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How to Start Google
471–480 of 681 posts
Re: How to Start Google
#472Any chance for me at 45 and without stellar academic background? Or just hope for better chance next life?
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Re: How to Start Google
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
// 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…
Counterpoint: Rudolph Hass, creator of the original hass avocado, barely made anything from it. I’m not gonna say that the Hass Avocado had more impact than Apple or Google, but it’s definitely more impactful than any $1-10 billion company I can think of.
Isn’t the story that some crazy old seed man gave him a Hass seed and we don’t really know where it came from?
Re: How to Start Google
#474Earlier quoted context omitted.
Poker is actually a good analogy. It is luck in the short term but skill over the long term. You can't confidently predict that you will win any specific upcoming hand but, given a particular set of opponents, you can reasonably predict whether you will be up or down over a number of hands. I may beat Chris Moneymaker on a hand or two but he's going to take all my money over the long haul. The insight here is to only…
I completely agree with the sentiment, and as someone who’s mostly focused on a startup for pro poker players to study game theory more effectively ( https://www.livepokertheory.com ) , I find countless parallels between poker and entrepreneurship. Also, people don’t realize that startups aren’t one single event. There’s a million events and each one has its own luck. For example, you make a piece of content marketin…
> it’s highly ironic you picked Moneymaker as your example poker pro, since he’s famous in the poker world for being a very bad amateur player who got extremely lucky at the perfect time
You may be overly generous in your estimation of MY poker skills! However bad Chris is, I am sure I am not anywhere close.
Re: How to Start Google
#475The cost of failure is way too high in this country for people to take a risk and venture out on their own. This is a privilege that has been reserved for the wealthy.
Larry. Sergey. Mark Z. Steve.
All of these people were born into families where both parents either had advanced degrees or were well off due to their success in the field. Failure for these people does not mean much. Maybe just a hit to their egos. But otherwise they keep living life, just not as the billionaires of today.
Re: How to Start Google
#476While 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…
Yes, and doing a startup involves risk. If you fail, you’ll lose time and likely money. I’m now 10+ years behind on my retirement savings. I’ll likely need to work until 70-75.
Re: How to Start Google
#477While 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 not trying to create 500 new Googles. 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 necessitate…
>Competition necessitates excellence.
There is always room for competition.
Re: How to Start Google
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think he answers the second point of "not every company can be a Google" though. He says this will get you to the point where your company could be a Google, but makes no promises that it will be one. I agree with the first point. I do think that the experience would nonetheless be valuable, though, to pilot a failed company.
Why even bring up 'Google' when the odds are (and always were) so long? It's like saying your bet could be the Powerball winner. I mean if his audience is only soon-to-be lottery winners, then it's kind of embarrassingly narrow and niche. And what advice is there to say except be rich enough to buy a lot of tickets?
Because it's drastically more exciting and interesting to a young audience, whose attention he's trying to acquire to get various points across. You won't get and keep their attention easily.
Inspiration matters. Attention matters.
Teenagers are not inspired by: you could start a little business that de facto operates as a medium paying job (but is far more stressful and risky to your future, your potential family, and your long-term finances), and it'll be miserably difficult, and you really shouldn't even try it because the likely rewards are so tiny that you should just go work for Microsoft instead for the fat (and easier) paycheck. Even if you try to sell that with a passion premise (the reward is in the love of the craft), the sell is so ugly you shouldn't even waste the young audience's time (they'll just come away depressed at best).
Why do people ever aspire to anything that's exceptionally difficult?
Re: How to Start Google
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Not every company can become a Google; but a Google can come from anywhere. ” - Peter O’Toole, probably.
"Not every company can become a Google, but a Google can come from any incredibly wealthy, well-connected, elite nepo baby."
> but a Google can come from any incredibly wealthy, well-connected, elite nepo baby
A math teacher and researcher's son, a middle class immigrant from third world Soviet Russia.
Or: the middle class son of a professor of computer science and an instructor of programming.
Such privilege. /s
"Elite nepo baby" applies to anyone that ever accomplishes anything these days huh.
Re: How to Start Google
#480Paul is fundamentally wrong with one thiing here: Larry knew google was going to be huge from the beginning. His brother Carl was already a multimillionare in tech and taught him everything required to set up a future successful company. Larry made it clear to me that he always planned Google to be a large cash-generating cow to invest in long-term AGI and there were only a few times at the beginning when he truly fe…
> Paul is fundamentally wrong with one thiing here: Larry knew google was going to be huge from the beginning. Nobody can know such a thing -- especially turning around a billion-dollar business, a thing with a near-zero prior probability. It's more reasonable to say that Larry had the drive, the aptitude, and the resources to maximize his odds (which would still be low.)
If you're one of the smartest people in the world, working in one of the most impactful areas... the posterior probability is more like 90% than near-zero.