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Let an entrepreneur be

avlesh.wordpress.com

29 pointssooperman9 comments

Another member of the Cult of Startup.

Startups are proto-businesses. Being a startup means you get to break the rules and out-compete established businesses, because you have nothing to lose. A startup is a business though, creating a startup is hacking the legal system and abusing the concept of corporation and limited liability, but it is still a business. Business means 'trying to make money'. If you don't make a huge multiple of what you would have made elsewhere, Startup is Fail. Acceptance of this leads to clear thinking, proper prioritization, and a much greater chance of success.

Any gambler will tell you that you must take a wager that offers positive expected value. However, they will also ruthlessly face reality and attempt to figure out what is happening if they keep losing over and over.

I guess what I'm saying is, Startup culture is valuable because of the chance of success only, failure is failure.

Can't agree more to what you are saying Justin. I keep sharing this with fellow entrepreneurs - http://bhorowitz.com/2011/10/08/nobody-cares/

Gamblers should not tell you to take any positive expected value wager. There's still the matter of the Kelly Criterion (ie. your bankroll) to consider [1].

The (rough) equivalent in startup world would be your risk appetite and/or financial stability.

[1] http://blog.streeteye.com/blog/2011/11/why-only-millionaires...

Kelly Criterion exists to manage volatility and risk of ruin.

It says what size of bet to make, not whether or not to make a wager. This is no different from a startup, where you might take investment, pay yourself a salary, or sell shares to reduce your personal risk.

My original point was that yes, if you believe startups offer much better outcomes than a regular job for you, you really should do startups and ignore everyone telling you not to. However, if the startups you join fail over, and over, and over, and over, at some point you should stop and try to figure out if startups are really not a good idea for you. It may be that the startups you choose to join are bad, or it could be that only badly run startups would hire you, or it could just be a string of bad breaks. Pretending otherwise is pretty foolish.

I agree, the Kelly Criterion tells you what size of bet to make. And if the size of the bet you should make is greater than your bankroll (or risk appetite), then logically... you should not make the bet.

And (indeed), this is the exact analogy you're using. If you place bet after bet after bet (ie. doing repeated failed startups), then perhaps you should re-evaluate your bankroll (opportunity cost?) and do something else for a bit.

[I think we're in agreement. I just wouldn't use positive expected value as the argument.]

> Contrary to the popular belief, an entrepreneur is NOT a businessman. The former has a much larger goal than ONLY making money.

I don't agree with this sentiment. To be a good entrepreneur you have to be a businessman and know how to start and run a business (or learn how to start and run a business). However that doesn't mean you have to sell your soul for money and a good (and ultimately successful) entrepreneur can build a business that solves problems, provides really good value for customers and makes money for himself as well as the rest of the team.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw

inspirational !

Every surprisingly insightful decision will be met with derision before you execute it. That is where courage, stubbornness and willpower come into play. Success is always based on ignoring 99% of the opinions around you. If not enough people think your plan is impossible, your idea is simply not particularly good. If you do not fail a few times first, it cannot be such a good idea either. It is simply too obvious in that case. Next, when the inevitable has materialized and Sergey Brin and Larry Page have become billionaires, they will start whining that such outcome is "unfair" and that these ill-gotten gains should be "re-distributed" to the more unfortunate and less "lucky" elements of society.

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