Comment by csomar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by csomar | Hacker News Reader

This is the most useless post one can read about some guy who is happy with his life and complain others are not doing things that he is thinking about...

> just days before my start date at McKinsey, which finally gave me the confidence to choose the startup over a prestigious job offer.

I highly doubt many people are getting offers at McKinsey and getting funded at the same time. The dude talks about risk but he literally took little to no risk. He is funded. The profile that allowed him both this job offer and funding at graduation will allow it again if his startup fails.

Most people do not get funded while having a job offer from McKinsey.

Which brings us to the second point: How is the VC scene in the UK compared to the US?

> The UK certainly doesn’t lack the talent or education, and I don’t think it’s any longer about access to capital.

The author proof is some random $1bn funding for some auto driving. This is weird when you can pull number (https://dealroom.co/guides/global) which shows the UK is still lagging the US.

Finally, the university ranking thing is bogus; which is what the argument of the author rests on.

Yes, to get a sense of risk taking, I'd rather hear many stories by risk takers that failed than one story from the guy that succeeded.

That’s often the same person.

I had a dozen failures before I struck on the sass product that retired me in my forties.

You try, you learn, you improve, and eventually something might work. Or you don’t try, keep your safe job and work until you’re 70 like everyone else.

Interesting but also scary to go this route. I think part of the problem in Europe is also that companies/governments are less open to just try out new (startup) solutions. I would love to be learn from US startups how they manage to sell without much done already.

I'm not saying this is incorrect, but how and where did you assess this?

Just from a qualitative perspective, i.e., personal experience/discussions.

Europe also is not a single language territory.

China and the US have so much more of an advantage when the TAM for the single spoken language is so massive by default.

In Europe you have to navigate a bunch of different languages, cultures and legislations.

Thanks for this - I think there's something to also be said about too many people failing once and not trying again.

This could be for any number of reasons:

1. burnout 2. life circumstances (dependents like kids, parents or others) 3. time to failure - if you built a company for 9 years, you might have less time and appetite to start again (partly due to 1 and 2)

Life is uncertain, many things about our life are probabilistic. Risk management is central to many aspects of life. On HN a prevailing sentiment is on the luck of doing a startup (no doubt you do need luck!!!) but what about the farmer or fisherman? A disease or weather can wipe you out. Or a storm can kill you while you're out at sea.

> I think there's something to also be said about too many people failing once and not trying again.

Yes!

If you're an entrepreneur, short term failure is by far the most likely outcome. Successful entrepreneurs are the ones that keep trying until they finally hit on a success.

> That’s often the same person.

It really well said. Without a failures it's hard to appreciate the success

I have personally found that success stories aren't that useful to me. Failure stories, on the other hand, are.

Indeed. Learning from failure can sometimes provide more valuable insights than hearing about success alone.

There is a saying that pessimist is right while optimist makes progress.

I haven’t heard that saying before but it certainly feels correct. I know a few successful people who don’t seem particularly bright or analytical, but keep pushing on in the misguided belief that things will work out. And sometimes they do.

There are endless sayings. You can make a post about optimism as a startup accelerator fuel. I am just addressing the OP points.

Well yeah, the entire thing reads like a piece from someone who should look up the meaning of survival bias.

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