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“Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

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Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#181

Post by mock-possum »

loudandskittish wrote: post #119
logisticpeach wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also had substantially wealthy parents if I'm not mistaken. Same with Gates and others. This is the ultimate safety net. It's easier to take risks when you have an out when it all goes really wrong. Doubt he'd still be cleaning manure today if he hadn't had a success...

I'm reminded of the song Common People by Pulp: "But still you'll never get it right/'Cause when you're laying in bed at night/Watching roaches climb the wall/If you called your dad he could stop it all."

This was basically Memnoch The Devil's [0] argument against the legitimacy of Jesus Christ's sacrifice - it didn't count, because he did it with full knowledge of his own immortality. Through crucifixion he suffered and died, but he never faced the existential dread that plagues humankind, and therefore giving up his own life was an inauthentic act.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memnoch_the_Devil

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#182

Post by dragonwriter »

dorkwood wrote: post #167
lovecg wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Wikipedia or Snopes are to be believed on the matter (and I really don’t know anymore), this is way overblown. Mines (emerald, not diamond btw) are cheaper than you think. If my dad buys half of a tiny mine in his retirement I’ll start walking around claiming I’m from a mine owning family! The story of how he even got to own the mine sounds pretty wild: “According to the story, in the mid-1980s, Errol and a copilo…

> It proceeds to say he made about $400000 from the mine in total - hardly a billionaire villain level money. Just to clarify for anyone else wondering, that’s 400,000USD inflation adjusted for 2021. Converted to South African rand, it’s about 7.2 million. To put that in context, the average home price in South Africa is about a million rand. So at most they would have been able to buy 7 properties. If they bought in…

> Converted to South African rand, it’s about 7.2 million.

> To put that in context, the average home price in South Africa is about a million rand. So at most they would have been able to buy 7 properties

That’s... not how averages work.

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#183

Post by [deleted] »

unactionintel wrote: post #162
starkparker wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's how I fare on that. Each checked box is something I have. [X] "The trick is to have parents", [ ] who are alive, [ ] "who aren't homeless", [ ] who have housing that is safe and functional, [ ] who have room for you not already occupied by other family members in greater need, [ ] who "had a sofa", [ ] or if they're dead, at least left you with enough money as an equivalent

I'm never sure what to do with this class of comment - it reminds me of guys who say they can't get a girlfriend because they're 5'8". (Also, you forgot people whose parents are able-but-unwilling. This also sometimes makes some things harder than they would be, compared to, say, being given fistfulls of cash each weekend by your rich parents who have a sofa AND a bed.)

[deleted]

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#184

Post by shon »

harshalizee wrote: post #166
shon wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I’ve also failed multiple times but achieved what for me is a satisfying level of success in the process. As a ratio I’ve failed a lot more than I’ve won but it is not a lottery. It’s more like a golf game, it’s hard to do well but you do learn and improve with each attempt.

That's exactly the lottery. The fact that you can play multiple rounds of "golf" is the privilege that the OP is talking about. You are lucky enough to be able to afford buying multiple lottery tickets and some hit the jackpot. Most people will never even have the opportunity to afford one lottery ticket.

Then life, not business is the lottery.

The lottery idea works in the sense that I was born in the U.S. rather than a developing country AND my parents, who were far from rich or even stable at times still were able to afford a family computer (thank you Atari 520ST) which was very fortunate since my formal education ended the 3rd time I was expelled from high school.

Yes, from the life perspective, as opposed to a worst-case (even in the U.S) I most certainly am privileged and lucky, and did certainly win a lottery of sorts. You’re absolutely correct.

Having said that, most of us that work in tech have won that same or a similar lottery.

Life, location, family, stability, yes those things are a bit of a lottery.

But not so for startups. Your odds of winning the lottery never increase. Your odds of winning in business do, as long as you learn from your failures.

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#185

Post by encoderer »

scarface74 wrote: post #173
encoderer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a little pessimistic. Just take smaller risks. I built my first business over nights and weekends and didn’t quit my day job for 5 years. If you want something bad enough you just have to take the chance.

Yes “because wanting something bad enough” is the key to success…

It is a necessary but insufficient step.

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#186

Post by twawaaay »

deely3 wrote: post #157
twawaaay wrote: post #57

I work with some pretty successful people who started their companies. I can tell you, the sentence is pure BS. Successful people may not know why exactly they got successful. Or they may not understand how much what they do contributed to the outcome. But they certainly tend to be sharp people putting a lot of hard, HONEST work and doing a lot of things right. Even if you could say it was luck, think in terms of bei…

> Try to understand what successful people do that makes them successful. Just because they can't explain it well doesn't mean there isn't wisdom to be had. Luck?

Why even try if success is blind luck? Why go to school? Why learn things?

Telling people that the success is just blind luck is offensive, IMO.

Not that successful people care.

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#187

Post by dorkwood »

dragonwriter wrote: post #182
dorkwood wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It proceeds to say he made about $400000 from the mine in total - hardly a billionaire villain level money. Just to clarify for anyone else wondering, that’s 400,000USD inflation adjusted for 2021. Converted to South African rand, it’s about 7.2 million. To put that in context, the average home price in South Africa is about a million rand. So at most they would have been able to buy 7 properties. If they bought in…

> Converted to South African rand, it’s about 7.2 million. > To put that in context, the average home price in South Africa is about a million rand. So at most they would have been able to buy 7 properties That’s... not how averages work.

If a house costs a million rand, and you have 7 million, then you can buy 7 of them, right? What am I missing?

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#188

Post by dragonwriter »

dorkwood wrote: post #187
dragonwriter wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Converted to South African rand, it’s about 7.2 million. > To put that in context, the average home price in South Africa is about a million rand. So at most they would have been able to buy 7 properties That’s... not how averages work.

If a house costs a million rand, and you have 7 million, then you can buy 7 of them, right? What am I missing?

If an average house costs a million rand, and you have 7 million rand, 7 properties is not the maximum you could buy.

(If the minimum price was a million rand, then 7 would be the maximum.)

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#189

Post by scarface74 »

encoderer wrote: post #185
scarface74 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes “because wanting something bad enough” is the key to success…

It is a necessary but insufficient step.

Not if you have the connections and funding to start on third base where you can afford not to work and start your business on the side and hire enough people where you don’t have to work hard.

I worked for a startup before my current job where the founders - two brothers - had connections with the governor of a state in the Midwest to get a grant to start a small health care company. Neither of them were technical. They hired a few people in the state as basically QA and then hired a full stack consulting company that did the design, the project management and the development by hiring cheaper labor from India.

Then when they started getting enough revenue, they started bringing the technical skills in house including hiring a very good CTO.

The CTO then hired me as his third technical hire to oversee the “cloud application modernization” initiatives because they wanted to sell access to their micro services to large health care providers.

They sold the company three years after I was hired for 10x revenue. It was only $30 million. But the founders and the CTO I assumed made out well.

I think the people who had been there the longest made in the low six figures. I left ten months earlier and didn’t exercise my options. I might have left about $60K on the table.

Please play the worlds smallest fiddle for me. My next job after leaving the 60 person company was a remote job working at $BigTech in the cloud consulting department where my two year prorated signing bonus was $nice.

Re: “Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

#190

Post by dorkwood »

dragonwriter wrote: post #188
dorkwood wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a house costs a million rand, and you have 7 million, then you can buy 7 of them, right? What am I missing?

If an average house costs a million rand, and you have 7 million rand, 7 properties is not the maximum you could buy. (If the minimum price was a million rand, then 7 would be the maximum.)

Oh, I didn’t realise I wrote “at most”. You’re right, that was incorrect.
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