5 ms·
In my mind, startups are less like the lottery and more like blackjack. You are gambling either way (as with any investment) but, with blackjack and startups yo
by shon 10y ago
In my mind, startups are less like the lottery and more like blackjack. You are gambling either way (as with any investment) but, with blackjack and startups you can optimize.
Unlike the lottery, knowledge and skill play a role here.
- rhizome 10y agoUnlike Blackjack, you have to make your entire bet for all hands up front.
- rdtsc 10y ago> Unlike the lottery, knowledge and skill play a role here. True, but that's not quite the analogy I was going for, the analogy was how survivorship bias is used in both cases for promoting the idea-- everyone picks the winners and remembers / tells / markets those while disregardign the losers. I do it too, it is just a natural human tendency. In both cases, if every time someone heard about a successful startup they also heard about many failed ones, they might have a different perspective.
- morgante 10y agoThe odds for startups are a lot closer to a lottery than they are to blackjack.
- Artemis2 10y agoOf course, but it's about control over your chances of winning big
- wastedhours 10y agoI choose my lottery numbers, so have an illusion of control over my destiny as well.
- marssaxman 10y agoYou have no control unless you are part of the core management team and even then you don't have very much. Startup options really are a lottery, and just because other people sometimes win doesn't mean you can actually count on getting there yourself.
- bostik 10y agoConsidering that the biggest factor for turning a startup into a massive success is luck, I find that sentiment delusory. The best you can do is to accept that you're not an expert in picking winners. (Just see how many hedge fund managers underperform the market. Even the supposed experts have problems doing any better than random decisions.)