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The Best Entrepreneur I Know

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Re: The Best Entrepreneur I Know

#41

Post by qznc »

abalone wrote: post #20

Fantastic man, and barbershops have long played an important role in African-American communities. But as to the comment about MLK, it would be a mistake to comprehend the civil rights movement as being embodied in entrepreneurialism. This being a startup community of entrepreneurs, it is tempting for us to celebrate the power of individual free enterprise paired with social cause. And that is noble. But the civil ri…

Martin Luther King also demanded his followers to become better people to disprove the stupid-savage-criminal image they had. The Black Panthers also stood for fixing white racism and structural inequality.

It is this "become a better person" aspect of MLK, which Dennis embodies, imho.

Re: The Best Entrepreneur I Know

#43

Post by danieltillett »

NhanH wrote: post #39
aceperry wrote: post #27

Great article. Also brings up an aspect of the tech startup mentality that bothers me from time to time. From my reading of pg and ycombinator's focus on fast hockey stick like growth curves, it seems that you can easily dismiss/overlook small and steady businesses like Klippers which can perform very important roles in our lives. I'm not criticizing pg and the ycombinator crowd, in fact I have much respect and admir…

It's actually pretty interesting that small/lifestyle businesses get a lot of respect on Hacker News (pinboard, improvely, Appointment reminder and their creators are all very well revered here). In fact, a lot more than the general population (from my point of view) have for those businesses.

This is because a pretty large percentage of the readers of HN are pretty smart - they recognise that a good lifestyle business is what smart people should be building.

Re: The Best Entrepreneur I Know

#44

Post by mseebach »

visakanv wrote: post #36
hueving wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the money wonks just take it out of your account every month. With a statement like that it sounds like you lack some important critical thinking skills. Try to provide concrete examples of things rather than echoing standard claptrap.

It's interesting to look at your comment, and look at the nasty comment that it provoked. This is the starting point of a cycle of nastiness. You could've asked the person to elaborate or be specific, or even contradicted or questioned them- without saying "you lack " and "try to rather than ". Why so mean? Was the meanness intentional, or...? Genuinely curious.

There's plenty of meanness in the GP as well, it's just a lot more subtle, so it's neither fair nor accurate to pin-point that comment as the starting point of a cycle.

"[F]inance/accounting/banking" is not one coherent blob of thieves or parasites or whatever labels otherwise apparently reasonable people get away with attaching to anything in the field. Of course it's not a divinely perfect field either (not that anyone is claiming that), of course it has big and important problems. But especially if you work in or near finance, it gets really annoying just how accepted and endorsed rampant prejudice is in the rest of society.

Re: The Best Entrepreneur I Know

#45

Post by Ntrails »

iolothebard wrote: post #11
beat wrote: post #3

There's a lot more to entrepreneurship than the weird little bubble of software startups. Entrepreneurs are just people who take a chance in order to make a real difference. I grew up poor, and one of the hardest things about being poor is that there are so few role models for success. Except for teachers, I didn't know anyone educated. Except for the people my father worked for (and mostly hated), I didn't know anyo…

I wanted to be a cat burglar as a kid. In all the studying, learning, planning and risk assessment I realized it's easier and less risky to just go to college. That and stealing isn't really something to aspire to in life. Probably why I didn't stay in finance/accounting/banking. At least salesmen have to convince you of their lies, the money wonks just take it out of your account every month.

I still want to be a cat burglar. I don't really actually want to do the whole robbery thing, so much as plan it all and see if I could get away with it.

I'm glad computer games give me the chance to play at stuff to be honest, it's a great outlet.

Re: The Best Entrepreneur I Know

#46

Post by mseebach »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #26
SwellJoe wrote: post #8

I'm happy to see there's been a lot more discussion lately in Silicon Valley and entrepreneurial communities, in general, about the importance of role models who are people of color and women. This article only covers one side of that (not that it is less interesting or touching for not covering the other side)...the other side is that until white folks in our industry, or in other industries, are regularly seeing an…

There is a very straightforward way to mitigate the effect of biases. Make everything as algorithmic as possible and don't use biasing factors as inputs to the algorithms. This also fixes more biases than just the the ones with sympathetic victims - you'll hire both the woman and the ugly socially awkward guy with kickass github profiles. Unintentional bias lives in the subjective and human parts of our procedures. T…

Nobody disagrees with that. But 100 years of management research, and we're nowhere near an objective measure for what makes a good hire.

The objective measure for an Uber ride is orders of magnitude simpler: "is reasonably civilised, unlikely to soil the car or abuse the driver" and even then, their approach to deciding who fits, is to just try, then kick you off the system if you don't live up to the criteria.

Re: The Best Entrepreneur I Know

#47

Post by yummyfajitas »

mseebach wrote: post #46
yummyfajitas wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a very straightforward way to mitigate the effect of biases. Make everything as algorithmic as possible and don't use biasing factors as inputs to the algorithms. This also fixes more biases than just the the ones with sympathetic victims - you'll hire both the woman and the ugly socially awkward guy with kickass github profiles. Unintentional bias lives in the subjective and human parts of our procedures. T…

Nobody disagrees with that. But 100 years of management research, and we're nowhere near an objective measure for what makes a good hire. The objective measure for an Uber ride is orders of magnitude simpler: "is reasonably civilised, unlikely to soil the car or abuse the driver" and even then, their approach to deciding who fits, is to just try, then kick you off the system if you don't live up to the criteria.

We've got lots of great techniques that apply in specific cases. Work sample tests and intelligence tests (admittedly illegal in the US), for example - tokenadult has a long linkdump that backs this up. If I recall right, tptacek has also done this in practice and had it work excellently.

Further, even if you can only systematize part of the process, that still helps you debug. If women all get rejected on the (blind) coding test then you don't need to waste time looking for bias. If women get rejected at the culture fit interview then you might want to look for bias at that stage.

Re: The Best Entrepreneur I Know

#48

Post by LukeB_UK »

thetruthseeker1 wrote: post #31

I read the Article. Dennis seems like a nice guy- rather a great guy! But I do think that this article does not particularly embody a spirit of entrepreneurship. Dont get me wrong, Dennis does not embody any negaative spirit, everything positive. It is fitting for MLK day. However, just because it makes us feel warm and fuzzy, it shouldn't be characterized to embody any particular quality that we choose to say it doe…

I also read the article. I think it shows that Dennis is a great entrepreneur. He has been successfully running a business for 20 years and knows his customers and treats them as more than just a customer. This then creates loyalty, enough to cause the author to return there time after time, even when there are likely other barbershops closer.

Dennis has identified a problem that needed to be solved, has solved it and is doing it so well that his customers talk about him and keep returning.

Re: The Best Entrepreneur I Know

#49

Post by arximboldi »

visakanv wrote: post #35
beat wrote: post #3

There's a lot more to entrepreneurship than the weird little bubble of software startups. Entrepreneurs are just people who take a chance in order to make a real difference. I grew up poor, and one of the hardest things about being poor is that there are so few role models for success. Except for teachers, I didn't know anyone educated. Except for the people my father worked for (and mostly hated), I didn't know anyo…

> Entrepreneurs are just people who take a chance in order to make a real difference. I'd go so far as to say- entrepreneurs are just people who are trying to solve problems. I get annoyed when I hear people ask things like "How do I become an entrepreneur?" in an aspirational way, as though it's some sort of cool club where all the cool kids are hanging out. An entrepreneur is just a person who's so bothered by a pa…

So now Karl Marx was an enterpreneur.

Re: The Best Entrepreneur I Know

#50

Post by rfergie »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #26
SwellJoe wrote: post #8

I'm happy to see there's been a lot more discussion lately in Silicon Valley and entrepreneurial communities, in general, about the importance of role models who are people of color and women. This article only covers one side of that (not that it is less interesting or touching for not covering the other side)...the other side is that until white folks in our industry, or in other industries, are regularly seeing an…

There is a very straightforward way to mitigate the effect of biases. Make everything as algorithmic as possible and don't use biasing factors as inputs to the algorithms. This also fixes more biases than just the the ones with sympathetic victims - you'll hire both the woman and the ugly socially awkward guy with kickass github profiles. Unintentional bias lives in the subjective and human parts of our procedures. T…

> Make everything as algorithmic as possible and don't use biasing factors as inputs to the algorithms

When you control for gender the gender pay gap disappears.

By which I mean deciding which factors are biasing factors and which are not is not clear cut.

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