101–110 of 171 posts
It's hard to test theories when the underlying system constantly changes like it does in economics. Something that works today might not work tomorrow. A theory that looks sound when applied to yesteryears data might stop working before the sun rises. When many others try to apply the same tricks that made you successful the cake on that table might suddenly be divided into so many pieces that everybody will go home…
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The emotions of your dog are not laws of nature. The "true market" is like "no true Scotsman" or "a closed system" or "a spherical cow on a frictionless plane". It assumes something that doesn't exist. In economics the influence of the things it assumes wrongly can be very significant. In physics wrong assumptions can also make the results wrong and a lot of work (or rather most work) is done on checking if all the a…
> The "true market" is like "no true Scotsman" or "a closed system" or "a spherical cow on a frictionless plane". Come on, what is physics about then? ;) Even today, systems like my dog are computationally infeasible to predict from the fundamentals, even though everything my dog does is a logical consequence of QED. That's why it is impossible to make progress without assuming a spherical cow and then traveling to e…
To some extent this is also true for the economy which contains many feedback loops and meta-stable states. Even if we have the perfect theory it might still behave chaotically and might be as unpredictable as the weather.
When I was in my twenties, I was part of the early "life coach blogger" culture. Now that I'm almost in my forties, I realize everything I wrote back then was bullshit. Earnest, but bullshit nonetheless. I'm much more cynical, but I'm also much more likely to just do what seems right and figure out the rest as I go. I don't read "best practices" or advice articles anymore. This is not to say that there is nothing to…
I’ve read a lot of time management/productivity books, and there seem to be only two things all of the authors agree on: write stuff down, and continuously tweak your system. The latter is usually mentioned offhand in the preface, as the author wants to deliver a fait accompli instead of just some tips and tricks.
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Maybe theories about what not to do are more solid.
Thank you for the validation! My purpose in life is to serve as an example of what not to do.
But you have a paradox.
Do you demonstrate one big thing to not do and go out with a bang, winning a Darwin Award, or demonstrate many smaller (less lethal) things to not do? Which generates more net benefit for the world?
Always these career choices, and what kind of advice is there on that?
And no, we have identified patterns accross many past successful cases so we think we can risk theorizing some formulae and advice.
Top of my mind: - Build something really wanted/needed - The A Team - Timing - Early/easy access to funding
And whether you like it or not: luck!
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" ...know that there's demand for your product/service even if it's pretty manual to deliver early on. Then see how to automate. " So, Theranos? (I swear, if I had a quarter for every company that had "good product-market fit", I'd have...a lot of quarters. Possibly all of them.) Advice isn't terribly useful if you can only evaluate it after you've taken it, or not. P.S. Think I can get VC funding for my corner fruit…
No, because they didn't deliver anything early on, manually or otherwise. "Dont do crimes and fraud" is another great bit of advice IMO. Even healthcare isn't immune from market considerations. Might have been a good idea for regeneron to have done more market research before developing praulent for example.
My go-to ex-post example is FedEx, whose founder took their last month's payroll to Vegas, and won big enough to keep the business going. I was taught about that in business school (as an example of entrepreneurial spirit). Founders who do bad things and lose are convicted of fraud (and gambling with your employees' payroll is definitely fraud). Founders who do bad things and win are hailed as heroes.
Emulating successful startups is folly. It's the myriad failures that you will never learn about that you should be concerned with. I'll just leave this here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
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No, because they didn't deliver anything early on, manually or otherwise. "Dont do crimes and fraud" is another great bit of advice IMO. Even healthcare isn't immune from market considerations. Might have been a good idea for regeneron to have done more market research before developing praulent for example.
no, they failed because they failed. If she'd won some of her gambles she'd be a hero. My go-to ex-post example is FedEx, whose founder took their last month's payroll to Vegas, and won big enough to keep the business going. I was taught about that in business school (as an example of entrepreneurial spirit). Founders who do bad things and lose are convicted of fraud (and gambling with your employees' payroll is defi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, because they didn't deliver anything early on, manually or otherwise. "Dont do crimes and fraud" is another great bit of advice IMO. Even healthcare isn't immune from market considerations. Might have been a good idea for regeneron to have done more market research before developing praulent for example.
no, they failed because they failed. If she'd won some of her gambles she'd be a hero. My go-to ex-post example is FedEx, whose founder took their last month's payroll to Vegas, and won big enough to keep the business going. I was taught about that in business school (as an example of entrepreneurial spirit). Founders who do bad things and lose are convicted of fraud (and gambling with your employees' payroll is defi…
Success isn't a guarantee of your sins being forgiven at all
> Do you think Musk copied that strategy from the business school he never went to. Elon Musk did his undergrad at Wharton. I guess the statement might be true if you mean "business school" to strictly mean a graduate MBA program. But Musk definitely took business classes that would have been nearly identical to those taken by MBAs.
Why cut the writer so much slack? Musk went to business school period. Undergraduate, graduate doesn't matter. Doesn't matter what classes he took either. That is not what is talked about in the statement. Curious why it even matters what is written by the OP given such a glaring and easy to figure out wrong mistake.