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Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

jwz.org

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Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#171

Post by chalst »

_delirium wrote: post #127
drumdance wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I doubt it's, say, 50 times luckier. I'll wager it's a lot easier to go from 10 million to a billion than from zero to 10 million.

It's hard to come up with a good conditional probability, but just looking at the population ratios, the odds are close to the same: somewhere around 1 in 300 American households have net worth >$10m, and somewhere around 1 in 300 of those (close to 1 in 100,000 households) have net worth >$1b.

Right. One has to factor into the assets that Microsoft had at the start the access to Bill Gates' dad, who was a highly successful lawyer active in technology.

Where would Microsoft's shrinkwrap sales strategy have been without legal advice?

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#172

Post by jorkos »

I don't think Mike is writing in the spirit you suggest; he's just arguing that you have to work hard to achieve something great. Is there something wrong with that argument? Of course, VCs want the people they invest in to work hard....does that surprise anyone? No one has to take VC money.....know what you're signing up for.

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#173

Post by [deleted] »

quanticle wrote: post #92
kamaal wrote: post #77

Oh, C'mon. So I'm not supposed to work hard and get rich because as a side effect that some one else also is? My dad is a cab driver. He really works his life off. Under absolutely dismal financial conditions he and may mom have given their whole lives to bring us out of poverty. They got me and my sister decent education. They did what every poor family in India does. They worked hard, saved money, invested it and g…

It's not about working hard or getting rich. It's about working until you've put your health in danger. It's about coding until you're hallucinating. It might be necessary. But it's not laudable. Likewise, with your dad, what's laudable is the result . What's not laudable is the process. I'm sure that your dad would have jumped at the opportunity to make the same amount of money for fewer hours worked every day. In l…

[deleted]

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#174

Post by guelo »

kamaal wrote: post #77

Oh, C'mon. So I'm not supposed to work hard and get rich because as a side effect that some one else also is? My dad is a cab driver. He really works his life off. Under absolutely dismal financial conditions he and may mom have given their whole lives to bring us out of poverty. They got me and my sister decent education. They did what every poor family in India does. They worked hard, saved money, invested it and g…

jwz and Arrington are talking about engineers in Silicon Valley. Those guys are relatively well off and have a lot of opportunities. The point is that they shouldn't be fooled into working hard for no extra gain compared to their other opportunities.

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#175

Post by neutronicus »

_delirium wrote: post #127
drumdance wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I doubt it's, say, 50 times luckier. I'll wager it's a lot easier to go from 10 million to a billion than from zero to 10 million.

It's hard to come up with a good conditional probability, but just looking at the population ratios, the odds are close to the same: somewhere around 1 in 300 American households have net worth >$10m, and somewhere around 1 in 300 of those (close to 1 in 100,000 households) have net worth >$1b.

Just going by the fact that the wealth distribution is fat-tailed, the (stochastic) rate at which you obtain wealth must be roughly proportional to your current wealth. Otherwise, you'd expect an exponential decay in the wealth distribution.

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#176

Post by swah »

bl4k wrote: post #26

wait, does jwz really expect us to believe that he doesn't know who arrington is? I mean, the techcrunch conference afterparty two years ago was at his night club .. and I am pretty sure i saw both of them there.

jwz sells beer for a living now (he said so).

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#177

Post by henrikschroder »

nostrademons wrote: post #116
larrys wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Almost every industry out there manages to make good profits without their employees having to give up their lives." Medicine and law being two exceptions.

Note the pattern: medicine, law, and engineering are 3 industries where the employees carry significant human capital with them (finance is another one, and i-bankers also give up their lives). I suspect the reason for this is because human capital makes the payoff for additional hours worked non-linear. One cashier working 80 hours a week should be just about as productive as two cashiers working 40 hours a week (a…

> However, one engineer working 80 hours a week is significantly more productive than two engineers working 40 hours a week

Only for short periods of time.

Every single piece of research on working hours for knowledge workers show that longer periods of overtime decrease productivity. These people work longer hours because the people that pay them are unable to measure productivity properly and instead pay them by hours worked. Good for your salary. Crap for your company's productivity.

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#178

Post by alexandros »

antirez wrote: post #168

Humans are not designed to: 1) Stay long hours sitted, immobile. It ruins your health. 2) To provide a steady high quality output in creative disciplines (writing code qualifies) for more than a 4/5 hours a day (add to this the time to do breaks, install your updates, check news sites, fix the email client, and you'll reach the 7/8 hours per day figure). It makes sense in a startup to work hard in crucial weeks, you…

It seems to me that Arrington does not realise that managing coders is not the same as managing journos on a blog. Maybe writers can churn and churn while working miserable hours for years on end. It does not work that way in coding. One hour of coding without thinking carefully can have a large negative contribution to your company's ability to meet its goals, by way of causing bad architectural decisions, bugs, and/or downtime.

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#179

Post by Retric »

chalst wrote: post #171
_delirium wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to come up with a good conditional probability, but just looking at the population ratios, the odds are close to the same: somewhere around 1 in 300 American households have net worth >$10m, and somewhere around 1 in 300 of those (close to 1 in 100,000 households) have net worth >$1b.

Right. One has to factor into the assets that Microsoft had at the start the access to Bill Gates' dad, who was a highly successful lawyer active in technology. Where would Microsoft's shrinkwrap sales strategy have been without legal advice?

His mother served on the same board of directors as the IBM CEO. Which is probably why the original licensing deal was even considered and why the they where not heavy handed in their contract negotiation.

Edit: In 1980, she discussed with John Opel, a fellow committee member who was the chairman of the International Business Machines Corporation," her son's company. "Mr. Opel, by some accounts, mentioned Mrs. Gates to other I.B.M. executives. A few weeks later, I.B.M. took a chance by hiring Microsoft, then a small software firm, to develop an operating system for its first personal computer." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#180

Post by gizmo »

suivix wrote: post #80
EGreg wrote: post #62

This is the comment I left on Uncrunched: (PS: if you feel inclined to downvote, cool -- but I would like to know the reason. Maybe you can reply and tell me why you seem to disagree.) LOL Mike. Our company gets things done without having to live like slaves. There is a reason http://qbix.com/about has pictures of all of us in nature. It’s subtle but it all fits together with our company’s vision. We want to have fun…

I think being able to work from anywhere is actually less liberating, because it means you're always battling internally about whether you should be working or not.

- Having a boss is liberating because otherwise you are always battling internally about whether you should be working or not

- Having no money is liberating because otherwise you are always battling internally about whether you should buy something or not

- Being in prison is liberating because otherwise you are always battling internally about what to do with your life

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