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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”

#351

Post by ergothus »

tracker1 wrote: post #340
ergothus wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Community college is a great deal. But $12-15k for a bachelor's degree, not to mention any hit to income because your work availability is limited when attending school and doing assignments, is not something every person can wave off as no big deal. That assumes the community college offers a four year degree and is within reasonable travel distance (oh, you do have a car, right? Because that college might not be on…

Here's a question.. why the fuck is college even a requirement here? I'm not saying it doesn't have value. But, if you are creating a startup and are that young, does college even matter at that point? The fact is, that for many things, a lot of people are perfectly capable of spending a few hours a day on a project above and beyond actually working a full time job. Yeah, people have advantages and others don't. Ther…

> Nothing is without risk

This is the whole point of the discussion here: For many people the risk is dramatically higher or lower than other people. Capitalism suffers if we don't let everyone actually participate in roles other than the menial worker.

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

#352

Post by SantalBlush »

Jommi wrote: post #306
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…

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.

This is a well-studied concept in labor and migration economics, but it's not about the "do or die conditions". It has more to do with tax competition and relatively lower wages, which tend to attract entrepreneurship, among other things. That's the prevailing theory, anyway.

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

#353

Post by joyeuse6701 »

blacktonystark wrote: post #260
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…

So, to put simply, VCs are only interested in those who already are full of multi-generational advantages and privileges built off the poor. No wonder startups are bascially for white guys only.

Lot's of people of color across the pond too, i.e. China.

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

#354

Post by bumby »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #330
bumby wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not the VCs' responsibility You make some valid points, but I really dislike the above comment. When used it seems like a convenient way to diffuse responsibility, often to selfish ends. There's lots of examples where this type of single-minded attitude isn't acceptable. - A civil engineer cannot just have making money be the sole pursuit when designing or building a bridge - A doctor cannot just have making m…

Leveling society's playing field is a far different scale of responsibility than a civil engineering designing a safe bridge or a doctor looking out for their patient. Societal level problems need societal level organizations to solve, such as governments. We should be voting for policies that strengthen the nation as a whole. A VC giving up a few % point in return in exchange for betting on poorer people is not goin…

To be clear, I'm not saying it's VC's job to create a solution of that scale. My position was that it's a weak position to wash one's hand of any responsibility because their stance is that they have a singularly focused job.

I would hope, for instance, that Boeing software engineers wouldn't take the stance that their job is to code to requirements and the safety engineers job to make sure the requirements are safe. I would hope everyone has the onus to look at the greater landscape for the impacts of their decisions rather than using a myopic view to skirt responsibility because it's convenient or easy.

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

#355

Post by mritchie712 »

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…

Like so many things in life, it depends.

I just like PG said "would ordinarily just let your bullshit go". I spit out some water, easily the best thing I've read on twitter this year.

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

#356

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

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.

Quality of community colleges vary greatly and these days you're just as likely to find one that's almost as predatory as a for profit college. They promise kids a great future and sign them up for as many student loans as they can. Then they feed them a canned curriculum from one of the major textbook publishers (with expensive digital content). Everyone passes just for asking. It's quickly becoming a racket thanks to "performance" based funding, but hey, they make lots of graduates now.

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

#357

Post by idlewords »

badatshipping wrote: post #350
idlewords wrote: post #170

Let's not forget that Graham has also publicly written he would be loath to choose any woman as a startup founder "who had small children, or was likely to have them soon." The man has a type, and the demographics of YC reflect it.

I... would too? Startups take over your life, and so does taking care of young kids. Pretty hard to do both at the same time. Not impossible, but pretty hard, which is presumably why he said he’d be reluctant, not absolutely unwilling.

Leaving aside that there are driven people who work their asses off despite having young children, and that "startups consume your life" is the kind of belief VC have an interest in perpetuating, note that Graham in this statement is treating kids as a women's issue.

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

#358

Post by bubblewrap »

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…

If you take the word of some gender studies person over his, OK... So fine, don't do a startup. Take up gender studies instead.

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

#359

Post by bubblewrap »

zepto wrote: post #236
bubblewrap wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Class may also mean you have no examples of entrepreneurship in your environment. I don't think PG claimed that poor people are as likely as rich people to become successful founders. That's not the same thing. He says you don't have to be rich to succeed.

Sure but he’s making a category error, and it’s so obvious as to be irresponsible coming from a person in his position. All it takes is one person who succeeds who is not defined as rich for his statement to be technically true, even if every other poor founder fails and dies in poverty.

What do you mean by category error? All he says is that poor people can succeed at startups, too. How is that making a category error?

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

#360

Post by skookumchuck »

InitialLastName wrote: post #343
skookumchuck wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

Neither of them "founded a start-up" while living below the poverty line. Rowling wrote a book in her spare time that eventually got popular. She wasn't putting any money or asking of anyone else's money to fund her book. Oprah followed the more usual path of "get a job, get promoted, rinse repeat" until she was a household name before she started her own company. Per the article you yourself linked, she was co-ancho…

Writing a book while on welfare is certainly a startup. She didn't self-publish the book. The publisher provided the funding to edit, print, market, and distribute the book (which is not trivial money). Rowling pitched the book to several publishers before one decided to fund it.

Oprah bootstrapped herself out of poverty to become a media billionaire. You might say she took the long way by routing through various jobs to get the money, but she still came from poverty, founded companies, and became a billionaire.

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