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

How to Be Successful

blog.samaltman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–326 of 326 posts

Re: How to Be Successful

#321

Post by nexus2045 »

spyckie2 wrote: post #191
porpoisely wrote: post #92

I find these types of articles/blogs to be relatively pointless because the market/economy/country/etc has room for a select few successes. Imagine if Obama wrote "How to Be a Successful Presidential Candidate" and every 2016 candidate read it and adopted it to a tee. We'd still have dozens of failures and only 1 success. If success were really a formula, then we'd all be successful. We can't all get into harvard, we…

I'm from the US but currently living in Asia. I observe that in many places outside the US, the cultural context of many stories, themes, and values is scarcity, whereas in the US it is opportunity. For example, in many Asian novels, power, wealth and opportunity is seen as an often vicious 0 sum game. Clans only have enough resources to put into 1 person. The throne of the kingdom only has enough space for 1 king, a…

Grew up in a very traditional Chinese household - never thought of it that way - somehow connects the dots with how my culture values being conservative, being stable, not rocking the boat - because there isn't much to go around in the first place.

Re: How to Be Successful

#323

Post by idontpost »

SiVal wrote: post #152
telesilla wrote: post #10

It's also very successful, if you have built a stable business and a way of supporting yourself and a few others around you. Being successful doesn't always mean having a 1BN valuation. But sure, it's nice to think that one day, it could happen. I'm just grateful every day that what I've got now - stability and plenty of resources - was a result of pretty much what Sam said. Believing in ourselves and not giving up,…

Decades ago, I heard a [possibly apocryphal] story that was already decades old about an encounter between a man famous for his vast wealth (I can't remember who, Carnegie, Morgan, Rockefeller..?) and a fan. A man recognized the rich guy on the street and approached him. "Are you ?" Yes. "Tell me, what does it really feel like to have so much money?" "Young man, I could probably ask you the same question." The young…

Sounds like something Getty actually would have said.

Re: How to Be Successful

#324

Post by johntran »

cosmie wrote: post #311
saberience wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These lists are always the same and never say anything new. Work hard, have goals, be focused, etc etc. No fucking shit. Everyone has heard this stuff X1000. The problem is, you can read the same shit again and again, but if you're not that way from the beginning, reading the same crap isn't suddenly going to change you. Most people who are mega driven are that way because of their birth parents and childhood. If you…

> The problem is, you can read the same shit again and again, but if you're not that way from the beginning, reading the same crap isn't suddenly going to change you. > Most people who are mega driven are that way because of their birth parents and childhood. If you were born into a crap family who didn't encourage you, by the time you're 18, it's radically harder to change I both wholeheartedly agree with the above…

You are a wonderful person. Keep doing you :).

Re: How to Be Successful

#325

Post by thorn »

Oh really. This article has click baity title. All these motivational posts get repetitive. They have very little actionable content in them. Rather than reading advices from the privileged ivory tower of survivors, I better go and read "The dispossessed" by Ursula Le Guin.

Re: How to Be Successful

#326

Post by woolvalley »

gianpaj wrote: post #319
woolvalley wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, some of the advice feels more like ‘How to be a better high risk vc startup founder’ vs ‘How to be a better 1M/yr “lifestyle” business founder’. Eventually if you want to scale yourself in the exponentiation formula you become a vc, vs grist for the founder mill. You only have so many 1% 5 year adventure chances to do a startup before you find your 50 and dont have much to show for your life.

how many people would you say try and fail 50 times? of course, failure can be defined in many ways. But I wouldn't think you end up in a bad place without having learnt a lot.

Let us say you start at 20 and end at 50, you only have 6 'startup adventure' chances that can work their way through.

If each have a %1 chance of success, it's very likely that the 6 adventure person wouldn't have much to show at the end of it.

Ending up an equivalent of mr. bullet ball is horrifying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leHwNiXgnh0

Because of survivorship bias, you usually never hear about these people.

Many people also try only 1 or 2 adventures, and if unsuccessful go into normal employment. But you jump off the 'potential exponentiation train' that sama describes by doing that, and you've lost out on 5-10 years of potential compound savings growth, which for many who can work at FANG instead means a million or two.

You also get to learn a lot and do fun stuff at FAANG employers too.

Post reply on HN