151–160 of 183 posts
"I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson (apocryphal; see [0]) [0]: http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/i-am...
-- leveling up in Morrowind (no idea who to attribute this quote to)
I know it's not the point of the article, specifically, but it's very difficult to draw any startup conclusions based on a game company. Games are notoriously difficult to make into successful products, even more-so than your average startup. That said, I do think the author has a lot of good points. Surely there is a portion of "randomness"/luck, but there's also a healthy dose of focus & determination that make thi…
I'm the author. Thanks for the comment. I agree with you, I don't know the Saleforce history but I'm quite sure that at the beginning of the company, they had lot of luck. I'm sure at least 10 other companies tried to address the same problem on the same market and failed. Execution is mandatory but lot of the execution is also based on lot of uncontrollable parameters, hire the right guy at the right time. Look at E…
I think it goes along the lines of the quote from The entertainment industry that every overnight success is a result of years of hard work (paying your dues in the form of acting/music lessons, community theater/coffee house performances, tons of auditions).
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…
I don't know, to me both are businesses and have to deal with things such as user acquisition, user retention, average revenue per user, etc.
We've read about the author releasing the game, but don't know the back story about user acquisition - what channels were used, what was the performance of those channels, what viral mechanisms were put in place, what A/B tests were run, how user stickiness was determined and improved upon.
Behind every "luck" story there's some dude or team of dudes whose entire job is user growth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would absolutely love to see a double-blind randomized experiment with controls for YC applications. In one batch, randomly and secretly assign CONTROL or EXPERIMENT to each application (in whatever proportion you are comfortable with). Of the CONTROL batch, do regular reviews. For the EXPERIMENT batch, randomly accept the same percentage of groups as the control. Then have people outside of the reviewers try to la…
It'd be unfair to great startups in the experiment batch -- not that it's pg's job to make life fair for people, but it'd put a big dent in YC's reputation. Why spend time flying out there if there's a chance your interview doesn't even matter?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would absolutely love to see a double-blind randomized experiment with controls for YC applications. In one batch, randomly and secretly assign CONTROL or EXPERIMENT to each application (in whatever proportion you are comfortable with). Of the CONTROL batch, do regular reviews. For the EXPERIMENT batch, randomly accept the same percentage of groups as the control. Then have people outside of the reviewers try to la…
So pg's years of experience getting better than random results is irrelevant and you'll only believe him if he does a long experiment (that would cost him lots of money if it's not just luck) to prove something he already believes?
"The harder I work, the luckier I get." — Samuel Goldwyn
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, not an expert and I have never been an entrepreneur so forgive me if I am misunderstanding, but doesn't YC give them money? In order for this statement to be true either (1) having startup seed money has no bearing on success or (2) YC gives the same money to people it rejects as to people it accepts.
But then you're acknowledging that startup success is not solely dependent on luck...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In order for us to "believe you", you would need to test your hypothesis at least once - for example, by selecting a small number the startups you invest in at random and see how they fare compared to the other startups. Keep in mind that most stock pickers would respond exactly like you even though their choices are rarely (if ever) better than chance.
If I was to walk for the first time into your kitchen and tell you that your hotplate was turned on, would you not believe me until I'd also experienced your hotplate turned off? You would discount my previous experiences with hotplates, because maybe, just maybe, your hotplate is hot enough to boil water when it's unpowered? The idea that the null hypothesis is the only source of information needs to die.
"I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." — Thomas Jefferson "The harder I work, the luckier I get." — Samuel Goldwyn
"I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson (apocryphal; see [0]) [0]: http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/i-am...