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Beware of survival bias. This article tells a tale that if you do similar things, you’ll get a billion dollar success too. Suppose a black founder was out in t
by nojvek 6y ago
Beware of survival bias. This article tells a tale that if you do similar things, you’ll get a billion dollar success too.
Suppose a black founder was out in the mall asking to install an app on your phone, security would drag them away.
Most of the founders went to prestigious colleges with enough connections and saved income to let them work on ideas before it became profitable. As the income divide gets larger, less and less Americans have that luxury.
For every founder that made it, they’re prolly 100s that didn’t make it even if they did the same things.
For a large chunk of the planet, surviving to day is a struggle, they can’t weather out months blowing their only savings on an idea that may or may not work.
This is why most founders tend to be white men from mostly wealthy backgrounds. Most VCs are in a similar demographic and would fund them, so it’s somewhat a self fulfilling cycle.
- rofws 6y agoThis. IMO, every successful founder has had at least one of these things in plentiful when starting up - money, connections, or deep insight into a painful problem. Luck, of course, cannot be overlooked. I think learning what worked for someone is good. But more important is learning what did not work (which is only realised in hindsight) There is a subreddit called r/shutdown. I keep visiting it from time to time to learn what not to do.