This makes no sense, arbitrarily applying the 80/20 rule to any and all circumstances holds no grounds - really. The 80/20 fallacy is one of the most overused and misunderstood concepts in stats...."applying the 80/20 we won't worry about this aspect of our customer base....or this aspect of our business...". It's pernicious, it really is.
The 80/20 Rule of Technical Founders
21–28 of 28 posts
Re: The 80/20 Rule of Technical Founders
#22Is this really the 80-20 rule? As I understood it, the 80-20 rule is that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. E.g. 80% of profits come from 20% of your clients. Here he's saying that 20% of developers want to launch a startup, and that you can further subdivide each group into another group that is 20% of the size of the previous group. That doesn't make sense to me as an application of the 80-20 rule oth…
I believe you're right, though the 80-20 law is just a very rough layman's approximation of a Zipf distribution.
Re: The 80/20 Rule of Technical Founders
#2390% of tech blog authors want some cool statistics to quote 90% of those will be willing to make them up to get there 90% of those will add as many steps as it takes to make the point they were trying to make, probably one about difficulty of getting from one step to the next 90% of those will be willing to publish those made up statistics 100% of those will lose a chunk of credibility by doing so.
I get your point, but I think you missed his.
Re: The 80/20 Rule of Technical Founders
#2490% of tech blog authors want some cool statistics to quote 90% of those will be willing to make them up to get there 90% of those will add as many steps as it takes to make the point they were trying to make, probably one about difficulty of getting from one step to the next 90% of those will be willing to publish those made up statistics 100% of those will lose a chunk of credibility by doing so.
I get your point, but I think you missed his.
Agreed....and I generally enjoy the article listings on Swombat too. Nothing wrong with the application of the 80/20 "rule" here. No way to determine the actual numbers but as a thought provoker 80/20 is just fine.... and an identifiable concept many are already familiar with.
Re: The 80/20 Rule of Technical Founders
#25Hmmm, I smell a general case... Our best estimates put the number of x in the world at around y. Applying the 80/20 rule you can estimate: Of those, 20% (y(.2)) want to z Of those, 20% (y(.2)(.2)) have enough motivation to start educating themselves about the process Of those, 20% (y(.2)(.2)(.2)) will actually start building something Of those, 20% (y(.2)(.2)(.2)(.2)) will actually finish building something Of those,…
>20% (y(.2)(.2)(.2)(.2)(.2)) have prepared themselves enough to achieve some measure of success What does this prep entail? What more needs to be done apart from having the motivation,starting and finishing building the damn thing?
Yeah, the last factor I didn't quite follow. Seems like the original author felt like 8000 was too large, so he needed a bullshit excuse to scale it down one more time.
Re: The 80/20 Rule of Technical Founders
#2690% of tech blog authors want some cool statistics to quote 90% of those will be willing to make them up to get there 90% of those will add as many steps as it takes to make the point they were trying to make, probably one about difficulty of getting from one step to the next 90% of those will be willing to publish those made up statistics 100% of those will lose a chunk of credibility by doing so.
I get your point, but I think you missed his.
His point isn't anything more than "Only a small proportion of people will be successful startup founders." We know this from experience and intuitively, because it's hard to start a startup and succeed.
The problem with his "argument" is that it's completely arbitrary. And I don't mean the 80/20 part, although that is too. He applies the 80/20 rule an arbitrary number of times. Why not one fewer? Why not four more times, which would get the number of startup founders down to 2.5? I can easily make up four more statements justifying the application of the rule.
Re: The 80/20 Rule of Technical Founders
#27Hmmm, I smell a general case... Our best estimates put the number of x in the world at around y. Applying the 80/20 rule you can estimate: Of those, 20% (y(.2)) want to z Of those, 20% (y(.2)(.2)) have enough motivation to start educating themselves about the process Of those, 20% (y(.2)(.2)(.2)) will actually start building something Of those, 20% (y(.2)(.2)(.2)(.2)) will actually finish building something Of those,…
>20% (y(.2)(.2)(.2)(.2)(.2)) have prepared themselves enough to achieve some measure of success What does this prep entail? What more needs to be done apart from having the motivation,starting and finishing building the damn thing?
I believe what he meant was the stuff in between 'starting' and 'finishing', i.e. doing the work. Lots of people start and do some of the work and never finish. Many also start, do a huge amount of work, but also never finish. It's 3 distinct phases, each of which represents a progressively smaller proportion of people.
Re: The 80/20 Rule of Technical Founders
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get your point, but I think you missed his.
Agreed....and I generally enjoy the article listings on Swombat too. Nothing wrong with the application of the 80/20 "rule" here. No way to determine the actual numbers but as a thought provoker 80/20 is just fine.... and an identifiable concept many are already familiar with.
It's a very poor way to make a point. It's like if I used the fact that the earth is flat to illustrate an otherwise good point. The point may be valid, but using such a bad illustration is better than not making the point at all.