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No. 20 year old Mark Zuckerberg would keep adjusting until he was whatever a unicorn needs to be in this instant. That's his nature. You would not. That's th
by waterlesscloud 11y ago
No.
20 year old Mark Zuckerberg would keep adjusting until he was whatever a unicorn needs to be in this instant. That's his nature.
You would not.
That's the difference.
- Amezarak 11y agoSo why isn't Zuckerberg continuing to create new billion dollar businesses? Why stop with Facebook?
- vinceguidry 11y agoMaybe he likes Facebook? Not everybody is Larry / Sergei.
- monksy 11y ago> Larry / Sergei What's so special about those people? Their success is probably due to their connections, and mostly luck in timing. I'm sure there are people that are better than Larry or Sergei and are much less successful.
- MaxScheiber 11y agoThe point the poster you responded to was making the point that Zuckerberg may be satisfied with just Facebook, whereas Larry and Sergey choose to pursue other ventures in addition to Google. The poster wasn't making a point about talent or luck. Even with that, Zuckerberg isn't 100% focusing on the Facebook core product; look at the Connectivity Lab, for example.
- seiji 11y agoWhat's so special about those people? It's not all luck, a lot of it is who they are. They are mostly aspie nerds. They all went to private montessori "we just do whatever we want" schools. Those schools teach them they don't have to compromise, they don't have to be average, they don't have to work within the system. They just do whatever they want. If someone tries to stop you, you destroy them for standing in the way of you doing whatever you wanted to do. The same people generally lack overt, crippling hardships in their lives. They get to associate with other successful people from an early age and often have built-in family or community connections. Musk was studying supercapacitors obsessively as a kid, as a teenager, as a 20-something, and now he puts them in his cars. It's not all luck. We're at the first age of humanity where aspie hyper-focused weirdness can be funneled into taking over the world. We're just getting started.
- a3voices 11y agoMost likely it's more effective to acquire smaller companies and grow them.
- waterlesscloud 11y agoHe's buying and developing them. EDIT - This comment is at -4. And it's 100% factually and clearly observably true and devoid of emotional content. Which says a lot about how voting works on this site.
- skj 11y agoThat they look at the other comments by the same person in the thread, and infer an overall message? :)
- HeyLaughingBoy 11y agoPretty much. That's why I voted him back up.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- coldtea 11y agoThat's mystical BS thinking, from too many self-help books. Most succeses had been a combination of being born at the right place and time, to the right parents, going to the right school and meeting the right people. Most of those are heavily determined by the past beyond one's control -- and others are semi-random. Then there's talent for business and determination -- but it's only survivorship bias that doesn't let us see that lots of people who didn't get to have FB also had equal talent for business and determination, or even more than Mark. Even a "perfect" Mark could have been hit by a bus before the success, or had a dehabilitating illness, etc -- and then your "magical unicorn" admiration would go to whoever else got to be succesful at the time, while Mark still be the same person (only unsuccesful).
- waterlesscloud 11y agoI'm sure that line of thought makes you feel better, but it's pretty demonstrably not the case.
- SpaghettiCat 11y agoCare to elaborate on how that is?
- coldtea 11y agoPlease, show me the science behind the "unicorn". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory And since it's all about the determined individual, I also guess women, blacks, latinos, LGBT et al are just lazy or not competent enough as Mark, Gates et co to not have such many billion dollar success stories -- heck even way less million dollar success stories per percentage of the population. Right?
- seiji 11y agoWe found the mark zuckerberg account everybody! He was born with his star in ascendence, destined to rule over the unruly private lives of every human alive, destined to surround himself with empty mansions so no others may peek upon his divine unicornhood. He is the first coming of social media ceo-frat-bro-jesus. praise be unto the billionaires, for they know not what they do; they only do what they are destined to accomplish regardless of their parents sending them to $60,000 per year teenage boarding schools. do not believe you can know them, for they are not fellow humans, they are Greater while we shall always remain Lesser to their unicorn brilliance. Bow, and praise be.
- 001sky 11y agoThis is delusional survivorship bias. Its like saying Churchill would have gone around starting world wars, to prove he could rise to the occasion. Had hitler not done it for him. etc.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- waterlesscloud 11y agoYou do realize, of course, that YC depends on the idea that certain people will adjust as necessary to become unicorns. They're fairly explicit about it. And their track record is pretty positive about the concept.
- seiji 11y agoI'll give you a billion dollars if you stop saying "unicorn" like it actually means something.
- waterlesscloud 11y agoGreat. You've decided to focus on terminology. Congratulations. Am I wrong about YC's central operating principle? Are they not explicit about it? Does their track record prove them wrong?
- 001sky 11y agoThis has nothing to do with YC. The math just doesnt agree with your argument.
- pswilson14 11y ago95% of YC-backed startups fail. A few go on to have decent success, and maybe 2 or 3 YC ventures actually went on to billion-dollar valuations (Dropbox and Airbnb). And that's considered a really good success rate. Since we're talking here about what you call 'unicorns' (I hate that word), then we're talking about the odds of building a billion-dollar company. YC is made up of hundreds of incredibly talented entrepreneurs, and even then, it's pretty evident that building a billion dollar company is as much about luck and circumstance as it is about talent and determination. EDIT: Correction - I was very wrong about YC stats, as it turns out [1]. My mistake. I stand by the original point, though. 8 billion-dollar companies out of ~940 YC companies demonstrate clearly that building a billion dollar company isn't easy, and takes a whole lot of luck. [1] http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-stats http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-stats