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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”

#191

Post by PascLeRasc »

vorpalhex wrote: post #185
njepa wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> An education? Might very well be $50k in debt. You can get a perfectly decent degree from your community college for very affordable prices. Likewise you may not be able to live in downtown manhattan, but you can probably live anywhere in a whole bunch of the square states on $1k a month.

How many YC founders went to community college?

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

#192

Post by Consultant32452 »

casion wrote: post #149
austhrow743 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem is that it gets read as a false dilemma. Talking about rich people and saying "you don't have to be rich to..." is like walking into a room of black people and saying "You don't have to be white to...". Nobody there is going to think that you're talking about asians. The statement doesn't really say anything except that 'being rich' is something that can come from some other non-rich state. It doesn't spe…

I don't think it matters what we're defining as rich. We can be honest without being destructive. I feel like our culture is constantly telling people they can't do anything with their life if they don't have every box of privilege checked. It's terribly psychologically destructive. Life is a constant struggle,a real river of shit sometimes, but it's one in which our own actions are still the biggest determining factor in our long term outcomes.

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

#193

Post by Timpy »

zpeti wrote: post #175
mattxxx wrote: post #171

The reality is that money lets you "take risks," and money gives you options (in this world). To be honest, I don't think that starting your company with the "risk" that you might move back in with your parents if it fails... is at all a meaningful risk.

Psychologically this is not true at all. It's much easier to take risks when you have nothing to lose. How many 18-30 year olds do you see having a swing at it and trying something, vs 30+ people with families and savings to burn?

I think everybody in this discussion is working with a different model for the word "risk". This is a problem of concision inherent to a platform like Twitter. I don't think the argument is that 18 year olds are risking less than 30+ year olds with established families. I think the argument is that for young middle/upper class people with social capital, the risk is moving back in with your parents. The conversation stems from the question "are startups riskier for rich kids or not-rich kids?", and not "are startups riskier for 18-30 year olds vs some other demographic?"

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

#194

Post by bettrsocial »

I don't think anyone else should pay for a startup's safety net. Doing a startup requires calculated risk. It may or may not work. Whoever wants to attempt need to sit down and calculate the costs and the risks and take precautions. This is not the same as someone becoming unemployed because they got laid off, and it's not the same as providing welfare to people in poverty. Startups by their nature are risky and no one else should have to pay for a safety net in case it doesn't work out. The market does well weeding out the bad ideas and companies that aren't actually solving any problems. Creating a safety net might just contribute to perpetual "startupdom" (with everyone else paying for it), when in reality certain ideas and efforts need to just die off.

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

#195

Post by michaelmcmillan »

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?

I guess you're smart enough to realize that was a typo :)

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

#196

Post by wastedhours »

bko wrote: post #160
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…

This is a kind of No True Scotsman fallacy. Anyone that is successful was 'advantaged' because her family was rich, or she had two parents, or she had a parent, or she was born in America, or she was born with the right number of chromosomes... The whole conversation strikes me as just snarky and reductive. I don't see the point. Why not try to promote a conversation to lift people up and empower them rather than wri…

> Anyone that is successful was 'advantaged'

> Why not try to promote a conversation to lift people up and empower them rather than writing off the hard work and perseverance of others?

I think these two can live together - if you succeed, there was something that allowed that. Whether it was privilege, whether it was luck, or timing, or the right application of hard work and a blend of them all.

It's important to recognise what advantages are best leveraged for success, and then we can optimise to ensure most people have access to it.

In the argument in question, what advantage did Airbnb's founders have that allowed them to take that risk? How did they get the flat they were struggling to pay for in the first place for example? Why did they not skip rent and have to work 3 part time retail shifts to cover it like large swathes of workers in a similar boat.

Identifying privilege is an important piece of the puzzle - noone succeeds solely by hard work alone (otherwise all coal miners would be millionaires, and 996ers would be everywhere), so if we can spot the factors that successful people leverage, we can support others to get there (whether that's better education, cheaper housing, familial support etc...).

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

#197

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#198

Post by lordCarbonFiber »

vorpalhex wrote: post #185
njepa wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> An education? Might very well be $50k in debt. You can get a perfectly decent degree from your community college for very affordable prices. Likewise you may not be able to live in downtown manhattan, but you can probably live anywhere in a whole bunch of the square states on $1k a month.

While you're not wrong in the strictest sense, I feel like this sentiment is being myopic to the point malice. The network gained from going to a university full of likeminded and talented people as well as living in a city teeming with opportunity is huge. Not to mention generic quality of life improvements of living in a city, doubly so if you happen not to be a cis-het white man.

Starting money is not strictly necessary nor sufficient for success but it sure can smooth over life's pitfalls, which makes risk taking a hell of a lot easier.

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

#200

Post by hef19898 »

vonmoltke wrote: post #165
hef19898 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Housing, food, clothing, etc... Unfortunately that's not included :-)
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