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Entrepreneurs think they’re badass

ryancarson.com

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Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass

#61

Post by paul9290 »

onewaystreet wrote: post #44
paul9290 wrote: post #37

Indeed, the following factors below is what makes you a success... 1. Luck/Serendipity - Your startup launches for the first or fifth time & boom gets traction, which money/success immediately follows. Think Pinterest, Uber, Facebook, Youtube; basically it's like winning the lottery! and 2. Network - You know the right people & or convinced them to give you their resources (their connections & money). With this you c…

Pinterest is the only one of those companies whose success was close to immediate. Uber, Facebook, Youtube all had to grind it out. Uber battled (and still is) many legal challenges; YouTube almost went the way of Napster early on; and Facebook was an underdog to MySpace for a long time.

As I recall, Uber was picked up quickly in San Francisco. I recall Mike Arrington raving about it when it first launched. It had instant uptake in tech circles & early adopters.

Facebook was instant in the fact that when launched it took Harvard by storm and then grew like a weed thereafter.

Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass

#62

Post by thinkerer »

That's why most who have seen some success would say (or so I have heard from their mouths):

"The more you try, the luckier you get".

There may be an element of luck that may affect to a significant extent (think lottery) without or having little attempts but in the long run it pans out. This highlights not only the importance of sticking it out, but sticking it out long enough, even after getting smashed many times over.

But of course, there has to be a specific and unique insight as a starting point, ala how can you make something better than whats out there now?

Its not surprising that people whom are passionate about their circle of competency, those who would venture in all directions from their initial locus/loci, seemingly random areas would pick up observations that others miss.

And only those with a genuine passion and interest will continue sticking out, even in the darkest times.

Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass

#63

Post by blueprint »

ryancarson wrote: post #47
tedks wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such an arrogant attitude. As if you'd be working on what you're working on if it didn't get you money or power. One is the other, really. No human alive doesn't want power. That's the basic evolutionary fuel of our entire species. There's no other desire humans even have -- anything else is just a means to that end. The truly powerful people in the world -- the ones whose names you don't know, because they don't par…

The reason I pity people who are passionate about power or money is because I have experienced much greater happiness in loving and being loved, unconditionally. The strongest of those loves are from my wife, my kids, my sisters and my mom and dad. None of those folks love me because of power or money. I've had a couple things that would demonstrate me having money like a super expensive watch, a brand new Audi, a bi…

Almost everyone in today's world confuses love and attachment. They misunderstand love as attachment, and attachment as love.

However, the term love contains a very important meaning. We can't say that we really live properly as humans without understanding what love is.

That's why I'd like to ask you something. I hope you don't mind my question. When you say "love", what do you mean by that term? What do you indicate?

Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass

#65

Post by [deleted] »

beambot wrote: post #49
staunch wrote: post #11

If Elon Musk had made $16M, instead of $160M, from PayPal there would be no Tesla or SpaceX. He likely would have spent his time much less productively, and the world would be worse off. And yet, very few people similar to Elon Musk ever find themselves in the position of being rich enough to field an army. In a future where resources aren't so constrained we'll start to see "geniuses" everywhere.

Before PayPal, Musk was heavily involved in Zip2. Upon its sale, he netted $22M. So that suggests an answer to your question: If he hadn't netted $160M from PayPal, he would've founded another company where he could go bigger. Zip2 details on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

[deleted]

Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass

#66

Post by wpietri »

adamzerner wrote: post #57

[Probability is in the mind]( http://lesswrong.com/lw/oj/probability_is_in_the_mind/ ). It's a reflection of our limited information, not reality. There really isn't anything inherently probabilistic about startups. If we had the right information and enough reasoning ability, we would be able to turn the dials just right. That's in theory. In practice, it's hard to acquire enough information. This is where luck come…

> If we had the right information and enough reasoning ability, we would be able to turn the dials just right. That's in theory.

Alas, not even in theory, because other actors are generating new information. Some of that new information will specifically be in response to your actions.

Even if over time skill and knowledge increase, that will be true for everybody. So luck will continue to be as important. Possibly more so; it seems to me that increasing knowledge reduces the opportunity for individual skill to make a difference.

Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass

#67

Post by logn »

I know some entrepreneurs who I think would do well in any era with any idea of the time. My office neighbor 20 years ago was selling vinyl phone book covers and did well. Now he's in SEO. And he's looking to get into healthcare devices next. His entire life is about finding sellable ideas and immersing himself in them until he's an expert.

Kind of like the idea that a bank loan officer should avoid business loans to people pursuing their passions and instead focus on the loaning to people who have hard data about why their business will make money.

Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass

#68

Post by wpietri »

tedks wrote: post #43
ryancarson wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pity someone who is 'passionate' about those things.

Such an arrogant attitude. As if you'd be working on what you're working on if it didn't get you money or power. One is the other, really. No human alive doesn't want power. That's the basic evolutionary fuel of our entire species. There's no other desire humans even have -- anything else is just a means to that end. The truly powerful people in the world -- the ones whose names you don't know, because they don't par…

> No human alive doesn't want power. That's the basic evolutionary fuel of our entire species. There's no other desire humans even have -- anything else is just a means to that end.

Demonstrably wrong.

Desire for power is certainly common among primates, but there are a number of basic drives. Drives people have it in different amounts. Further, there's no particular reason to think it was a huge evolutionary driver for us.

If you're really looking for the evolutionary driver that made us what we are, it might be a taste for cooked food. [1] You could also make a case for tool usage, or an arms race in language capability, a peacock's tail that happened to let us do far more than woo mates.

And even if power were a major drive, it doesn't really tell us much about what we should do. People are naturally violent, but we mostly set that aside. What's natural tells us nothing about what's right.

Of course you won't believe me, because you write like a fundamentalist. You can't tell a Freudian that it isn't about sex or a Baptist that it isn't all about God. Fundamentalism always makes me a little sad because it's so stunting.

It'd as if somebody put on a pair of blue-tinted glasses and ran around insisting that since they only see blue things, blue is the only real color and everybody else is just fooling themselves. They can't quite get that "everything they see" isn't only about everything; its also about how they see.

Could you be pulling our legs? When you call him arrogant and then explain how only you understand the deep, hidden truths of the world, it's kooky enough that I wonder if you're just trolling.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/14...

Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass

#69

Post by tedks »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #46
tedks wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such an arrogant attitude. As if you'd be working on what you're working on if it didn't get you money or power. One is the other, really. No human alive doesn't want power. That's the basic evolutionary fuel of our entire species. There's no other desire humans even have -- anything else is just a means to that end. The truly powerful people in the world -- the ones whose names you don't know, because they don't par…

> No human alive doesn't want power. That's the basic evolutionary fuel of our entire species. There's no other desire humans even have -- anything else is just a means to that end. If you're going to be that reductionist, then you're still wrong. The basic evolutionary drive behind our species, and all others, is to reproduce and spread your genes. Everything else stems, however circuitously, from redirected or misd…

>The basic evolutionary drive behind our species, and all others, is to reproduce and spread your genes. Everything else stems, however circuitously, from redirected or misdirected reproductive drive.

Actually, it's you who's misdirected. Increasing inclusive fitness is the end, not the means, of an evolutionary adaptation. In humans, and in other social species like great apes, the evolutionary adaptation that exists in the species is the desire for power over the environment. A species is an adaptation-executor, not a fitness-maximizer.

>but to say that my motivations are identical to those of a senator or a billionaire is ridiculous.

It's a matter of ambition, and degree, isn't it? Plenty of people who are otherwise powerless take power through drugs. It's the same game. Some people win more objectively than others.

Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass

#70

Post by tedks »

adamzerner wrote: post #57

[Probability is in the mind]( http://lesswrong.com/lw/oj/probability_is_in_the_mind/ ). It's a reflection of our limited information, not reality. There really isn't anything inherently probabilistic about startups. If we had the right information and enough reasoning ability, we would be able to turn the dials just right. That's in theory. In practice, it's hard to acquire enough information. This is where luck come…

It's hilarious to me that someone linking to less wrong isn't rational enough to know that reddit markup doesn't work on hacker news. Somehow, the rationality never much further than discussing fictional AI scenarios.
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