[Me gets to the end of the article] Oh, Ben has a new book coming out so he needs to shill it. Makes sense.
More than ever, we need to tone down the clickbait, put it to perspective, and understand if it's something we should give attention to. HN does this in a quick manner
Then I ran into something truly awful, and got drugged (and possibly raped, though I will never know). I've been afraid since then, and it's gonna take me a good long while to shake it off. It has immensely negatively affected my life, and it's made me question my judgement in a lot of situations - because I'm pretty sure the experience is only unique in that the stars aligned, not that the intent, will, and opportunity wasn't there in plenty of previous places, only didn't all line up before.
I don't have anything that I can take from it, except a certainty that Chestertons fence is real, and a lot of things that are looked down upon are looked down upon for good reason.
In the context that Ben is writing this post (founding a startup), basically the worst thing that can happen to you is that your company goes bankrupt and you have to look for a job. It feels a lot scarier than that because your ego gets wrapped up in the startup and all sorts of negative events can be existential threats to the startup, but there are basically no physical threats to your person other than yourself. If a tiger comes running at you or someone points a gun at you, by all means, be afraid and run away, but if you're signing a $30M lease, be afraid and then face that fear and rationally analyze the risks.
This post reeks of the privilege of a VC who sells self-help books.
To put it kindly, I disagree.
It's not that you need to spot a ball is about to drop and catch it. Founders are up at 2am and every e-staff & advice meeting thinking about them & then acting on them. However, running at all of them will give you a heart attack, burn out your team, and derail your mission.
Instead, you have to accept that a ton of balls are dropping, and somehow get good at guiding which & how. Now that's a chapter I'd like to read :)
That’s what we need in a modern non-jungle world - understand your impulses, but be enough in control or yourself to rationally examine your environmental triggers, counteract your adrenaline and logically decide your future actions.
Save the evolutionary adaptions for your camping trip.
I'm always baffled that people who flop in the most spectacular way manage to convince others to buy books with advice from them.
I distinctly remember an article about a year or so ago touting a new managing partner(?) at a VC who ran his one and only startup into the ground. The logic was "He can help you not to do what he did"
Isn't that confusing what someone who fails should do ( do it again/do something else/try another path) with what those who see it should do ( not listen to whoever failed about how to succeed at doing what the failed person did )?
I'd argue a great engineer is someone who can anticipate exactly how a software product is going to evolve, where it will not scale properly in those cases and see if the code they are writing today is potentially going to be a problem then or not (and play a fine line game of not over-engineering vs. preparing for future circumstances).
Should have have addressed something with his head of sales, or should he have handled his expanding workforce differently?
Or something else entirely? Maybe the point is that ignoring evidence that the market is turning can be a disaster?
But he didn't. He delegated the space problem so he didn't have to think about it anymore. And it cost him $30M that he would desperately need not long later (read The Hard Thing About Hard Things for that story).
It's not about ignoring evidence that the market is turning. It's not that specific. It's that your spidey-sense, for lack of a better word - your gut, your sense of fear - is telling you that something is a problem. You can then either engage that problem, or avoid that problem. And if you avoid it, you will screw up.
But it's incredibly difficult to face our gut fear. So we don't do it.
That's the problem with companies that raise gobs of money -- zero discipline in spending.
Loudcloud was a terrific concept in its day. It could have become what AWS has become. But it was growing because money was just getting poured into dotcom startups. When the money dried up, they were stuck with all this hardware and staff they had needed. It's a credit to Horowitz that he saved even the sliver he did.
It's a good point albeit expressed obscurely. It took me two reads to get it, which seems about average judging from some of the other comments here.