What if successful startups are just lucky? • Hacker News Board

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#11

Post by spindritf » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 4:09 PM UTC

What if successful startup founders have high IQs? Or particular personalities making them persevere? It's entirely possible that all those methods and practices count for nothing or are completely eclipsed by IQs, luck, networks...

This argument is being made against education. How much education really matters and how much outcomes are just a matter of raw cognitive ability of students and (self-)selection?

Truth is that we don't know. So most people choose to follow in the footsteps of those who have demonstrable achievements and hope for the best.

BTW This might be the first time I'm seeing a ghost blog in the wild. Just browsing the Internet, not looking at ghost blogs specifically.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#12

Post by alecco » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 4:10 PM UTC

Interesting topic, but the blogpost lacks data.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#13

Post by acemtp » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 4:13 PM UTC

spindritf wrote: post #11

What if successful startup founders have high IQs? Or particular personalities making them persevere? It's entirely possible that all those methods and practices count for nothing or are completely eclipsed by IQs, luck, networks... This argument is being made against education. How much education really matters and how much outcomes are just a matter of raw cognitive ability of students and (self-)selection? Truth i…

As you said, we don't know.

I moved to ghost 2 days ago and for the moment, it works quite nicely!

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#14

Post by sz4kerto » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 4:16 PM UTC

Well, according to statistics (see Kahneman) CEO 'performance' has very low correlation with perceived CEO performance. Also, past success has low correlation with future success. In other words, there isn't really a 'CEO skill', or a 'successful manager' skill. In other words, company success is not repeatable given the same set of people. In other words, yes, luck is extremely important.

There is no moral of the story other than: failure does not mean that you didn't do well.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#15

Post by polskibus » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 4:16 PM UTC

Among the best, luck is more important for winning than between best and mediocre (where skill is more important). I thought this was common knowledge after being described in so many pop.sci. books like black swan,etc.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#16

Post by dsugarman » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 4:17 PM UTC

The problem is that it is hard to give each project any real chance of success without spending your full effort on seeing it through. A strategy like this will make you abandon your good projects at the first resemblance of a road block.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#17

Post by acemtp » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 4:19 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #7

"Think of it like a lottery. In this case the obvious decision is to buy more tickets in order to get more chances to win." I like what Seth Godin has to say on failing until you succeed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDtkBsWgzWE And this article by Scott Adams: "What's the best way to climb to the top? Be a failure." http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230462610...

Nice links, thanks

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#18

Post by kristiandupont » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 4:21 PM UTC

This has been on my mind lately as well, for some reason. That, and the point of this story http://sivers.org/horses which is basically that even after the fact, it's really hard to know anything[1].

I don't know if it's just from growing older but I feel a lot more humble when looking at peoples ideas and actions than earlier. I literally feel that I have no clue whether they will succeed or not whereas I used to quickly get quite strong feelings in one direction or the other. In one way, this feels more mature and zen but at the same time, it annoys me a bit. I feel that conviction is the trait of a leader and something I need to possess if I want to convince anybody to engage in my projects. Maybe I'll just practice faking it and hope they didn't read this comment :-)

Edit: [1] One of my favorite examples of this is in Felix Denis' book How To Get Rich where he describes that the problem with Apple is Steve Jobs. This was written 7 years ago when Apple was struggling and it looked like Steve Jobs was driving it into the ground with his stubbornness. (The book is excellent by the way, in spite of the tacky sounding title)

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#19

Post by mseebach » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 4:21 PM UTC

tomasien wrote: post #10

It keeps me up at night that you could work your entire life in startups, do everything right and even work on good ideas, and you could still never really succeed. Then I realize that success (in terms of an exit or something similar) can't be the goal: I work on startups because I like building things (edit: things that have the potential to have a tremendous impact) and I want to change the world.

What about "changing the world" (for the better, presumably) doesn't require financial independence AND a good chunk of luck on top of that?

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#20

Post by dpeck » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 4:22 PM UTC

Chance favors the prepared mind.