Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 384 posts

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

#161

Post by bluGill »

todd8 wrote: post #134
michaelmcmillan wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Induction gets you nowhere though: where did our privileged parents get their brains from? You're proving my point here: we inherit roughly 50% of our traits through our parent's genes. I never claimed IQ was the best measure (surprised it looked like random noise though), but certainly our cognitive traits matter . So to my question: How do you distinguish that privilege from the privilege you got from your "class"?…

Where do the other 50% of our genes come from?

You get 50% of your parents genes, the other 50% isn't passed on to you at all. They might be passed on to your siblings.

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

#162

Post by vonmoltke »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #19
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…

Registering a company in the UK, and keeping it running, is both simpler and cheaper than in the US. Registering a company takes a few minutes and costs less than $30. Compulsory annual filing costs less than $20. If your company's revenue is below some threshold, you don't need to register for VAT (similar to sales tax). And there's another (even higher) threshold below which you can file very simple annual accounts…

That's about the process in Texas. Incorporating is a different story, but you don't have to incorporate to register a business (and it's probably a waste of money if you are the sole owner with no employees).

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

#163

Post by idlewords »

lazyjones wrote: post #117
cbanek wrote: post #108

Pretty disappointed in PG's response: "I would ordinarily just let your bullshit go, but this myth that you have to be a rich kid to start a startup is terribly dangerous, because it discourages people who aren't from trying it. Brian Chesky's parents were social workers. That is not a rich kid." As if having two parents with stable jobs isn't considered a safety net. I agree, you don't need to be rich, but I also ag…

Why is it disappointing to that he points out that "having a safety net" and "being rich" are different things? The whole thread seems to revolve around people trying to misunderstand him deliberately in order to post their "progressive" complaints.

He specifically says later in his replies that he's debunking "the meme that you have to be upper middle class to start a startup." But his chosen example is exactly that, three upper-middle-class kids (Harvard and RISD grads).

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

#164

Post by tluyben2 »

Everyone from my country (NL) has a safety net to start with (you can screw up but still) and that goes for many EU countries anyway and yet all the entrepreneurs I know from NL are extremely risk averse compared to the US ones. Most of my NL friends are entrepreneurs but more of the lifestyle kind than even wanting to become the #1 in their field with the monetary status that comes with it. I dare to say that I only know Chinese and US entrepreneurs that look beyond getting more than few million on their account and that is it.

I wonder why that is.

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

#165

Post by vonmoltke »

hef19898 wrote: post #70
bko wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was replying to the specific claim that getting a degree requires a lot of money.

Undergrad programs are what, 3 to 4 years. That means enough money to replace 30 hour per week job for four years. With uncertain healthcare status. That is a lot of money. Over here studies are basically free, about 100 EUR incl. public transport per semester. And even then working full-time to be able to finance all of that is hard.

> Over here studies are basically free, about 100 EUR incl. public transport per semester. And even then working full-time to be able to finance all of that is hard.

Who needs to work full time to afford €200/year?

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

#166

Post by bluGill »

njepa wrote: post #80
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 abl…

Cost to live in a decent sized city are much less than that in most cities. Sure Silicon Valley is going to be more. Also every city has rich areas that are more. However in most cities there are poor neighborhoods where rent is under $1000, and you can share that with a few roommates. If you tastes are to a stove that you don't need to light with a match, sidewalks that are even, and other nice things: that will cost you.

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

#167

Post by Miner49er »

PandaRider wrote: post #8

I'm shaking my head right now because I can't believe people at the top is still susceptible to sampling/survivorship bias. I've tried searching but cannot find a good empirical study of privilege and entrepreneurship correlation. However, I've found an essay paper [0] that exactly predicted this twitter drama; that entrepreneurs simultaneously present and erase this conversation about class and entrepreneurship. The…

There are studies that show that welfare increases entrepreneurship. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/welfare...

So providing more people with safety nets increases entrepreneurship. Having a strong safety net is a form of privilege.

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

#168

Post by Daishiman »

nichos wrote: post #156
ldoughty wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. I have great ideas of things to work on, but I'm essentially a single income household (my wife is in grad school, and her part time pay barely covers her education and school). I can't quit my job and work on a dream venture, who will pay for my wife's upcoming childbirth and related expenses? Who will ensure we can still make payments on our home and food? Living with parents is definitely a safety n…

This may come off rude, but I certainly don't mean it to be, but you have a choice to make. It sounds like you're chosing to have a kid and your wife go to school. If you want to do the startup, skip the kids, have your wife work and support you while you do the startup. Not everyone can have everything.

So the rich kids get to have their startup and kids. And that definitely tilts the balance for a lot of people.

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

#169

Post by JangoSteve »

austhrow743 wrote: post #137
cbanek wrote: post #108

Pretty disappointed in PG's response: "I would ordinarily just let your bullshit go, but this myth that you have to be a rich kid to start a startup is terribly dangerous, because it discourages people who aren't from trying it. Brian Chesky's parents were social workers. That is not a rich kid." As if having two parents with stable jobs isn't considered a safety net. I agree, you don't need to be rich, but I also ag…

Paul said you don't have to be rich. Matthew responded as if he'd said that it's not beneficial to have a safety net. That's putting a statement in to his mouth that he did not make. Anything more than a "fuck off" from PG was charitable.

I think the response was reading more into the meaning behind what pg said than the actual words he used. This makes sense to a degree, since what pg actually said makes little sense unless you read more into it. When people say startups are for rich kids, they probably don't mean you _have_ to be rich to succeed in startups, since there are plenty of examples to the contrary. What they mean is that your chances of success are significantly higher when you already have means.

So pg arguing that startups aren't for rich kids probably isn't just a claim that you don't need to be rich to start a startup, because that would be a response to a claim no one is making. I think this is why it's reasonable (maybe incorrect, but reasonable) for some people to infer that pg is trying to discredit the underlying notion actually meant by such claims as he referenced, which is that building a successful startup is often less of a meritocracy than we'd like to believe.

Of course we could argue all day about the nuances of each argument, and what was said versus what was meant. But we all know this is the problem with any claim made on Twitter; it invites inference, since abbreviated excerpts don't allow for proper context or dialogue.

Post reply on HN