Contrast this with some of the people I grew up who came from wealthy families: A lot of their parents pushed them toward entrepreneurship and funded their ventures, but to date I can only think of one business from this cluster of friends that went anywhere. When you come from such resources and wealth that you don’t need to succeed and you can drop the business as soon as it becomes difficult, it’s a different situation.
I don’t know exactly what to make of this, other than to remind myself to keep pushing through the difficult times for things I really want even when I could fall back to an easy path and give up.
Succeeding without safety net is hard -> only the best can do it -> the best entrepreneurs you know did not had a safety net
The answer seems self evident, but idk for sure, and I would like to know the Gini coefficient of successes vs failures among safety netters be that of non-safety netters. Wouldn’t we expect the successes within the safety net to be massively larger on average than those of the non-safety netters, given that a safety net affords you so many more swings to take? Your comment suggests that this is not the case, driven by the selection/survivor effect within non-safety net
"has safety net" and "has success" - one major factor here is not having a poverty mentality that would lead to panicking and quitting early
as well as between "has safety net" and "takes multiple swings if no initial success", for the direct reason of "can afford to do so."
Also need to define what successful means because a lot of trades people are successful solo-prenuers but don't make more than say a doctor.
Take Bill Gates, his father cofounded a law firm, and his mother was a board members of several firms. That is a very wealthy background, but not outrageously so. How many people of the same level of wealth became successful businesspeople? It's said that his mom being on the same board as IBM's CEO at the time was a more instrumental factor to his eventual success than his family's wealth, and his own effort of course.
This sounds a lot like "his family's wealth was a more instrumental factor than his family's wealth" since "being on a board" is pretty rarified air. It's not Gates-himself-level wealthy, but what percentile is that? 90th? 95th? 99th?
Bezos’s mom was his first investor, giving him $300K.
Then he also had connections to millionaires through his family
Bill Gates’ mother, Mary Gates, was instrumental in securing Microsoft's first major deal with IBM through her connections. His family was wealthy and provided connections and support
The best businesses I've seen parents find for their children are lettings agents (urgh) and basic manufacturing (last mile door assembly etc.). You can get the business model in a six month course, the staff are minimum wage, the product is high margin. If your parents buy the building you are so close to default alive its a joke. Grow the business, flip it, and try the big idea.
Peter used to say, that every successful company could look back at a defining moment early on, where they would have died had it not been for the courage, and the tenacity, and maybe the insanity of one visionary person who put it all on the line, even though it seemed like a huge mistake at the time.
A moment where all the metrics and the numbers didn't mean anything.
It was all about the emotion. It was about belief, rational or irrational.
And I think...
I hope that I just witnessed that.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2014/11/19/why-you-...
The whole idea of succeeding by “grit” makes way too many people too idealistic and unrealistic.
Don’t get me wrong, Peter Drucker (hopefully that’s the Peter you are referring to) had some great actionable advice. But believing in yourself and having grit is about as banal as “thoughts and prayers”
But what makes the difference in whether or not we hear about it is pure luck and survivor bias.
If their luck was just right that with all that push in the right time the deal came through or the product sold, then we hear about what a great success it was, and how important was their grit.
And many smart determined people with all the courage, tenacity, and risk-taking in the world have also taken the big risk, but dice did not roll their way, or the hill was just so steep it didn't work, so we hear nothing of them. And their number likely vastly exceeds the few for whom it did work.
Otherwise maybe more poor people try startups so success will be biased towards them (rich will take over daddy or mommy business... maybe take a shot at a startup for fun but say meh lets try the business, plus there are waaaaay fewer rich).
Or to put it another way: Most people who live >100 are also from modest backgrounds too. As are olympic gold winners. Us paupers are the best!
There’s probably some truthyness to this but it doesn’t account for survivorship bias. And there’s a baseline amount of resources necessary to take a risk and be able to try again (e.g., good luck taking a risk when preoccupied by [lack of] health, housing, food).
Typical small businesses (plumbing, HVAC, restaurants, convenience stores) I’d expect to come from poorer families. These businesses are a potential avenue to success without traditional credentials, and they’re not the sort of thing somebody is likely to start as a passion.
From wealthy families, I’d expect vanity businesses. There wouldn’t be as much motivation for the annoying aspects of a real business. And anyone who is interested in business can probably get a nice start in something their family owns or has a major stake in.
Moonshot companies I’d expect to come from the upper middle class, children of doctors and such. Not fabulously wealthy, so the potential for making millions can still be a big motivator. But comfortable enough to get advanced schooling and be willing to aim big with a chance of failure, rather than going for something mundane you know is always in demand, like fixing pipes.
Off the top of my head, Gates, Page, and Zuckerberg all fit that mold.
It has one of the weakest social security systems. Not even proper healthcare is guaranteed. Yet it out innovates all of Europe, Canada, Australia, other places that have incredible social "safety nets".
I agree with the other commenter: safety nets and multiple tries are always good to have, but persistence and grit are even more important, and these come more from necessity.
Probability: highly unlikely.
Speaking for Europe, I see a lot of silent innovation. No press, no LinkedIn posts, not an article on their website. There are a lot of US firms that shop in Europe for high tech. (I know of instances were the US company buys the IP from the EU supplier + take public credit for it + forbids the supplier for showcasing their success in public.)
What is different is:
1) the amount of money available in the US. The US enjoyed a very beneficial position post-WOII, enabling them to run high deficits.
2) the US has a positive attitude to entrepreneurship. You are not a failure when your company goes bankrupt, you learn from it and you go-go-go.
In other words, human capital.
Most of the entrepreneurs I meet are not going to be homeless if things don't work out. They'll be employed.
Forgive me for asking, but (if it's acceptable to reduce it to that) isn't joining the army or something gets one covered? The army service would come with the added bonus of not letting you go soft in perseverance and risk taking areas.
/sarcasm
…except it is. Health insurance is available on a sliding scale based on income and essentially free for most low income people.
I don’t think my older (step)son has had insurance since he got off our plan at 26 over two years ago.
https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/medicaid-insurers-doct...
Did you have any (real, not GenZ) mental or physical disability?
Did you have a house to come back to every day? Did you have a hot meal waiting for you whenever you wanted?
Did you have a community that supported you through your business?
Did you have a legal structure around you that allowed you not to worry about getting kidnapped/killed? A structure that enforces getting paid after you've earned your money?
98% of what you have was given.
I do agree, however, that a lot of people don't even bother to put in the remaining 2%.
“Can you start a business on an empty stomach without a roof over your head” is not the same debate. A roof over your head is a prerequisite to almost everything else in life - starting a business is WAY down the list. Better to have societies work to provide food and roofs - which they do, with varying degrees of success.
People without those things cannot play the lottery as many times as those who have them. They might not even get to play it once.
If everyone around you has all of those basic human needs met, you are the exception.
But of course people don't like to hear this, because their whole meritocracy myth (which has always been trash) comes falling down and they might be forced to admit that, please excuse me for making this outrageous statement, ... you're just an average person with slightly better luck than others.
(It is true, however, that "luck" compounds through your life and even more through generations, though. But that even detracts from the meritocracy myth even more, as the family you're born in greatly defines what you'll achieve.)
Luck is often the deciding factor in meritocracy, but we also make our own luck. You can have all the privleges in the world and still end up as a failson, it happens all the time.
That’s not even considering that the intern I mentored in 2021 is now making in the low $200s as an SA at BigTech at 25.
The wealthy get infinite at-bats. They get to stand at the plate for however long they want, and swing and swing until they get their home run. I worked with a founder like this. He would always talk about his business's humble beginnings, starting from a garage and so on--you know the story. What he would neglect to admit was this was like his 7th try. Every time he failed, he'd just chill on his family's couch, dreaming up his next startup idea.
To go with the sports analogy, (paraphrasing, been awhile since I read it) it mentions how birth date coinciding with the youth sport season was a strong determiner of success at that sport because being ~11 months older in the same age group meant they were bigger faster more experienced and would be played more, compounding increases in skill.
There was also a similar concept floating around about darts, where the poor get maybe one dart to throw, middle class a few and wealthier get many. But I can't remember where I saw or read that
There are plenty of people who tried repeatedly to “succeed” in their own company and failed. Let’s say I did try to start my own company at 22 10x and spent 3 years at each one. I’m now 52 and would have been better off just working those 30 years and saving and investing with a lot less stress
That’s the equivalent of a 51 year old with a limp not being self aware enough to know that I don’t have the skills to be a basketball player just because I can dribble.
What worked for me best was looking around a lot, identifying a few worthy targets, and aiming well.
For what? Their garbage SaaS that barely works and is just a thin veneer for advertisers to gorge on my data?
By the time, our are faced with the choice, our kid will be embedded in school so ripping them out of it is going to be a tough choice.
So, yeah, we’re essentially burning our boats and fighting to survive.
Our choice us somewhat made easier because we didn’t like any of the schools near us except this one. The others were focused on exams/results and were larger in size so felt more “corporate”.
The entire idea of most entrepreneurs pulling themselves up by their bootstraps in tech is a myth. Out of all of major tech companies now, how many of the founders came from disadvantaged backgrounds?
At an earlier point in my life, I had been applying to many well-known big tech companies right out of school (not a top school either). I never got a reply from any of them so I ended up accepting a local job with a non-tech company after months of searching.
But I didn’t give up my hopes and kept applying to big tech, and while I did manage to get the occasional interview with some mediocre companies or the random startup, I also miserably failed all of them too.
At some point during my long period of despair at never getting a better job, my very top pick (and arguably one of the best tech companies in the world at the time) reached out to me. Even more miraculously, I somehow passed their interview (the only tech interview I passed in the prior year) and accepted a job there.
I really enjoyed working there. Some of the best years of my life. And my performance reviews were great too, so the imposter syndrome from having failed so many tech job interviews sort of faded into the background. But after a while, perhaps due to the “hedonic treadmill” mentality, I thought I could do better. So I left to join a startup.
Well, the startup failed, as startups tend to do, but what I didn’t expect and what caught me off guard was that I was now back in the same situation I was in right after graduating from college. Don’t get me wrong—having “the name” on my resume now meant I could get at least one chance at an interview about anywhere. But much like the first round that I tried to forget about, I once again failed all the interviews.
Unfortunately, this second time around never procured a “get out of jail free” card.
So I guess my lesson is: 1) there’s a lot of luck involved in these things, 2) if life gives you a winning lottery ticket at some point, don’t throw it away for the chance to win an even bigger lottery, and 3) that famous saying about “the only actions regretted are those not taken” is absolutely, totally wrong—almost all of my regrets in life relate to taking some action I shouldn’t have rather than inaction.
And also I’ve long ago dissociated my tech interview performance with my actual performance indicated by performance reviews.
I'm now taking time out to try to figure out how to escape the confines of the career path I've taken to find something different.
Open to suggestions of entirely different careers that I could switch to that might have higher odds of not being toxic rat-races full of people telling lies and bullshit just to survive.
But broader experience suggests the world of work just sucks these days (and yes, it's these days - our parent's generation had a brief period of doing 9-to-5 jobs which paid well enough to afford homes, have families and social lives and holidays. We don't get that now.). No wonder large numbers of my generation are dropping out of the workforce...
I think this can be a useful maxim to get you to the next day, but in reality it takes a lot more than one of anything for a fulfilling life. We grow and change and need novelty. We are held in a web of interdependent, ever-shifting relationships - with people, businesses, material goods, ecology. I think that generally people are seeking connection in a broader sphere. To be held in community, to have multiple significant identities (mother/wife/boss), to live in richness and abundance where any one thing is not make or break.
We seem to view "reality" through different lenses. I've usually found "one" to be a magic number; as long as it's the "right one." That's the gist of what he's saying.
In my experience, needing more than one, often signals issues that need closer examination.
In my community, we have a joke: "An addict is someone that needs two One-A-Days."
There's a lot of initial investment and groundworks, then once you're well-integrated, the marginal returns get higher for the most established relationships.
Or we can realize we have some things to learn that we will learn no matter whether we pick the startup, or job to learn transferrable skills and also become better well rounded.
What do you do if the job that makes you an offer doesn't excite you? What if the house that feels like home needs more repairs than you can afford? What if the program that accepts you has crappy funding? What if the person who chooses you has red flags?
Do you say "screw it," cross your fingers, and walk through the door that kind of sucks? Or do you keep looking as long as your resources last you?
So when you say, ‘kinda sucks’, perhaps ask if the opinion is grounded in (your) reality?
Once recalibrated to accept that what we are in, is inescapable true life, then we stop looking for something better, and instead focus on the challenge of making it better than it should naturally be.
Happiness I believe, is a decision, we choose it when we feel it’s a sustainable perspective. I think it’s sustainable to allow ourselves to be happy, whenever we achieve marginal improvement on what is natural.
Specifics, about the job and yourself, matter. If you feel like sharing, this is a pretty good community with good instincts.
The magic in "all it takes is for one to work out" is in the strength it gives you to keep trying. Trying something that might fail is hard, even when we know that trying is the right thing to do.
More widely applicable advice would be how to deal with compromise, not how to hold out for "the right one."
“All it takes is for one to work out.” is not the same as "You just need the one [job] that’s the right fit." or "You just need the one [house] that feels like home." or "You just need the one [life partner]."
Author's examples are, spiritually, the opposite of their friend's advice - in fact, "all it takes is for one to work out" is something often said to people who lost hope because they got lost being too picky.
I started out where the author was. Well, roughly. +Kids, -Secondary edu. I could and did rise above that. And above 3 economy shifts that each reset my biz to zero.
I did not rise above my spouse being swapped for an adult with profound psych issues. I took on the single dad and caregiver roles well enough.
However, I could not overcome the daily sabotage of, well, everything. It's like a TV trope where you are shackled to your worst enemy. But you have to keep them safe and your loved ones safe from them.
It's tough to maintain a job schedule when the police frequently call you during the workday (w and w/o CPS). Or when your transpo is stolen and can't be replaced.
In short, it's particular tough to pretend to be stable. Eventually there are no bridges left to burn.
Some of these risks are hard to adjust for. I guess you've got to muster all the grit and keep walking.
Also BTW, you've shown enough but let me wish you more strength for you. All the very best!
I should probably still try that.
Mission accomplished.
and that is a good thing
This is all the more sad for me because among all the spam, many high effort articles get posted to /newest but many don't get the upvotes. These shallow, feel-good articles always get the upvotes. I guess it takes more time to read and appreciate a high effort article. So I understand why this happens. But ...
Through these experiences I totally agree, and try to apply it to life, but it's hard, even knowing that it's true. How cool is it for every college, person, job offer, scholarship to want you?
Even though we're looking just for "the one" it's very hard for me to mitigate the feeling of getting rejected, even knowing it was not "the one". Rejection generally hurts, when you care about the goal
Life had to spark only once, leading to the subsequent explosion in variety and complexity.
It didn't try to maximise by how much it won, but just that it won. Apparently it changed the meta for human pkayers.
If you have the time for it, the movie/doc is worth watching https://youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_Anyone_Builds_It,_Everyone_...
Really it's just odds of finding success vs effort / time spent. And whether that's worth it.
Any of the blanket statements could be true depending on what the exact odds are.
There could be near 0% chance of finding success and it would be better idea to rethink and spend time elsewhere, or yes, there's 10% chance of finding success and it's significant enough that trying 20 times is enough.
If we are talking about e.g. finding a house, if you are not finding any it could very well be that your expectations vs budget is unlikely to find anything and you have to reconsider strategy.
Someone could be repeatedly trying to find work, and thinking it's just a matter of time, but really time would be better spent on improving their strategy, resume, or other means.
These statements to me seem like motivational non-sense which misrepresent how real world works or what the patterns really are like. At best they just give someone a false understanding of how the world works, at worst they make someone spend all their time in the wrong direction.
If I gamble and try 10 times and win once - I have probably lost money.
Even if I interview 10 times and fail 9, I’ve learned something from each interview and I’ve gotten better. That’s also not true from rolling dice.
This is in contrast to gambling where you actually do need to win more often than not to win overall.
If the alternative to send to yet another university application is to start a new match of CoD then it wasn't a loss.
Worse, this guy isn't trying to get a job. He's just trying to get into grad school. Which is no longer a guarantee of a good career, but may be a guarantee of a big debt. Remember that "I did everything right" post on HN a few weeks ago? CS degree from a good school, but nobody wants junior CS people any more.
So, all it takes is for you to work out: You may not get into that grad school / that job, but you'll be healthier and you'll feel less depressed. In fact, even if you're in grad school, it's pretty good advice for coping avoiding burnout, coping with impostor syndrome etc.
Thanks for the tip buddy!
You mean, the first one to say yes. Tbh seems more like first to say yes, not first to be fit and say yes.
> You don’t need every house to accept your offer. You just need the one that feels like home.
Same here. Is easy to find one to say yes. Hard to be “feels like home” && say yes.
> You don’t need every person to want to build a life with you. You just need the one.
“The one” is hard.
>You don’t need ten universities to say yes. You just need the one that opens the right door.
Same. What even means “the right door”? How can you even know before you got in?
I think it’s a bad analogy. At least frame it a more realistic: your only need one job to say yes. Might not be the right job but it’s a job. Same for all other.
Here in Bay Area, in Silicon Valley, all you need is to try hard and get lucky once.
>You don’t need every job to choose you. You just need the one that’s the right fit.
When I’m applying for a job, I can apply for multiple jobs at once and interview for multiple jobs over a a few weeks. It’s especially easy when I am both interviewing and working remotely. I don’t have to make excuses to leave work during the middle of the day or worse case fly out for an interview.
The same is true for buying a home, I can put bids in for multiple homes - or in my case just have my homes built in 2003 and 2016. I know the world is different now.
>You don’t need every person to want to build a life with you. You just need the one.
This is one place where of course you can shoot your shot at multiple potential partners and date often. What you don’t want to do is try marriage multiple times if it can be avoided. A bad marriage will wreck every part of your life and a divorce will set you back financially. (Happily remarried for 15 years after a horrible first marriage.)
None of his examples are applicable to starting a business. 9/10 startups fail and even out of those that “succeed” only a small number of those have an outsized return for the founder where they wouldn’t be better off financially working a regular old enterprise dev job for those years let alone getting a job at BigTech.
VCs can make multiple bets at one time and be more assured that they capture the 1/10 startups that succeed than a founder.
There is a huge difference between being able to take multiple chances at once in all of those scenarios and being stuck with the 1/10 choices you make for multiple years.
Applicable not just for grad school applications, but also to job apps, startups, and relationships.
Hang in there y'all, all it takes is for one to work out. Keep working hard, kings & queens.
If you're never done growing, you're never done peaking, nor ever really done trying.
One working out can lead to the next way.
Wishing everyone well who this piece resonated with.
Sheesh. HN is grumpy today.
You have already lost, you can only win.
All it takes, is for one to work out.
There's a false equivalence between -
“All it takes is for one to work out.”
and the following:
- "You don’t need every job to choose you. You just need the one that’s the right fit."
- "You don’t need every house to accept your offer. You just need the one that feels like home. "
The latter assumes that _every_ attempt you make has a chance at being "the right fit", "the one that feels like home". That is not the way things works for 99% of us.