Ask HN: Do super smart people avoid entrepreneurship? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do super smart people avoid entrepreneurship?

15 pointsamichail28 comments

Perhaps it's not a rational thing for them to do given the risks. They would probably have much better opportunities as employees.

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Successful entrepreneurs are more likely to be smarter than less successful entrepreneurs, but the most successful people in any field are more likely to belong to the set of "super smart."

I think to some degree, "super smart" people are less likely to be interested in entrepreneurship because they find the business aspects of entrepreneurship dull. (I don't think you could classify me as "super smart," but I belong to the set of people bored by business.) Some people want to spend all their time solving problems that they find fascinating. Taking less financial risk -- and consequently reaping fewer financial rewards -- might be a worthwhile trade-off if it means you can spend all, or at least more of, your time tackling problems you find fascinating.

I agree.

I'd rather spend my time programming, building interesting things(interesting by my definitions) and learning new tech than building (or overseeing the construction of) things, spending time on making sure that other people are going to like it, finding ways to monetize it, hiring people and retaining them, ensuring they get paid every month, and keeping a commercial enterprise afloat.

"... Successful entrepreneurs are more likely to be smarter than less successful entrepreneurs, but the most successful people in any field are more likely to belong to the set of "super smart." ..."

If you replaced "determined" for "smart" I'd probably agree ~ http://paulgraham.com/determination.html

Yeah, I think I agree with this more. My guess would be that those with profound intellectual abilities gravitate towards fields with more "concrete complexity"- the math/science type careers that demand a considerable raw intelligence to have a good chance at making contributions.

Fields like business/entrepreneurship don't necessarily require this sheer brainpower because it can be sacrificed for (and one might argue necessarily requires) things like street smarts/people skills, creativity, etc.

Do you have any reasons to believe this other than your own rationalizations? I'd like to see some evidence, please.

I think it depends more on other aspects of the person's interests and personality than a linear smartness factor. For example, not many top physicists historically have been entrepreneurs (Einstein dabbled in a Freon-free refrigerator, but mostly because he was repeatedly lured by an entrepreneur who wanted Einstein's assistance on it, as opposed to great entrepreneurial interest on Einstein's part). A lot of top computer-science types have been, but a lot also haven't been. You've got some Sergey Brin / Larry Page types, who start businesses, and some Ken Thompson / Dennis Ritchie types, who don't.

> They would probably have much better opportunities as employees.

Nope. Nobody ever made a billion dollars working for someone else, but more to the point very few employees actually get to decide their own destiny. Imagine what Steve Wozniak's life would look like if he had never met Steve Jobs. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts he'd still be designing test equipment for some asshole boss. Arguably he ended up designing microcomputers for some asshole boss, but there were a few perks.

Plenty of people don't have the constitution or the inclination for entrepreneurship and that's fine, but they're never going to see a tenth of the opportunities as an employee than they would as an entrepreneur.

The obvious counterexample would be the likes of Xerox PARC and Bell Labs, but I think they're weak examples. PARC may have invented the WIMP interface, but it was Apple that changed the world with it. Alan Kay is a hell of a thinker and has been hugely influential, but he doesn't get to organise rock festivals or go Dancing With The Stars.

You assume that super smart people have money as their primary goal in life.

I have found this to be far from true. The truly brilliant people I know follow their passions, and usually make just enough money to do so, spending the rest of their energy on their actual passions.

Even if your ratio is right, that they get only a tenth of the opportunities as entrepreneurs... they tend to land the right ones, make the correct one, and be very satisfied with their lives.

Are there any truly brilliant people for whom money (in some abstract, score-keeping sense) is their passion? You could argue this for Warren Buffet, who isn't crazy about spending a lot of money but is very serious about investing well.

You could also be super smart and also passionate about something that immediately leads to making lots of money--Steve Jobs, for instance, is undeniably passionate about the kinds of products Apple makes, and how well they make them.

That only works for a very narrow range of 'passions', namely those that don't require money to fulfil. Larry Ellison is the perfect example. He's passionate about sailing, so he buys the sixth largest yacht in the world and runs an America's Cup team. He's passionate about aviation, so he buys a fleet of fighter jets. He's passionate about medieval Japan, so he builds a piece of it for himself.

Thinking that money is just about money is a middle-class mistake. Money is capital, capital is power. Money is the lever with which you move the world. Money is how things get done.

The usual counterexample is academia, that a tenured academic has the freedom to pursue their discipline. That's not true and it hasn't been true for years. Most academics are under constant pressure to produce research and bring in funding.

You're right to say that you just need to make enough money to pursue your passions, but unless your passions are hopelessly mediocre, 'enough' has a lot of zeroes.

> The truly brilliant people I know follow their passions, and usually make just enough money to do so, spending the rest of their energy on their actual passions.

This sounds suspiciously like No True Scotsman

Just a fack check.

There is at least one person who have worked for others and becomes a billionaire because of that: Charles Simonyi. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Simonyi). But he is probably the only 1 in 6,697,254,041 human beings who achieve billionairehood by working for others.

And yes, he worked one time in Xerox PARC before Microsoft.

Yet from your link it says: "He now heads his own company, Intentional Software,[1] with the aim of developing and marketing his concept of intentional programming."

I was not talking about entrepreneurship, but "Nope. Nobody ever made a billion dollars working for someone else,".

But quite a few people made $20 million working for someone else. Unless you have a strong desire to be a Global Corporate Titan, you don't gain much utility going from $20 mil to $1 bil.

Rumor has it that several extremely early and important Googlers are billionaires, including Marissa Mayer and Jeff Dean. Same for Facebook.

Keyword: early. Those employees were also risking by joining a new company.

I would think the obvious one is Eric Schmidt

To answer this question, one would need to...

a) accurately define intelligence (good luck), and

b) know the motives of those who belong to that highest tier of intellegence (again, good luck).

This is 100% anecdotal, but based on everything I've really ever seen: absolutely not.

This isn't directly related to your question, but thought you'd find this 5 minute video interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU7Y6HiLXto

It's Art Williams (inspirational speaker guy) who mentions he doesn't think "smart" people are likely to "succeed" in business, because they try to figure things out too much. Instead, he preaches (almost literally) a "just do it" mentality.

Worth the few minutes if you haven't seen it.

I don't think there is any correlation between smartness and a particular aspiration like, wanting to be an entrepreneurship.

All of the most successful entrepreneurs, I am sure they are among the smartest people. Its just being a scientist, the typical tag for 'smartness', may not have been their aspiration.

Jobs, Gates, Theil, these are all very smart people who went on to be entrepreneurs.

Actually I find that super smart people care very little about money, and more about what they're doing, so that's one reason a lot of them go into academia.

Luckily I'm not super smart so I don't have to spend my days writing papers, instead I write code!

It seems to me there are 3 basic components to "smart" 1) How fast your processor is. 2) How big your data base is. 3) How refined your algorithms are.

Depends on your definition of "super smart". I had put a successful entrepreneur in "super smart" category.

Even if entrepreneurship is irrational, there's no requirement that smart people are necessarily rational.

It depends on how you define smart.

Well, super smart people probably don't ask such silly questions and then worry about the answers. They're out there doing something smart.

Unless they're super smart AND have an anxiety problem, and thus want to be told whether they're normal (or not).

What was your goal?

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