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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”

#301

Post by sidlls »

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.

It's not rude but it does miss the point, entirely, and is a little condescending as a result.

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

#302

Post by claudiawerner »

michaelmcmillan wrote: post #203
x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think someone's ending point as an adult is largely limited to their "brains"? Like, how are you going to completely exclude the upbringing environment and the scarcity and struggle for resources that some folks face.

It's not "what I think", it's what we know. One of the most well established facts in sociology is that IQ is the best predictor for life success: Firkowska-Mankiewicz, Anna, and Jerzyna Słomczyńska. Intelligence (IQ) as a Predictor of Life Success. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20628656 You reiterate my question in the second sentence: How do we weight these different privileges?

A quote from paper that cites the one you link,

>For instance, IQ was believed to be one generic measure of human intelligence, on which Young’s meritocracy was based. But a century of research on IQ and life success has largely dispelled the once widely spread myth about the importance of IQ (Arrow et al., 2000; Gardner, 1983; Goleman, 1995; Gould, 1996; Zhao, 2016). Based on longitudinal studies on IQ and life’s success that lasted multiple decades, researchers conclude that: “the value of the IQ scores should not be overestimated” (Firkowska-Mankiewicz, 2002, p. 41).

https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/josi.1...

Besides that, even if an analytical weighting cannot be given, it doesn't mean we can't examine the effects qualitatively.

>The results demonstrate that intelligence is a powerful predictor of success but, on the whole, not an overwhelmingly better predictor than parental SES or grades. Moderator analyses showed that the relationship between intelligence and success is dependent on the age of the sample but there is little evidence of any historical trend in the relationship.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028960...

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

#303

Post by michaelbrave »

skookumchuck wrote: post #288
devy wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. You are totally missing the point Matthew Prince is trying to make, that is, you need to have a "safety net" before you can take risks. If one can't even get them fed and not worrying about what the next meal is and where to stay, all bets are off…

"Rowling has lived a "rags to riches" life story, in which she progressed from living on state benefits to being the world's first billionaire author." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling Oprah's another: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprah_Winfrey

those are examples of government safety net though no?

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

#305

Post by vonmoltke »

KaiserPro wrote: post #10
jacquesm wrote: post #2

How do countries with good social safety nets factor in here? In EU people are definitely not nearly as likely to start their own business as in the US, and many people that would otherwise be labelled 'jobless' (or on the dole) are 'self employed' instead.

This is demonstrably untrue. Looking at the official docs here: https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-... for the US and here: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06... for the UK (both are PDFs) In the USA for the first quarter of 2016, there were 240,000 new companies. So just million in a year, assuming that trend. Also, that is all companies, including those with no emp…

The US number is only counting businesses with at least one employee (owners are not employees, even if they work day-to-day), and may only be counting businesses that incorporate, or are formed via articles of organization. The source is unclear. As someone else noted, the UK number also leaves out certain types of businesses. Therefore, I can't tell that this is actually comparing apples to apples.

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

#306

Post by Jommi »

devy wrote: post #281
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…

> 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. You are totally missing the point Matthew Prince is trying to make, that is, you need to have a "safety net" before you can take risks. If one can't even get them fed and not worrying about what the next meal is and where to stay, all bets are off…

That would mean that places where nearly everyone has safety nets (countries with welfare) would have a higher amount of entrepreneurship. That is not the case.

Entrepreneurship seems to strive in harsh do or die conditions like in US or Israel.

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

#307

Post by ordu »

snowwrestler wrote: post #159

PG seems worried that tweets saying you have to be rich to do a startup will discourage non-rich folks from trying a startup. This doesn’t give those folks much credit. It implies that a few tweets will have a bigger impact on their decision-making than their own detailed understanding of the constraints and anxieties of their own lives. I don’t think PG is in a good position to understand those constraints and anxie…

Nicely said. It is an irrational economic decision for a non-rich to begin a startup. Even if memes could change their decision it would make matters worse for them, not better.

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

#308

Post by Reedx »

SeanAppleby wrote: post #206
vorpalhex wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

For better or for worse, VCs need heuristics to filter the likelihood of you pulling off what you're claiming you can, and prestige and depth of education is one of those factors, as well as employment history which also selects on those education factors. An associates from a community college isn't going to get you a meeting with a VC, nor is it going to get you past the resume screen at google to run around the ed…

You don't need a VC for most types of businesses. Especially not at the beginning.

Furthermore, you can get VC meetings or a job at Google with no college. Many have done it. It's increasingly the case that employers care more about what you've done/built than what college you went to - or indeed if you went at all.

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

#309

Post by zapita »

o10449366 wrote: post #174
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…

Twitter is one of the worst social media sites, in my opinion, and it makes me concerned how much it's caught on with American politicians (no, I'm not just referring to Trump). It limits discourse and incentivizes "outrage culture" by design. I see more racist and outright intentionally false information content on Twitter than any other social media platform and its only gotten worse with time. They've shown very l…

I think the main reason Facebook is under more scrutiny than Twitter is that they are so much more influential, and therefore more dangerous. Between facebook.com, Instagram, and the tentacular reach of Facebook connect, they have the ability to track and influence vastly more people than Twitter.

I agree that Google is not getting nearly enough attention. I think it because they’re better at PR, and have been developing a “respectable” image. Facebook has been much more blunt and careless in their communication, and now they’re paying the price.

I do hope Google gets in more trouble, they have a lot to answer for. Youtube in particular has a disturbing history of propagating toxic content. Their ad division has been very eager to look the other way when their customers engaged in questionable methods. And they are in great part responsible for demolishing the traditional news business and replacing it with the “engagement” business model that fuels clickbait and outrage-inducing content.

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

#310

Post by SeanAppleby »

Reedx wrote: post #308
SeanAppleby wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For better or for worse, VCs need heuristics to filter the likelihood of you pulling off what you're claiming you can, and prestige and depth of education is one of those factors, as well as employment history which also selects on those education factors. An associates from a community college isn't going to get you a meeting with a VC, nor is it going to get you past the resume screen at google to run around the ed…

You don't need a VC for most types of businesses. Especially not at the beginning. Furthermore, you can get VC meetings or a job at Google with no college. Many have done it. It's increasingly the case that employers care more about what you've done/built than what college you went to - or indeed if you went at all.

Yes, I actually have gotten VC meetings and work at Google without a compsci degree. I said one of the factors, like that it is a big difference in likelihood of getting past filters, not that it's impossible. It's a statistical effect.
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