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I am done. I give up

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Re: I am done. I give up

#491

Post by nprateem »

MikeDelta wrote: post #275
copx wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most founders are still men from Ivies or Stanford. That's the key part of the "entrepreneur" story the OP missed. From Gates over Zuckerberg to Musk, all these people were born rich, into well-connected families. If you do not belong to this ultra-privileged class of people, your chances of doing what they did is practically zero.

Indeed, this has been a topic of many discussions in the past and I do believe that connections and privilege form a more important factor in success than many would like to admit.

Connections, privilege, but also it's about personal net capital invested. Entrepreneurs with ordinary net worth are underdiversified, with a concentration in their own business. If you have high net worth, you have less exposure so the stakes are lower and you require a lower rate of return to compensate you for the risk (CAPM).

There's no way I wanted the pressure to run a business in my 20s. A decade or so later with a cushy job gives me the financial freedom to do this without the high risk of failure, since if it tanks I'll still have other investments. Most entrepreneurs are in their 40s apparently according to research.

Re: I am done. I give up

#492

Post by icoder »

lr4444lr wrote: post #460
jurmous wrote: post #10

A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing. The basic fact is that most startups and most entrepreneurial dreams fail or get consumed by another for their talent/clients. And as an entrepreneur you fight against all odds. Most will fail…

Identifying the right opportunity/connections/time etc. isn't just luck, like something that dropped out of the sky. It draws on skills, past experience, and calculated risk taking to know who, what, and when to seize on something and ignore what isn't important.

As I see it, you're both right, as in: all that you mention finds its relevance through shaping luck / increasing luck surface area.

Re: I am done. I give up

#493

Post by nutate »

You’ll be ok. I’ve been institutionalized many times and I’ve never even tried to start a business. Take care of yourself and shield yourself from the liars who profit from your belief in their fabrications. Be well, health is a process and has nothing to do with monetary or business success, but is far more valuable.

Re: I am done. I give up

#494

Post by hunter-gatherer »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #434
mnky9800n wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately another component of the Nordic model that makes it work is that everybody trusts the government. This is what makes the Nordic model hard to translate to other settings in my opinion.

They're high trust societies in general, partially because they're small monocultures. As Robert Putnam's research shows, in multicultural societies, especially large ones, trust rapidly declines, surprisingly even within cultural groups. Trust in government falls even more rapidly as each group starts to perceive those in power as being more favorable to one group or another, even if those in power are from their ow…

I've distinctly noticed this in my own life, being born and raised in the western US, but having lived throughout the US, my trust in my "fellow Americans" declines the further away from the mountain west I get. My spouse is Finnish, and we've lived in Finland for years, and have independently observed that their homogeneous society definitely makes their rosy politics possible. I bring this up when people try to compare US and Finnish domestic politics. There is often a "it works in !" rhetoric when discussing health care, schools, or whatever. Comparatively, Finnish politics are boring and uneventful.

Re: I am done. I give up

#495

Post by calcifer »

3pt14159 wrote: post #415
opyate wrote: post #320

Succeeding in the startup world reminds me of the funfair analogy: The rich kid will have a go at throwing the dart at the balloon, and miss. But, because they're a rich kid, they just take out their wallet (or parents' wallet), get more stubs, and try again (and again) until they hit the balloon. The middle class kid will have a go at throwing the dart at the balloon, and also miss. Then they will walk away, saying…

I don't think this way of looking at it is helpful either. Sometimes the rich kid was abused by his dad and it ate him up inside and he turned to drugs and died of an overdose at 25 years old. Sometimes the middle class kid came from a father that survived as a child in WW2 with undiagnosed metal scars to prove it. Sometimes the poor kid learns plumbing from his dad then starts and scales a business up to millions in…

Judging by your website, you're very much the rich kid who simply resents the label.

Re: I am done. I give up

#496

Post by aizyuval »

jurmous wrote: post #10

A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing. The basic fact is that most startups and most entrepreneurial dreams fail or get consumed by another for their talent/clients. And as an entrepreneur you fight against all odds. Most will fail…

Luck is an excuse.

One can choose to try a lot of different things, and another will choose to have a single few shots. One can choose to accept the “truth”, and the other will refuse to do so.

We get feedback from the world, and we choose how to analyze it and interact with it.

It’s easy to be fooled by the fact that we have only one choice. Or that the feedback reflects the absolute truth.

Re: I am done. I give up

#497

Post by nprateem »

_448 wrote: post #119
jurmous wrote: post #10

A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing. The basic fact is that most startups and most entrepreneurial dreams fail or get consumed by another for their talent/clients. And as an entrepreneur you fight against all odds. Most will fail…

> A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing. This is not true! I have seen successful business built from scratch by people who had no connections, no money and no privileged background (and no VC money). And I will say this for sure, i…

"Luck favours the prepared mind" - Louis Pasteur

Re: I am done. I give up

#498

Post by mensetmanusman »

Zanfa wrote: post #343
mensetmanusman wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything in life is luck, including your comment being top voted. If everything is luck, then it probably isn’t worth saying.

It definitely is. Just because success mostly boils down to luck, doesn’t mean that people realize or acknowledge it, which leads to unhealthy obsession with “being successful” that permeates the society.

If everything being luck-based is generally acknowledged, I wonder if that generally leads to nihilism since there isn’t anything that could be done.

Re: I am done. I give up

#499

Post by neilwilson »

throwawaybbq1 wrote: post #239
pavlov wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail. Unfortunately it's rarely discussed in society as such. The political parties that built these welfare states have traditionally been associated with worker unions, and entrepreneurship isn't high on their agenda. The Nordic right-wing parties got ideologically married to Thatcher-style neoliberalism and pref…

The issue is who pays for the welfare state. Finland got a lot of its wealth through off sea oil I think. Not easy to replicate in almost every part of the world. If you make the population pay for the welfare state, you are essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul. The people you rob (the ones paying the bulk of taxes) have a lower incentive to produce. This is one reason the energy Windfall taxes being proposed everyw…

They pay for it by spending the money - which induces higher production, higher sales - and higher taxes without ever changing the tax percentage.

There isn't a fixed amount of stuff, nor a fixed amount of money. Otherwise turnover, ie GDP, would never rise.

Don't get your stocks and flows mixed up.

Re: I am done. I give up

#500

Post by aliswe »

You're an investor of time, so the following quote applies:

The lesson for investors, Buffett says, is that you don't have to swing at every pitch.

"The trick in investing is just to sit there and watch pitch after pitch go by and wait for the one right in your sweet spot. And if people are yelling, 'Swing, you bum!,' ignore them."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/02/02/war...

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