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Ten Tips Guaranteed to Improve Your Startup Success

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11 pointsmikeleeorg10 comments

Oops, direct URL is http://dashes.com/anil/2013/03/ten-tips-guaranteed-to-improve-your-startup-success.html

> 3. Grow up with a family that is as steady and secure as possible.

"I was having lunch with a friend who is a retired venture capitalist and we drifted into a discussion of the startups she funded. We agreed that all her founding CEOs seemed to have the same set of personality traits – tenacious, passionate, relentless, resilient, agile, and comfortable operating in chaos. I said, “well for me you’d have to add coming from a dysfunctional family.” Her response was surprising, “Steve, almost all my CEO’s came from very tough childhoods. It was one of the characteristics I specifically looked for. It’s why all of you operated so well in the unpredictable environment that all startups face.”

I couldn’t figure out if I was more perturbed about how casual the comment was or how insightful it was." --http://steveblank.com/2009/05/18/founders-and-dysfunctional-...

There's no doubt that many high achievers have some sorts of dysfunction as motivators; I always point to the paternal failings of the fathers of (say) Bill Clinton or Michael Jackson. But even granting that pattern, you'll generally find a stable presence within people's broader family, and examples from Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg show a much more common pattern of extremely supportive parents providing a strong foundation for success. I would love to see research about the families of a cohort of YCombinator participants, for example.

"My hypothesis is that most children are emotionally damaged by this upbringing. But a small percentage, whose brain chemistry and wiring is set for resilience ..."

This relentlessness, stress immunity, etc. -- these are "positive" characteristics of primary psychopathy. And it is associated with having a rough childhood. Maybe that's what he's referring to? On the other hand, it's such a small fraction of the population, maybe it's irrelevant?

Oops, direct URL is http://dashes.com/anil/2013/03/ten-tips-guaranteed-to-improv...

That was about as useful as all the people putting #firstworldproblem hashtags on their tweets, which is to say, "not at all".

Look, if those of us who happened to be born as white males in the United States are supposed to apologize for that, then ya know what...

No, never mind, not going to try and incite a big flame war over this.

There are millions (if not billions) of people in the world, living in horrible conditions, and that's a terrible tragedy. But there are better ways to point that out, and raise attention for causes like clean water, sanitation, etc., than mocking those of us who happened to be born American born WASPs, and who want to improve our own lot in life and maybe, just maybe, make the world a better place for everybody in the process.

I didn't read it as mocking, or that it demands an apology for privilege. It just points out that luck in ones starting conditions is a large, and oft-ignored component to success in the startup world.

Maybe you're right. But since you can't control any of those things, the discussion is moot and pointless. It also ignores the fact that all (or most) of those things can be true in your life, while you can be disadvantaged in innumerable other ways.

It may sound like a silly, trite aphorism, and it harkens to a judeo-christian worldview in a way that I'm not totally comfortable with, but I like to sum things up with the expression "We all have our own cross to bear".

It's a worthwhile conversation if it serves to make people more aware of the struggles/disadvantages of others. Hell, even if it just makes people like you and I sit back for a second and be happy that we have some of these advantages.

Again, I didn't get the sense that the author was implying that fitting most/all of these means that you can't be disadvantaged in other ways, or that they would guarantee success: "I thought it'd be good to share 10 key tips that I've found work 100% of the time to increase your odds of startup success. Try to execute on as many of these as you can!"

A useful exercise may be to examine why you thought I was mocking you, even though nothing like that appears in the piece. Similarly, your defensiveness in thinking I asked for, or wanted, some kind of apology isn't supported anywhere in the article.

Really think about where those responses come from, because I think that could be one of the best lessons you take away from the article, since your heart is in the right place on the issues I was trying to raise. I suspect part if what impacted your perceptions here is that this article was not solely, or even primarily, directed at you. Thanks for reading!

I am, of course, over-generalizing. I don't see it as mocking me specifically... but honestly, this piece read very similarly to a class of articles / commentaries / whatever, that one commonly sees in the wild, that seem obsessed with asking white, male Americans (and related groups) to engage in pure self-deprecation, attribute everything good in their lives to "privilege" or luck, and feel no pride in their accomplishments.

Maybe it hits close to home for me, because while I was born in the US, as a male, in a marginally stable family (my parents didn't divorce until I was 16), I feel like I've overcome a tremendous amount of adversity nonetheless, and when people - who I expect are largely more prosperous, more affluent, etc. than I am - come out and start talking like I should be apologetic for my circumstances, I chafe at that a bit.

White? Yeah... "white trash". America? Yeah... North Carolina: rural North Carolina... very rural North Carolina. Family? Yeah... my dad dropped out of school in 8th grade, never really learned to read, worked back-breaking manual labor jobs his whole life, the majority of which kept him away from home for months at a time. I barely knew my dad as a kid, and we went through more than one period of being on food-stamps/welfare/etc. while he as between jobs... my mom had some mental health issues and threatened to kill herself not infrequently, and may have tried once. Etc., etc., etc.

Now, no matter how hard my childhood was, I know there are people who have it worse, even much worse, especially in 3rd world countries. And I am sympathetic and I do want to help make the world - as a whole - a better place, for them as well. But damnit, any insinuation that I had some sort of easy path to success by virtue of being white, male and American just rubs me the wrong way.

Like I said... "we all have our own cross to bear".

Oh, and I tend to take things too personally sometimes. :-)

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