461–470 of 681 posts
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He's giving advice to school kids on what to do during their remaining school years or early college years.
As long as Paul Graham doesn't tell the truth that most if not all school kids won't ever make the next Google, then I'm okay with influencers (like Paul Graham, for instance) lying about the possibility of enormous opportunities being available to people.
I'm wondering if there is a research about which percentile of these two groups became rich: People who started a company vs People who worked for Tech companies.
it really depends on what you mean by rich: the surest path to end up with $2-5M over ~10 years is job at ~FAANG, do it well to get promoted, and manage your savings/investments well. that path is very unlikely to get you to $10-100M in the same 10 years, and starting a startup seems to be one of the best ways to do that.
What is the parallel advice for a 40 year old? I guess the programming and tinkering stuff still applies. But university cannot be redone. Sure I can study but I wont have any connection to most young people. I’ll be the old guy. And this assumes I can afford the loss of income. I assume a lot of start ups are started by older people too. I think for older people an advantage is to solve older people problems. Like h…
https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...
The link above links to the article I was going to post. Just adding the headline here, since it was missing.
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I don't disagree that luck is a factor, but what can you do with that information other than console yourself when it doesn't work out?
Learn how to manage bets. Some people have the resources to fail many times and keep going. Others do not. Knowing that a huge portion of starting a business is luck, you can better weigh your options and hopefully select different opportunities depending on your situation. And, in the unfortunately common case, recognize when you cannot take any bets and instead focus on getting yourself to a place where you can, ra…
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Yes, sadly. If you read between the lines and take his advice more as "understanding the psychology of VCs" rather than as actual advice, his essays are very useful. He has long passed the phases of a manager's life where he has to be right - he is surrounded by yes men who tell him that he is right no matter what. Matt Levine, as usual, has a great take on the phases of life of a partner/founder of a hedge fund (whi…
This is great. What Bridgewater did for Dalio's popularity rating is the same thing Twitter did for Musk's Tweet reach (and what Trump's pollsters did for his ratings).
What is the parallel advice for a 40 year old? I guess the programming and tinkering stuff still applies. But university cannot be redone. Sure I can study but I wont have any connection to most young people. I’ll be the old guy. And this assumes I can afford the loss of income. I assume a lot of start ups are started by older people too. I think for older people an advantage is to solve older people problems. Like h…
// Also being older I don’t care about making a unicorn You can use that term as a proxy for delivering large impact to the world. It's approximately the same thing. If you do something like "aged care" and "dealing with kids schools" in a way that helps millions of people, you'll end up a billionaire whether you want to or not. I don't use the term "unicorn" but I think keeping score in financial terms helps because…
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Starting a successful company is not an essentially impossible pipe dream. There are literally millions of businesses in the US that are generating millions in revenue. Sure, they aren't all mega behemoth tech companies, but what of it? Setting your ambitions high when you're young is still worth it. It can be a major difference maker in motivating you to learn the skills necessary to build a successful business, and…
> If you believe you can, you might try, and you might make it. The statistics are pretty clear that you almost certainly will not. So by all means give it a shot if you can do so without screwing your chance at whatever you'll do if/when it fails. People deserve dignity and meaning no matter what work they do. This should not be reserved to the folks who manage to start unicorns (let alone Googles).
This is an area where I think this quote applies.
Don't reach Google status and build the next $1T company? Okay, maybe you'll make a unicorn. Don't make a unicorn? Maybe you'll start a $100M company. Or a $10M company. Or a $1M company. Or hell, a $100k company is a hell of an achievement.
And if you fail to do that? Well congratulations, you're eminently employable. Because on your way to "failure," you likely taught yourself a lot about code/tech, work either, managing people, raising money, marketing, and business, to say nothing of the professional contacts you made along the way.
I haven't met founders who feel that by starting and failing companies they have "screwed their chance" at something, at least not in a professional capacity.
One caveat (and it's a big one) is people going all in* on startups in their 20s, neglecting their health and relationships.
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Certainly a few, but a quick scan of lists makes it look more like 25% inherited in the top 20 or so
I think it depends where you set the limit between “self made” and “inherited”. I don’t think it’s black or white Would Gates have made it if Mum wasn’t on the board of IBM? Would Bezos have made it without 200k from mum&dad ?
That’s a fair point to make in the abstract, but it’s absolutely, breath-takingly extraordinary to turn moderately well-off parents into a top-twenty global wealth position. I went to high school and university with many people considerably more privileged than either of those, and the challenge is generally in not mismanaging the assets too poorly so there’s enough to pass on to the next generation.
What is the parallel advice for a 40 year old? I guess the programming and tinkering stuff still applies. But university cannot be redone. Sure I can study but I wont have any connection to most young people. I’ll be the old guy. And this assumes I can afford the loss of income. I assume a lot of start ups are started by older people too. I think for older people an advantage is to solve older people problems. Like h…
// Also being older I don’t care about making a unicorn You can use that term as a proxy for delivering large impact to the world. It's approximately the same thing. If you do something like "aged care" and "dealing with kids schools" in a way that helps millions of people, you'll end up a billionaire whether you want to or not. I don't use the term "unicorn" but I think keeping score in financial terms helps because…
While I absolutely agree with PG here on identifying a missing link and solving it with technology as your own project is a good way to own a startup, I also feel most of his examples are reminiscent of survivorship bias. For every one of these giant trillion dollar companies, there are also thousands of companies that couldn't make it. Also, just by the distribution of it all, not every company can be a Google. Not…
He's trying to inspire the one kid that will actually create the next Google.
Alternatively, if only one person in the upcoming generation tries to create the next Google it will probably be a crap company. If 200 million kids try to create the next Google the one that succeeds in creating their own survivorship bias story will likely be a stellar co.
Competition necessitates excellence.