Nassim Nicholas Taleb on startups | Hacker News Reader

Nassim Nicholas Taleb on startups

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37 pointseugenejen8 comments

>> People start thinking in terms of other people's perception of the business, for raising cash. Like prostitutes.

This. The only startup vitamin poster you will ever need.

Sorry, but Taleb just seems to have turned into a bitter old man. Yes, that's personal, but that's my point. A lot of his arguments really boil down to criticizing people's personal characteristics rather than challenging their arguments.

Earlier Taleb wasn't like this (although the seeds of bitterness were there). The works he is known for are pretty solid, interesting and thoughtful.

This is one of several blogs posts/comments/articles he's written lately where it really just serves as platform for criticizing all those people "who don't take risks", or "bureaucrats."

Bottom line: he's just not that interesting any more.

On his list of what's needed: "Convexity". Um, what? What does that mean, in a startup context?

He means the gains from doing well are greater than the losses from doing badly I think, kinda. http://www.advisorperspectives.com/articles/2013/07/16/nassi...

These facts are just wrong. Google and FB both received massive funding early on.

Google started with practical attempts to improve searches and had a hard time at first because they were a search engine when people thought search engines were over. Facebook started as a way of connecting people at school and didn't get big funding until much later when the leader took a major risk by leaving school which seems to emphasize what Taleb is saying about risk being central. Relying on funding too soon may indicate that investors are the only real customers.

>Google began in March 1995 as a research project

>Some Rough Statistics (from August 29th, 1996) Total indexable HTML urls: 75.2306 Million Total content downloaded: 207.022 gigabytes

>The first funding for Google as a company was secured in August 1998 in the form of a US$100,000 contribution from Andy Bechtolsheim

>In January 2004, Mark Zuckerberg began writing the code for a new website, known as 'theFacebook'.

> Within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard was registered on the service.

>In the summer of 2004, venture capitalist Peter Thiel made a $500,000 angel investment

So both were up and running before getting investment. And not massive amounts to begin with. I do kind of disagree with Taleb's point:

>What is needed? 1) .... and above all, 5) risk loving

Neither Page nor Zuckerberg took much risk. If their projects failed business wise they just would have ended up with a PhD from Stanford and a degree from Harvard respectively. What they had that was needed was enthusiasm for building cool stuff.

can't believe this has only 8 upvotes and largely ignored by people because it's the inconvenient truth about startups, largely founded by people who are empty suits, highly optmisic headless chickens who are against risk taking and juice behind the charisma.

I think it's great that HN is celebrating nassim taleb's black swan theory with the black bar at the top

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