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What we learned in studying the most effective founders

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Re: What we learned in studying the most effective founders

#81

Post by CapmCrackaWaka »

stult wrote: post #73
CapmCrackaWaka wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was nice until you get to the bottom of the actual report and find out that Josh has an undergraduate degree in Biology and an MBA. I'm not sure how that shows any expertise in what is being written about but please go on nor how that could possibly qualify you as Chief of Staff at Google Research but there it is. I was with you until this comment. Unnecessary ad-hominem, as well as a misguided premise. It loo…

> Not even sure what a formal education in this context would entail. An MBA. This is exactly the sort of material MBAs study and there really isn't any other formal educational credential that qualifies someone to evaluate strategies for making a business succeed. Making this particular ad hominem criticism especially ridiculous.

> An MBA.

The person OP was talking about does have an MBA, since you mentioned it.

Either way, I am hard pressed to believe that an MBA makes someone an expert on this subject, or that someone can't become an expert in 'business' without a degree.

But you're right, not an ad hominem, just a very angry, mis-guided rant.

Re: What we learned in studying the most effective founders

#82

Post by austinjp »

theptip wrote: post #65
diob wrote: post #31

I'm honestly more interested in studying the most ineffective founders. We spend too much time focusing on survivors, when I feel like the best learning comes from looking at failure. I'd be willing to be there's a lot of failed / failing companies out there doing the exact same thing as the "most effective founders", so what makes them different? I'd be interested to know.

My intuition is that there are an infinite number of ways to fail, and the number of ways to succeed are much more scarce. So it’s good to study both, but studying success is often more informative. You definitely want to be intimately aware of the common failure modes. I’d be very surprised if lots of failing companies are doing the _exact_ same as the most successful ones. Maybe cargo-culting all of the things, or…

> My intuition is that there are an infinite number of ways to fail, and the number of ways to succeed are much more scarce

This may well be true, but the factors for success are hyper-sensitive to the context of the time with a hefty dash of randomness thrown in. By the time we've observed the factors, the circumstances have changed so they're not entirely repeatable. Sticking to the formula may work, or may lead to wildly different results. But altering the formula is just as unpredictable. Context is critical.

Re: What we learned in studying the most effective founders

#83

Post by throwaway_1928 »

emaginniss wrote: post #72
marcus_holmes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple science: you need a control group. The whole "25 things that successful people do" completely ignores the entire question of whether unsuccessful people also do those things, and therefore whether those things have anything to do with success. Survivor bias is so prevalent in any thinking about "what makes someone successful?" that yes, it would be much more effective at this point to consider "what makes some…

"We have found that 100% of successful people breathe at least once a minute"

Successful founders choose GCP over AWS or Azure.

Re: What we learned in studying the most effective founders

#84

Post by techsin101 »

A list more useful:

- have energy

- have a goal, the why?

- surround yourselves like the people you want to be

- launch something crappy

- keep doing something, anything.. one day it will all accumulate

- be good at finding people who know instead of learning yourself

Re: What we learned in studying the most effective founders

#85

Post by nebulousthree »

gopher_space wrote: post #60
nebulousthree wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the software/IT industry where everyone talks about how you can be self made and degrees don't matter as much as skill and experience, right? Yet here you are dismissing this guy for whatever he studied in school. Other than that I completely agree with you

> This is the software/IT industry where everyone talks about how you can be self made and degrees don't matter as much as skill and experience, right? Yet here you are dismissing this guy for whatever he studied in school. I'd pay for a reputation mapping service with a specific point of view. I'd pay for several of them if they were different enough.

Aren't you just describing your average industry-specific recruiting agency?

Re: What we learned in studying the most effective founders

#86

Post by cyborgx7 »

rvba wrote: post #55
cyborgx7 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I read it as: "Dont pay them the market rate, squeeze them like lemons - and make them earn peanuts, for the grand vision of getting equity later". In what context are volunteers treated like that?

Volunteers work for free also usually there are too few of them (there can be lots of "volunteers" but only few are contributing, so they are overworked).

Volunteers volunteer their time and energy for free, so you are nice to them so they will continue to do so. The only part that matches your description is the free part and that part of it doesn't really matter because the point the sentence is making is "eventhough you pay them, treat them like they are doing you a favor for doing work for you".

Re: What we learned in studying the most effective founders

#87

Post by gopher_space »

nebulousthree wrote: post #85
gopher_space wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the software/IT industry where everyone talks about how you can be self made and degrees don't matter as much as skill and experience, right? Yet here you are dismissing this guy for whatever he studied in school. I'd pay for a reputation mapping service with a specific point of view. I'd pay for several of them if they were different enough.

Aren't you just describing your average industry-specific recruiting agency?

Oh that's an interesting thought. I've been asking the recruiters I interface with a lot of questions but hadn't thought about how I'm metered.
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