311–320 of 1001 posts
Here is a paper on A/B testing that the Bing search team conducted under Microsoft.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3171224
Hidden in there in a distribution graph is that 2% of the ideas that were A/B tested resulted in 74.8% of the improvements.
Now you can ask yourself what are they considering improvements which is a valid answer but that really struck me.
Section 4.3 Figure 3a.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the privileges people don't often think about is being able to afford to fail. If you don't risk destitution after your startup fails, you can try and fail many times, learn and try again. It's like continuously rolling two dice, and you only need to get double sixes once, and after that it's private jets until you die. One of the many reasons the rich get richer and the poor, well you know how it goes.
This is why societies should strive for more “inequality” (as in, more families with large fortunes). The rich have a safety net that allows them to take risks that ultimately benefit all of society. Let’s say with the best execution, a startup still only has 10% chance of success - so then the only thing to do is have more and more people “roll the dice.” And no, a strong welfare state is not a substitute - the dang…
I get the case for some capital accumulation. Capital does make for an amazing economic engine that we all benefit from. Capitalist countries are richer than non capitalist countries. Easy to understand. But there is a point where more capital accumulation and inequality just makes the rest of us become serfs to oligarchs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue is who pays for the welfare state. Finland got a lot of its wealth through off sea oil I think. Not easy to replicate in almost every part of the world. If you make the population pay for the welfare state, you are essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul. The people you rob (the ones paying the bulk of taxes) have a lower incentive to produce. This is one reason the energy Windfall taxes being proposed everyw…
This comment distorts what is happening by using the word "robbing". Why not "supporting"? Perhaps Peter has earned his cash by working really hard. But perhaps not, perhaps he just exploited other people to hustle his way up some corporate food chain.
If Peter did in fact work hard and now he's stripped of the results of his labor while being told that probably he only managed to accumulate capital because he was just exploiting others, what incentive landscape does that create.
Is a lot of profit a function of factors much less commendable than creating value for others? Sure. But by lumping in the productive people with the parasites, you are undermining those people who deserve your protection the most.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail. Unfortunately it's rarely discussed in society as such. The political parties that built these welfare states have traditionally been associated with worker unions, and entrepreneurship isn't high on their agenda. The Nordic right-wing parties got ideologically married to Thatcher-style neoliberalism and pref…
The issue is who pays for the welfare state. Finland got a lot of its wealth through off sea oil I think. Not easy to replicate in almost every part of the world. If you make the population pay for the welfare state, you are essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul. The people you rob (the ones paying the bulk of taxes) have a lower incentive to produce. This is one reason the energy Windfall taxes being proposed everyw…
Also, banks should chip in a lot more than they do. They’re basically printing money and should be taxed harder.
If the postmortem is "I tried to follow what influencers said, but it didn't work, so I'm tired, I give up" then, well, no surprise here.
And yes, startups are hard. Very hard.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Norway, not Finland. >The people you rob (the ones paying the bulk of taxes) have a lower incentive to produce. Sure, the thought of being worth only 150 billion dollars rather than 300 would stop Bezos from starting Amazon.
Bezos would not have kept Amazon in the US if it adopted Nordic welfare levels of taxation. The fact of the matter is that the EU has a staggeringly low output when it comes to tech innovation compared to the US. Their policies and regulations shape this.
The rich kid will have a go at throwing the dart at the balloon, and miss. But, because they're a rich kid, they just take out their wallet (or parents' wallet), get more stubs, and try again (and again) until they hit the balloon.
The middle class kid will have a go at throwing the dart at the balloon, and also miss. Then they will walk away, saying that was fun, and go hang out with their mates. But maybe the 10th or the 100th middle class kid will hit the balloon.
And the working class kids? They work at the funfair. They never get to throw darts.
Here's the kicker: those kids who hit the balloons? One or two of them might go off and start a blog/podcast, or write a book titled
- Zero To Plushy
- The Dart Thing About Dart Things: Plushy Hunting When There Are No Easy Answers
- Dart Throwers at Work: Stories of Plushy Hunters' Early Days
- You Are a Badass at Hunting Plushies: Master the Mindset of Throwing Darts
- The Lean Plushy Hunter
- &c
Hell, if it's the middle class kid writing the book, they might even throw a couple of anecdotes in there about how they didn't have an easy start (compared to the rich kid), and it might even be true for them.
That book is the catnip that folks like you and me base our life decisions on.
I had a go at 3 startups, only one of them quasi-full-time, as I self-funded with freelancing. (I spent years building a "turn PDFs into data" product, had a few paying customers, and then one day got made totally redundant by Google Vision.)
Needless to say, I got completely burned out on startup number 3.
I shuttered the business just as Covid hit. I spend more time with the family (wife, two daughters, 9 and 6), and we moved to the countryside to be closer to ageing parents and siblings with kids.
It's healing time, baby
I wish you all the best