8 ms·

And also be extremely lucky.

by zouhair 10y ago

noobermin 10y ago
The good part is that if you are working on something you care about, you won't be as upset when you fail if you were building something just to become the next Zuck. This does contrast with pg's story, however.
- joshuacc 10y ago
  > The good part is that if you are working on something you care about, you won't be as upset This probably varies from person to person, but failing at something I care about would make me much more upset than failing at something I didn't really care about.
  - mpbm 10y ago
    I think he means if it's important to you it's still worth trying and if you fail at least you were trying. Whereas if it's just a business, "nothing personal," then failing means you've got nothing, not even the feeling of working on something important to you.
- davidw 10y ago
  For each and every bit of startup advice, there is an equal and opposite bit of startup advice.
carlisle_ 10y ago
This is true for pretty much every aspect of life though. I think massive success for an individual should already imply this.
thefastlane 10y ago
power and privilege help too.
- dang 10y ago
  That they do, but the problem with taking the conversation in this direction is that it gets us all thinking in terms of how some people have had it easier, instead of what we can do that's valuable of our own.
  - antar 10y ago
    True but that doesn't mean someone shouldn't even mention it.
    - dang 10y ago
      It's more a question of how you mention it. The difference can have a big impact on the conversation. For example, snarky or cynical one liners produce more of the same, and so do thoughtful reflections. We're hoping for thoughtful reflections here.
  - bayonetz 10y ago
    I'd counter that taking it in this direction can actually help you get more honest with yourself about what value you can provide. For example, if you don't have wealth or privilege behind you, you may should maybe focus being the technical founder rather than the CEO in a start up situation. if you buy into the myth that everyone has an equal shot it can be quite discouraging and at the same time mystifying as to why things aren't working out. If you have a clear sense of ALL the inputs that your favorite startup success had going for it, then you can make informed decisions about what you have to offer and what you are likely capable given your particular set of inputs and resources.
  - greysphere 10y ago
    It also challenges people to think how to structure a society that maximizes peoples ability to work at this level. The folks who figure out how to put 'everyone' in a position to make successful startups with have contributed orders of magnitude more value to society than any single startup.
janvdberg 10y ago
In this [1] Tim Ferris podcast Peter Thiel states about Zuckerberg (paraphrasing here): "the more time you spent with him the more you realise it is not luck." [1]http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/09/09/peter-thiel/ http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/09/09/peter-thiel/
- misiti3780 10y ago
  nice find. i liked the comment at the end where he says he is optimistic because no all the great ideas have been found. i think if your in the start up game and have failed a lot of times you can start to feel that you were too late
- zouhair 10y ago
  I'd call him being born in the US in a kinda wealthy family a huge amount of luck. I never said that what he did is a small feat, but let's be real if he was born in the slums of India none of his smart would have been useful.
- sp527 10y ago
  I think Zuckerberg's success had more to do with being able to identify valuable contributors and convince them to join the Facebook team. He isn't responsible for generating many of the important features or business decisions, though he certainly has to approve of them. In that way, his primary skillset is very similar to that of Jobs and other successful entrepreneurs.
  - visakanv 10y ago
    > He isn't responsible for generating many of the important features or business decisions, though he certainly has to approve of them. Alternative way of framing this: Any CEO who is personally responsible for generating most of the important features or business decisions in his company is incompetent at hiring and delegating
eatkinson 10y ago
"I find that the major objection is that people think great science is done by luck. It's all a matter of luck. Well, consider Einstein. Note how many different things he did that were good. Was it all luck? Wasn't it a little too repetitive? Consider Shannon. He didn't do just information theory. Several years before, he did some other good things and some which are still locked up in the security of cryptography. He did many good things. You see again and again, that it is more than one thing from a good person. Once in a while a person does only one thing in his whole life, and we'll talk about that later, but a lot of times there is repetition. I claim that luck will not cover everything. And I will cite Pasteur who said, 'Luck favors the prepared mind.' And I think that says it the way I believe it. There is indeed an element of luck, and no, there isn't. The prepared mind sooner or later finds something important and does it. So yes, it is luck. The particular thing you do is luck, but that you do something is not." --R.W. Hamming
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  There was a lot of luck in Facebook, even if Zuck is a particularly talented individual. Also - if Harvard is a great school - how the F does someone find time to do the work and make a product at the same time? When I did Engineering, I didn't have time to take a shower.
  - perseusprime11 10y ago
    I agree. Think if Friendster & Myspace were on top of things, they would have bested Facebook. What made them suscpetible for disruption?
    - jomamaxx 10y ago
      Friendster was a clumsy product. MySpace was limited in features, and a fugly interface. Neither had talented people. Zuck started at Harvard. That was his core user base. The Ivy League. Basically marquis 'customers' in social. Think of how massively that affected recruiting and attention? The network effect of Ivy League x 1000. It would have been trivial for him to get investment. But in the end - forget culture - the basic features were just better, and for every great feature, there are 'smart things' happening internally that are good. Zuck deserves credit for that. I used to work a little bit with MySpace. Their culture was 'LA Cool Kid' i.e. 'The Standard' hang-out types. They reminded me of a Record Label - totally hip - totally useless. I feel sorry for any Engineer that had to work at MySpace. If you knew the culture at Lycos, Excite etc. - and compare it to Google, it's a little bit of a similar story.
pystack 10y ago
The entrepreneur pits his willpower against the entropy of nature. Nature is huge and moves randomly, while the entrepreneur is small and moves purposefully. There is definitely luck in nature's random movements. But the entrepreneur small purposeful movements add up over time and overcome nature.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
azeirah 10y ago
You do not need to be extremely lucky to "make the world a better place". If that is truly your goal, you can definitely do that without building a startup, without getting extremely lucky, without spending 80 hours a week working on ideas. I'm very much convinced that nearly everybody on this site who claims to want to make the world "a better place" just want to start their startup, earn their money and financial freedom, and tell themselves "they made the world a better place". Snarky as fuck, yes indeed. I'm just beyond tired hearing all this bullshit, at least be honest with yourselves. If this does not apply to you, then it doesn't. If it does, please rethink your goals in life.
- smaddox 10y ago
  I generally agree with your views. I think a large part of the problem is that we've all been (self) deluded into thinking technology can solve all our problems. The older I get, the clearer it becomes, though, that the root of all our problems is psychological. Outside of transhuman genetic engineering or human-replacing AI, I don't see how technology can fix our psychology.
  - davidivadavid 10y ago
    You can't see how technology can "fix" psychology? The most obvious way is direct through e.g. drugs. There's a very wide spectrum of potential futures here from nootropics to brave-new-worldesque soma. The less obvious way is that technology alters your surroundings, which in turn influence your psychology. Neither scenario seems particularly implausible to me.
    - smaddox 10y ago
      The kind of psychological problems I'm talking about aren't the kind that are fixed by drugs. I'm talking about things like values and beliefs. I'm calling it psychology because I don't know what else to call it; perhaps mindset would be a better name.
random314 10y ago
Zuckerberg actually understands that. So it is refreshing to see him receive advice from Sam[1], one of the five greatest founders in the past 40 years! [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html

And also be extremely lucky.

by zouhair 10y ago

And also be extremely lucky.

The good part is that if you are working on something you care about, you won't be as upset when you fail if you were building something just to become the next Zuck. This does contrast with pg's story, however.

joshuacc 10y ago
> The good part is that if you are working on something you care about, you won't be as upset This probably varies from person to person, but failing at something I care about would make me much more upset than failing at something I didn't really care about.
- mpbm 10y ago
  I think he means if it's important to you it's still worth trying and if you fail at least you were trying. Whereas if it's just a business, "nothing personal," then failing means you've got nothing, not even the feeling of working on something important to you.
davidw 10y ago
For each and every bit of startup advice, there is an equal and opposite bit of startup advice.

carlisle_ 10y ago

This is true for pretty much every aspect of life though. I think massive success for an individual should already imply this.

thefastlane 10y ago

power and privilege help too.

dang 10y ago
That they do, but the problem with taking the conversation in this direction is that it gets us all thinking in terms of how some people have had it easier, instead of what we can do that's valuable of our own.
- antar 10y ago
  True but that doesn't mean someone shouldn't even mention it.
  - dang 10y ago
    It's more a question of how you mention it. The difference can have a big impact on the conversation. For example, snarky or cynical one liners produce more of the same, and so do thoughtful reflections. We're hoping for thoughtful reflections here.
- bayonetz 10y ago
  I'd counter that taking it in this direction can actually help you get more honest with yourself about what value you can provide. For example, if you don't have wealth or privilege behind you, you may should maybe focus being the technical founder rather than the CEO in a start up situation. if you buy into the myth that everyone has an equal shot it can be quite discouraging and at the same time mystifying as to why things aren't working out. If you have a clear sense of ALL the inputs that your favorite startup success had going for it, then you can make informed decisions about what you have to offer and what you are likely capable given your particular set of inputs and resources.
- greysphere 10y ago
  It also challenges people to think how to structure a society that maximizes peoples ability to work at this level. The folks who figure out how to put 'everyone' in a position to make successful startups with have contributed orders of magnitude more value to society than any single startup.

janvdberg 10y ago

In this [1] Tim Ferris podcast Peter Thiel states about Zuckerberg (paraphrasing here): "the more time you spent with him the more you realise it is not luck." [1]http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/09/09/peter-thiel/ http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/09/09/peter-thiel/

misiti3780 10y ago
nice find. i liked the comment at the end where he says he is optimistic because no all the great ideas have been found. i think if your in the start up game and have failed a lot of times you can start to feel that you were too late
zouhair 10y ago
I'd call him being born in the US in a kinda wealthy family a huge amount of luck. I never said that what he did is a small feat, but let's be real if he was born in the slums of India none of his smart would have been useful.
sp527 10y ago
I think Zuckerberg's success had more to do with being able to identify valuable contributors and convince them to join the Facebook team. He isn't responsible for generating many of the important features or business decisions, though he certainly has to approve of them. In that way, his primary skillset is very similar to that of Jobs and other successful entrepreneurs.
- visakanv 10y ago
  > He isn't responsible for generating many of the important features or business decisions, though he certainly has to approve of them. Alternative way of framing this: Any CEO who is personally responsible for generating most of the important features or business decisions in his company is incompetent at hiring and delegating

eatkinson 10y ago

"I find that the major objection is that people think great science is done by luck. It's all a matter of luck. Well, consider Einstein. Note how many different things he did that were good. Was it all luck? Wasn't it a little too repetitive? Consider Shannon. He didn't do just information theory. Several years before, he did some other good things and some which are still locked up in the security of cryptography. He did many good things. You see again and again, that it is more than one thing from a good person. Once in a while a person does only one thing in his whole life, and we'll talk about that later, but a lot of times there is repetition. I claim that luck will not cover everything. And I will cite Pasteur who said, 'Luck favors the prepared mind.' And I think that says it the way I believe it. There is indeed an element of luck, and no, there isn't. The prepared mind sooner or later finds something important and does it. So yes, it is luck. The particular thing you do is luck, but that you do something is not." --R.W. Hamming

jomamaxx 10y ago
There was a lot of luck in Facebook, even if Zuck is a particularly talented individual. Also - if Harvard is a great school - how the F does someone find time to do the work and make a product at the same time? When I did Engineering, I didn't have time to take a shower.
- perseusprime11 10y ago
  I agree. Think if Friendster & Myspace were on top of things, they would have bested Facebook. What made them suscpetible for disruption?
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    Friendster was a clumsy product. MySpace was limited in features, and a fugly interface. Neither had talented people. Zuck started at Harvard. That was his core user base. The Ivy League. Basically marquis 'customers' in social. Think of how massively that affected recruiting and attention? The network effect of Ivy League x 1000. It would have been trivial for him to get investment. But in the end - forget culture - the basic features were just better, and for every great feature, there are 'smart things' happening internally that are good. Zuck deserves credit for that. I used to work a little bit with MySpace. Their culture was 'LA Cool Kid' i.e. 'The Standard' hang-out types. They reminded me of a Record Label - totally hip - totally useless. I feel sorry for any Engineer that had to work at MySpace. If you knew the culture at Lycos, Excite etc. - and compare it to Google, it's a little bit of a similar story.

pystack 10y ago

The entrepreneur pits his willpower against the entropy of nature. Nature is huge and moves randomly, while the entrepreneur is small and moves purposefully. There is definitely luck in nature's random movements. But the entrepreneur small purposeful movements add up over time and overcome nature.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

azeirah 10y ago

You do not need to be extremely lucky to "make the world a better place". If that is truly your goal, you can definitely do that without building a startup, without getting extremely lucky, without spending 80 hours a week working on ideas. I'm very much convinced that nearly everybody on this site who claims to want to make the world "a better place" just want to start their startup, earn their money and financial freedom, and tell themselves "they made the world a better place". Snarky as fuck, yes indeed. I'm just beyond tired hearing all this bullshit, at least be honest with yourselves. If this does not apply to you, then it doesn't. If it does, please rethink your goals in life.

smaddox 10y ago
I generally agree with your views. I think a large part of the problem is that we've all been (self) deluded into thinking technology can solve all our problems. The older I get, the clearer it becomes, though, that the root of all our problems is psychological. Outside of transhuman genetic engineering or human-replacing AI, I don't see how technology can fix our psychology.
- davidivadavid 10y ago
  You can't see how technology can "fix" psychology? The most obvious way is direct through e.g. drugs. There's a very wide spectrum of potential futures here from nootropics to brave-new-worldesque soma. The less obvious way is that technology alters your surroundings, which in turn influence your psychology. Neither scenario seems particularly implausible to me.
  - smaddox 10y ago
    The kind of psychological problems I'm talking about aren't the kind that are fixed by drugs. I'm talking about things like values and beliefs. I'm calling it psychology because I don't know what else to call it; perhaps mindset would be a better name.

random314 10y ago

Zuckerberg actually understands that. So it is refreshing to see him receive advice from Sam[1], one of the five greatest founders in the past 40 years! [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html