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Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

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Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#191

Post by ch4s3 »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #108
mc32 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soviet style housing is an answer and also not an answer. It would provide housing for people on UBI, but because it’s operating on a thin budget, over time it becomes less desirable. Now, it’s not always the case _if_ you can get the tenants to coöperate and pitch in on basic maintenance and keep anti social behavior at bay ala Singapore, but my feeling is we’re not of the same mindset as Singaporeans.

Any creation of affordable housing contributes to slowing down increasing prices. Many countries do this by putting legal limits against gentrification.

> Many countries do this by putting legal limits against gentrification.

What does that even mean? I'm not aware of any country that restricts the change in the income mix of housing, or the renovation of dilapidated housing by new residents.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#192

Post by advisedwang »

danenania wrote: post #173
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

I've known this for decades. When Bill Gates started publishing Smart Basic (or whatever) in magazines, I got a copy and saw what crap it was. I could do better. Why didn't I? That was my very first thought. The reason was, I had to work halftime to pay tuition and buy food. I was mired in working to live. Ol Bill had a family to support him as he bought resources (ads in magazines etc), recruited staff, took meeting…

It definitely makes a huge difference to have savings if you want to be an entrepreneur. But these days, a decent programmer can save up a year or more of runway and build industry connections just by working for a few years and not spending outlandishly. If the startup doesn't work out, a new cushy job is waiting for you. So yeah, startups are risky and favor the wealthy, but let's not overstate the case. I'm in fav…

Realistically a startup needs more than a year or two of runway for one person. It requires several years of runway for several people, plus paying for infrastructure, legal work, marketing etc.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#193

Post by ch4s3 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #41
nostrademons wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the case for rent restrictions. It's actually worse - rent control decreases housing mobility (nobody wants to give up a rent-controlled apartment, even if it no longer meets their needs) and disincentivizes development, so the prevailing market rate for non -rent-controlled apartments goes up. But eliminating zoning restrictions and building more housing actually does work. Then when you move, you have your p…

I live in a rent-restricted area. There is quite a bit of construction, and the average person moves almost once every two years. The effects of rent-restriction you quote are theoretical effects. In the real world, it does work, as long as the rent-restrictions are well-thought-out.

> and the average person moves almost once every two years

Are you sure? There's lot of research n rent control and it basically all highlights decreased housing mobility, event he pro rent control authors mention it asa downside.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#194

Post by aksss »

bumby wrote: post #129
Vaslo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there will be a few folks that will prosper from basic income, I can’t say I’m interested in paying people to pursue things that are more like hobbies. For every entrepreneur or community volunteer that makes a difference, I fear 9 others will set their sights on being gaming streamers or will just sit around writing blogposts. If you aren’t adding value somewhere and are able minded and able bodied, I don’t wa…

I really appreciate Jack Goldstone’s perspective on this. Instead of perpetual UBI, he’s in favor of a larger single lump sum paid out after a period of time post-civil service. The idea being instead of the slow morphine drip of $1k a month for life, you can get, say, $25k-$50k in a lump sum after serving a year or two in the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps etc. The advantage being service builds a stronger sense of communi…

I’m not sure that’s a good plan with such a huge dependency on financial wisdom. Look at Alaska - they have the PFD every year (well, mostly) and people just use it to buy TV’s, quads, and all the rest. You could say it frees up other income to pay bills, but I think generally people indulge themselves with lump sums of cash unless they are really struggling and have some good sense. In Alaska there are people who would favor switching the PFD to a monthly stipend rather than a lump sum to discourage this behavior.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#195

Post by ozim »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #188
Axsuul wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we using Bill Gates as an example here? He is an extreme outlier that is far beyond the goal post of what most entrepreneurs would see success as. It doesn't require the seminal upbringing and kismet growth environment of Bill Gates just to get into entrepreneurship.

The focus here is on the hustling Bill of the 80s, not billionaire Bill of the 90s.

Don't forget that this guy full name is: William Henry Gates III.

He is not your friend Bill from across the street that most of people could compare with.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#196

Post by mmmBacon »

czbond wrote: post #179

ha ha ha ha ha. Ok. As a grizzled founder, who is becoming numb to the entitlement that is easy startups, easy funding, easy results. I know many founders - and they were broke, broke, broke (and went broke to bootstrap). This 'finding about your parents' can make those straight out of college who don't stick with it feel better. Reality is... entrepreneurship is an incredibly hard game that takes years of grinding a…

I’m sure if you came about entrepreneurship at the highest difficulty setting, it’s hard to shake your own perspective. As a person who has tried twice and failed both times, I totally agree there is no easy path. There are however, lower difficulty paths and those paths lead to better outcomes for entrepreneurs.

If you keep at it, are smart, have good ideas and execute, I think you can probably build an equivalent network over time that leads to success. I always like to think that investors fund people more than ideas.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#197

Post by jrexilius »

People are extrapolating way too much from a study in Israel about their market, culture, and system. While it is a truism that starting a company is easier with money than without, that doesn't explain the abundance of poor immigrants (here in the US) who build businesses. Nor is any of it a clear indicator that shifting policy towards blanket money hand-outs would be an efficient means of increasing entrepreneurship. The left-tech's attachment to universal hand-outs looks much more like a guilt-salve than reasoned, efficient policy.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#198

Post by pastage »

danenania wrote: post #173
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

I've known this for decades. When Bill Gates started publishing Smart Basic (or whatever) in magazines, I got a copy and saw what crap it was. I could do better. Why didn't I? That was my very first thought. The reason was, I had to work halftime to pay tuition and buy food. I was mired in working to live. Ol Bill had a family to support him as he bought resources (ads in magazines etc), recruited staff, took meeting…

It definitely makes a huge difference to have savings if you want to be an entrepreneur. But these days, a decent programmer can save up a year or more of runway and build industry connections just by working for a few years and not spending outlandishly. If the startup doesn't work out, a new cushy job is waiting for you. So yeah, startups are risky and favor the wealthy, but let's not overstate the case. I'm in fav…

That means some extra years/decades off from your career, to get to the same level of security. So this is not overstating it, it just basically says if there is capital available ambitious ventures will succed at a more frequent rate.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#199

Post by CalRobert »

CM30 wrote: post #169
iso1631 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans may be more risk averse too -- perhaps more YOLOs in America because there's nothing to lose, where as in Europe you can still have a normalish life, but it's not just a strong safety net either though -- many unicorn concepts were done in Europe, but they didn't become big globally. Maybe the lack of VC to scale - a lot of money sloshing around in SF. Maybe there's less of an culture of thinking "my way is…

I think the VC one is the main factor here, as is how risk adverse many investors seem to be in Europe. Put simply, the majority of them don't like investing in B2C companies, they don't like investing much money in general (by US standards) and they certainly don't like investing in businesses where it'll take years for it to pay off if they're lucky. This means that if you ask for investment in something like Faceb…

It's interesting, when I look at EU supports for entrepreneurship or vc amounts it's largely a question of whether an investment of 6 months' salary is enough to quit my job. The scale is pathetic by comparison to the US.

Although, I'm hoping to bootstrap something here in Europe for my next gig. Public healthcare, insanely cheap houses (compared to California) and cheaper devs should help with runways.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#200

Post by czbond »

mmmBacon wrote: post #196
czbond wrote: post #179

ha ha ha ha ha. Ok. As a grizzled founder, who is becoming numb to the entitlement that is easy startups, easy funding, easy results. I know many founders - and they were broke, broke, broke (and went broke to bootstrap). This 'finding about your parents' can make those straight out of college who don't stick with it feel better. Reality is... entrepreneurship is an incredibly hard game that takes years of grinding a…

I’m sure if you came about entrepreneurship at the highest difficulty setting, it’s hard to shake your own perspective. As a person who has tried twice and failed both times, I totally agree there is no easy path. There are however, lower difficulty paths and those paths lead to better outcomes for entrepreneurs. If you keep at it, are smart, have good ideas and execute, I think you can probably build an equivalent n…

Totally agree with your perspective. I'm now on a lower difficulty - but still rewarding path - that can still scale over time.
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