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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

It's still a random personal anecdote. And the "strategy" is an empty trivial advice.

Do you think other poor people trying to start businesses don't try to do it with "almost no monetary investment"? Not only they try that, that's the only way they can afford to try anyway.

Still no match for a big monetary investment, and still much much harder for them to get the same outcomes as an enterpreneur coming from privilege. Notice also how the claim isn't that it's impossible (or inversely, that the rich always succeed to build a succesful business), but that it is much much harder, and the upper middle class/rich/connections people have it much easier.

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This is cynicism disguising itself as wisdom.

Of course people with privilege have it easier. The whole world runs on the Matthew Effect because it's too lazy to do anything else. It isn't just or fair. Until you can fully accept that truth and do things despite that, you're stuck.

Me? As someone who rarely is fully confident about things, I'm fully confident I'll achieve some moderate success in bootstrapping if only because I have internalized the meta-belief that I can learn, adapt, persevere, and work toward the future I want, regardless of how long it takes, how successful I am, or any other external indicators. Agency is a powerful meta-belief. In that sense, I've already won, I'm just enjoying the journey and what I'm learning. And, one day I'll start cutting the strings of trading time for money.

Cynicism, and its brother pessimism, are absolutely necessary to survive and thrive in business. Unbridled optimism is generally for future failures.

Cynicism that keeps you out of the game is maladaptive...if you want to be playing that game.

Nobody is arguing for unbridled optimism.

>This is cynicism disguising itself as wisdom

Nope, just reality described as is.

>Of course people with privilege have it easier. (...) Until you can fully accept that truth and do things despite that, you're stuck.

That, on the other hand, is fatalism described as realism.

Nothing ever changed without outrage about how things are.

And even less by people accepting them and trying to get by "despite that".

"Every pessimist thinks themself a realist."

Realists also think of themselves as realists, so there's that.

Plus, every starry-eyed, la-la land, Polyanna thinks themselves not naive!

Agreed. Very nearly 100% of people think their point of view is correct and reasonable and everyone who doesn't share their point of view is wrong. The point of the quote, to me, is to remind us of that.

It goes along with another of my favorite quotes: everyone seems crazy when you don't understand their point of view.

There's an interesting tension in between aggregate problems and what's possible for you as an individual.

As an example, in the aggregate people with non-CS or math backgrounds are very unlikely to make $400k+ a year as a software developer. On an individual level, I have repeatedly been able to get others to that level inside 5 years if those people are willing to do straightforward but difficult work. However, this is only possible because so many people won't do the work, if everyone was aware of the opportunity and had the gumption to pursue it diligently the opportunity would quickly be exhausted.

This same pattern of "plenty of opportunity for individuals, but not enough for the group" seems common in many other ventures. Talking to very successful people it seems to be one of the reasons so many people who make it view lack of success as a failing, they've acquired the skillset to see these opportunities and wonder why no one is taking them (but often fail to notice there aren't enough for everyone).

I did something similar, so there you go... now you have three "random" anecdotes.

1000 similar random anecdotes would still be random anecdotes.

No ones anecdotes in this thread are random. The majority of failures are not reading this.

Chiming in with my random personal anecdote: I worked a very low-paying job, started with zero dollars, saved my money, and took a shot on a business with less than 5-figures.

This system is very repeatable. I'm 13 years in.

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