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What if successful startups are just lucky?

blog.ploki.info

101–110 of 183 posts

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#101
post #71

All successful startups are lucky, but they're never just lucky. If they were, we could save ourselves a lot of work reading applications and doing interviews. We could just pick randomly instead. If we did that for one batch, you'd really be able to tell the difference, believe me.

Basically, the random choice is pulled from the pool of all the talented and productive people. So the best we can do is try our best to continuously be talented and productive, and hope we get lucky one of the times.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#102
post #76
post #71

All successful startups are lucky, but they're never just lucky. If they were, we could save ourselves a lot of work reading applications and doing interviews. We could just pick randomly instead. If we did that for one batch, you'd really be able to tell the difference, believe me.

Spot on. I think it's important to mention the context of Taleb's philosophy. You have to keep in mind that in certain jobs, like trading, it is fairly plausible that successful traders are plain lucky because all traders eventually blow up. In the startup world, this analogy doesn't hold for a number of reasons. If you are genuinely skilled, you will succeed. Perhaps not on the first try, but you will succeed eventu…

> If you are genuinely skilled, you will succeed.

Some skilled people succeed, therefore all skilled people succeed eventually?

Alternatively, it's a tautological statement that defines "genuinely skilled" people as those who succeeded, therefore unsuccessful people must not be skilled.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Changing the world doesn't mean changing EVERYTHING about the world, or the entire world, just a part of it. I want to make huge changes, but you also have to find a level of satisfaction in making smaller changes

Well, of course it's fickle to define what exactly constitutes changing the world. As per the butterfly effect, anything could be said to change the world, but let me attempt a definition: I'm thinking it has to be major (substantially different from what was before and affecting a lot of people, most of whom are and remains perfect strangers to you), deterministic (ie. what you did caused the change) and lasting (still identified as a change by strangers at least a few years after the fact).

Making that kind of change is really quite difficult and requires both luck and financial success (which in itself requires luck).

That said, I think it's perfectly honourable to be a good guy and do a good job without changing the world. My argument is merely that in my view, changing the world is a quite higher bar than "just" being successful.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#105
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is no statistical significance then it means that there is no difference in picking randomly and doing interviews for the rare winners. Since the winners are what they are after they can omit the interview process.

That's not what "no statistical significance" means.

Sorry, statistically speaking the difference in results of interviewing and not interviewing are insignificant.

I have a feeling that eventually there will be a Vangaurd of startups that will massively outperform traditional VC/incubators due to reduced management fees similar to index funds vs. regular funds.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#106
post #70

I used to think I was really smart and that my intelligence would carry me when I finally set out to start a company. Wrong, while I still consider myself to be smart, I don't think I'm savvy enough to rely upon good decisions to carry me. There are plenty of people smarter than me that have failed in their ventures. So, I've reverted to a brute force strategy coupled with an unrelenting resolve to see projects to co…

You missed the point of the article. Ultimately, the universe is unfair. No special insight, ability, breakthrough, or perseverance is sufficient to change that.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#107
No, not really.

About being too complex to be controlled, yes maybe, but there is very good people controlling complexity.

I know lots of entrepreneurs, as I am one myself.

The best entrepreneurs will learn from other people. Take for example Steve Jobs, he was not born knowing it all, he had fckng Robert Noyce as mentor, and all his life was spent learning from the best he could, like Polaroid inventor or Sony founder.(every year he will take 100 people from his company to learn from)

No matter were you are, there is always someone 10 to 20 years over you on a topic, and the best thing you could do is learn from them instead of thinking you are inventing gunpowder(Spanish expression that means you are inventing something revolutionary nobody knows about).

I personally know a man called Warren Buffet. This man, who is super rich old(normal old people believe they know it all) and famous will cold call you if he is interested in something you do for please explain it to him, and then he will start asking you deep questions about your business like crazy and if you ask him, he would do the same for you for anything you ask. This man has amazing amounts of valuable knowledge. In public he could not say what he really things because his word alone is capable of making markets go up or down.

Successful people do something called "masterminding", that is very similar to "pay it forward" in Silicon Valley. They learn form each other what works and what does not. They do it officially or by networking and just talking.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#108
post #63

One important point to realize for the author is that games are not services, they are works of art. As such, you can't say this is an incredible game with the same objectivity as this is an incredible service . Ryzom was a great game, but MMOs are built on one thing: atmosphere. Blizzard made WoW precisely because WarCraft was its longest running and most popular brand to date. Blizzard already had a massive fan bas…

Don't regret making works of art. It is all that succeeds us when we leave this realm.

Sometimes I feel this is our main differentiation from other species.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#110
post #71

All successful startups are lucky, but they're never just lucky. If they were, we could save ourselves a lot of work reading applications and doing interviews. We could just pick randomly instead. If we did that for one batch, you'd really be able to tell the difference, believe me.

It's best if founders are all up to get some fun, and investors are in to get lucky, not vice versa.
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