101–110 of 111 posts
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Genuine question, how do you know when to continue/slog and when to stop?
When you run out of passion, or will.
But as long as you like it and want to do it, lack of success should be easier to take.
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survivor bias. you just don't see all the other people "sticking to it" and never making it. you're discounting luck, chance, etc. one bad decision or just bad luck moment and you're toast. and for female singers - if your genes made you butt ugly, no career for you, no matter how great you sing.
" and for female singers - if your genes made you butt ugly, no career for you, " Music is not limited to the payola crap pumped on most stations you know And I'd say it probably gets better with music sharing over the internet, the ones complaining are usually the executive heads.
Yes, thousands upon thousands of people still make amazing music with very little concern for profit (and I'm as grateful as I suspect you are for their passion) but they do it for a pittance based on love of the craft.
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I guess define "worse off". But I would say in both cases they ended up about the same...but I will grant they learned lots of intangibles from the experiences.
How did the end up about the same? Were they paying themselves the same salaries they would have been getting at Microsoft the whole time? Were they living more frugally than they would have been had they been working at Microsoft?
So it wasn't wasted time in that respect, and they'll be bringing in unique and different skills that they probably wouldn't have developed had they been at MS the whole time.
But...there's things like the lower pay they probably had while doing their business, and the intensity of running a failing business is very very hard mentally and physically.
Near the end, one of the guys shut down...hard...now that he's moved on he's recovering. But I think that kind of experience trails along with you for a long while.
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I guess define "worse off". But I would say in both cases they ended up about the same...but I will grant they learned lots of intangibles from the experiences.
One way to tell- if you asked them, would they say that they should have spent their time doing something else? What do you think they would say? (Or if you could just ask them, that would be even better!)
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I don't have any, but I do wonder if this is another reason why there's a bias towards younger founders (or at least the perception of one). You start a company at 25 after a few years of unfulfilling work, put your nose to the grindstone for 5 years, and, in this unusually terrible hypothetical, end up with nothing but lost time and opportunity. But hey, you're 30. There's time for a comeback. There's no age limit o…
I feel in a lot of ways that starting over at 50 must be easier than starting over at 30. At 30 you possibly have kids, a spouse, and are just getting started in a mortgage. At 50 the kids are off to college, the house should be paid off or close to it, and now you have many peers in the same situation as you (ie, access to capital). It's no wonder the avg age for entrepreneurs is mid 40s
It takes an inhuman amount of confidence or blind faith to convince yourself that you are good enough to make it in the film industry. To hold that belief for 6 years, while seemingly spinning your tires and growing your family is just something else. Ang Lee is something else too, though. After seeing Eat Drink Man Woman one evening, he instantly became one of my favorite directors. As a former film school graduate…
I really respect Asian men who try and make it in Hollywood because its an upill battle.
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In a lot of ways, I feel that my own path has had that trajectory.
Thanks for sharing that. Do you think you could have better spent your time elsewhere outside of tech startups?
I knew Taylor Swift growing up. Like Ang Lee, for around 6 to 8 years Taylor acted in musicals, sang at festivals, entered competitions, and recorded demos. She was bad at first (sorry Taylor!), but she kept working at it. Every day, she was writing another lyric, or taking another guitar lesson, or auditioning for another play, or switching voice teachers. The reason I knew her was that I went to school with her (sh…
TV writing is a young person's business, so basically you are up or out. Because there is always someone right out of college who is pretty good and will work for almost nothing. And feature writing is totally unpredictable. Getting your movie made, and made well, is like oil drilling.
If you aren't really good, it's a tough decision to make - to spend 10 years in the industry trying to make it.
And then, if you are really good.... I think producing and writing are reasonably opportunity-rational paths, where you get a ton of swings at the bat. But if you're an actor or a director, you can be really great and still goose-egg your 20s.
Tough business.
Very inspiring, though this makes me think that we also have to worry about survivorship bias. How many people stuck to their guns, focused, worked really hard for years, and nothing ever happened for them (at least nothing close to their dreams)? Probably many, though I'm sure it's still the best way to maximize your chances of getting there; by giving up, you are assured of not making it; but even doing your best b…
How many people have worked on their own startup in the valley for 5+ years and had nothing come of it? Before I made the leap to working on a startup full time, I searched for a while for an example where 5 or more years resulted in complete failure but I couldn't find one. Not a single data point among hundreds that I read about/heard about anecdotally. I'm very curious, anyone care to share an example where they w…