521–530 of 681 posts
YMMV The happiest entrepreneurs I know got advanced degrees, had a solid career, developed plenty of contacts, then launched something in their 30s or 40s with substantially less risk than taking a punt on knowing what problems were worth solving while at University, or taking a punt on finding the right person to start a company with while at University, or taking a punt on having the wide range of skills required t…
What is YMMV?
YMMV The happiest entrepreneurs I know got advanced degrees, had a solid career, developed plenty of contacts, then launched something in their 30s or 40s with substantially less risk than taking a punt on knowing what problems were worth solving while at University, or taking a punt on finding the right person to start a company with while at University, or taking a punt on having the wide range of skills required t…
>The real way to start Google is to be smart, hard working and incredibly lucky. IMHO the best way to start a company is to be smart, hard working and patient. Reward requires effort, but effort does not guarantee reward. It's a fact of life that we really should teach our kids instead of the nonsense that effort will be rewarded.
YMMV The happiest entrepreneurs I know got advanced degrees, had a solid career, developed plenty of contacts, then launched something in their 30s or 40s with substantially less risk than taking a punt on knowing what problems were worth solving while at University, or taking a punt on finding the right person to start a company with while at University, or taking a punt on having the wide range of skills required t…
What is YMMV?
PG is remarkably consistent in his advice; much of his writing is about developing a nose for "what's missing" and having the chops and resources to attempt a solution. Also, I think 'Google' in this instance is more for motivation rather than a literal comparison. He's leaving out the part that Google was founded by graduate CS students a) looking for a thesis, b) into node-link graphs, and c) inspired by academic c…
This is what is fundamentally missing from most talk about "tech" startups by VC types these days. They're not actually interested in the nerdy stuff, just in the "disruption" stuff. L&S were , and they hired other people who were. They didn't start with a business idea, but with a technical one. They filled in the blanks on the business side after they survived the .com crash. I didn't get to Google until 2011, but…
The irony is that both the thing and its side effects were anticipated very early on.
"Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. ... It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media, we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers."
(The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The real way to start Google is to be smart, hard working and incredibly lucky. IMHO the best way to start a company is to be smart, hard working and patient. Reward requires effort, but effort does not guarantee reward. It's a fact of life that we really should teach our kids instead of the nonsense that effort will be rewarded.
I guess the problem is that "you might be able to do anything you set your mind to" is less catchy ...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Less startup, more starting a business. The older I get the less I want to build a startup and more I want to start a business. Something that takes a little bit of capital, lots of hard work, gets some customers and provides goods or services, without venture capital firms and 100x returns and everything that comes with that, just a standard business. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1SLHEC98I
That's a romantic idea until you realize you're now dealing and subservient to the dredges of society, the worst kinds of customers, the worst kind of people. Far worse than a niche market specialized technology sales prospect. Get ready to have a new contempt for humanity. Get ready to be raked over the coals by Yelp.
This optimizes for Paul's outcomes not for the individual outcomes.
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…
Less startup, more starting a business. The older I get the less I want to build a startup and more I want to start a business. Something that takes a little bit of capital, lots of hard work, gets some customers and provides goods or services, without venture capital firms and 100x returns and everything that comes with that, just a standard business. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1SLHEC98I
As a just-graduated poor student I was used to living on practically nothing. By 40 I had a mortgage, kids, wife etc. The penalty-for-failure at that age is substantial.
When I stopped getting a salary in my 20s my wife was earning so we just lived on her salary. That lasted a few years until the new business found its niche.
So, how to start a business later in life? Slowly and carefully. First do it as a side hustle. Night's and weekends. (Which is good to see if you still gave the energy for that.)
Price things "as if its full time". If you're selling ceramics on Saturdays figure out what your daily sales need to be and price accordingly. If you're teaching piano ditto.
Side hustles also let you experiment with marketing. See if the market will bear more than just a Saturday here or there.
When you can, take a paid vacation from your day job, and see how busy you are (and what income) from the eide hustle. Figure out if you enjoyed that more than the day job.
Save every penny from the dide hustle. You'll want at least 6 months of cash before you make the leap. 3 months to get income back up, 3 to look for a new job if it fails.
It's harder to start a new thing in your 40s. But it's also more likely to succeed, IF you plan and execute right.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the zero interest rate environment it was easier to get good advice and orders of magnitude more more money. A lot of those companies are crap. Google had good timing but importantly, a good product and market fit. Prior search engines sucked in comparison with obnoxious monetization.
I think the UX was the main reason people flocked to Google - an empty white page with a single search text entry and a button.
It's interesting that this piece mentions "to get really rich" as one of the primary motivators. Especially to high school students. I wonder if that's good advice or if society is better served by motivating students to start companies that make the world better.
Getting rich and making the world better are not incompatible, or even unaligned in general. You get rich by offering a good or service that society desires.
You get filthy rich by capturing as much of the market as possible by whatever means necessary and killing off competition - including user lock-in, artificial bundling, using successful past products to subsidize non-profitable new ones just to screw competitors etc.