4 ms·

While true, so, so much of your life is luck (or more accurately, good fortune through chance, only affected by positioning). While your chances may not exactly

While true, so, so much of your life is luck (or more accurately, good fortune through chance, only affected by positioning). While your chances may not exactly be 0.00006% that you'll succeed, I doubt that you can improve them to more than about 0.0001%. Truly, we don't get where we get because of our capacity or our ability (in most cases). We get lucky, a lot, and we can't really change that.

mindcrime 13y ago
We get lucky, a lot, and we can't really change that. That depends on how, exactly, you define "luck". I posit that a lot of what people call "luck" can be manufactured, or at least cultivated through directed action. Remember the article that showed up here a while back about "How to date a supermodel"? The premise was that if you want to date a supermodel, you have to move to a city where there are lots of supermodels, and hang out at the places where supermodels shop, work out, dine, etc., and you have to start conversations with supermodels, blah, blah.. So if one of you buddies shows up next year dating a supermodel, everybody is probably going to go "Dude, that's amazing, you are SO lucky!" And this will completely ignore the fact that he did a lot of things to create the opportunity. It's SUCH a cliche, but I guess cliches exist for a reason, so I'll just come back to: Luck = Preparation + Opportunity
- lelandbatey 13y ago
  That is true, to some extent. That's why I elaborated a bit and said that it's "...good fortune through chance, only affected by positioning."
- timr 13y ago
  "The premise was that if you want to date a supermodel, you have to move to a city where there are lots of supermodels, and hang out at the places where supermodels shop, work out, dine, etc., and you have to start conversations with supermodels, blah, blah.." Likewise, if you don't want to date anyone at all, you move to silicon valley and work on a startup! (Kidding! sort of...)
  - mindcrime 13y ago
    You don't even need to move to Silicon Valley to do that! You can "date no one" in Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina, while working on a startup, quite effectively.
- crucialfelix 13y ago
  Supermodels are a special elite cohort of models. They are household names, people with instant recognition that can generate news articles simply by announcing that they are doing something involving your brand. To date one you would need to be compatible with her lifestyle. That means highly successful or at least part of a similar industry like fashion or music. It means that you have to be somebody that can be announced in gossip columns as dating her. It has to be a good career move for her. Naomi Cambel once walked past me while I was hanging out backstage at New York fashion week. Even if I had said hi there are still significant reasons why I am not now dating her. And so it is with startups. Pedigree matters, the pedigree of your investors matters. Press matters and is heavily influenced by your position in the network. People in the game are deciding who the winners and losers are. Public perception is influenced by that.
nostrademons 13y ago
For many people, that luck already happened based on who their parents are and what sort of upbringing they had. Someone born to middle-class American parents has a whole lot better shot at being a billionaire than someone born in the inner-city ghetto, or, for that matter, in rural China. Much of the remaining "luck" comes from our choices. Think of it this way: how many people choose to work a steady job for all of their life. They will never be a billionaire, regardless of how lucky they get, and so their contribution to the average is zero. Actually, I suspect this invalidates your math: more than 1 in 2 people have probability zero of being a billionaire simply by virtue of not taking the chance of being one, and therefore of the people who take the chance, the odds are significantly better than 0.0001%.
pg 13y ago
Though it's still a bit early to say, it looks like the probability of a YC startup ending up worth a billion dollars is at least .5%. So the truth is somewhere on the continuum between (a) that you're off by a factor of 5000, and (b) that we improve people's chances by 5000x. And while it would be a great compliment if people chose extremum (b), I think it would be a stretch to claim we can improve the probability by even 10x.
- mrsharpoblunto 13y ago
  If one factors in the 2-3% YC acceptance rate, and makes the assumption (that I admittedly haven't checked out) that no startups rejected by YC are now billion dollar companies, that closes the difference down to around 100x
  - loceng 13y ago
    If there are limited choices for resources and YC gets to choose the best options, then how much is actually attributed to being in YC vs. those startups having received mentorship? Out of the companies that will become or are billion dollar companies, how many already had their direction/focus and business model decided before joining YC? Correlation != causation, right?
- tel 13y ago
  From another perspective, likelihoods like these depend on information. Every iota of market validation that is compatible with a $1B company improves the likelihood that you will create one.
- beambot 13y ago
  You've just added information that will alter the probability. The prior can still be 0.00006% and the addition of new evidence (in the bayesian sense) of being admitted into YC could result in a posterior probability of 0.5%. (Sorta like using Series A as a filter.)
  - baddox 13y ago

mindcrime 13y ago

We get lucky, a lot, and we can't really change that. That depends on how, exactly, you define "luck". I posit that a lot of what people call "luck" can be manufactured, or at least cultivated through directed action. Remember the article that showed up here a while back about "How to date a supermodel"? The premise was that if you want to date a supermodel, you have to move to a city where there are lots of supermodels, and hang out at the places where supermodels shop, work out, dine, etc., and you have to start conversations with supermodels, blah, blah.. So if one of you buddies shows up next year dating a supermodel, everybody is probably going to go "Dude, that's amazing, you are SO lucky!" And this will completely ignore the fact that he did a lot of things to create the opportunity. It's SUCH a cliche, but I guess cliches exist for a reason, so I'll just come back to: Luck = Preparation + Opportunity

lelandbatey 13y ago
That is true, to some extent. That's why I elaborated a bit and said that it's "...good fortune through chance, only affected by positioning."
timr 13y ago
"The premise was that if you want to date a supermodel, you have to move to a city where there are lots of supermodels, and hang out at the places where supermodels shop, work out, dine, etc., and you have to start conversations with supermodels, blah, blah.." Likewise, if you don't want to date anyone at all, you move to silicon valley and work on a startup! (Kidding! sort of...)
- mindcrime 13y ago
  You don't even need to move to Silicon Valley to do that! You can "date no one" in Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina, while working on a startup, quite effectively.
crucialfelix 13y ago
Supermodels are a special elite cohort of models. They are household names, people with instant recognition that can generate news articles simply by announcing that they are doing something involving your brand. To date one you would need to be compatible with her lifestyle. That means highly successful or at least part of a similar industry like fashion or music. It means that you have to be somebody that can be announced in gossip columns as dating her. It has to be a good career move for her. Naomi Cambel once walked past me while I was hanging out backstage at New York fashion week. Even if I had said hi there are still significant reasons why I am not now dating her. And so it is with startups. Pedigree matters, the pedigree of your investors matters. Press matters and is heavily influenced by your position in the network. People in the game are deciding who the winners and losers are. Public perception is influenced by that.

nostrademons 13y ago

For many people, that luck already happened based on who their parents are and what sort of upbringing they had. Someone born to middle-class American parents has a whole lot better shot at being a billionaire than someone born in the inner-city ghetto, or, for that matter, in rural China. Much of the remaining "luck" comes from our choices. Think of it this way: how many people choose to work a steady job for all of their life. They will never be a billionaire, regardless of how lucky they get, and so their contribution to the average is zero. Actually, I suspect this invalidates your math: more than 1 in 2 people have probability zero of being a billionaire simply by virtue of not taking the chance of being one, and therefore of the people who take the chance, the odds are significantly better than 0.0001%.

pg 13y ago

Though it's still a bit early to say, it looks like the probability of a YC startup ending up worth a billion dollars is at least .5%. So the truth is somewhere on the continuum between (a) that you're off by a factor of 5000, and (b) that we improve people's chances by 5000x. And while it would be a great compliment if people chose extremum (b), I think it would be a stretch to claim we can improve the probability by even 10x.

mrsharpoblunto 13y ago
If one factors in the 2-3% YC acceptance rate, and makes the assumption (that I admittedly haven't checked out) that no startups rejected by YC are now billion dollar companies, that closes the difference down to around 100x
- loceng 13y ago
  If there are limited choices for resources and YC gets to choose the best options, then how much is actually attributed to being in YC vs. those startups having received mentorship? Out of the companies that will become or are billion dollar companies, how many already had their direction/focus and business model decided before joining YC? Correlation != causation, right?
tel 13y ago
From another perspective, likelihoods like these depend on information. Every iota of market validation that is compatible with a $1B company improves the likelihood that you will create one.
beambot 13y ago
You've just added information that will alter the probability. The prior can still be 0.00006% and the addition of new evidence (in the bayesian sense) of being admitted into YC could result in a posterior probability of 0.5%. (Sorta like using Series A as a filter.)
- baddox 13y ago