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Comment by abhayhegde | Hacker News Reader

While I absolutely agree with PG here on identifying a missing link and solving it with technology as your own project is a good way to own a startup, I also feel most of his examples are reminiscent of survivorship bias.

For every one of these giant trillion dollar companies, there are also thousands of companies that couldn't make it. Also, just by the distribution of it all, not every company can be a Google. Not trying to be pessimistic here; everyone should be able to try solving some problem as a project and have fun meanwhile. However, expecting a Google out of it could be a bit too demanding.

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Yes, that’s inherent to the problem statement. Any guidance on “how to become a gold medalist Olympic athlete” would suffer from the same limitation.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t insightful things to say about building a Google or becoming a gold Olympic medalist.

Yes he tells you how to increase your odds in the lottery from 1E-11 to 1E-6 perhaps. His advice assumes you won the birth lottery already. Really you can’t be motivated by being the next Google because it (approximately) won’t happen. Be excited by the other things on the way.

I think he answers the second point of "not every company can be a Google" though. He says this will get you to the point where your company could be a Google, but makes no promises that it will be one.

I agree with the first point. I do think that the experience would nonetheless be valuable, though, to pilot a failed company.

Why even bring up 'Google' when the odds are (and always were) so long? It's like saying your bet could be the Powerball winner. I mean if his audience is only soon-to-be lottery winners, then it's kind of embarrassingly narrow and niche. And what advice is there to say except be rich enough to buy a lot of tickets?

Because it's drastically more exciting and interesting to a young audience, whose attention he's trying to acquire to get various points across. You won't get and keep their attention easily.

Inspiration matters. Attention matters.

Teenagers are not inspired by: you could start a little business that de facto operates as a medium paying job (but is far more stressful and risky to your future, your potential family, and your long-term finances), and it'll be miserably difficult, and you really shouldn't even try it because the likely rewards are so tiny that you should just go work for Microsoft instead for the fat (and easier) paycheck. Even if you try to sell that with a passion premise (the reward is in the love of the craft), the sell is so ugly you shouldn't even waste the young audience's time (they'll just come away depressed at best).

Why do people ever aspire to anything that's exceptionally difficult?

“Not every company can become a Google; but a Google can come from anywhere.”

- Peter O’Toole, probably.

"Not every company can become a Google, but a Google can come from any incredibly wealthy, well-connected, elite nepo baby."

> but a Google can come from any incredibly wealthy, well-connected, elite nepo baby

A math teacher and researcher's son, a middle class immigrant from third world Soviet Russia.

Or: the middle class son of a professor of computer science and an instructor of programming.

Such privilege. /s

"Elite nepo baby" applies to anyone that ever accomplishes anything these days huh.

Quoting Jim Koen:

"His dad wasn't "just" a computer scientist, he was a professor for computer science and artificial intelligence at Michigan State. Sergey Brin's father was equally a professor in mathematics at the University of Maryland. > It's obvious in retrospect that this was a great idea for a startup. It wasn't obvious at the time. It may not have been obvious, but the decision was damn well near as engineered with data as it could be. They also were _insanely_ well connected through their and their parents academic career. Both Sergey and Larry had obtained their PhD prior to starting the company. I can also remember reading that they obtained significant amounts of funding through connections Larry's dad had into the industry. You can ignore the rest of my comment, what follows is just my take. Their success story is imo one of the most blatant examples on how privilege really does give you a boost in life. I am not arguing that anyone could have done it, but I do wonder how the world would look like if we were all kids of academics with a successful career, with a relatively safe, secure and stable childhood home and a family background that really incentivizes learning and academic success over succumbing to the pressure of, you know, having an income at some point."

Yes, and doing a startup involves risk. If you fail, you’ll lose time and likely money. I’m now 10+ years behind on my retirement savings. I’ll likely need to work until 70-75.

He's not trying to create 500 new Googles.

He's trying to inspire the one kid that will actually create the next Google.

Alternatively, if only one person in the upcoming generation tries to create the next Google it will probably be a crap company. If 200 million kids try to create the next Google the one that succeeds in creating their own survivorship bias story will likely be a stellar co.

Competition necessitates excellence.

>Competition necessitates excellence.

There is always room for competition.

Agree. Although, de does mention that a barber shop counts.

I think when someone like him shows up, kids want to hear about the extreme end of financial success.

Hopefully those kids get to hear from other types of business people as well -- those who can talk about more of the middle of the road.

From the perspective of society, this is how to start Google

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