3 ms·

this blog post is a kind of guide to starting your own company and making millions of dollars. this is a little unrelated but i just find it funny to read this

this blog post is a kind of guide to starting your own company and making millions of dollars. this is a little unrelated but i just find it funny to read this guide because its very convoluted. there is actually a much simpler guide that their guide is a derivation of. here is the actual guide: step one: be more intelligent than most people behind almost every business, behind almost every professional success and behind almost any success in general that ive seen, is a highly intelligent person. i find it irritating to read because the concept of a guide is spelling things out so that anyone can follow the steps and get the same result. successful people always benefit from high intelligence, money and success will always be unfairly skewed to the benefit of those who happened to be born with better brains and into better developmental circumstances. nobody needs this guide because they are either smart and dont need a guide or dumb and in which case cant use this guide.

bacongobbler 9y ago
Sure, if you look at it from the closed mindset that nobody improves or can "git gud". It's been proven time and time again that humans can learn and adapt to achieve their own aspirations. Take one quick look at the special olympics; you'll see a very large group of individuals who have all overcome amazing obstacles to become olympians. Similarly, highly intelligent people may not have the domain knowledge required to understand how to bootstrap a company. Their knowledge domain may come from a completely different environment or culture which has its own mindset on how to bootstrap a company. Being smart does not necessarily make you more equipped than "dumb" (and highly motivated) people, but it does give you a decent head start.
- chronic824 9y ago
  > Being smart does not necessarily make you more equipped than "dumb" (and highly motivated) people, but it does give you a decent head start. This is absurd. Of course if you are smart, you are far better equipped. Your line of thinking promotes the idea that "anyone can work hard and achieve their dreams." We both know this is not true.
3pt14159 9y ago
I've analyzed a lot of startups data over time and at least over the past ten years I've found that determination correlates higher to success than intelligence. Most startups are not rocket science.
goatherders 9y ago
I know lots of very successful business owners that aren't much more than normal/average when it comes to intelligence. They just work hard and provide a quality good or service to a market they understand. The END
dahart 9y ago
> behind almost any success in general that ive seen, is a highly intelligent person This sounds to me like multiple flavors of selection bias, e.g., survivorship bias, confirmation bias, etc. Have you looked into how many very smart people achieve nothing of significance? There are a lot of them... > step one: be more intelligent than most people Studies have shown that founder IQ correllates lower than other factors with business success. (I assume you're talking about IQ, otherwise defining being "smart" to mean do what it takes to be successful is a tautology.) https://www.forbes.com/sites/richkarlgaard/2013/11/27/smarts-in-business-is-not-about-iq/#1b0ffc034e94 https://www.forbes.com/sites/richkarlgaard/2013/11/27/smarts... https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140717120528-117825785-what-predicts-success-it-s-not-your-iq?trkSplashRedir=true&forceNoSplash=true https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140717120528-117825785-what... http://scientificbrains.com/people-with-higher-iq-makes-more-money-but-when-it-comes-to-making-boatloads-of-money-ha/ http://scientificbrains.com/people-with-higher-iq-makes-more...

bacongobbler 9y ago

Sure, if you look at it from the closed mindset that nobody improves or can "git gud". It's been proven time and time again that humans can learn and adapt to achieve their own aspirations. Take one quick look at the special olympics; you'll see a very large group of individuals who have all overcome amazing obstacles to become olympians. Similarly, highly intelligent people may not have the domain knowledge required to understand how to bootstrap a company. Their knowledge domain may come from a completely different environment or culture which has its own mindset on how to bootstrap a company. Being smart does not necessarily make you more equipped than "dumb" (and highly motivated) people, but it does give you a decent head start.

chronic824 9y ago
> Being smart does not necessarily make you more equipped than "dumb" (and highly motivated) people, but it does give you a decent head start. This is absurd. Of course if you are smart, you are far better equipped. Your line of thinking promotes the idea that "anyone can work hard and achieve their dreams." We both know this is not true.

3pt14159 9y ago

I've analyzed a lot of startups data over time and at least over the past ten years I've found that determination correlates higher to success than intelligence. Most startups are not rocket science.

goatherders 9y ago

I know lots of very successful business owners that aren't much more than normal/average when it comes to intelligence. They just work hard and provide a quality good or service to a market they understand. The END

dahart 9y ago

> behind almost any success in general that ive seen, is a highly intelligent person This sounds to me like multiple flavors of selection bias, e.g., survivorship bias, confirmation bias, etc. Have you looked into how many very smart people achieve nothing of significance? There are a lot of them... > step one: be more intelligent than most people Studies have shown that founder IQ correllates lower than other factors with business success. (I assume you're talking about IQ, otherwise defining being "smart" to mean do what it takes to be successful is a tautology.) https://www.forbes.com/sites/richkarlgaard/2013/11/27/smarts-in-business-is-not-about-iq/#1b0ffc034e94 https://www.forbes.com/sites/richkarlgaard/2013/11/27/smarts... https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140717120528-117825785-what-predicts-success-it-s-not-your-iq?trkSplashRedir=true&forceNoSplash=true https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140717120528-117825785-what... http://scientificbrains.com/people-with-higher-iq-makes-more-money-but-when-it-comes-to-making-boatloads-of-money-ha/ http://scientificbrains.com/people-with-higher-iq-makes-more...