Hacker News Reader

Comment by taneq | Hacker News Reader

I think with n=1 it's pretty hard to call it a skill. He made a call and was lucky. And it wasn't a hard call for him to make - if Toy Story had flopped, at least he wouldn't be out of pocket for the ongoing expenses of the studio. He took a punt on win-big-or-quit when he was planning on quitting anyway. The only downside to the call was for the people working for him, and his track record on that front speaks for itself.

View on HN

This is the problem with all the success stories like Jobs and other billionaire. They all took incredible amount of risk and it paid of.

You never hear about the thousands (millions?) that took similar level of risk and didn't make it. Actually billionaire stories are almost typical example of reckless behaviour. There is a bit a cognitive dissonance in society to strongly reject billionaire behaviour except when it all works out and your behaviour become instead aspirational stories to be emulated.

What you're describing reminds me of survivor bias - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

That's pretty much what any successful business story is. It's not like a market springs up, and the eventual dominators of that market immediately own it. There is lots of competition and failed ventures and aquisitions etc. Then we hear about the literal survivors that dominate in the end.

Few gamers of today recall VooDoo or SGI, for instance. And most consumers have no idea what a Tandy is (was?).

Oh man, you mention Tandy. Dick Smith (which was basically Tandy in Australia) finally went tits up a couple of months ago. They'd been bought out by some mob that wanted them to be the next Harvey Norman, and the pivot did not go well. Happily Altronics and Jaycar seem to have picked up the slack between them and we still have someone to turn when we want to buy misc. parts.

Thanks for this, was interesting to read about all the Dick Smith clones of American computers back in the day.

Precisely. It's a perfect example of survivor bias.

SJ's track record was actually n=3.

Apple made him the youngest tech multi-millionaire. Pixar a billionaire. Apple, again, where he built the world's most valuable company and insane profits.

More n than most billionaires, no? Only Buffet has a real n>5.

I could see a case being made that iTunes with its disruption of the music industry should count as a success on its own. Same for the iPhone and App Store. Same possibly in the future for Apple TV (we'll see), although obviously Steve's participation in thst one was limited to the envisioning phase. But you might get me on a technicality by saying that n represents actual successful IPOs. In that case take this comment as not being about n, but more about simply business successes.

Well Apple had something of an inside track there, as they were already a household name in the creative industries.

You're absolutely right, I was keeping it simple to stay out of SJ fanboy derailments.

Key is he was not a one-trick pony. Real data to prove it.

Right now I'd put Bezos in that category with an n=2 (ecommerce, AWS).

To show a counterexample, Brin/Page have an n=1 - ads. Rest is cool tech, but not significant business and yes, I am adding Youtube into the ads business idea.

Same with Zuckerberg, both Instagram and WhatsApp were about adding eyeballs to the same business model - super ideas, but additive. If Facebook Workplace takes off as a paid-for business, he will have n=2.

How about Elon Musk? He would rate n=3, don't you think?

now that one is interesting.

Does PayPal count? How much relied on the others? I don't know.

Tesla, Solarcity and SpaceX are all on the verge, but not quite there yet.

5 years from now he either has a n=3+ or is known as a massive flameout. but yeah, good shot at being a SJ 2.0.

Shai Agassi of Better Place comes to mind: https://www.fastcompany.com/3028159/a-broken-place-better-pl...

Except it's not N=1. He did it with Apple (arguably twice). He did it with Pixar. He sort of did it with NeXT. He arguably did it 2-3 times with Apple with the iPod, iTunes, and iPhone.

I'm not a big fan, but calling Steve Jobs a one-trick-pony with one good call is inaccurate.

Every time someone succeeds, people call it out for good luck.

In the case of Steve Jobs, that takes a lot of good luck. Good luck repeated reliably over the course of his life.

It's funny how good luck falls more on people often who work hard...

I think the point is that even if you're 100x as "lucky" if you work hard, if x << 1, then it's also true that 100x << 1.

But that's exactly what survivor bias IS. Jobs took some very long shots, and hit the bullseye on each of them. (He also missed a couple cough NeXT cough.) How long would you say the odds of him making the right call all those times? A million to one?

There were at least a million other people who started in about the same situation, and worked just as hard, and made similarly risky calls. They didn't get heads all the way, and now you're not reading their autobiography or talking about them on HN.

Don't discard your priors.

Do you think with the first time he pushed out of Apple (1985) and then his failures at NeXT, he found some kind of formula he employed to suddenly be able to hit the bulls eye more consistently?

It would seem Apple had several low level failures (Lisa, iMac mouse, G4 cube), but his big bets (iTunes, iPad, iPhone) always seemed to pay off.

Other than the iPhone none of that would look like a big bet if they had failed or not taken off.

Attributing a causal relationship between hard work and success ignores the millions who work hard and are not successful.

Hard work in itself doesn't matter. You also have to work in a smart way. Most people work hard, but not smart.

The wealthy boss will always sell you on hard work being responsible for being where he is today. But who gains most from a hard working employee - the employee or the boss?

The boss, obviously. Most wealthy people I know with net worths over $100m (maybe some tech founders excluding) aren't really hard working.. they're strategic thinkers and deal makers, and they know how to get stuff done, but I would not consider them hard working. They tend to live relatively relaxed lifestyles but are smart about how to achieve results when required. And when required, that might mean once a year.