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> And the probability of a group of sufficiently smart and determined founders succeeding on that scale might be significantly over 1%. For the right people—e.g
by staunch 14y ago
> And the probability of a group of sufficiently smart and determined founders succeeding on that scale might be significantly over 1%. For the right people—e.g. the young Bill Gates—the probability might be 20% or even 50%. So it's not surprising that so many want to take a shot at it.
Which means that even Bill Gates may have failed repeatedly at creating a successful startup.
Just as in poker even great players will lose if it's not in the cards and even the mediocre player can win big on occasion.
The lesson is that even a founder as good as Bill Gates can only expect to succeed if she is willing to make multiple attempts.
- nostrademons 14y agoMicrosoft was Bill Gates's 4th venture. His first was consulting for CCC, finding bugs in their software in exchange for free computer time. His second was a payroll program in COBOL for Information Sciences. His third was Traf-O-Data, a startup with Paul Allen to make traffic counters. He'd already been programming for 6 years by the time he started Microsoft. Similarly, Facebook was Mark Zuckerburg's 3rd startup, and Apple was Steve & Steve's 2nd.
- staunch 14y agoI think you're stretching a bit. Traffic-O-Data was Gates' first company and Apple was Steve's.