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“Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

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Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#141

Post by bradleyjg »

jollofricepeas wrote: post #20

This is stupid. Any of us who have had at least two “successful” businesses will tell you that this quote is ridiculous. What’s your ideal of being successful? If it’s exiting at a billion, then sorry. But you can use a lot of this entrepreneur advice to find some level of success. The problem is that non-entrepreneur or first timers always try to skip the small stuff. 1. have a good team and hire right. you need jus…

I’ve bootstrapped two companies to success in my eyes which has changed me and my families life.

…

I’ve also failed miserably and had 5-7 business go under or never even really get off the ground.

All other things being equal, I’d expect someone who started 8 businesses and had one mild and one moderate success to have more useful insights to offer than someone who started one business and had it become wildly successful. Yet our culture valorizes the latter to extreme extents.

Perhaps that was what “awinkinson” was trying to get at with his pithy comment on that terrible platform.

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#142

Post by cyclotron3k »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #46
jollofricepeas wrote: post #20

This is stupid. Any of us who have had at least two “successful” businesses will tell you that this quote is ridiculous. What’s your ideal of being successful? If it’s exiting at a billion, then sorry. But you can use a lot of this entrepreneur advice to find some level of success. The problem is that non-entrepreneur or first timers always try to skip the small stuff. 1. have a good team and hire right. you need jus…

Honestly it just looks to me like the lottery you won is not "having a successful business", but "having the luxury and connections to try and fail 5-7 times with one success" Most people cannot afford to recover from failing once.

There's also a lot of survivorship bias. We don't hear about the entrepreneurs who had X failures and no successful exits. There must be some (a lot?)

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#143

Post by 8note »

dvt wrote: post #48
thfuran wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you know that some people spend their weekend working to make rent rather than launching apps that they hope might work?

Of course, but we're not talking about people in poverty, or that are homeless, etc. You're just bringing up a weird red herring that's orthogonal to my point--namely, that the bar is extremely accessible (esp. compared to ventures prior to the advent of computers).

Isn't this the same argument though?

Youre saying that if you only consider the rich, then there's no difference between the rich and poor experience for making businesses

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#144

Post by 8note »

delegate wrote: post #67

Consider that luck starts at birth. The genes you get, the health, the level of energy, stubbornness, personality, who you meet in life, etc .. these are all dice rolls. It does take skill to build something, but having the ability to learn that skill is a 'chance', which is in the realm of luck. Neither being lucky nor skilled is enough for success, it's the combination of both. And here I leave 'success' as loosely…

Being born ultra-wealthy is quite highly correlated with being ultra-wealthy, mind you.

Enough luck negates the need for skill

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#145

Post by roflyear »

jollofricepeas wrote: post #20

This is stupid. Any of us who have had at least two “successful” businesses will tell you that this quote is ridiculous. What’s your ideal of being successful? If it’s exiting at a billion, then sorry. But you can use a lot of this entrepreneur advice to find some level of success. The problem is that non-entrepreneur or first timers always try to skip the small stuff. 1. have a good team and hire right. you need jus…

The point is you still got lucky. Something helped you beyond doing hard work.

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#146

Post by [deleted] »

starkparker wrote: post #98
SamReidHughes wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where did they sleep? Maybe at least one of their parents had a sofa . The trick is to have parents who aren't homeless.

Here's how I fare on that. Each checked box is something I have. [X] "The trick is to have parents", [ ] who are alive, [ ] "who aren't homeless", [ ] who have housing that is safe and functional, [ ] who have room for you not already occupied by other family members in greater need, [ ] who "had a sofa", [ ] or if they're dead, at least left you with enough money as an equivalent

[deleted]

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#147

Post by wallace_g »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #42
angarg12 wrote: post #16

My general take on successful people giving advice is to ask yourself "how reproducible is this?". When the advice hinges on a unique set of circumstances that you can't reproduce, then they are likely giving you their lottery ticket. Otherwise you might want to listen more closely.

> When the advice hinges on a unique set of circumstances that you can't reproduce, then they are likely giving you their lottery ticket. People typically don't explain their success with "just after I opened the pickaxe shop, the gold rush started". Even if that is a major factor in their success, they will explain their success coming from other factors, like waking up at 5 am to listed to podcasts while running on…

[dead]

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#148

Post by gcanyon »

jollofricepeas wrote: post #20

This is stupid. Any of us who have had at least two “successful” businesses will tell you that this quote is ridiculous. What’s your ideal of being successful? If it’s exiting at a billion, then sorry. But you can use a lot of this entrepreneur advice to find some level of success. The problem is that non-entrepreneur or first timers always try to skip the small stuff. 1. have a good team and hire right. you need jus…

All of that seems very "necessary but not sufficient." The fact you had multiple businesses fail seems strongly to argue for that: presumably you didn't violate any of the above points when you failed?

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#149

Post by anonymousab »

shon wrote: post #134
bluefirebrand wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly it just looks to me like the lottery you won is not "having a successful business", but "having the luxury and connections to try and fail 5-7 times with one success" Most people cannot afford to recover from failing once.

>Most people cannot afford to recover from failing once. That’s not true in my experience. I’m a similar case, have started 8 businesses in 30 years. Most have had some level of success: enough pay my employees and provide good healthcare while also making a (often small) profit. I’ve also had 2 exits, one of which generatied a life-changing amount of money for my co-founder and myself. Of the 6 business that did not…

I'd assume "most people" refers to the average (assuming American) person that likely has tens of thousands of dollars of debt and works a job (or three) that can sustain them only by not fully servicing that debt. Putting time and money into a business venture means putting all they have on the line; failure means "skin of the teeth" living for some decades, if they can survive some winters outside.

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#150

Post by sashank_1509 »

bsder wrote: post #63
ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it does, the second paragraph in my original response states just that. This doesnt negate the fact that some people are exponentially better at business than others. Its the same in math, chess, basketball, football, writing, and every other human endeavor

> This doesnt negate the fact that some people are exponentially better at business than others. Its the same in math, chess, basketball, football, writing, and every other human endeavor Citing chess directly contradicts your thesis about "innate talent". In chess, the Polgar sisters are proof that training is the key and not genetics. The increasing existence of younger and younger chess grandmasters distributed ar…

Polgar sisters clearly proves a genetic point if you notice their ancestry? But I dont want to go individual examples, because individual geniuses possibly exist in every genetic pool. Let’s talk about averages where genetics do matter. On average which groups did/do well in intellectual pursuits. The trend is obvious but unfortunately taboo so we can’t have a reasonable conversation about this, even in this forum at times but if you study I think you’ll find some small sub groups overly represented in intellectual pursuits even when given extremely unfair environmental conditions like abject poverty or literal prosecution and you see this trend happening over and over again that it becomes clear to me that some gene pools are better suited to intellectual pursuits than other gene pools.
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