Entrepreneurs think they’re badass
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Entrepreneurs think they’re badass
1–10 of 89 posts
Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass
#2A corollary to this: if you want to be a badass entrepreneur, focus on getting lucky.
The people who really strike it rich - the Elon Musks, Larry Pages, Evan Williamses, Marc Andreessens, Steve Jobses, Mark Zuckerburgs, et al - all seem to devote significant thought and attention to figuring out where the opportunities are that are almost ripe for a company to come in and pick them. To an outsider, it looks like they single-handedly changed the course of history, but if you read in-depth biographies or listen to them speak in person and then try to trace through what their thought process might be, there's a lot of attention to paid to what social or technical trends are just on the cusp of developing, and what the implications of them are. Good entrepreneurs realize that they can't do it alone, so they're always looking out for things that lots of people want to have happen, but need a slight catalyst to get things moving.
Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass
#3A corollary to this: if you want to be a badass entrepreneur, focus on getting lucky. The people who really strike it rich - the Elon Musks, Larry Pages, Evan Williamses, Marc Andreessens, Steve Jobses, Mark Zuckerburgs, et al - all seem to devote significant thought and attention to figuring out where the opportunities are that are almost ripe for a company to come in and pick them. To an outsider, it looks like the…
I don't think "focus on getting lucky" is quite right either.
I didn't sift through all the available opportunities and choose changing education. I was personally interested in this problem - it mattered to me on an emotional level. I've interviewed Evan Williams and Mark Zuckerberg personally and I see the same pattern there.
It kind of sucks to say "You just need to be interested personally in solving a problem" but it's true. I don't think you can simply identify a problem and solve it, without the personal passion.
Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass
#4A corollary to this: if you want to be a badass entrepreneur, focus on getting lucky. The people who really strike it rich - the Elon Musks, Larry Pages, Evan Williamses, Marc Andreessens, Steve Jobses, Mark Zuckerburgs, et al - all seem to devote significant thought and attention to figuring out where the opportunities are that are almost ripe for a company to come in and pick them. To an outsider, it looks like the…
I don't think "focus on getting lucky" is quite right either. I didn't sift through all the available opportunities and choose changing education. I was personally interested in this problem - it mattered to me on an emotional level. I've interviewed Evan Williams and Mark Zuckerberg personally and I see the same pattern there. It kind of sucks to say "You just need to be interested personally in solving a problem" b…
Maybe this is a quirk of my personality, but I'm interested personally in solving a lot of problems. From what I saw of Larry Page's decision-making when I was at Google, this was true of him as well. From there, it's a matter of choosing the intersection of that set with the set of problems that many other people want solved and the set of problems that you personally have the ability to make a dent in right now.
Business books like to talk about the "hedgehog" principle:
http://ilead.byuh.edu/node/133
This is what it means in practice. It helps if all of the sets are relatively large, and the intersection is quite narrowly focused. Usually when I've had "small" successes (projects beloved by a handful of users, but not enough to make any money), it's because I was following my passion but not considering how many other people cared about the problem. When I've had outright failures (like the graveyard of projects that I never completed), it was when I followed my passion for a project that large amounts of people would want, but didn't pay any attention to whether the problem was tractable with the resources I had available to me.
Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass
#5On balance, I would consider this a fair appraisal. Black swan companies get built because it is the right time. Obviously, it takes skill to know when that is and that the right time is a range. As time goes on it gets easier to do these things, ie electric cars. These were really hard to do in 2005 but now they seem rather obvious. Be early, be correct, and be gritty.
Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think "focus on getting lucky" is quite right either. I didn't sift through all the available opportunities and choose changing education. I was personally interested in this problem - it mattered to me on an emotional level. I've interviewed Evan Williams and Mark Zuckerberg personally and I see the same pattern there. It kind of sucks to say "You just need to be interested personally in solving a problem" b…
Maybe this is a quirk of my personality, but I'm interested personally in solving a lot of problems. From what I saw of Larry Page's decision-making when I was at Google, this was true of him as well. From there, it's a matter of choosing the intersection of that set with the set of problems that many other people want solved and the set of problems that you personally have the ability to make a dent in right now. Bu…
Interesting that you were at Google. What did you do there?
I'm just finishing "I'm Feeling Lucky" about Google's early days.
Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe this is a quirk of my personality, but I'm interested personally in solving a lot of problems. From what I saw of Larry Page's decision-making when I was at Google, this was true of him as well. From there, it's a matter of choosing the intersection of that set with the set of problems that many other people want solved and the set of problems that you personally have the ability to make a dent in right now. Bu…
Interesting that you were at Google. What did you do there? I'm just finishing "I'm Feeling Lucky" about Google's early days.
I was in Search from 2009-2014. Worked on a bunch of projects - 3 visual redesigns, the Authorship program, some miscellaneous infrastructure & internal research projects, 3 interactive homepage doodles, about 1/3 of the easter eggs you see on Wikipedia's list of Google easter eggs, loaned out to GFiber and G+ for their launches, a few other things. It was already a big company by the time I got there, but I had the pleasure of working with several folks who'd been there since it was just a couple hundred people. It was also a pretty interesting time in its history - the first half of my tenure was when Bing was still considered a scary competitor, so we pushed out a lot of innovations in a short time period - and I straddled the Eric Schmidt / Larry Page CEO turnover, so had experience under both CEOs.
Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass
#8I like the guy, but he doesn't understand the definition of luck.
Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass
#9A corollary to this: if you want to be a badass entrepreneur, focus on getting lucky. The people who really strike it rich - the Elon Musks, Larry Pages, Evan Williamses, Marc Andreessens, Steve Jobses, Mark Zuckerburgs, et al - all seem to devote significant thought and attention to figuring out where the opportunities are that are almost ripe for a company to come in and pick them. To an outsider, it looks like the…
I don't think "focus on getting lucky" is quite right either. I didn't sift through all the available opportunities and choose changing education. I was personally interested in this problem - it mattered to me on an emotional level. I've interviewed Evan Williams and Mark Zuckerberg personally and I see the same pattern there. It kind of sucks to say "You just need to be interested personally in solving a problem" b…
Maybe for some people, their passion lies in money/fame/etc ,but they see very clearly how attacking said opportunity would lead to those, and it gives them enough "passion" and motivation?
Re: Entrepreneurs think they’re badass
#10One thing missing from the list is "being born and raised in the right part of the world". And I'm not talking about being able to raise capital, but simply being in a society that embraces and promotes entrepreneurship, as well as having easy access to numerous basic amenities such as food, water, health care, Internet (at decent speeds etc).