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>by that token uber's founders should have gone and worked as taxi drivers so they would understand that world, and airbnb's founders should have opened a hotel
by lsc 11y ago
>by that token uber's founders should have gone and worked as taxi drivers so they would understand that world, and airbnb's founders should have opened a hotel.
Yeah. That's actually a really appealing idea. At one point, I wanted to write software to help individuals and small bookstores sell online. So what did I do? I bought a bunch of books and sold them online! I'm not saying that's why I failed... but I failed to come up with a product worth using before the market became crowded with much better products.
- logicallee 11y agowell, come on, you have to at least try - I mean if you literally come up with a business plan to sell books online "after making a cross-country drive from New York to Seattle, writing up the business plan on the way", which is a quote I got from Jeff Bezos's wikipedia page on how he founded Amazon...oh.
- lsc 11y agoYeah. It's kind of embarrassing how wrong I proved myself to be about business. But... on the other hand, one thing I am still certain of... 90% of business advice and business stories are bullshit from people who don't know what they are doing. the other 10% is lies from people who do.
- logicallee 11y agono, what I'm saying is that contrary to the point I was disagreeing with, Jeff Bezos didn't know anything about bookstores. This is a direct refutation of "live in that world". the fact that you didn't personally succeed in online bookselling actually doesn't mean that to succeed in online bookselling, you first have to understand bookselling. You don't!
- lsc 11y agoRight. I'm mostly in agreement. I did live in that world and still failed miserably, in part because I was spending a lot of the effort I should have been spending programming on, you know, selling books. I just find this apparent truth to be deeply unsatisfying, that's all, and "live in that world" is a good example of business advice that sounds really good, really true, and really satisfying, but that doesn't seem to hold up when you subject it to the harsh tests of reality. That, and I don't think I'd believe anything written by a successful businessman like Bezos. Who knows what he actually knew, who he talked to, who helped him or what his intent was at the time. now he's going to tell the best story he can, because that's what a competent businessperson would do. Because of this, I think reading advice or stories of success from proven masters is way less useful than it sounds.