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So if that’s all it takes? Then why are so many businesses failures? I bet if you got in a room with 30 people and they all told you their story without mention

So if that’s all it takes? Then why are so many businesses failures? I bet if you got in a room with 30 people and they all told you their story without mentioning the outcome and you could judge the characteristics you mentioned and they were all equal, you couldn’t predict which ones are successful business people and which ones are failures. On the other hand, if you gave 10 people a job at BigTech, 10 a job at a well known non tech company and told 10 to go start a business, which one of those groups do you think would have the highest median and mean compensation history over 5 years? 10 years? I posit that it would be BigTech, Enterprise Dev and the startup founders would come in dead last. Heck I got close to a million dollars in “revenue” just working as a mid level (L5) remote employee at BigTech for 3.5 years and I was paid 10-15% less in my position (cloud consulting) than the equivalent SDE. If that were my major concern at this point in life (I’m 50), there are much easier ways to have a million dollars in “revenue” over 3-4 years for anyone in tech than starting a business with much less work and risks.

CRConrad 2y ago
> So if that’s all it takes? Then why are so many businesses failures? I bet if you got in a room with 30 people and they all told you their story without mentioning the outcome and you could judge the characteristics you mentioned and they were all equal, you couldn’t predict which ones are successful business people and which ones are failures. Luck. Or, IOW, random variation. In physics, you could probably predict the position[1] of every atom in a confined volume of a gas, if you knew all their initial positions and velocities with sufficient precision... But that required precision is so high, and the effects of any infinitesimal deviation from the true state has such far-reaching chaotic effects, that it's in practice pretty much impossible. Same with the social sciences, economy, and "the market" (whichever market it is you're entering): Random impossible-to-measure tiny variations add up to a chaotic sum of effects that manifests as what is usually called "good" -- or "bad" -- "luck", which probably accounts for almost as much of your success as anything you do (or don't do). > On the other hand, if you gave 10 people a job at BigTech, 10 a job at a well known non tech company and told 10 to go start a business, which one of those groups do you think would have the highest median and mean compensation history over 5 years? 10 years? > I posit that it would be BigTech, Enterprise Dev and the startup founders would come in dead last. Yup, I'd guess so too... For N = 10 or so. Add an order of magnitude, and the mean might rise enormously -- though not the median. [1]: Heisenberg's uncertainty principle notwithstanding.

CRConrad 2y ago

> So if that’s all it takes? Then why are so many businesses failures? I bet if you got in a room with 30 people and they all told you their story without mentioning the outcome and you could judge the characteristics you mentioned and they were all equal, you couldn’t predict which ones are successful business people and which ones are failures. Luck. Or, IOW, random variation. In physics, you could probably predict the position[1] of every atom in a confined volume of a gas, if you knew all their initial positions and velocities with sufficient precision... But that required precision is so high, and the effects of any infinitesimal deviation from the true state has such far-reaching chaotic effects, that it's in practice pretty much impossible. Same with the social sciences, economy, and "the market" (whichever market it is you're entering): Random impossible-to-measure tiny variations add up to a chaotic sum of effects that manifests as what is usually called "good" -- or "bad" -- "luck", which probably accounts for almost as much of your success as anything you do (or don't do). > On the other hand, if you gave 10 people a job at BigTech, 10 a job at a well known non tech company and told 10 to go start a business, which one of those groups do you think would have the highest median and mean compensation history over 5 years? 10 years? > I posit that it would be BigTech, Enterprise Dev and the startup founders would come in dead last. Yup, I'd guess so too... For N = 10 or so. Add an order of magnitude, and the mean might rise enormously -- though not the median. [1]: Heisenberg's uncertainty principle notwithstanding.