OnStartups.com - Seeking Stellar Software Entrepreneurs | Hacker News Reader

OnStartups.com - Seeking Stellar Software Entrepreneurs

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I'd bet this describes most people on news.YC - after all, being a relatively new, non-mainstream site that focuses on written articles delivered electronically, it'll attract folks with half the qualities in this article right off the bat.

I'm more curious how many people have all these qualities, start a company, and then fail. That'll give me a better idea of what my true odds are. It's possible that there are lots of people with these 10 qualities, yet there are only a few people who cash out with multi-million-$ payouts.

"I'm more curious how many people have all these qualities, start a company, and then fail."

I think this is a poor metric. Individual projects fail all the time for no reason. What's more telling is the chance that you'll succeed big somewhere at some point. Part of being smart is trying lots of random stuff and failing or getting bored and doing something else.

This describes me very well except for the email response time bit. I have an awful tendency to mull over my responses for days, editing and re-editing to get them "perfect", when I know I shouldn't. Anyone else have this?

My problem is different. If I fail to respond to an email within the first few hours, I'll often forget to respond to it at all.

It's not that I'm mulling them over, it's that they get overridden by a new flurry of messages. It's hard to keep up.

I'm like that too, except I don't have the "flurry of new messages" excuse. More often, if I let it go when I first see it, it slips out of my mind. It's like "Well, it wasn't important enough to respond to the first time, what's different now that makes it important enough to respond to?" (regardless of whether it actually is important enough to respond to).

Yep. Written conversations lack the live, non-verbal feedback that one gets face to face, so it makes sense to spend more time thinking about it to make sure that you convey what you want. I also prefer meeting people in person. It makes stronger relationships.

Ergo, if you are a successful entrepreneur, you are probably an exceptionally intelligent, considerate artist with a proclivity for action.

Maybe it was not meant that way, but it sounds to me like over-the-top flattery.

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