of war and famine to the unknown risks in the target country. Which for a lot of American history has been war and crop failure.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#77

Post by lotsofpulp »

emsy wrote: post #71
DevX101 wrote: post #37

They're talking past each other. Thing is, they're both right. Paul seems to be saying you don't have to be rich to do a startup. Matthew is saying lots of founder have some resources (family home, savings, great education, i.e. middle-class) that made doing a startup feasible Both these positions are true and aren't incompatible. Being middle class (Matthew's position) and prudent with savings can afford you probabl…

They’re not even talking past each other (that would require a back and forth). Matthew responds to something pg didn't say.

If that’s the case, then Paul Graham chose a very poor subject as an example.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#78

Post by sheeshkebab »

sfifs wrote: post #32
KaiserPro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only data I can get is this: https://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/research/2009/04/educati... 93% had a degree, with 30% having a masters, That would suggest to me that you'd need a decent wedge of cash. Now, what is interesting, is that in 2016 at least, the US created gross 960k new companies (there is some smoothing here, so +- 100k) The UK created 460k. Seeing as how the UK is 60 million, versus 300 million pe…

Interestingly, only a quarter of the businesses are employers in UK, so most of the company creation is presumably basically city of London financial engineering :-)

what's with justifying an existence of a company by having employees? If a company is profitable and you as an owner are doing well financially, does it really matter?

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#79

Post by znpy »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #28

Twitter wins again. We keep reducing these complex multivariate social issues to simple cause-effect situations then beating one another up over what the simple cause is. When we're doing definitions, the key phrase is "necessary and sufficient" In this case, being rich or poor is neither necessary nor sufficient since we have plenty of examples of things working out with either of these two things being missing. So…

> We keep reducing these complex multivariate social issues to simple cause-effect situations then beating one another up over what the simple cause is.

Twitter is cancer and this is why i keep off it.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#80

Post by njepa »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #28

Twitter wins again. We keep reducing these complex multivariate social issues to simple cause-effect situations then beating one another up over what the simple cause is. When we're doing definitions, the key phrase is "necessary and sufficient" In this case, being rich or poor is neither necessary nor sufficient since we have plenty of examples of things working out with either of these two things being missing. So…

It isn't like 3 or 4 percent though. Starting a startup ranges from a largely risk free career move to impossible. Most people today start at negative. Want to live in a decent sized city? That's at least $2k a month. An education? Might very well be $50k in debt. Job security? Need to put in the hours young.

Otherwise there is a very real chances of getting evicted, not being able to find a decent job, not being able to keep your friends or start a family. Plenty of people who are successful today have their parents pay for university, their first apartment and/or a safety net. And that is just to have a normal career.

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