Taking Risk

I don't get it, can you explain?

Sad but true in one aspect, but another is it's useful for additional practical learning and opportunity discovery working for a megacorp for a few years. Stanford is (or was, last I checked) an exception though: extremely entrepreneurial PIs, staff, grad students, and undergrads.

At UT Austin a couple of times talking to a startup club dude, he was having trouble gathering interest on the Yellow Brick Road. I suggested he improve his advertising and marketing graphics, lead with thought-provoking questions and elevator convo about financial security and regret, and consider broadcast mechanisms on social media.

I think it's also younger generations aren't supported and encouraged appropriately to take risks, to view discomfort and fear as temporary obstacles to be sought, and are sold traditional dogma that "working as an employee equals financial security".

Unavoidable microeconomic law: You're never going to get anywhere near rich working for someone else without substantial equity.

"There's many factors that make Europe less competitive than the US: small fractured markets"

This first one seems the largest hurdle w.r.t. startups. If you are a startup founder of say a ride hailing app - the total addressable market is much larger in the US for the same level of effort. If you want to scale beyond your home state (i.e. California) in the US, there are probably just a handful of different state/city taxes/regulations that need to be accounted for.

If you start in a country in Europe, you need to factor in:

- language translation of the entire app

- different country cultures/customs (i.e. tipping, wording of prompts and promotions) - even down to the naming of the app which might have a negative connotation in a different language

- prior to the Euro - differences with respect to currency, trademarks, patents, etc.

- entirely new country regulations and politicians that need to be "handled" - each in their own separate language which means a separate lawyer and lobbyist needs to be on staff for each country

- home court advantage - French probably prefer to support LeCab while Spaniards probably prefer to support Cabify

> Universities are a bit of a self-perpetuating reputation scheme, and the UK has been punching well above its weight in that department.

Someone like Peter Thiel would maybe argue that the difference in risk taking in the UK and the US is actually reflected in the relatively high number of high UK university rankings? I'm far from Thiel in my general perspectives but it's worth noting that in certain circles there's sort of an ambivalent — if not outright hostile — attitude toward universities in the US and that ambivalence is only increasing. I think a Thiel-like person might think it odd to draw a direct line between some reputational rankings of universities and startup culture, and might flip the whole thing on its head and argue it's evidence of problems with universities today.

I don't necessarily agree with this perspective but do think it's maybe worth pointing out some of the implicit assumptions being made in the essay.