Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

asc.upenn.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 265 posts

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#241

Post by openknot »

ryandrake wrote: post #201
Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense, a bad foundational idea sets a start-up back so much that it makes a failure so much more likely. Most don't have the runway to pivot away to something that works. And if you think that businesses failing are some abstract concept completely removed from any personal impact then it shows why these success stories are a problem. It's less prevalent and more unwelcome to hear about the marriages breaking up,…

I always wondered how these kinds of ideas even survived the initial laugh-test. Like, didn't the entrepreneur even have a single friend who could point out how awful and flawed their idea was before they tried to make a serious business out of it? People used to come to me to validate their horrible business ideas. "Oh, you're a tech guy and you have a business degree! What do you think of my Online Store For Cats i…

>Entrepreneurs tend to be positive and optimistic, and then only surround themselves with other positive, optimistic people.

I wonder how to navigate this. Quite frankly, I would not be interested in startups at all if I listened to the negative people in my life (who say to get a stable job, don't take risks). But I also don't really want to fool myself into believing a fundamentally flawed idea would be viable.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#242

Post by inter_netuser »

burntoutfire wrote: post #127
throw8932894 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Living in the US of America is already a success compared with most other places in the world. > Success for most people is not making a billion dollar company. Success for them is being able to raise a family, work on their own, pursue their interests and be free. In the US you can do that way easier than in the rest of the world. This is such self absorbed and delusional opinion! Your point proves point of the ar…

It's very easy to make very good money in the US, compared to practically anywhere else in the world. Mundane corporate IC paper-pushers with no discernible talent can make up to six figures - which is salary restricted to mid- and high-level management in most other industrialized countries. What's more, taxes in the US are lower than in most other industrialized countries. In result, an (non-software) engineer in t…

engineers make 2.5-3k in europe after taxes?

thats third world wages?

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#243

Post by lampe3 »

WalterBright wrote: post #237
GameOfFrowns wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This only works if your peers aren't following the same strategy of maximizing potential otherwise they would just cut you out for being the least successful friend.

If you look hard enough for a reason to fail, you'll surely find one.

[flagged]

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#244

Post by lampe3 »

nickpp wrote: post #168
lampe3 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like a American entitled boomer. Just work hard and it will be fine. Which if you look was never true. > Get a guitar and start practicing. Every guitar god I've heard of have one thing in common - they played a lot, for many many years, before breaking through. Sure but they also got talent and were the exception and your view is biased. The ods of becoming a guitar god are very low and of course they are…

>Just work hard and it will be fine. Which if you look was never true. I don't know, but I still think the first strategy beats the hell out of the alternative: "don't do anything and wait for life to pamper you" - because it won't. Life is a fight and one's attitude, while not the only factor, will go quite far towards determining the outcome. A can-do attitude, optimistic and oriented towards success will often enc…

I mean these sound nice in a book or in a blog post but in real life.

Attitude to fight everybody and be better then everybody can lead to being alone because nobody wants to be your friend or only as long as you have money or other stuff.

Yes some people have victim mentality but again just because someone has a winning attitude does not mean he/she will win.

The odds are bigger of course if you do something but again how much? from 0.001 to 0.002? or 0.05? Just doing stuff is most often not a better advise then doing nothing.

Its more important to do the thing that brings you near to your goal. Which these days is taking hack after life hack. Which usually only benefits the people selling you stuff.

What about the person who has to work 2 jobs? yes they still can learn that 1 hour when they have a break.

But in most of the definitions they would be a looser which they are not.

Sometimes it is the systems fault. Sometimes it is random luck or misfortune.

What has a bigger impact on you being healthy and wealthy then doing hard work?

Your parents being healthy and wealthy.

If you look at studies this is the biggest impact not working hard.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#245

Post by lampe3 »

WalterBright wrote: post #197
lampe3 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like a American entitled boomer. Just work hard and it will be fine. Which if you look was never true. > Get a guitar and start practicing. Every guitar god I've heard of have one thing in common - they played a lot, for many many years, before breaking through. Sure but they also got talent and were the exception and your view is biased. The ods of becoming a guitar god are very low and of course they are…

> Just work hard and it will be fine. I didn't say work hard. Nor did I say it will be fine. I said it IMPROVES THE ODDS OF SUCCESS. > they also got talent I don't buy that. When I was younger, I enjoyed competitive ballroom dancing. I was terrible at it, but I kept at it for years, and finally was able to get on the floor in a competition with the good dancers. I'd get complimented on my "talent". What a laugh. Tale…

You can always tell the winners?

So scammers like MLM/Gurus/Influencers and the rest are seen als winners.

Still they are what they are scammers.

That single person responsibility thing is nice in theory but breaks really fast in the real world.

Yes it works for people who already had a great start and they can decide.

But that for me is a pretty middle class western world view and has led to were we are now.

If that is good or bad I don't know but could it be better? Sure.

First we need to understand that sometimes things are not in our hands. Sometimes the system is rigged against us (not always). If we then start to make the play field fair for everybody then your theory would work but I don't see this happening in the next 10 years.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#246

Post by peterdn »

WalterBright wrote: post #233
buran77 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't mention what might be the most important things successful people have to get them there: a good support network of other successful people, and a good safety net to catch them if they fail (sometimes the same network). I think you can scratch away everything on that list and the network (family, friends, colleagues, etc.) could still help you be successful. It's like a game where some people get a copy wi…

Why do you think America is fuller of successful people than other countries?

Is it though? By what metrics do you believe that's true?

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#247

Post by burntoutfire »

inter_netuser wrote: post #242
burntoutfire wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very easy to make very good money in the US, compared to practically anywhere else in the world. Mundane corporate IC paper-pushers with no discernible talent can make up to six figures - which is salary restricted to mid- and high-level management in most other industrialized countries. What's more, taxes in the US are lower than in most other industrialized countries. In result, an (non-software) engineer in t…

engineers make 2.5-3k in europe after taxes? thats third world wages?

Both numbers (5k in US, 2.5-3k in Europe) were monthly.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#248

Post by cryptica »

nickpp wrote: post #178
cryptica wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at who is getting all the funding, you will see that they have rich and/or politically connected family members in 99.9% of cases.

That is simply not true. There are countless angel, pre-seed, seed and VC funds begging founders to apply and funding any idea with the slightest chance of success. We are rather living boom times in funding, both in US and EU. What we are lacking is entrepreneurs: people willing try to work and prove ideas.

That's simply not true. The process is highly selective. Though maybe they only select from 20 year old inexperienced people on purpose (I'm in early 30s)? Otherwise, I can't reconcile observable reality with what you're describing. I've applied to 100s of incubators and seed investors over 10 years and got 2 interviews (one was from A16z though... What are the odds?) and my CV as a tech person is excellent (with a proven track record in a startup and in open source) and I've been hustling pretty hard to get interviews (e.g. attending company events where I knew the VCs would be going and talking to them). I never got any seed funding from any VC.

Then I bootstrapped my project myself and it was enough of a success to allow me to not work... It could have been a far bigger success with funding.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#249

Post by sbilstein »

mdorazio wrote: post #202
sbilstein wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep.... Bootstrapping is for fools. Virtually no founders out there are pouring their personal savings into their company. The issues with bootstrapping: 1) No one to tell you to give up except your own survival instinct. 2) You've already told yourself to ignore that survival instinct because of the success stories you've heard. 3) Even if your idea is fantastic, there is another group of folks out there who have ra…

I would be willing to bet a large amount of money that the large majority of successful businesses are either bootstrapped or use traditional loans as funding. The stats don't work out any other way - several hundred thousand new businesses are started in the US each year, but only a fraction that number could possibly be angel or VC funded. Your perspective only applies to a narrow slice of SaaS businesses.

I suppose when I read Hacker News, I think about the kind of companies that would apply to YC or otherwise compete with SV-ish funded companies.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#250

Post by [deleted] »

yawnxyz wrote: post #135
sbilstein wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep.... Bootstrapping is for fools. Virtually no founders out there are pouring their personal savings into their company. The issues with bootstrapping: 1) No one to tell you to give up except your own survival instinct. 2) You've already told yourself to ignore that survival instinct because of the success stories you've heard. 3) Even if your idea is fantastic, there is another group of folks out there who have ra…

We've been bootstrapping our weird tech/bio/techbio startup for the last four years... it's NOT EASY at all, but we've made it to the point that we're ramen profitable (For now) and it's kind of an amazing feeling. Of course I'm making like 1/5 I would at a tech company, but we're literally saving people's lives, and that really makes up for not making as much.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN