Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The myth of the serial entrepreneur

swombat.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 56 posts

Re: The myth of the serial entrepreneur

#31

Post by prof_hobart »

swombat wrote: post #4
tomblomfield wrote: post #3

I can't help but feel that there's some sample bias going on here. Each example given is an person who is currently well-known for being an entrepreneur. By definition, they haven't moved on to something else. There's a tonne of people who've succeeded as an entrepreneur and then gone onto something else; venture capital (in fact most VCs partners are ex-entrepreneurs), politics or philanthropy, for example. The poin…

Can you name a handful? I don't argue that there are no such people, but I don't think there's a tonne of them.

I know more than one person who's quit their day job, started up a business, made a few million pounds and then retired. They won't be anyone that you, or I suspect anyone else on here, knows. They are simply people I've worked with.

And that's the thing. The ones that become mega-famous are typically the ones who have been around for an extended period of time - either through having spent the time building a single successful company (Bill Gates, Zuckerberg etc), or people who become well known for starting up multiple companies. If Bill Gates had retired 4 years after starting up Microsoft, how many people would even know his name now?

Rather than trying to identify people who've famously walked away after a few years and comparing them to the number of famous people who didn't, a far better measure would be to find random 20 entrepreneurs who have only been doing it for a couple of years and see how many of them are still doing it, either with the same company, or with a new company, in 10 years time.

Re: The myth of the serial entrepreneur

#32

Post by aortega »

kator wrote: post #15

Really good article, at first I started reading on the defensive because I am a serial entrepreneur. For 28 years of my life I never had a payroll check from anyone but my own companies. It was amazing and painful at the same time. I thought about starting my sixth company and I got a chance to be an SVP at a very large public company. I did that for a while and really enjoyed it and actually moved on to a new compan…

It's amazing how you people really believe all this. I don't mean to offend anyone, but I hate when people think of themselves a beautiful butterfly. Common people, employees, plumbers, etc. also have ideas, also have "bold blindness", they also have a willingness to create from nothing (who think created the thousands of open-source apps that are part of GNU and/or Linux, entrepeneurs?) is not that what separates you from them. You have disposable money and instead of a nice boat or car you put it in a business. And you know how to talk people into putting money in your idea, and you probably live in a country so terribly full of money that people are willing to risk it. That's it. Unless you are an entrepeneur living in some hellhole african country, in that case, respect to you, bold african entrepeneur.

Re: The myth of the serial entrepreneur

#33

Post by krschultz »

aortega wrote: post #32
kator wrote: post #15

Really good article, at first I started reading on the defensive because I am a serial entrepreneur. For 28 years of my life I never had a payroll check from anyone but my own companies. It was amazing and painful at the same time. I thought about starting my sixth company and I got a chance to be an SVP at a very large public company. I did that for a while and really enjoyed it and actually moved on to a new compan…

It's amazing how you people really believe all this. I don't mean to offend anyone, but I hate when people think of themselves a beautiful butterfly. Common people, employees, plumbers, etc. also have ideas, also have "bold blindness", they also have a willingness to create from nothing (who think created the thousands of open-source apps that are part of GNU and/or Linux, entrepeneurs?) is not that what separates yo…

Success or failure has a large component of luck that people don't like to acknowledge. Especially counter-factual luck. My parents are very lucky to never have had to deal with serious illness, injury, accident, etc. I'm sure if there was a terrible car accident that killed my family, I wouldn't exactly be as focused on my work and therefore less 'succesful' as an entrepreneur.

But there is an element of uniqueness to dive into the entrepreneurship game at all. Plenty of people have ideas and do nothing at all with them. If you don't actually dive into it, quit your job, and work at it, it's impossible to build a business. Most people (the vast majority) don't have the balls to do that.

Hard work and taking that risk are necessary but insufficient conditions for entreprenurial success. You also need luck. But that doesn't discount the amount of risk taken or the amount of work put into it, and most people can't stomach that.

Re: The myth of the serial entrepreneur

#34

Post by nuaccnt »

aortega wrote: post #32
kator wrote: post #15

Really good article, at first I started reading on the defensive because I am a serial entrepreneur. For 28 years of my life I never had a payroll check from anyone but my own companies. It was amazing and painful at the same time. I thought about starting my sixth company and I got a chance to be an SVP at a very large public company. I did that for a while and really enjoyed it and actually moved on to a new compan…

It's amazing how you people really believe all this. I don't mean to offend anyone, but I hate when people think of themselves a beautiful butterfly. Common people, employees, plumbers, etc. also have ideas, also have "bold blindness", they also have a willingness to create from nothing (who think created the thousands of open-source apps that are part of GNU and/or Linux, entrepeneurs?) is not that what separates yo…

Resentment won't help your cause, whatever it is.

Re: The myth of the serial entrepreneur

#35

Post by [deleted] »

aortega wrote: post #32
kator wrote: post #15

Really good article, at first I started reading on the defensive because I am a serial entrepreneur. For 28 years of my life I never had a payroll check from anyone but my own companies. It was amazing and painful at the same time. I thought about starting my sixth company and I got a chance to be an SVP at a very large public company. I did that for a while and really enjoyed it and actually moved on to a new compan…

It's amazing how you people really believe all this. I don't mean to offend anyone, but I hate when people think of themselves a beautiful butterfly. Common people, employees, plumbers, etc. also have ideas, also have "bold blindness", they also have a willingness to create from nothing (who think created the thousands of open-source apps that are part of GNU and/or Linux, entrepeneurs?) is not that what separates yo…

[deleted]

Re: The myth of the serial entrepreneur

#36

Post by aortega »

krschultz wrote: post #33
aortega wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how you people really believe all this. I don't mean to offend anyone, but I hate when people think of themselves a beautiful butterfly. Common people, employees, plumbers, etc. also have ideas, also have "bold blindness", they also have a willingness to create from nothing (who think created the thousands of open-source apps that are part of GNU and/or Linux, entrepeneurs?) is not that what separates yo…

Success or failure has a large component of luck that people don't like to acknowledge. Especially counter-factual luck. My parents are very lucky to never have had to deal with serious illness, injury, accident, etc. I'm sure if there was a terrible car accident that killed my family, I wouldn't exactly be as focused on my work and therefore less 'succesful' as an entrepreneur. But there is an element of uniqueness…

I agree with all you said, but consider that humans in general are terrible at estimating risk. I believe being an entrepeneur is not that risky, and being an employee is not that safe either. The main problem that I see about seeing entrepeneurship as unnaturally bold, risk-takers, creative intelligent people, is that you dehumanize the no-entrepeneur person, in such a way that's very easy to exploit them, because, they are like cattle, non-risk takers, and deserve it, right?

Re: The myth of the serial entrepreneur

#37

Post by jaredsohn »

guth wrote: post #30
swombat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting angle, though I would argue that what you're defining here is a very successful serial entrepreneur, rather just a "serial entrepreneur". I'd say that someone who willingly jumps into startup after startup is a serial entrepreneur - successful or not. Max Levchin was clearly a serial entrepreneur already after his 6th company, even though he hadn't started Skype and Slide yet...

Skype?

that should be PayPal

Re: The myth of the serial entrepreneur

#38

Post by vannevar »

adamt wrote: post #10

I agree with a lot of what the author says, but I am not sure I agree with the main premise in his title. Luck and timing often play a big role in setting up a business. I think there are some people who saw an opportunity through being in the right place at the right time and created a business out of it. Often these evolve into being what people call lifestyle businesses. In my mind these people don't fit into the…

...to do it 3 or 4 times is something else.

Doing it 3 or 4 times is in fact much easier, which is why so many entrepreneurs who are successful the first time go on to have further success. It's much easier to raise money with a track record, you have connections with skilled people on both the technical and financial side, and you have your own experience to avoid pitfalls and give you confidence. If entrepreneurship is a marathon, it's a marathon where every mile gets easier and easier as you run.

In such an economic race, it's no wonder there is a growing disparity between the leaders and the rest of the pack.

Re: The myth of the serial entrepreneur

#39

Post by KingMob »

swombat wrote: post #4
tomblomfield wrote: post #3

I can't help but feel that there's some sample bias going on here. Each example given is an person who is currently well-known for being an entrepreneur. By definition, they haven't moved on to something else. There's a tonne of people who've succeeded as an entrepreneur and then gone onto something else; venture capital (in fact most VCs partners are ex-entrepreneurs), politics or philanthropy, for example. The poin…

Can you name a handful? I don't argue that there are no such people, but I don't think there's a tonne of them.

The very fact that you don't know them could support the point. In science, this is known as survival bias.

It's a mistake to argue that the entrepreneurs you read and hear about must be representative of all entrepreneurs. It's quite likely that the ones most likely to become serial entrepreneurs will remain visible, and the ones who stop after a successful exit are less likely to remain in the field.

Re: The myth of the serial entrepreneur

#40

Post by teebs »

swombat wrote: post #11
tomblomfield wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Robin Klein, Bill Gates, Silvio Berlusconi, Michael Bloomberg, Niklas Zennström

Marc Andreessen: cofounded Netscape and then OpsWare and Ning and now is a VC. Serial to the max. Ben Horowitz: Opsware and then VC. A Morten Lund character. Bill Gates: already addressed in both the article and another comment Silvio Berlusconi: I don't know much about his business history, but a quick glance at his Wikipedia page shows he started multiple businesses. Definitely not a one-business-and-retire type. M…

Even Bloomberg is almost a serial entrepreneur. Effective, memorable politicians must be to some extent entrepreneurial--you have to believe in your own ability to create change and to unify people behind your cause.
Post reply on HN