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Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

foundersatwork.com

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Re: Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

#61

Post by thedanfilter »

001sky wrote: post #58
msrpotus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one big difference between luck and attractiveness, though. Luck is a big unknown except in hindsight. If you knew you were going to be unlucky, there's very little you could do (I hesitate to say nothing but I can't think of anything).

Luck is a big unknown except in hindsight Tools, techniques, and strategies for dealing with "the unknown" are a fundamental part of intelligence. As a corralary, the denial of uncertainty is the most un-intelligent of strategies. It follows that your statement has within it a bit of insight: just knowing that risk matters. So even if you can't know (with precision) your exact 'luck' at every moment, you can build up…

Luck is like time travel. Once you've done such an analysis, luck moves on to represent all those factors that you didn't take into account. That's what the word means.

Re: Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

#62

Post by 001sky »

thedanfilter wrote: post #61
001sky wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luck is a big unknown except in hindsight Tools, techniques, and strategies for dealing with "the unknown" are a fundamental part of intelligence. As a corralary, the denial of uncertainty is the most un-intelligent of strategies. It follows that your statement has within it a bit of insight: just knowing that risk matters. So even if you can't know (with precision) your exact 'luck' at every moment, you can build up…

Luck is like time travel. Once you've done such an analysis, luck moves on to represent all those factors that you didn't take into account. That's what the word means.

PG has a good quote, how ignorance can be useful when it keeps you from making other, bigger mistakes.[1] I think this is worth keeping in mind. Does ignoring luck [2] make you better off? Its not clear ignorance is the only strategy.

______________

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html; see also

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luck

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knightian_uncertainty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_process

Re: Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

#63

Post by mck- »

The Mixergy interview with PG (Feb 2010)[1] mentions Jessica working on a second edition of Founders at Work.

PG: "You know, that is her deepest wish. If she is watching this, she’ll be laughing so much at this point because that’s what she would like the most too to be able to spend more time on the new version of Founders at Work. There’s a new, she’s working on a new edition, with a bunch of new interviews."

Any updates on this?

[1]: http://mixergy.com/y-combinator-paul-graham/

Re: Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

#64

Post by ww520 »

Wow. Great advices. I especially like the resilience part. Those rejection stories really hit home, as I have gone through similar experience recently. When reading them, the line "when life deals you a lemon, make lemonade" kept flashing through my mind.

Re: Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

#65

Post by dools »

Arguing anything other than differences in levels of persistent hard work and skill in your particular field has a large mountain of evidence to overcome.

The effects of those two are very large, the effects of everything else comparatively small per decades of startup and longitudinal entrepreneurial studies.

Nonsense about hustle is exactly that: nonsense. The weight of evidence suggests that, if anything, hustling and creativity have a net negative effect on long term health of a startup.

But there's money to be made keeping up the lie.

Lastly, beware of pseudo-pop-science that opens with only a few people's stories. People manage to succeed as founders all over the world; these stories are not remarkable and tell us nothing.

In general the whole "determination" thing has little to no value in any serious consideration of startup success: it's about on the same level of credibility as diet fads.

Re: Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

#67

Post by johnsang »

cup wrote: post #59
pg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We call her Panic because she's the office worrier. I never considered her two sides might be related. Interesting idea, but I don't think so.

I wonder if her strength in picking up social cues also causes people to panic because shes the office warrior, detecting problems/issues and cutting through to their core.

My thoughts as well. Empathy has its costs. I was wondering if exposure to swings was one of them.

Re: Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

#68

Post by xyzzy123 »

dools wrote: post #65

Arguing anything other than differences in levels of persistent hard work and skill in your particular field has a large mountain of evidence to overcome. The effects of those two are very large, the effects of everything else comparatively small per decades of startup and longitudinal entrepreneurial studies. Nonsense about hustle is exactly that: nonsense. The weight of evidence suggests that, if anything, hustling…

Success is always the result of hard work and skill, but failure is usually bad luck ;-)

I think you have the right internal Locus of Control (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control) theory needed to succeed. But personally I believe the truth is a more nuanced (i.e, my Locus of Contol theory is a more external than yours :)

Environment is important too; generally, when people of modest background and means rise to found successful businesses, this is invariably mentioned in their biography precisely because it's unusual.

The influence of social environment, peers, connections, location, opportunities and just plain old timing do matter, in my view. Even Warren Buffett acknowledges that he won the "Ovarian Lottery".

Yep, I even believe in "luck" too (unpredictable external factors outside one's control). You can found a perfectly viable business, work hard, be skilled - and then become sick at a critical time. These things happen. Likewise, making the right connection or deal at just the right time can make all the difference to one's success.

Of course, as others have pointed out -your view is the most useful. You can only control what you can control. But do I advocate kindness to others, because persistent hard work and skill are no guarantee of success.

Re: Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

#69

Post by pmarca »

dools wrote: post #65

Arguing anything other than differences in levels of persistent hard work and skill in your particular field has a large mountain of evidence to overcome. The effects of those two are very large, the effects of everything else comparatively small per decades of startup and longitudinal entrepreneurial studies. Nonsense about hustle is exactly that: nonsense. The weight of evidence suggests that, if anything, hustling…

Keep telling yourself that :-).

Re: Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

#70

Post by wheels »

1123581321 wrote: post #54
btilly wrote: post #5

The link assumes that you know who is speaking. But it doesn't give that critical piece of information. Founders at Work was written by Jessica Livingston, who is a cofounder of ycombinator. She's married to Paul Graham. But do not think that she's in there just because of the personal connection. Her book is truly excellent. And in previous articles I've seen Paul say that the #1 thing that they want in a founder is…

She also contributed her financial and legal knowledge to YC. The others were "only" programmers.

The part about the "others" isn't really true. Paul and Robert had founded two companies together and Paul had been the CEO of a medium sized startup and taken it through the acquisition process.

Also, at least in the earlier YC batches before there were more folks helping out, Jessica definitely felt like the operations person; like she was the one that actually made things happen.

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