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The Best Advice My Dad Ever Gave Me (for Demo Day)

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Re: The Best Advice My Dad Ever Gave Me (for Demo Day)

#51

Post by Domenic_S »

jackpirate wrote: post #40
dkersten wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

doing a startup in Bay area with a family is not practical for a lot of people, especially given the current rental/living expenses. That's still fear of failure, only in that case, the fear may be well founded. If they fail, they cannot feed their family, so they are afraid of failing and probably for good reason.

It's not fear of failure. It's possible that there are people who couldn't do a startup even if guaranteed 100% chance of success in 10 years due to the stress/lack of money in the mean time.

IMO the calculation in that situation is risk of ruin.

The higher your financial obligations are, the more weight the ruin side of the equation holds.

Re: The Best Advice My Dad Ever Gave Me (for Demo Day)

#52

Post by dreese »

I really liked this article. More generally, I think deliberately choosing to do the "hard" things first (whatever that means to you as an individual) has served me well in life. I wish I did it more often.

At a former company, in a large group setting, I was asked to identify what I thought was the biggest roadblock to the company's success. I hesitated to comment because I knew my answer would be controversial. But, taking the bull by the horns, I answered, "Fear." I felt (still do) that when people are nervous about their careers or how they will be perceived, then they tend to censor themselves, sometimes without even realizing it. If the company took a deliberate approach to making the company a safe place (safe to disagree, safe to take risks, etc) then it would be a major benefit and help improve both morale and performance.

The CEO immediately disagreed. She didn't like the idea that any of her employees (200+) might be feeling some form of fear. Trying to address an issue like that is hard because it implies that high-ranking employees and "leadership" types were acting in a way that caused fear. It didn't even have to be deliberate or conscious. She would've had to do a lot of soul-searching, a lot of questioning the actions of her direct reports, many of whom were friends, and a lot of listening to frustrated employees.

I think it's pretty common to avoid hard things. So I try to tackle the hard things first. I think I learn more and it gets me out of my comfort zone. And the benefits are normally much greater too.

Re: The Best Advice My Dad Ever Gave Me (for Demo Day)

#54

Post by WiseWeasel »

pg wrote: post #50
WiseWeasel wrote: post #5

I hate to be that guy bitching without offering any constructive criticism, but this was painful to read. At least I had the courtesy to stick it through to the end to be sure before I posted this. We deserve better than this drivel at the top of HN.

If you feel that way the right thing to do is to say nothing.

But then who would know of weasel's disapproval?

J/k, I am sorry for revealing myself as an ass. I'll bite my tongue next time, or at least attempt to offer something of value.

Re: The Best Advice My Dad Ever Gave Me (for Demo Day)

#55

Post by MattGrommes »

pg wrote: post #50
WiseWeasel wrote: post #5

I hate to be that guy bitching without offering any constructive criticism, but this was painful to read. At least I had the courtesy to stick it through to the end to be sure before I posted this. We deserve better than this drivel at the top of HN.

If you feel that way the right thing to do is to say nothing.

I wish I could put this at the top of all comment systems.

Re: The Best Advice My Dad Ever Gave Me (for Demo Day)

#56

Post by kylebrown »

gyardley wrote: post #37

For me, this story was most interesting because it demonstrates the impact of social class in America, something that's rarely discussed. Try to picture the same story if the author's father was a millwright or a construction worker. Not at all a criticism of the author - we absolutely should work with the advantages we're given!

Same here, very interesting read. My only minor criticism is that it seems a little insensitive or dishonest when every well-to-do family calls themselves "upper middle class." So you can manage billions in assets and still be middle class? I call people on it when this comes up and find that they either see it as a social faux-paux to call oneself upper class, or the subjective threshold to be considered upper class is ridiculously high at 0.1% or whatever. Sorry, when your father manages billions there's no middle. Just a minor quibble because, for being upper class, Danielle is refreshingly honest and open about her background. I greatly appreciate that.

Re: The Best Advice My Dad Ever Gave Me (for Demo Day)

#57

Post by inthewoods »

savramescu wrote: post #41
choffstein wrote: post #34

As someone who has started a business in the finance space trying to leverage technology, I take some offense to this. My business partners and I have worked our asses off over the last several years to get to where we are today: billions of dollars in assets powered by our investment models. Trust me: asking someone to give you money to put in your strategies is not easy. Unlike the start-up space, there is no "mini…

I see Dad's advice as going for something that can have more meaning to you and for which you need balls then for the safe/low risk model. It's not about stress, it's about the need of the individual to make a difference. Doing something that has been done before it's not that exciting for a 20-ish year old. But someone older will take comfort in it.

The assumption implicit in that is that starting a hedge fund is "safe/low risk" - which, having started a hedge fund, is just wrong. It is as risky as starting any business. In fact, in some ways it is much, much harder because to gain any size in the hedge business you have to have either come from a very well-known shop or have a very good, audited track record. Even given all of that, count on 2-3 years of managing a small amount of money that doesn't cover your costs. And pray you don't have a large drawdown and have to watch that fast fund-of-fund money disappear.

She really lost me with the stuff about raising $200m - I'm sorry, but that's very, very, very unlikely to happen with an unproven manager with no track record - unless her family name is so strong she could just ride on that. But even given that, I don't know anybody that is giving out $200m to a 25 year old who hasn't run money before. Maybe that happened 5 years ago - I don't think that is happening now.

Lastly - I think it is an interesting idea to audit shipping records to decide on a position (macro I'm assuming), but there was also no discussion of whether she had even tested this and if it even worked.

Like an earlier poster, I frankly found this post insulting.

Re: The Best Advice My Dad Ever Gave Me (for Demo Day)

#58

Post by inthewoods »

choffstein wrote: post #34

As someone who has started a business in the finance space trying to leverage technology, I take some offense to this. My business partners and I have worked our asses off over the last several years to get to where we are today: billions of dollars in assets powered by our investment models. Trust me: asking someone to give you money to put in your strategies is not easy. Unlike the start-up space, there is no "mini…

Couldn't agree with this more...

Re: The Best Advice My Dad Ever Gave Me (for Demo Day)

#59

Post by WiseWeasel »

dmor wrote: post #16
jeroen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for WiseWeasel, but for me the spelling errors made some sentences hard to parse on first read. A bit of proofreading would have caught the worst of it, like these: "My wonderful friend David Weekly probably remembers me angsting in his kitchen over whether or pursue this idea vs. what ultimately became Referly." "I pondered him comments though"

Sorry about the typos, I have fixed most of them and I am still reviewing. I was very close to chickening out and not publishing this at all, so I went for it before it was perfect. I wanted to get past the point of no return. Not a great excuse but it is the truth. I'm sorry you had to struggle through the unpolished version

I'm sorry I was an asshole.

Please don't hesitate to submit on account of jerks like me in the future. Not to rationalize my behavior, but I do think the typos were a large part of what gave me a bad impression, inclining me to question whether it was up to the site's standards. Proof-reading carefully before submitting to HN might have made a big difference to my reaction.

That said, I am embarrassed by how much of a dick I was, and that certain other people voted me up (you know who you are). I could never have said something that mean to your face, which makes me a coward as well. Let that be a lesson to the kids out there; don't post mean, stupid comments at 1AM (or any other time)!

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