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>> If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on. I believe this is from Eric Schmidt. It's probably the single most important pr

>> If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on. I believe this is from Eric Schmidt. It's probably the single most important principle that you have to follow if you want to have a successful career. Especially if you're an engineer. Most fast growing tech companies are founded by random dumb kids in their garages. Don't try to build the rocket yourself (that's a gamble that practically never ends well); let someone else do it and try to hitch a ride. That is the safest way by far. It's much easier to identify a good rocket ship than to build it yourself.

adventured 9y ago
> Most fast growing tech companies are founded by random dumb kids in their garages. Most fast growing tech companies were in fact founded by people between the ages of ~28 and ~50 (and not in a garage), not by kids in garages. The kid in the garage founding a major tech company is a very rare exception. I can add a lot more names to this list: Paul Graham (31, Viaweb), Jan Koum (33, WhatsApp), Brian Acton (37, WhatsApp), Ev Williams (34, Twitter), Jack Dorsey (33, Square), Elon Musk (32, Tesla), Garrett Camp (30, Uber), Travis Kalanick (32, Uber), Brian Chesky (27, Airbnb), Adam Neumann (31, WeWork), Reed Hastings (37, Netflix), Reid Hoffman (36, LinkedIn), Jack Ma (35, Alibaba), Jeff Bezos (30, Amazon), Jerry Sanders (33, AMD), Marc Benioff (35, Salesforce), Ross Perot (32, EDS), Peter Norton (39, Norton), Larry Ellison (33, Oracle), Mitch Kapor (32, Lotus), Leonard Bosack (32, Cisco), Sandy Lerner (29, Cisco), Gordon Moore (39, Intel), Mark Cuban (37, Broadcast.com), Scott Cook (31, Intuit), Nolan Bushnell (29, Atari), Paul Galvin (33, Motorola), Irwin Jacobs (52, Qualcomm), David Duffield (46, PeopleSoft; 64 Workday), Aneel Bhusri (39, Workday), Thomas Siebel (41, Siebel Systems), John McAfee (42, McAfee), Gary Hendrix (32, Symantec), Scott McNealy (28, Sun), Pierre Omidyar (28, eBay), Rich Barton (29 for Expedia, 38 for Zillow), Jim Clark (38 for SGI, and 49 for Netscape), Charles Wang (32, CA), David Packard (27, HP), John Warnock (42, Adobe), Robert Noyce (30 at Fairchild, 41 for Intel), Rod Canion (37, Compaq), Jen-Hsun Huang (30, nVidia), Eli Harari (41, SanDisk), Sanjay Mehrotra (28, SanDisk), Al Shugart (48, Seagate), Finis Conner (34, Seagate), Henry Samueli (37, Broadcom), Henry Nicholas (32, Broadcom), Charles Brewer (36, Mindspring), William Shockley (45, Shockley), Ron Rivest (35, RSA), Adi Shamir (30, RSA), John Walker (32, Autodesk), Halsey Minor (30, CNet), David Filo (28, Yahoo), Jeremy Stoppelman (27, Yelp), Eric Lefkofsky (39, Groupon), Andrew Mason (29, Groupon), David Hitz (28, NetApp), Brian Lee (28, Legalzoom), Demis Hassabis (34, DeepMind), Tim Westergren (35, Pandora), Martin Lorentzon (37, Spotify), Ashar Aziz (44, FireEye), Kevin O'Connor (36, DoubleClick), Ben Silbermann (28, Pinterest), Evan Sharp (28, Pinterest), Steve Kirsch (38, Infoseek), Stephen Kaufer (36, TripAdvisor), Michael McNeilly (28, Applied Materials), Eugene McDermott (52, Texas Instruments), Richard Egan (43, EMC), Gary Kildall (32, Digital Research), Hasso Plattner (28, SAP), Robert Glaser (32, Real Networks), Patrick Byrne (37, Overstock.com), Marc Lore (33, Diapers.com), Ed Iacobucci (36, Citrix Systems), Ray Noorda (55, Novell), Tom Leighton (42, Akamai), Daniel Lewin (28, Akamai), Michael Mauldin (35, Lycos), Tom Anderson (33, MySpace), Chris DeWolfe (37, MySpace), Mark Pincus (41, Zynga), Nir Zuk (30, Palo Alto Networks), Caterina Fake (34, Flickr), Stewart Butterfield (31, Flickr), Kevin Systrom (27, Instagram), Adi Tatarko (37, Houzz), Brian Armstrong (29, Coinbase), Pradeep Sindhu (43, Juniper), Peter Thiel (31, PayPal; 37, Palantir), Jay Walker (42, priceline.com), Pony Ma (27, Tencent), Robin Li (32, Baidu), Liu Qiangdong (29, JD.com), Lei Jun (40, Xiaomi), Ren Zhengfei (38, Huawei), Arkady Volozh (36, Yandex), Hiroshi Mikitani (34, Rakuten), Morris Chang (56, Taiwan Semi), Cheng Wei (29, Didi Chuxing), James Liang (29, Ctrip)
- pdog 9y ago
  Is 28 not considered an extremely young age to start a world-changing company?
  - adventured 9y ago
    28 substantially disqualifies you as being a kid, imo. If you look at the list, you'll find the 30s is the largest age group for founding those companies. Which makes sense: the number of people capable of building a Salesforce.com or Netflix at the age of 19 or 22, would obviously be extraordinarily slim (whether due to lack of skill, reputation & capital access, experience, or all of the above).
  - Gargoyle 9y ago
    Perhaps, but Y Combinator has previously indicated that's more or less the median age of their accepted founders. And beyond YC, the hype is most often for youth, people under 30. This isn't just the situation in tech, but it's interesting to see the industry's mythology isn't supported by data, when it claims to be a data/results-driven industry.
    - eru 9y ago
      One reason Y Combinator starts so young is to give repeated founders the early failures (and successes) they need to learn how to do things right. Also, the young ones have less opportunity costs. Failure is comparatively cheaper for them.
      - lsc 9y ago
        >Also, the young ones have less opportunity costs. Failure is comparatively cheaper for them. People keep saying this, and it's simply not true. I spent about a decade on my company, give or take, getting serious-ish when I was 25 or so. If I had taken 10% of the cash and opportunity cost I spent on that failed venture and stuck it in a whole market index fund? or in some real-estate? or really any other conventional investment, I would be pretty well off now. If I invested 30%? I would be able to retire now. Compound interest is an incredible force, a force that is strongest when you are young. As a young engineer with a good starting salary? you are uniquely positioned to win through passive investing.
lsc 9y ago
My observation, at least at my level, is that the engineers who do best get seats on rocket ships that have already made it to orbit. Established companies give out bonuses on good years that look like the payouts I've seen engineers get during realistic exits. I mean, sure, if you shoot the moon in your selection of startups, that's going to go pretty well for you, but I think on average you are best off, assuming you are an engineer, getting a very well compensated job at a top company and then putting the resulting money in a whole-market index fund.
runeks 9y ago
> Don't try to build the rocket yourself (that's a gamble that practically never ends well); let someone else do it and try to hitch a ride. But what if everyone’s building shitty rocket ships, that have all sorts of practical (not technical) limitations, and no one’s trying to build what I have in mind, which I’ve identified as a superior rocket ship? If you, yourself, can convince investors that it’s a good idea, is there an advantage to hitching a ride instead?
- mikesabat 9y ago
  OP says that hitching a ride is the SAFEST by far. Maybe starting something is not for everyone and I think most people on HN would encourage someone to 'go for it' if they think they have it in them. But the reason that I wanted to respond is to point out the difference between convincing investors to invest and building a rocketship yourself. These are completely different things. Convincing an investor buys a little time for a company to form and a product to develop. The company needs to prove, prove, prove to get to a rocketship stage.
rajacombinator 9y ago
It's also a bit of nice self serving advice for rocket ship captains who are trying to hire lots of cheap labor. People like Eric Schmidt do the exact opposite of this advice and carefully calculate every move they make.

adventured 9y ago

> Most fast growing tech companies are founded by random dumb kids in their garages. Most fast growing tech companies were in fact founded by people between the ages of ~28 and ~50 (and not in a garage), not by kids in garages. The kid in the garage founding a major tech company is a very rare exception. I can add a lot more names to this list: Paul Graham (31, Viaweb), Jan Koum (33, WhatsApp), Brian Acton (37, WhatsApp), Ev Williams (34, Twitter), Jack Dorsey (33, Square), Elon Musk (32, Tesla), Garrett Camp (30, Uber), Travis Kalanick (32, Uber), Brian Chesky (27, Airbnb), Adam Neumann (31, WeWork), Reed Hastings (37, Netflix), Reid Hoffman (36, LinkedIn), Jack Ma (35, Alibaba), Jeff Bezos (30, Amazon), Jerry Sanders (33, AMD), Marc Benioff (35, Salesforce), Ross Perot (32, EDS), Peter Norton (39, Norton), Larry Ellison (33, Oracle), Mitch Kapor (32, Lotus), Leonard Bosack (32, Cisco), Sandy Lerner (29, Cisco), Gordon Moore (39, Intel), Mark Cuban (37, Broadcast.com), Scott Cook (31, Intuit), Nolan Bushnell (29, Atari), Paul Galvin (33, Motorola), Irwin Jacobs (52, Qualcomm), David Duffield (46, PeopleSoft; 64 Workday), Aneel Bhusri (39, Workday), Thomas Siebel (41, Siebel Systems), John McAfee (42, McAfee), Gary Hendrix (32, Symantec), Scott McNealy (28, Sun), Pierre Omidyar (28, eBay), Rich Barton (29 for Expedia, 38 for Zillow), Jim Clark (38 for SGI, and 49 for Netscape), Charles Wang (32, CA), David Packard (27, HP), John Warnock (42, Adobe), Robert Noyce (30 at Fairchild, 41 for Intel), Rod Canion (37, Compaq), Jen-Hsun Huang (30, nVidia), Eli Harari (41, SanDisk), Sanjay Mehrotra (28, SanDisk), Al Shugart (48, Seagate), Finis Conner (34, Seagate), Henry Samueli (37, Broadcom), Henry Nicholas (32, Broadcom), Charles Brewer (36, Mindspring), William Shockley (45, Shockley), Ron Rivest (35, RSA), Adi Shamir (30, RSA), John Walker (32, Autodesk), Halsey Minor (30, CNet), David Filo (28, Yahoo), Jeremy Stoppelman (27, Yelp), Eric Lefkofsky (39, Groupon), Andrew Mason (29, Groupon), David Hitz (28, NetApp), Brian Lee (28, Legalzoom), Demis Hassabis (34, DeepMind), Tim Westergren (35, Pandora), Martin Lorentzon (37, Spotify), Ashar Aziz (44, FireEye), Kevin O'Connor (36, DoubleClick), Ben Silbermann (28, Pinterest), Evan Sharp (28, Pinterest), Steve Kirsch (38, Infoseek), Stephen Kaufer (36, TripAdvisor), Michael McNeilly (28, Applied Materials), Eugene McDermott (52, Texas Instruments), Richard Egan (43, EMC), Gary Kildall (32, Digital Research), Hasso Plattner (28, SAP), Robert Glaser (32, Real Networks), Patrick Byrne (37, Overstock.com), Marc Lore (33, Diapers.com), Ed Iacobucci (36, Citrix Systems), Ray Noorda (55, Novell), Tom Leighton (42, Akamai), Daniel Lewin (28, Akamai), Michael Mauldin (35, Lycos), Tom Anderson (33, MySpace), Chris DeWolfe (37, MySpace), Mark Pincus (41, Zynga), Nir Zuk (30, Palo Alto Networks), Caterina Fake (34, Flickr), Stewart Butterfield (31, Flickr), Kevin Systrom (27, Instagram), Adi Tatarko (37, Houzz), Brian Armstrong (29, Coinbase), Pradeep Sindhu (43, Juniper), Peter Thiel (31, PayPal; 37, Palantir), Jay Walker (42, priceline.com), Pony Ma (27, Tencent), Robin Li (32, Baidu), Liu Qiangdong (29, JD.com), Lei Jun (40, Xiaomi), Ren Zhengfei (38, Huawei), Arkady Volozh (36, Yandex), Hiroshi Mikitani (34, Rakuten), Morris Chang (56, Taiwan Semi), Cheng Wei (29, Didi Chuxing), James Liang (29, Ctrip)

pdog 9y ago
Is 28 not considered an extremely young age to start a world-changing company?
- adventured 9y ago
  28 substantially disqualifies you as being a kid, imo. If you look at the list, you'll find the 30s is the largest age group for founding those companies. Which makes sense: the number of people capable of building a Salesforce.com or Netflix at the age of 19 or 22, would obviously be extraordinarily slim (whether due to lack of skill, reputation & capital access, experience, or all of the above).
- Gargoyle 9y ago
  Perhaps, but Y Combinator has previously indicated that's more or less the median age of their accepted founders. And beyond YC, the hype is most often for youth, people under 30. This isn't just the situation in tech, but it's interesting to see the industry's mythology isn't supported by data, when it claims to be a data/results-driven industry.
  - eru 9y ago
    One reason Y Combinator starts so young is to give repeated founders the early failures (and successes) they need to learn how to do things right. Also, the young ones have less opportunity costs. Failure is comparatively cheaper for them.
    - lsc 9y ago
      >Also, the young ones have less opportunity costs. Failure is comparatively cheaper for them. People keep saying this, and it's simply not true. I spent about a decade on my company, give or take, getting serious-ish when I was 25 or so. If I had taken 10% of the cash and opportunity cost I spent on that failed venture and stuck it in a whole market index fund? or in some real-estate? or really any other conventional investment, I would be pretty well off now. If I invested 30%? I would be able to retire now. Compound interest is an incredible force, a force that is strongest when you are young. As a young engineer with a good starting salary? you are uniquely positioned to win through passive investing.

lsc 9y ago

My observation, at least at my level, is that the engineers who do best get seats on rocket ships that have already made it to orbit. Established companies give out bonuses on good years that look like the payouts I've seen engineers get during realistic exits. I mean, sure, if you shoot the moon in your selection of startups, that's going to go pretty well for you, but I think on average you are best off, assuming you are an engineer, getting a very well compensated job at a top company and then putting the resulting money in a whole-market index fund.

runeks 9y ago

> Don't try to build the rocket yourself (that's a gamble that practically never ends well); let someone else do it and try to hitch a ride. But what if everyone’s building shitty rocket ships, that have all sorts of practical (not technical) limitations, and no one’s trying to build what I have in mind, which I’ve identified as a superior rocket ship? If you, yourself, can convince investors that it’s a good idea, is there an advantage to hitching a ride instead?

mikesabat 9y ago
OP says that hitching a ride is the SAFEST by far. Maybe starting something is not for everyone and I think most people on HN would encourage someone to 'go for it' if they think they have it in them. But the reason that I wanted to respond is to point out the difference between convincing investors to invest and building a rocketship yourself. These are completely different things. Convincing an investor buys a little time for a company to form and a product to develop. The company needs to prove, prove, prove to get to a rocketship stage.

rajacombinator 9y ago

It's also a bit of nice self serving advice for rocket ship captains who are trying to hire lots of cheap labor. People like Eric Schmidt do the exact opposite of this advice and carefully calculate every move they make.