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2. You don’t need to be Facebook This should be number one - or even just the whole article. Any startup, or a career in general, should not be an end unto it

2. You don’t need to be Facebook This should be number one - or even just the whole article. Any startup, or a career in general, should not be an end unto itself, but a vehicle to A) fulfill your basic needs and B) get you what you want. While I believe entrepreneurship is often the best way to get both of these, shooting to be the next Facebook is unnecessary. You could keep that corporate job, build your credit, and then buy a McDonald's or a gas station or an apartment building. There's no reason to make a dent in the universe if all you want to do is put your kids through college and travel abroad once a year. 9 out of 10 startups fail. While these odds are better than many other paths to wealth (being born rich, winning the lottery, becoming a rockstar/movie star/pro athlete), you're still likely to fail. If wealth is what you want, you need to ask yourself why you want to be wealthy. If it's because you want nice things or want to travel or even because you want to feed starving people, there's a path to get there that has much better odds than building extreme wealth.

hawkice 11y ago
>You could keep that corporate job, build your credit, and then buy a McDonald's or a gas station or an apartment building. There's no reason to make a dent in the universe if all you want to do is put your kids through college and travel abroad once a year. This phrasing I think minimizes the positive impact you can have with those endeavors. Displacing temperamental landlords with professional landlords makes the world a better place, and I've found having property be their only source of income ratchets up the stakes so much that many landlords explode over nothing (I've had a landlord threaten to evict an entire house of unrelated tenants because someone -- unbeknownst to her, her son in the middle of normal maintenance -- had made a very slight mess in the kitchen). More important than "you don't have to be Facebook" (as if everyone who tried could be even if they "had to") is: with proper diligence and care, running a business well DOES make a dent in the universe, with very few exceptions. It makes the lives of yours customers (and vendors, hopefully) better in ways that are tangible and appreciated.
- padobson 11y ago
  This phrasing I think minimizes the positive impact you can have with those endeavors. This is well put. It's almost as if I'm saying you don't need to make a dent in the universe if you want to make a dent in the universe. Ultimately I'm saying there's no need to build a massive company for the side effects - material wealth, political influence, financial independence. Don't spend all of your time and energy working on something for its side effects.
ska 11y ago
9 out of 10 startups fail. While these odds are better than many other paths to wealth ... That presupposes that a successful startup results in (the founders at least) becoming wealthy. That's a real stretch - unless you define it as "success". In that case, 10% is way, way too high. If wealth is what you primarily want, you're probably in the wrong game anyway - and much more likely to fail than someone who wants to solve a problem.
rmellow 11y ago
"9 out of 10 startups fail" I don't expect accuracy on this statistic, but everytime I hear it I wonder how many of those were prepared to run any sort of business. Execution matters, but aside from that, perhaps the hypothesis many of them were validating was not sound at all. I realise most of these concepts, especially what constitutes an insane hypothesis is in the eye of the beholder, but it's definitely relevant if one seeks to use the "9/10 startups fail" as a measure of risk.

hawkice 11y ago

>You could keep that corporate job, build your credit, and then buy a McDonald's or a gas station or an apartment building. There's no reason to make a dent in the universe if all you want to do is put your kids through college and travel abroad once a year. This phrasing I think minimizes the positive impact you can have with those endeavors. Displacing temperamental landlords with professional landlords makes the world a better place, and I've found having property be their only source of income ratchets up the stakes so much that many landlords explode over nothing (I've had a landlord threaten to evict an entire house of unrelated tenants because someone -- unbeknownst to her, her son in the middle of normal maintenance -- had made a very slight mess in the kitchen). More important than "you don't have to be Facebook" (as if everyone who tried could be even if they "had to") is: with proper diligence and care, running a business well DOES make a dent in the universe, with very few exceptions. It makes the lives of yours customers (and vendors, hopefully) better in ways that are tangible and appreciated.

padobson 11y ago
This phrasing I think minimizes the positive impact you can have with those endeavors. This is well put. It's almost as if I'm saying you don't need to make a dent in the universe if you want to make a dent in the universe. Ultimately I'm saying there's no need to build a massive company for the side effects - material wealth, political influence, financial independence. Don't spend all of your time and energy working on something for its side effects.

ska 11y ago

9 out of 10 startups fail. While these odds are better than many other paths to wealth ... That presupposes that a successful startup results in (the founders at least) becoming wealthy. That's a real stretch - unless you define it as "success". In that case, 10% is way, way too high. If wealth is what you primarily want, you're probably in the wrong game anyway - and much more likely to fail than someone who wants to solve a problem.

rmellow 11y ago

"9 out of 10 startups fail" I don't expect accuracy on this statistic, but everytime I hear it I wonder how many of those were prepared to run any sort of business. Execution matters, but aside from that, perhaps the hypothesis many of them were validating was not sound at all. I realise most of these concepts, especially what constitutes an insane hypothesis is in the eye of the beholder, but it's definitely relevant if one seeks to use the "9/10 startups fail" as a measure of risk.