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> Your project has a youthful optimism that I hope you won’t lose as you go. And in fact it might be the way to win in the long run. This is the nicest thing a

• camhart 3y ago
  Optimism is (almost) always required in order to accomplish anything of significance. Those who lose it, aren't living up to their potential. I'm not encouraging the false belief that everything you do will work out. Instead I'm encouraging the realization that the greatest accomplishments almost always feel like long shots, and require significant amounts of optimism. Fear and pessimism, while helpful in appropriate doses, will limit you greatly in life if you let them rule you too significantly. When I look back on my life, the greatest accomplishments I've achieved are ones where I was naive yet optimistic going into it. This was a good thing, because I would have been too scared to try had I really known the challenges that lay ahead.
  • johnthewise 3y ago
    I like this quote from Napoleon on taking risks: “If the art of war were nothing but the art of avoiding risks, glory would become the prey of mediocre minds.... I have made all the calculations; fate will do the the rest."
  • jacquesm 3y ago
    To me the payoff of failed projects is in what I learned. As long as that's the case I can carry my optimism over into new projects.
  • Frost1x 3y ago
    >Optimism is (almost) always required in order to accomplish anything of significance. Those who lose it, aren't living up to their potential. I argue that realism trumps optimism. It's perfectly normal in a realist farming to see something difficult, acknowledge the high risk and failure potential, and still pursue something with intent to succeed. I've personally grown tired of over optimism everywhere because it creates unrealistic situations and passes consequences of failure in an inequitable way. The "visionary" is rewarded when the rare successes occur, while everyone else suffers the consequences for most failures. No contingency plans for failure, no discussion of failure, and so on. Optimism just takes any idea, pursues it and consequences be someone else's problem and be damned. Pessimism isn't much better, you essentially think everything is too risky or unlikely to succeed so you never do anything. You live in a state of inaction because any level of risk or uncertainty is too much. To me, realism is much better. You acknowledge the challenge. You acknowledge the risk. You make sure everyone involved understands it, but you still charge forward knowing you might succeed. Some think if you're not naively optimistic (what most people in my experience refer to as "optimism") you don't create enough pressure. I think that's non-sense.
    • rileyphone 3y ago
      You can be a realist visionary.
      • Frost1x 3y ago
        Absolutely, which is what I advocate for.
    • hgsgm 3y ago
      Realism doesn't work in business. Business success requires 10 people to try for 1 person to succeed. If those 10 people were realists, they wouldn't try.
      • worldsayshi 3y ago
        Depends how much that one person wins and how much the others lose.
        • krsrhe 3y ago
          [dead]
    • hackernewds 3y ago
      If everyone were a realist, we wouldn't have half the advances we do. Because what can be "real" is proven wrong through innovation, after all isn't that disruption? :) Sam Altman talks about this quite frequently, that it's not intelligence or luck necessary for an enduring innovation. It is persistence in the face of inevitability, and a high tolerance for being proven wrong and still persisting
      • OO000oo 3y ago
        Everybody knows socialism is impossible though. Can't work, not worth trying, don't even think about it.
    • OrsonSmelles 3y ago
  • dhash 3y ago
    YC startup founder here, Mostly agree, except the market is not an optimistic place — it’s the market. There are a multitude of reasons you lose your optimism, mostly because people take it away — your optimism is their money
  • hackernewds 3y ago
    What a beautiful and articulate thought. thank you