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Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

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Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#141

Post by prayag »

paraschopra wrote: post #88
prayag wrote: post #21

Dave's dilemma is far too familier to a lot of people in the tech scene in general, and bay area in particular. Bay area attracts the brightest minds from across the globe. All of them have been at the top of their high school classes. They have all been told from a very young age that they are destined to doing something great in life. They not only expect themselves to do better than themselves but pretty much dema…

Even comparing your present self to your past self is fraught with numerous biases. Humans have imperfect memories, so they only remember most interesting events from the past. Based on the few remembered details and a vague sensation of your self 2 years back, you would construct a full detailed description and compare it to your present self. But you forget that the past self that you have constructed is influenced…

>Even comparing your present self to your past self is fraught with numerous biases.

This is definitely true. But you probably have a better idea of how successful/happy you were 2 years ago than your peers right now.

>Moreover, on which dimensions are you going to compare

Yes the dimensions have to be defined. If you wanted to be more creative or wanted to live abroad (assuming you are not from France), then you have progressed in life. But if you wanted to write more software than this is a regression.

>Key should be to not overanalyze life, but rather simply live it as if it is not that important.

Different strokes. You don't have to. But if you ever ask a question to yourself about whether you are successful or not, or happy or not you might want to measure somethings. I don't think it's a bad idea to look back once in a while and see where you have come to in life.

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#142

Post by joering2 »

Boy I felt like reading my own story, except I hadn't had brilliant parents that would give me good genes for a start and force me to be productive instead of lazy (so I wasn't working for huge corps like OP).

But regardless this post made me think that if you treat your body well (healthy food, gym, as little stress as possible) and you hadn't had some genetical disadvantages then your brain stay quite young forever, and you are like a fine wine: you age well and gather wisdom all the time. Truly, the only thing stopping OP from learning from his mistakes and trying again, learning and trying again and again is his approach that I may be too old. You are not! How old you are only matters whether you will personally make a big deal out of it or not. Don't let it stop you from trying again.

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#143

Post by svdad »

Vivtek wrote: post #72
elsewhen wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he might not be as wealthy as you think: http://www.quora.com/How-much-is-Dave-McClure-worth

A week ago I had seven dollars in the bank. Granted, that was after moving the household to Europe again and I do have accounts receivable, but financially I'm at the point where when I'm not actually underwater I feel successful. Having "a little less than a million" as a pad would reduce my stress considerably.

My wife and I went out for a celebratory dinner recently when our net worth finally turned positive after years of grad school.

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#144

Post by neilk »

randall wrote: post #68
Domenic_S wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> something as big as, say, a Twitter knockoff for the enterprise. It's been done! http://www.salesforce.com/chatter/overview/

I think he was referring to Yammer, and their recent acquisition.

DMC explicitly mentioned Yammer as one of the things that some of his former co-workers had done. (He neglects to consider all the things his other colleagues have done which failed, classic survivorship bias, but that's not my point.)

My point is, from a certain perspective, everything looks stupid, and everything has a limited impact, and everything could have been better. Maybe some people who work at Yammer feel they're doing something important, like democratizing information flows within big companies. But it's also a knockoff of various social networking tools for the enterprise. It's a matter of which perspective you choose.

DMC looks at Yammer wistfully because it seems like a big score that was within his grasp. But I bet that if DMC had worked at Yammer he'd be picking a narrative closer to this: I worked for a lame knockoff of innovative companies like Twitter and Facebook, and we failed to thrive independently, and in the end we had to be sold to a dying and clueless organization like Microsoft. And I made a little money, but I never achieved a higher executive rank - any idiot could have made the money I did, and it was barely enough to cover a small house in a not-so-great part of Palo Alto. But the real players made serious bank! People that I worked with who didn't seem much smarter than me! I wonder if I will ever do something worthy of the promise I had when I was a child....

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#146

Post by zpk »

lewisflude wrote: post #81

I'm 19 yet I feel I can relate in some way.

You're 19, you have so much ahead of your life ahead of you rather than behind. Go look in the mirror and smile...You can start from scratch today, and in a decade still be ahead of 99.999% of your age group, and even people twice that age as well.

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#147

Post by ekanes »

michaelochurch wrote: post #108

I've come to the conclusion that success in business is like the game Rochambeau (Rock, Paper, Scissors). People will argue to death whether it's a game of luck or skill, and often it gets very emotional, with people who've had success attributing it to skill and the rest attributing their lack of success to bad luck. In reality, it's neither. It's a game of strategy in the academic, game-design sense (interaction ra…

> if you've been in VC-istan for 2 decades and haven't made fuck-you money, you haven't won

Dave has only been a VC for a few years, in a game that takes a few rounds to go either way. In terms of "late bloomer" my guess is he's talking about life, not VC.

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#148

Post by radley »

I'm confused. In my mind Dave is already a success.

I guess he's just in a rut. I read a great book called "How High can You Bounce?" It's all about if you've taken a downturn how can you spin it to your advantage so you rebound better off than where you were before the fall. Knowing this is possible is simply the first step.

Think Dave just needs some bounce.

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#149

Post by wglb »

daeken wrote: post #119
neilk wrote: post #50

Wow, I sure do hope he finally does that one thing that nobody, absolutely nobody can deny is important -- something as big as, say, a Twitter knockoff for the enterprise. Then he'll never have any nagging doubts about himself ever again. Hey, far be it from me to criticize someone who's trying to make a mark in the world. I myself am just past 40, a former child prodigy, not very successful in Silicon Valley, and st…

> Wow, I sure do hope he finally does that one thing that nobody, absolutely nobody can deny is important -- something as big as, say, a Twitter knockoff for the enterprise. Then he'll never have any nagging doubts about himself ever again. In my experience, the degree to which you're successful has no effect on those doubts. I've put out a number of highly successful pieces of software, had a ton of attention in the…

This is really quite germane: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA. While she talks about writing, I think it applies to the kind of thing you are talking about here.

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#150

Post by radley »

radley wrote: post #148

I'm confused. In my mind Dave is already a success. I guess he's just in a rut. I read a great book called "How High can You Bounce?" It's all about if you've taken a downturn how can you spin it to your advantage so you rebound better off than where you were before the fall. Knowing this is possible is simply the first step. Think Dave just needs some bounce.

I'll also add an "Eskimo saying" I learned from West Wing:

The best place to store extra food is in someone else's stomach.

Dave has built an incredible network in the valley. He's helped 100s of people form companies. Those are a lot of great bonds.

Is that not success?

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