61–70 of 120 posts
The only consistent advice I have ever gotten from the most financially successful people I know (many worth >$100MM) has been to never give up. Some of them took decades to get to even moderate success.
The last decade has been an illusion of how quickly you can get rich starting a company. It can take years to see payoff and it is not always obvious.
But it also comes down to personal goals. If I was in it for the $, we would have been Google employees years ago and many m&a offers earlier. Shutting down can be the right move, so depending on the goals, different questions to ask.
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I burnt years of my life following advice like this when I was young and didn’t know better. If your formula is sufficiently wrong, which is the rule not the exception, you can’t make up for it with perseverance. There’s a selection bias in these stories you hear. Stories about people who gave it their all and failed aren’t popular.
What would you do differently? How do you know now that you were wasting your time? These moments make you more powerful than ever to be able to articulate why those precious (auto corrected but worked) times were not the myths you heard.
Though I've worked at a few startups, I don't have enough experience to know to know the above generally applies. But if there isn't a market for your product, no amount of effort is going to fix it. I don't mean existing market, sometimes good products make their own category ... but you need to have evidence that is true.
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What's up with the weird Elon hate recently? I don't care for the guy one way or another, but it's just bizarre. Plus, I have friends that worked for both Tesla and SpaceX and from what I hear, apart from being big and corporate-y, it's a pretty awesome place to be at.
It is not weird. He is the world's biggest grifter. Precisely, a great deal more of what he says is a lie than is true, and he has profited more from his grift than anybody except (maybe!) Putin. Pedo Guy. Hyperloop. Full Self-driving. Electric truck-tractor. Cybertruck. Sub-orbital passenger service. Sub-orbital freight. One-day turnaround. Mars Colonization. (To be clear: Starship, even 1000 of them, is totally ina…
I mean, this is a bit dramatic, don't you think? Or do you not know who Jordan Belfort and Bernie Madoff are? Apart from annoyingly trolling Twitter, I don't really think Musk's really done anything that terrible.
Just seems like weird and reactionary "rich guy = bad" groupthink. I remember when everyone hated Bill Gates, but I guess now he's a humanitarian so it's totally cool.
This was written by a VC who has no track record as an operator or founder. The only consistent advice I have ever gotten from the most financially successful people I know (many worth >$100MM) has been to never give up. Some of them took decades to get to even moderate success. The last decade has been an illusion of how quickly you can get rich starting a company. It can take years to see payoff and it is not alway…
Extraordinary people can fail and regular people can make a lot of dough. I've met with a few billionaires myself and I have to say I didn't find them to be a different class of human. Just luckyer, from good families and with a very good sense of timing. Obviously very good at what they do. But fundamentally not that different from you and I.
This was written by a VC who has no track record as an operator or founder. The only consistent advice I have ever gotten from the most financially successful people I know (many worth >$100MM) has been to never give up. Some of them took decades to get to even moderate success. The last decade has been an illusion of how quickly you can get rich starting a company. It can take years to see payoff and it is not alway…
Well, yes, but let's bear in mind that there's a big confirmation bias there. Were these hundredaires more or less willing to give up than your ordinary founder who ends up with nothing after a few years to a decade at the wheel of a zombie company? Have they never given up on anything at all? Extraordinary people can fail and regular people can make a lot of dough. I've met with a few billionaires myself and I have…
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What's up with the weird Elon hate recently? I don't care for the guy one way or another, but it's just bizarre. Plus, I have friends that worked for both Tesla and SpaceX and from what I hear, apart from being big and corporate-y, it's a pretty awesome place to be at.
It is not weird. He is the world's biggest grifter. Precisely, a great deal more of what he says is a lie than is true, and he has profited more from his grift than anybody except (maybe!) Putin. Pedo Guy. Hyperloop. Full Self-driving. Electric truck-tractor. Cybertruck. Sub-orbital passenger service. Sub-orbital freight. One-day turnaround. Mars Colonization. (To be clear: Starship, even 1000 of them, is totally ina…
Get a grip.
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It is not weird. He is the world's biggest grifter. Precisely, a great deal more of what he says is a lie than is true, and he has profited more from his grift than anybody except (maybe!) Putin. Pedo Guy. Hyperloop. Full Self-driving. Electric truck-tractor. Cybertruck. Sub-orbital passenger service. Sub-orbital freight. One-day turnaround. Mars Colonization. (To be clear: Starship, even 1000 of them, is totally ina…
> He is the world's biggest grifter I mean, this is a bit dramatic, don't you think? Or do you not know who Jordan Belfort and Bernie Madoff are? Apart from annoyingly trolling Twitter, I don't really think Musk's really done anything that terrible. Just seems like weird and reactionary "rich guy = bad" groupthink. I remember when everyone hated Bill Gates, but I guess now he's a humanitarian so it's totally cool.
Rich does not mean bad. Grift is bad. I think there is a difference. Or do you mean that nobody can be that rich without being a grifter? That might be true, but I don't think of Warren Buffet as one. Or even Jeff Bezos.
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What's up with the weird Elon hate recently? I don't care for the guy one way or another, but it's just bizarre. Plus, I have friends that worked for both Tesla and SpaceX and from what I hear, apart from being big and corporate-y, it's a pretty awesome place to be at.
He’s of the wrong tribe now it seems
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Compare it to water energy storage. Water is 1kg/L. Concrete is 2.4kg/L. Therefore, the volume of concrete lifted is 40% the volume of water you would need to store the same amount of energy. Here's the biggest water energy storage facility in the US: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Dominion+Bath+County+Pumpe... Cost of the water for that facility? $0/L. Equivalent cost for concrete? $0.15/L ( https://www.google.co…
> like thousands or tens of thousands of the motor/generator devices. I can't imagine the cost. ? The number of motor/generator pairs is proportional to the charge/discharge rate of the system. I'm not saying that because I'm an insider or have any special knowledge, I'm saying that because nothing else makes sense . So the question is whether it's cheaper to maintain a bunch of cranes and miles of steel cable and pu…
Hydro power dams and generating stations have been through thousands of serious earthquakes, worldwide, over more than a century. A condo penthouse packed with concrete blocks? Not so much. We have a lot of experience with earthquakes and stone blocks stacked high without mortar. The name for those is "ruins".