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Taking Risk

tomblomfield.com

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Re: Taking Risk

#231

Post by robertlagrant »

oblio wrote: post #75
LAC-Tech wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans hate moving. They're not like the European diaspora, they will live within a days drive of Switzerland, all their life, and never even consider the concept of trying to make a life there to earn 2-5x as much.

Everyone hates moving if their lives are good enough. They generally only move because they think their environment has structural problems that can't be solved within, say, 5 years. For example: bad healthcare, generalized low level corruption, bad infrastructure, bad air quality, no opportunities, etc. Americans are probably the only developed people that will move en masse just to make a bit more money, and even t…

Americans don't move en masse. They move as individuals. Lots of people in the UK move to London to make money. Move to the capital, make your pile, leave at 50 and buy a big house.

Re: Taking Risk

#232

Post by jasonkester »

kavalg wrote: post #224
csomar wrote: post #220

This is the most useless post one can read about some guy who is happy with his life and complain others are not doing things that he is thinking about... > just days before my start date at McKinsey, which finally gave me the confidence to choose the startup over a prestigious job offer. I highly doubt many people are getting offers at McKinsey and getting funded at the same time. The dude talks about risk but he li…

Yes, to get a sense of risk taking, I'd rather hear many stories by risk takers that failed than one story from the guy that succeeded.

That’s often the same person.

I had a dozen failures before I struck on the sass product that retired me in my forties.

You try, you learn, you improve, and eventually something might work. Or you don’t try, keep your safe job and work until you’re 70 like everyone else.

Re: Taking Risk

#233

Post by switch007 »

arpinum wrote: post #85
CalRobert wrote: post #46

Not the UK, but I'm a Californian who lived in Ireland for ten years. The risk aversion is _intense_. Me: "I want to build a house" My Irish friends: "That's a bad idea, you will fail, it could fall down, you don't know anything about houses". They were extra horrified that I didn't want to build it out of concrete blocks because "you can't build a house out of wood" My Californian friends (but one in particular): "F…

Same experience in England. There is little celebration of business success and more likely accusations of exploitation. The class system is also alive and well in business - the ambition of many well off uni students is to manage others. Grinding on a startup doesn't fulfil that class ambition

Let's not pretend there is not actual exploitation and "exploitation".

The question is rather perhaps whether it's reasonable and justified given the huge amount of laws and regulations.

A typical small business owner will prey on the naivety of younger employees particularly around HR law. No business owner will be 100% truthful with their customers (ie they engage in some form of marketing). I have not worked a single job where this was not the case. It's celebrated here and called "growth hacking"

All of that is done for the gain of the owner, not solely so that they may enrich the lives of their employees

Re: Taking Risk

#234

Post by mike_hearn »

bezier-curve wrote: post #225
mike_hearn wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember you have to normalize for population size. And when we say the US we really mean one small part of it. People in the US often move to California to start their startups, they don't necessarily stick around in the part of the US they're currently in. This is largely due to the VC ecosystem there which makes "irrationality" relatively safe vs everywhere else in the world where it doesn't. Tom's article makes t…

> four-day working weeks I don't see how this affects innovation. Labor interests need to be taken care of too in a startup-friendly economy. In fact, I will probably never work for a startup simply because of the lack of safety net here in the states. That's a risk founders don't seem to consider too thoroughly - the lives they're entangling with their experiment.

People weren't choosing short weeks because they wanted leisure time. It was because there wasn't enough electricity to work five days a week due to Marxist miners unions shutting down the power stations.

Also on checking it turns out I misremembered. The UK went to three day weeks during this time:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week

TV stations were also required to shut down at 22:30 to conserve power. Bodies went uncollected, hospitals shut down, TV stations routinely went dark even when there was sufficient power. It's impossible to overstate the apocalyptic state of Britain in this era. You can read about it here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent

The government was so left wing any thought of building a high tech ecosystem was out of the question and even keeping existing 1930s era industries was hard. Whilst the Americans were building Intel the British were living through something from a disaster movie. The 1980s were spent partly repairing the damage. By that point the US tech ecosystem was well under way.

Re: Taking Risk

#235

Post by serced »

jasonkester wrote: post #232
kavalg wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, to get a sense of risk taking, I'd rather hear many stories by risk takers that failed than one story from the guy that succeeded.

That’s often the same person. I had a dozen failures before I struck on the sass product that retired me in my forties. You try, you learn, you improve, and eventually something might work. Or you don’t try, keep your safe job and work until you’re 70 like everyone else.

Interesting but also scary to go this route. I think part of the problem in Europe is also that companies/governments are less open to just try out new (startup) solutions. I would love to be learn from US startups how they manage to sell without much done already.

Re: Taking Risk

#236

Post by helsinkiandrew »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #204
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #107

> It was inconceivable that the Bank of England would authorise me, a 31 year old who’d never even worked in a bank, to act as the CEO of the UK’s newest bank. In general I would think this as a good thing. The UK has a more rigorous banking control than the US (where different state laws can make starting a bank easier than in the UK), with more scrutiny of the business model and customer protection - you need to pr…

> none of the failures that have happened in the US in the past few years I assume you are referencing Silicon Valley Bank, which wasn't a small bank and wasn't run by young, inexperienced leaders. In the US, community banks would be 10% the size of SVB at its peak (before the run). Except SVB, can you name any other failures? And were they due to young, inexperienced leaders? I cannot name a single one.

> I assume you are referencing Silicon Valley Bank

No: https://www.fdic.gov/resources/resolutions/bank-failures/fai...

Many of these had far more, and many far less customers and deposits than Monzo in 2016.

Re: Taking Risk

#237

Post by helsinkiandrew »

switch007 wrote: post #228
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #107

> It was inconceivable that the Bank of England would authorise me, a 31 year old who’d never even worked in a bank, to act as the CEO of the UK’s newest bank. In general I would think this as a good thing. The UK has a more rigorous banking control than the US (where different state laws can make starting a bank easier than in the UK), with more scrutiny of the business model and customer protection - you need to pr…

> This means there are no small 'town' or small specialist banks in the UK We do have about 250 credit unions and 42 building societies though

> We do have about 250 credit unions and 42 building societies though

And many of those still don't have 'full' banking licenses - there's limitations on what commercial services they perform and how they raise money.

Re: Taking Risk

#238

Post by openrisk »

People attribute differences in the enterpreneurial landscape between the US and European countries to cultural factors (aka some "abnormal" risk aversion) but consider the possibility the difference is actually the rational stance on the face of persistent realities.

First, there is the issue of the absence of scale. As a Briton once said (and Brexit famously demonstrated), there is no such thing as Europe. This is particularly true in the financial domain that the author knows well. Every crisis, whether economic, natural or purely political leads to fragmentation and retrenchement back to national borders. Terms such as banking union or capital markets union are the sorry markers of an ambition that was never fulfilled. Alas none of the European countries is big enough for the emerging planet scale economic forces that are being unleashed.

Secondly, most European countries are quite statist, the central government plays a very, ahem, central role in economic life. This is not necessarily without merit - a different discussion altogether, but it does imply that the success or failure of potentially disruptive private sector initiatives hinges on political connections and access.

Re: Taking Risk

#239

Post by blitzar »

masfuerte wrote: post #158
foldr wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extraordinary how determined the current UK government is to destroy its university sector. The economic and geopolitical advantages of having one of the world's best university systems are not only incalculable but also blindingly obvious . And yet apparently not too obvious to be missed by the caliber of person that currently makes up the cabinet.

There has been a precipitous drop in overseas university applications for the coming academic year. It was reported today that Cameron has warned Sunak that his visa reforms are likely to lead to university closures. The cabinet is aware of the problem but I don't think there is any limit to the damage Sunak is prepared to do when he believes it will improve Tory election chances.

> I don't think there is any limit to the damage the Conservative party is prepared to do

It is the entire party not any one individual. They know they are going to lose, they are literally salting the earth.

Re: Taking Risk

#240

Post by blitzar »

GeneralTspoon wrote: post #60
rwmj wrote: post #7

The expected returns from "want[ing] to go and work at companies like McKinsey, Goldman Sachs or Google" are both greater and more certain, so perhaps the individual young people are acting quite rationally in the UK? For context I spent years in my 20s doing start ups in London, and undoubtedly would have been better off financially now if I'd worked for some soul-sucking consultancy instead. I do agree with him tha…

The expected return of working for Big 4 in your 20’s is a coke habit

The expected return of working for Startups in your 20’s is a heroin habit
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