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