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Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

blogs.nature.com

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Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#181

Post by ssharp »

Ma8ee wrote: post #179
beachy wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Introverts often perform brilliantly when pitching or persuading. Being out in front of others is not their relaxing place, so they focus, pour their energy into it and succeed at it. Then they withdraw to some solitude to recharge.

Or they panic, or blank out, or more likely, find a way not to be in front of others in the first place.

I think with all the real and pop science done the past few years on introversion and it's subsequent rise in awareness, far too many people conflate social anxiety and introversion. They may be related but they're not the same thing.

Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#182

Post by brightball »

hvidgaard wrote: post #168
brightball wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear things like this about Zuckerberg all the time and he did one singular thing that made Facebook take off more than all of the other social networks that were out there at the time (Classmates, High School Alumni, My Space, etc). He made it exclusive. You had to have a .edu address to sign up so the people ON the network were initially only your peer group. You couldn't get in without that .edu address and ther…

Tell me again how exclusivity helped Google+ take off. What he did right, was providing something that no other service did.

How was Google+ exclusive?

Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#183

Post by leksak »

matrix wrote: post #54

While the author does quote the very low odds of success, I think he does readers a disservice by minimizing that risk. Very few people have the right disposition, the right partners, the right idea, and the right skill set to launch a startup. Being a freshly minted PhD doesn't change that. Failing at a startup sucks, and sucks really hard. But of course, its not in a VC's interest to tell you the pain that comes wi…

I agree, going after a professorship after getting a PhD is unlikely to cause you personal bankruptcy but creating a start-up might.

Also, if your product is similar to another you may get caught in costly legal battles but this is unlikely to occur as a scientist. It will most likely "just" tarnish your reputation.

While the monetary rewards of creating a successful company exceeds a good academic career it is, as the author points out, high risk.

I wouldn't call a high risk gamble that has possibly detrimental long-lasting effects over your life and your co-founders life "sensible". I'd call it a gamble, as that is what it is.

Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#184

Post by leksak »

pb wrote: post #65
__mbm__ wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Failing at a startup sucks This. I have a PhD and a failed startup. It felt real bad, and I didn't get that far with it (9 months before calling it quits). Creating a successful startup requires significantly more energy and stress than most science jobs, even for pre-tenure professors. It requires different skills than science. Few introverts will succeed at founding a company, for example. Moreover, you have to p…

Many of the most successful founders are introverts. Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Bill Gates, none of them are very extroverted, but they've started some of the most valuable companies in the world. Of course if you are so introverted that you are unable to make eye contact or talk to people it will be a problem, but most of us are not that extreme.

Out of the Fortune 500 companies I'd argue that most of their founders are not introverts, but some of them comes from money which helps.

Just because some introverts have seen success does not mean that all introverts starting a company will share in the same amount of success. It can, just as being an extrovert can, enable you or inhibit you.

Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#185

Post by leksak »

j7ake wrote: post #160
jedberg wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chance of extremely high returns = Check (not so much in academia)

I would disagree. Just read the list of nobel prize winners and how many of them are academics. These are often actual paradigm shifts in how you think of the world that lasts generations, not decades. Compare this with the impact a successful startup has and it does not quite compare. A successful startup creates new jobs. Novel science that can be applied creates entire industries.

When he/she says high returns I'd imagine he/she is referring to monetary gains.

So impact withstanding, a Nobel prize winner is awarded roughly 8 million SEK, which is 941320 U.S. dollars. Now, disregard their monthly salaries, as the time it takes from winning a Nobel Prize varies from an infinity to once or twice and consider the portion of Nobel prize winners compared to the number of scientists and measure that against the number of businesses owners that rake in 941320 dollars a year out of all of the business owners that there are and I'm sure you'd agree that if you are optimising for personal economic gains going the academic route is not the wisest choice.

Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#186

Post by jandrese »

brightball wrote: post #182
hvidgaard wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me again how exclusivity helped Google+ take off. What he did right, was providing something that no other service did.

How was Google+ exclusive?

When it first started out you needed an invitation. Gmail had the same thing. Google does this fairly often to prevent still developing services from being crushed by an onslaught of signups.

G+ never gained traction because it was always the nerdier also-ran to Facebook. Everyone was already on Facebook and G+ didn't really offer anything compelling to make people want to switch. It had (has?) somewhat better segregation of your friends but keeping track of all of that is too much hassle for most people and doesn't really buy them much. Trying to decide if only your family would appreciate this witty cartoon or if you can also include your work colleagues is not something people want to do on every post.

Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#187

Post by amyjess »

noobermin wrote: post #156
amyjess wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's add: clean, simple theme and layout that doesn't allow users to customize how other people see their page. MySpace was a trainwreck. The default layout was horrendous, and each user had their own themes, many of which were unreadable (I remember having to select text just to read it).

Not that they didn't want it, Myspace glits moved onto tumblr, although it is "cleaner" there I suppose.

From looking at the culture on Tumblr, it feels like there was a large-scale migration from LiveJournal more than anything else.

Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#188

Post by brightball »

jandrese wrote: post #186
brightball wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was Google+ exclusive?

When it first started out you needed an invitation. Gmail had the same thing. Google does this fairly often to prevent still developing services from being crushed by an onslaught of signups. G+ never gained traction because it was always the nerdier also-ran to Facebook. Everyone was already on Facebook and G+ didn't really offer anything compelling to make people want to switch. It had (has?) somewhat better segreg…

That's not really exclusive though, that's just a beta program.

Facebook's exclusivity initially showed no plans for letting everyone else in. It was basically, if you do not have this type of email account, you can NEVER join.

Re: Why building a startup is probably your most sensible career path

#190

Post by alimw »

__mbm__ wrote: post #62
matrix wrote: post #54

While the author does quote the very low odds of success, I think he does readers a disservice by minimizing that risk. Very few people have the right disposition, the right partners, the right idea, and the right skill set to launch a startup. Being a freshly minted PhD doesn't change that. Failing at a startup sucks, and sucks really hard. But of course, its not in a VC's interest to tell you the pain that comes wi…

> Failing at a startup sucks This. I have a PhD and a failed startup. It felt real bad, and I didn't get that far with it (9 months before calling it quits). Creating a successful startup requires significantly more energy and stress than most science jobs, even for pre-tenure professors. It requires different skills than science. Few introverts will succeed at founding a company, for example. Moreover, you have to p…

I'm sorry to hear about your friend-of-a-friend†, but it's crazy to suggest that's meaningful data in isolation. Most of us have known people, or know people who have known people, who have killed themselves; they come from all walks of life. († I suppose that's what you mean by one degree of separation?)
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