Out of curiosity, does anyone know how academic positions are counted in these numbers? Are the Google founders counted as having been previously employed in tech, for example? (They had paid PhD research positions at Stanford CS, but never worked in "regular" tech jobs in industry.)
If you want to start a startup, go work for someone else
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Re: If you want to start a startup, go work for someone else
#22According to the author: - 18% success rate for time founders - 20% success rate after that Implying previous experience almost doesn't matter that much... so just trying 5 times should assure 1 success. In that view, starting your company as soon as you can would still be the best way to get to your first success faster.
>So trying 5 times should assure 1 success
That's NOT how probability works. Just because you have a 50-50 chance of flipping heads does not mean it only takes two try's to get heads. On AVERAGE it does.
Re: If you want to start a startup, go work for someone else
#23Also is http://www.paulgraham.com/ down for anyone else?
Re: If you want to start a startup, go work for someone else
#24Out of curiosity, does anyone know how academic positions are counted in these numbers? Are the Google founders counted as having been previously employed in tech, for example? (They had paid PhD research positions at Stanford CS, but never worked in "regular" tech jobs in industry.)
In my observation, academic research shares a lot in common with entrepreneurship. Stealing from nostrademons above:
>>>> Working for someone else's startup, I learned how to quickly cobble solutions together. I learned about uncertainty and picking a direction regardless of whether you're sure it'll work. I learned that most startups fail, and that when they fail, the people who end up doing well are the ones who were looking out for their own interests all along. I learned a lot of basic technical skills, how to write code quickly and learn new APIs quickly and deploy software to multiple machines. I learned how quickly problems of scaling a development team crop up, and how early you should start investing in automation. I pretty much experienced all of those things in the course of my PhD research, with the exception of forming teams.
Re: If you want to start a startup, go work for someone else
#25According to the author: - 18% success rate for time founders - 20% success rate after that Implying previous experience almost doesn't matter that much... so just trying 5 times should assure 1 success. In that view, starting your company as soon as you can would still be the best way to get to your first success faster.
> So trying 5 times should assure 1 success That's NOT how probability works. Just because you have a 50-50 chance of flipping heads does not mean it only takes two try's to get heads. On AVERAGE it does.
Yea, I think even if people know this they don't intuitively grasp how far off they are. Five tries at 20% success rate is only 67% overall. That's about the same odds you have to win two rounds of russian roulette.
To have an overall 99% chance (what we might conversationally say is a guarantee), it'd take 21 tries.
Re: If you want to start a startup, go work for someone else
#26It kind of drives me nuts that I've read a lot of this research elsewhere, and all of my experiences have either flew in the face of them, or there were major asterisks. It makes me wonder, who were the people being studied, because I can see all of this being true in the general population, and you can even see it in most of the valley. There is something about the results that I don't trust, much like the way that…
I think it has something to do with the idea that 3% of YC applicants have a 100% chance of getting an interview.
If you follow PG's ethos perfectly maybe you choose to work at a great startup that is going to succeed and then you start your own. Work at Justin.tv, and then start Twitch/ZeroCater
Re: If you want to start a startup, go work for someone else
#27According to the author: - 18% success rate for time founders - 20% success rate after that Implying previous experience almost doesn't matter that much... so just trying 5 times should assure 1 success. In that view, starting your company as soon as you can would still be the best way to get to your first success faster.
Interesting. I am on my sixth startup. The first one, in Los Angeles, shut down, but the product was sold to another company and became the core product in the next company over 10 years, and that company eventually sold for hundreds of millions in cash. (Nothing for me.) I learnt a lot of painful but good lessons.
The second company was a consulting company, in London UK, with some friends. We did well, but it was so boring eventually that I closed it. Learnt a lot though.
The third one was a software reseller, in London UK, which worked quite well for a number of years. Top worldwide reseller for several products. But the companies we resold for were so keen to cash out that they stabbed the resellers in the back to improve the numbers right before the sale. Handed over my part of the company to my colleagues and moved on.
Fourth company was another consulting company with some friends (Stockholm, Sweden). But quickly found out we were not lined up on goals and methods, so exited that. (Most of them joined me in the next startup, so it was ok.)
Fifth company was a software product startup in San Francisco. Made several mistakes on sales, marketing and people and ran out of money in the dot com bust, and a VC investment, where we had a term sheet, evaporated.
Went back to the third company for a while to help them restructure and pick up new products then moved on.
Sixth organisation started seven years ago and we now have 60 people and have stared expanding rapidly worldwide in a market which is very different and very rewarding. I am finally able to use everything I learned in the previous five attempts and really use that knowledge. People from three of the previous startups are also in this one.
Re: If you want to start a startup, go work for someone else
#28Finding which startups to work for is the trick
Re: If you want to start a startup, go work for someone else
#29According to the author: - 18% success rate for time founders - 20% success rate after that Implying previous experience almost doesn't matter that much... so just trying 5 times should assure 1 success. In that view, starting your company as soon as you can would still be the best way to get to your first success faster.
> According to the author: - 18% success rate for time founders - 20% success rate after that ... so just trying 5 times should assure 1 success.
Not according to the Binomial theorem. For a success probability of .2 per independent trial and a binary outcome (i.e. success or failure, no intermediate states):
Trials Probability of >= 1 successes
-------------------------------------
1 .20
2 .36
3 .38
4 .48
5 .67
10 .89
100 .99
Re: If you want to start a startup, go work for someone else
#30Analysis like this is interesting because it assesses entrepreneurship like a career choice. Most entrepreneurs arise out of an idea. They aren't sitting on HN dreaming of becoming an entrepreneur(not that there is anything wrong with that). You see an unfulfilled need in the marketplace, believe you have the solution and can smell the money.
The thought, "is this a good long-term career choice?" isn't in the equation. That's for people looking to build a career. This is your one great idea that will make you rich, fuck a career. You are your boss from now on.
If your thought process doesn't look like that than maybe you just haven't stumbled upon that great idea. The idea that strips every rational bone out of your body, that keeps you up at night. Or may you just don't have the risk tolerance for entrepreneurship.
It's a fairly cavalier mindset, but you have to have that kind of naivete to outlive the struggles of starting a business.