4 ms·

Are All Successful Entrepreneurs Slightly Deluded?

21 points by annajohnson 16y ago

devmonk 16y ago
How do you measure confidence and delusion quantitatively?
- annajohnson 16y ago
  Good question. To go from a purely conceptual model such as this to one with real empirical substance you would have to be precise about such concepts as confidence and success and how they are quantitatively measured. I think a group of smart psychologists could pull it off, as long as they were open about their definitions and quantitative scales, so people could accept or reject their thesis accordingly.
  - MikeMacMan 16y ago
    Good point. There are founders that have valuable inside knowledge of their industry (domain expertise, etc) who can be more reasonably sure of their success in some B2B venture than a YCombinator project that wants to be the next Twitter. Can we say that if both examples are equally confident of their success, that the former is less deluded than the latter?
gregpilling 16y ago
Yes. But make that ALL entrepreneurs are slightly deluded. Success is not part of the delusion.
lowtecky 16y ago
How was that person deluded when they ultimately reached their goal? Isn't that the opposite of deluded? They simply didn't give up, and they have their high confidence to thank for keeping them motivated.
j-g-faustus 16y ago
I think that almost everyone is slightly deluded. The natural state of mind of healthy (i.e. not clinically depressed) people is to default to think that they are important and good at what they do. So you get things like 70% of drivers saying that they drive better than average. (And I saw a psychologist post somewhere online claiming that they had asked 500 people how good they were in bed, and exactly one person out of the 500 thought they were below average.) At the level of subjective reality "I'm important" is obviously true in general, as you are presumably the most important person in your own life. At the level of objective reality you have things like "you are one random individual among 8 billion, all of you living on a small rock on the outer edges of an insignificant galaxy, and the lifetime of the entire human species is hardly a blink of the eye in the timeframe of the Earth". Although objective truth has the advantage of being objective, it is also somewhat depressing. Terry Pratchett (of the Discworld series) has the concept of "knurd" ("drunk" spelled backwards). The idea is that people normally look at the world through rose-tinted glasses as if they were slightly drunk, being "knurd" is the state of being hyper-sober, stripped of all comforting illusions and seeing the world in all its harsh reality. I certainly believe that this story is fairly close to being true, although I have no scientific studies to back it up :) Although most people are slightly delusional, it may be more visible in people that are successful somehow somewhere, since they have an external story to collaborate the internal story: "I feel important, and this proves that I actually am important". We also have hubris as one of the three virtues of a programmer ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall#Virtues_of_a_programmer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall#Virtues_of_a_program... ), I have no reason to think that this is less true for entrepreneurs in general. In short, I think a moderate amount of delusion is quite healthy, and possibly even essential :)
- Mz 16y ago
  I think that almost everyone is slightly deluded. I think most folks are extremely deluded -- which is why the slightly deluded ones do so well.
- Bones66 16y ago
  If you don't act like you're slightly delusional, you stand out as a minority.
paramendra 16y ago
The Scvngr Chief Ninja is the real deal. http://goo.gl/fb/UdZzx http://goo.gl/fb/UdZzx He is absolutely right about the gaming layer as the next big thing after social.
10ren 16y ago
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw,
bobf 16y ago
The NYTimes just covered a similar idea, in an article titled "Just Manic Enough". An interesting quote from the article, which I think sums it up fairly well, was "You need to suspend disbelief to start a company, because so many people will tell you that what you’re doing can’t be done, and if it could be done, someone would have done it already. There are six billion human beings on this planet, we’ve been around for hundreds of thousands of years, we’re a couple hundred years into the industrial revolution — and nobody has done what you want to do? It’s kind of crazy." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/business/19entre.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/business/19entre.html
danielnicollet 16y ago
of course. what's wrong with that? ;-)

21 points by annajohnson 16y ago

devmonk 16y ago

How do you measure confidence and delusion quantitatively?

annajohnson 16y ago
Good question. To go from a purely conceptual model such as this to one with real empirical substance you would have to be precise about such concepts as confidence and success and how they are quantitatively measured. I think a group of smart psychologists could pull it off, as long as they were open about their definitions and quantitative scales, so people could accept or reject their thesis accordingly.
- MikeMacMan 16y ago
  Good point. There are founders that have valuable inside knowledge of their industry (domain expertise, etc) who can be more reasonably sure of their success in some B2B venture than a YCombinator project that wants to be the next Twitter. Can we say that if both examples are equally confident of their success, that the former is less deluded than the latter?

gregpilling 16y ago

Yes. But make that ALL entrepreneurs are slightly deluded. Success is not part of the delusion.

lowtecky 16y ago

How was that person deluded when they ultimately reached their goal? Isn't that the opposite of deluded? They simply didn't give up, and they have their high confidence to thank for keeping them motivated.

j-g-faustus 16y ago

I think that almost everyone is slightly deluded. The natural state of mind of healthy (i.e. not clinically depressed) people is to default to think that they are important and good at what they do. So you get things like 70% of drivers saying that they drive better than average. (And I saw a psychologist post somewhere online claiming that they had asked 500 people how good they were in bed, and exactly one person out of the 500 thought they were below average.) At the level of subjective reality "I'm important" is obviously true in general, as you are presumably the most important person in your own life. At the level of objective reality you have things like "you are one random individual among 8 billion, all of you living on a small rock on the outer edges of an insignificant galaxy, and the lifetime of the entire human species is hardly a blink of the eye in the timeframe of the Earth". Although objective truth has the advantage of being objective, it is also somewhat depressing. Terry Pratchett (of the Discworld series) has the concept of "knurd" ("drunk" spelled backwards). The idea is that people normally look at the world through rose-tinted glasses as if they were slightly drunk, being "knurd" is the state of being hyper-sober, stripped of all comforting illusions and seeing the world in all its harsh reality. I certainly believe that this story is fairly close to being true, although I have no scientific studies to back it up :) Although most people are slightly delusional, it may be more visible in people that are successful somehow somewhere, since they have an external story to collaborate the internal story: "I feel important, and this proves that I actually am important". We also have hubris as one of the three virtues of a programmer ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall#Virtues_of_a_programmer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall#Virtues_of_a_program... ), I have no reason to think that this is less true for entrepreneurs in general. In short, I think a moderate amount of delusion is quite healthy, and possibly even essential :)

Mz 16y ago
I think that almost everyone is slightly deluded. I think most folks are extremely deluded -- which is why the slightly deluded ones do so well.
Bones66 16y ago
If you don't act like you're slightly delusional, you stand out as a minority.

paramendra 16y ago

The Scvngr Chief Ninja is the real deal. http://goo.gl/fb/UdZzx http://goo.gl/fb/UdZzx He is absolutely right about the gaming layer as the next big thing after social.

10ren 16y ago

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw,

bobf 16y ago

The NYTimes just covered a similar idea, in an article titled "Just Manic Enough". An interesting quote from the article, which I think sums it up fairly well, was "You need to suspend disbelief to start a company, because so many people will tell you that what you’re doing can’t be done, and if it could be done, someone would have done it already. There are six billion human beings on this planet, we’ve been around for hundreds of thousands of years, we’re a couple hundred years into the industrial revolution — and nobody has done what you want to do? It’s kind of crazy." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/business/19entre.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/business/19entre.html

danielnicollet 16y ago

of course. what's wrong with that? ;-)