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Portrait of the Entrepreneur as an Old Man
- terra_t 16y agohell yeah!
- rfawal 16y agoLive life with a child-like imagination no matter how old you are. Just don't be child-ish.
- jamesbritt 16y agoIndeed. Get older, not old.
- karensky 16y agoI agree completely. How much talent would be wasted because people believed someone who told them they couldn't do something? Does Steve Blank think institutional knowledge, business savvy, world experience, etc. count for nothing? There are other ways to achieve your goals besides being willing to kip up on someone's sofa.
- ojbyrne 16y agoThe canonical case is Ray Kroc, who took over and ran a small company called McDonalds at age 52: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kroc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kroc
- weel 16y agoI think the reason many entrepreneurs are young is not so much that young people have inherently better ideas as that young people are in a better position to take some risk. That is why a good fraction of companies that are started by older people seem to be started by older people that already have money in the bank: they, too, are in a position to take some risk.
- rfawal 16y agoGreat point. I constantly joke that I'm somewhere between being a gazzillionnaire and living in a van down by the river.
- Todd 16y ago+1 for the Matt Foley/Chris Farley quote
- lelele 16y agoObligatory Machiavelli's quote: "For my part I consider that it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is, therefore, always, woman-like, a lover of young men, because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her." (The Prince)
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Poiesis 16y agoA question about Watchparty: isn't the trend for people to be not watching the same show at the same time? I mean, I can see networks desperate to stop this trend so I could see how some established network might want to acquire you. And that's not a bad plan but I'm not sure if that is going to reverse the trend. I mean, if anything gets people watching at the same time it will be social interaction. I just don't know if it will be enough? Or do you have some way to connect people who are viewing asynchronously? If so, I'd love that personally. I do often want to share with other people but I never watch when originally aired. Somehow connecting me with everyone else sounds great except for the fact that at that point you're pretty much talking about a forum at that point and there's plenty of those.
- rfawal 16y agoThat's an excellent question that is raised often when I talk about WatchParty. The fact is, however, that 85% of all TV watching is still live, the amount of live TV people watch is increasing, not decreasing (http://goo.gl/X0mH http://goo.gl/X0mH). We're approaching WatchParty as a Lean Startup, so we're concentrating on that 85% to start. We know that plenty of folks timeshift, and we want to provide a great social TV experience for you as well, but it makes more sense to solve a problem for 85% of the market first. Of course I believe we'll be wildly successful and will soon solve your problem, too. Thanks very much for your interest!
- iron_ball 16y agoOn the XBox 360, Netflix coordinates with the XBox Live to enable a "watch with party" function. You watch a streaming movie in sync with the other people in your party -- an ad-hoc invite-only group -- while retaining the platform's built-in voice chat with your party.
- rfawal 16y agoYes, we're looking at similar kinds of approaches for WatchParty users. In all likelihood we'll build something that works with GoogleTV and AppleTV, but who knows?
- moron4hire 16y agoI agree completely. When does this "entrepreneurship" era end that young people are ostensibly good at, and what does it become that would account for the fact that most successful companies are not currently being ran by 20-somethings?
- Bricejm 16y agoSometimes it takes experience to come across a problem that needs a solution. It's hard to come up with an answer until you fully understand the problem.
- da5e 16y agoAgeism (in either direction) is like other forms of bigotry. It tells you nothing about any particular individual. It might be time for old rocker, Neal Young to bring out a song, "Young Man, take a look at your life. I'm a lot like you'll be."
- Albin 16y agoIts no surprise that people in our society spend so much time dealing with the fear of old age. But the truth is that you grow old when you lose interest in life, when you cease to dream, to hunger for new truths, and to search for new worlds to conquer, and this can happen at any age. But when your mind is open to new ideas, new interests, and when you raise the curtain and let in the sunshine and inspiration of new truths of life and the universe, you will be forever young and vital at any age.