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Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

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Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#301

Post by xiaoma »

crdoconnor wrote: post #235
xiaoma wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jack Ma had neither when he started Alibaba. And whatever handicap not having connections is now in the west, it was a much larger one a decade ago in China.

Jack Ma worked for the Ministry of Foreign trade in China before he founded Alibaba.

Fair enough, but his job at the ministry of foreign trade was after he had made a (for the time) fortune with a different venture. His parents were traditional musicians, not powerful party members. He absolutely was not from a privileged or politically connected background.

Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#302

Post by totallystupid »

jmcmichael wrote: post #93
totallystupid wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A person's life is their responsibility. The only thing disingenuous is believing that is not so. A person brings shame upon themselves when they blame others for lack, instead of choosing to create for themselves. Your fancy words conceal an illogicality of thought. Clear your thought, before you clothe it in fancy words, otherwise you get confused. Stopping making excuses and tolerating that from others, is the way…

> Clear your thought, before you clothe it in fancy words, otherwise you get confused. Your prose is clothed in finery that would make Louis XIV cringe.

yeah it's far too straightforward and clear to besuit his ostentation.

Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#303

Post by totallystupid »

bakhy wrote: post #48
totallystupid wrote: post #33

Friends! If you find someone trying to criticize your achievement as being "just because you are privileged" say "I'm now further from where I started, than where I started was from where you started. So if you couldn't even make it from where you started to where I started, how do you expect that you could have made it from where I started to where I am now?" People may choose to respond to this by saying something…

> Friends! If you find someone trying to criticize your achievement as being "just because you are privileged"... As the Spartans said to Philip of Macedonia: "If."

exactly, who's going to dare to now? and yet still, people try.

Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#304

Post by 6t6t6 »

tertius wrote: post #249
lhc- wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sorta spits at the idea of social mobility ("the american dream") though. The biggest rewards are only really available to those who can take risks like starting a business, and if you restrict that to only those who are already well-off, you remove most chances for the poor to ascend to the higher classes.

This implies that you believe that there is a global elite and there has always been a global elite and that they are all related and there is no way to become a part of that elite. Because if you say that "if you restrict that to only those who are already well-off", their parents probably weren't or their parents' parents etc. There are many occupations that really only require hard work and little risk that has bi…

> There are many occupations that really only require hard work and little risk that has big payout.

Such as?

Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#305

Post by 6t6t6 »

larrys wrote: post #269
efaref wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. The risk of having to run back to mummy and daddy with their tail between their legs is no risk at all. I could be quite entrepreneurial if I didn't also have to pay for my apartment and food every month without fail.

You of course are right. Tail between legs is embarrassing but in the end you won't go hungry or homeless. Problem is in popular culture there are also stories about the 1 out of 1000 guys (just like you) that essentially gambled and came out ahead. Let me say that again. Gambled and won. You hear those all of the time. What you don't hear is about the ones who lost or hit the skids as a result of those chances that…

That's the big fallacy of capitalism. Nobody buy books about the guys who took a risk and lost everything, but everybody buys books about the One Guy who became millionaire after being a drop out.

What you call "popular culture", is just propaganda to make people believe that if they don't became rich is their own fault.

Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#306

Post by tertius »

6t6t6 wrote: post #304
tertius wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This implies that you believe that there is a global elite and there has always been a global elite and that they are all related and there is no way to become a part of that elite. Because if you say that "if you restrict that to only those who are already well-off", their parents probably weren't or their parents' parents etc. There are many occupations that really only require hard work and little risk that has bi…

> There are many occupations that really only require hard work and little risk that has big payout. Such as?

Medicine.

Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#307

Post by patkai »

botswana99 wrote: post #227

If you work your way through school, you end with ‘deficits’ relative to your peers whose parents paid their way through University (and provided a rich set of ‘cultural’ experiences along the way). It is a tough having tens of thousands of debt for your CS degree, as well having spent all your free time in crummy jobs to pay the bills along the way. Walk through a co-working center in Cambridge or San Francisco – ho…

No, in the long term it isn't. In the short term there may be all kinds of deficit, but they will eventually disappear. It has also been a great source of self-esteem for me, the fact that I left home without a penny.

Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#308

Post by DanielBMarkham »

Futurebot wrote: post #212
radmuzom wrote: post #11

Ten years back, when I was fresh out of college, I joined a startup - not as a founder but as the first employee. A lot of it was driven by reading Paul Graham's essays, and I was naive and immature enough to believe that I was doing something great (as an aside, I came from an economically disadvantaged family; and every cent of my assets today is something I have earned and not something which I have inherited or o…

Absolutely. What I think some stating that this is all "common sense" miss is that for many people it's NOT. All the advantages some have are advantages they believe that others have. Couldn't go to university because you had to work? Why didn't your parents help you? What? Nowhere to live? What about your old bedroom? You've supported yourself since you were a teenager? Where were your parents! No money left? Huh? N…

The world isn't fair or just. But we all control our attitude and our decisions. Some attitudes and decisions get you a house and food. Some do not.

Speaking as somebody who's been there, I'm really concerned with this "poor changes your mind" thing I'm seeing. Buddhists manage to live and be happy not having much at all. For the vast majority of history, great men lived in conditions much worse than the average poor person in the western world does.

I agree that many rich people do not understand poor people. Likewise, many poor people do not understand rich people. But when people say things like "So your startup doesn't work out, why don't you just go live with family", they are not simply showing that they don't understand your situation. They're trying to point out: what's the worse that could happen? I've been homeless, I've lost everything I've owned. You go through a lot of crap an either you sit in the corner feeling sorry for yourself or you start thinking "So I could lose the house? It's not the end of the world." Doesn't mean I'd do it lightly, but I am in control and I have the power to make that decision.

I really don't care who has a private jet or has never worried about food or shelter. Moreso, I find worrying about those things is a good sign my head is in the wrong place for actually making me a better person.

Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#309

Post by kseshadri »

One cannot be unmindful of risk. Those with family money know they can afford the risk. It is really that simple. I started a venture, and assessed the status after a period, and had kept a stop loss for how much I can afford to lose. I closed at the limit and shut it down. I must of course mention that business schools teach you to a project feasibility report first and then proceed. But quite often, I suspect, misguidance and insincere encouragement makes one launch a project without a strict and impassioned appraisal. K.Seshadri

Re: Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

#310

Post by Hydraulix989 »

larrys wrote: post #268
cryoshon wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lesson from this is don't drink anyone's kool aid consciously. PG has a huge incentive to wax heroic about the "risk takers" "makers" and "founders"; it's the Silicon Valley cargo cult, and should be compensated against in the mind of the reader. Always be brutally critical of applying the question of qui bono-- always, no exceptions, ever. PG has little incentive to explicitly qualify ideas that are his foundati…

"PG has a huge incentive to wax heroic about the "risk takers" "makers" and "founders"" To be sure (in the spirt of NY Times "to be sure" statements) [1] PG (who went to Harvard of course as everyone knows) and others always point out the obligatory risks but tend to do so in a way that I think most people perhaps ignore. More or less a "sure it's risky but" as opposed to "you'd be foolish however there's always a sm…

PG also went to a no-name public high school at a blue collar steel town outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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