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Mistakes You Should Never Make

sethbannon.com

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Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#181

Post by slg »

pjungwir wrote: post #131
slg wrote: post #83

I know this is a minor point of the article, but as someone with a degree from Harvard Extension I need to weigh in on that part of the story. I hate people who make this lie of ommission. Harvard Extension isn't Harvard College or Harvard Business School, but it still provides a very good education with great flexibility at an even better price. However, there is a small minority of people that continuely try to pas…

I also took a few Harvard Extension School classes (mostly Greek and Latin, but also Distributed Computing). I didn't earn a degree, just took a few things that interested me. It's on my resume as Harvard Extension School, and I have to actively correct people who think it's more than it is. My jokey way of putting it is that HES "takes anyone with a credit card." What's really embarrassing is when someone introduces…

I would echo your point about actively correcting people. It is something I find myself doing all the time. The problem is that it often isn't worth going in-depth describing the school, most people simply don't care that much. My jokey explanation is that it is "Harvard's version of community college". Funny thing is some people will come away even more impressed after a comment like this thinking you are incredibly humble. The Harvard brand has a lot of power.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#182

Post by cullenking »

tptacek wrote: post #153
bravo22 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually as an S-Corp owner all the corporate income is taxed as REGULAR INCOME. It doesn't become a capital gains tax -- which is what I assume you mean by investment income. However the US government wants you to also pay Social Security and Medicare tax, which you only pay on employment income. Therefore they force you to take a "reasonable"[1] salary from the company. Everything else left in the company's account…

It's taxed as regular income, but the premise under which it's exempt from the payroll taxes every other worker has to pay is that it's not normal income, but rather the return from an investment in the company. For people in our industry, it's hard to see a definition of "reasonable" that would be financially beneficial. You start a tech company. You pull $100k out every year, putting you right smack in the middle o…

Sure, but you just mentioned an unreasonable salary. If the median is $100k, then that's reasonable, and the person only gets to avoid SS and medicare on any additional profit.

I operate as an s-corp and pay myself a reasonable salary, matching that of the salary I could get in the current job market in the area I live in. Anything I clear above this is only taxed with my regular taxes.

If I was running a C-Corp instead of an S-Corp, I'd get my $100k salary, and any extra would have been taxed at the 30% corporate rate when it was taken in, then the 20% capital gains when it's distributed to me as profit.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#183

Post by pyre »

matwood wrote: post #108
ChuckMcM wrote: post #88

That had to be a tough article to write, thanks Seth. The thing that really stuck with me is the 'technically true' aspects. Growing up in various places around the world I encountered a number of people for whom their motto was 'its only illegal if you get caught!' The advantages of this motto were very apparent as a teen, you could run a stop light at 11:30pm, there was hardly anyone around, and you could be home b…

Interesting about your grandfather. Mine taught me a similar integrity lesson when I was a kid. Back when there were payphones I would always check them for spare quarters. One time when I was with my grandfather I checked a phone that has broken and dumped ~ $6 in change out. I pulled all the money out super excited about my find. He explained it wasn't mine and when we got home he mailed the local phone a check for…

Two thoughts:

1. Was that really the phone company's money? My first thought on hearing that story was that the $6 in change was from people putting money into the broken phone, realizing it was broken, and leaving without their money. Does the phone company really deserve money that the phone 'eats' when it doesn't deliver the service that people are giving it money for?

2. If you sent the phone company that $6 today, they would file criminal charges, because that cheque is an admission of guilt for stealing money from them. (Much in the way that, "I stumbled across a security flaw," is responded to nowadays)

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#184

Post by todayiamme »

Given, that the dominant comments over here are in some shape or form pointing out deficiencies of some sort in Seth, I would like to point out something. You're forgetting how hard it is to start something new. I'm sure that some of us might have avoided some of the items on the list, some might have even managed to avoid all of them. However, I'm also pretty sure that all of us would have made a lot of other gigantic mistakes along the way.

I'm in the process of starting a non-profit in the field of medicine and I've been taking a lot of pain to do my homework. I've spent my evenings quizzing people, reading books, talking to the friends I'm working with, and just trying to get something out of the door, but I wasn't even remotely aware that things could go wrong in half the permutations Seth mentions. In fact, in his list alone, I spotted at least 3 things that I would have inevitably messed up if it hadn't been for an hour of inspired reading based upon his post. It's hard to make something new, sometimes it feels that you're trying to push through the improbable, shift the odds to your favour, and achieve what seems to be so impossible. In that world, in that arena, it's easy to mess up. It's easy to make mistakes and it's very hard to fix them.

At the end of the day, the truth is that everyone messes up. Everyone has that one time where they should have done X, but did Y / nothing and that then resulted in bad thing Z, which could have dragged / or did drag them under. This is why - in my mind - the right question to ask over here is, what does it take to handle a crisis with Seth's grace? After all, not dying is the difference between crossing the finish line and pausing along the way.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#185

Post by larrys »

rdwallis wrote: post #167
larrys wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I asked him about his unwillingness to do what others have done (at the time it was drive faster than the speed limit on an empty road) " The above (parent comment) as well as your comment "I pulled all the money out super excited about my find. He explained it wasn't mine" ... well, I can't agree that it teaches the proper lesson, even to a child. Forgetting whether he is even right "it isn't yours" (I could argue…

I've chosen to never speed because it reduces my cognitive load. Nobody speeds all the time. Even people who speed a lot will try to slow down for speed traps. So everyone who speeds even those who speed only every now and then have to be constantly making a choice for when to speed. They must constantly assess whether the benefits of speeding in this specific moment outweigh the disadvantages. There are dozens of va…

"I've chosen to never speed because it reduces my cognitive load."

Never? Never speeding also means not always keeping up with traffic which might be flowing at a higher rate of speed. Consequently you are chancing a greater risk of an accident by not keeping up with traffic and not speeding.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#186

Post by ColinCera »

pjungwir wrote: post #131
slg wrote: post #83

I know this is a minor point of the article, but as someone with a degree from Harvard Extension I need to weigh in on that part of the story. I hate people who make this lie of ommission. Harvard Extension isn't Harvard College or Harvard Business School, but it still provides a very good education with great flexibility at an even better price. However, there is a small minority of people that continuely try to pas…

I also took a few Harvard Extension School classes (mostly Greek and Latin, but also Distributed Computing). I didn't earn a degree, just took a few things that interested me. It's on my resume as Harvard Extension School, and I have to actively correct people who think it's more than it is. My jokey way of putting it is that HES "takes anyone with a credit card." What's really embarrassing is when someone introduces…

> My jokey way of putting it is that HES "takes anyone with a credit card."

That's nice & humble of you, but it's not precisely true. There are very few requirements for taking a random course or two (or 20) at HES, but to be admitted to a degree program at HES is not so easy. You have to take a certain number of HES courses and earn a high GPA in them to be admitted to a degree program. Then, of course, you have to pass the full slate of courses to earn your Bachelor's degree.

Some people also seem to be under the impression that HES courses aren't as difficult as regular Harvard College courses. If anything, I'd say there's far more grade inflation in Harvard College than in HES, i.e., it's probably easier to make an A in a lot of (though obviously not all) regular Harvard courses than it is in Extension courses.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#188

Post by ChuckMcM »

larrys wrote: post #174
Loughla wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To me (and with all due respect to the parent commenters grandfather) when I hear things like this I think something is trying to prove honesty a bit to much and (once again not to imply the parent commenters grandfather is such a person) that is the type of person I actually watch out for sometimes." 99.9% of the time, that type of statement is more of a sign of your personality and less a sign of others'. In reali…

"In reality, though, the main point that you missed is that in a world made of shades of gray, the only person you can ever truly rely on is yourself. If you don't have scruples and you don't have honor, you don't have anything." Well let me put it this way. I don't think you understand my point about nuances and that I (once again) don't feel any of this is black and white. As an example the honor that I might displ…

The thing my grandfather taught me was that you live with all of your decisions for the rest of your life. When you make decisions which put other people at risk, you take on the risk that you are going to make someones life harder, possibly much harder. What is perhaps even more important is that no amount of "I'm so sorry I did that ..." will ever undo it. Sometimes its little things, like taking the last serving because you thought everyone had eaten, sometimes its big things like deciding that home is close enough that and you're sober enough to get there safely. They are all decisions we make every day. And as I've gotten older the weight of ones I wish I had made differently doesn't get any lighter. You can lie to yourself about your choices, rationalize them, but that doesn't change them either.

I didn't understand any of that when I was younger.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#189

Post by efuquen »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #179
xcubed wrote: post #158

This is just awful. There's owning up to mistakes, which is very "trendy" right now, and then there's being a straight up terrible, unethical, incompetent person. It's a bit gross to reference Ben Horowitz, to try to make this seem like a "classic" startup moment that every startup goes through. E.g., "most companies go through at least two, and sometimes over a dozen WFIOs in their lifetime." 1. "And so I learned th…

I can't really agree with you - I have made many of these mistakes (taxes! Paperwork! Forms!) and it's not out of innate evil intentions. This sort of article is important - if only to remind the next generation not to be so damn stupid. And I can't blame him for his lack of remorse - He seems to have built a valid company employing real people - society has a net win. Did it cause pain on the way - yes. But the peop…

>I have made many of these mistakes (taxes! Paperwork! Forms!) and it's not out of innate evil intentions.

The only point that is about "taxes! Paperwork! Forms!" is the first one, and even the OP wasn't attributing that to any "innate evil intentions" like you've stated, just incompetence. There is a difference in degree of messing up tax forms for a few years and not noticing that you are not paying any payroll taxes for over 3.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#190

Post by rwallace »

xcubed wrote: post #158

This is just awful. There's owning up to mistakes, which is very "trendy" right now, and then there's being a straight up terrible, unethical, incompetent person. It's a bit gross to reference Ben Horowitz, to try to make this seem like a "classic" startup moment that every startup goes through. E.g., "most companies go through at least two, and sometimes over a dozen WFIOs in their lifetime." 1. "And so I learned th…

This kind of comment is remarkably shitty. Someone performs the extremely unpleasant and stressful task of publicly admitting to his mistakes so the rest of us can learn from them, and xcubed responds by spitting in his face. What's the result going to be if we tolerate this sort of behavior? Well we don't have to guess, it was documented in the original post: most founders are not willing to admit their mistakes in public.

In game theory terminology, xcubed's comment is called responding to cooperation with defection. In plain English, it's called being an asshole.

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