What Would Paul Graham Think, About Poker

I am reminded of the start-up where I was an early employee. It has an interesting story of founder persistence. He couldn't raise a series B and had to lay-off the 10 or so employees in July 2011. I thought maybe he would either fade away or just go take a job somewhere. I was wrong. He kept the tech alive with a bit of licensing here, a partnership there and some more feature development on his own. Eventually he found a partner that really liked the tech we had built and made an offer to acquire. In the end by persisting and just keeping it "alive" for another 20 months or so post-crisis, the founder was able to succeed. In baseball analogy, he hit a triple, the angels a double and the VC firm a single.

That takes a lot of faith in what you have built, a good attitude to keep selling or pitching even when it is just you and some tech behind the curtain.

Sorry I have kind of rambled but I think my connection is confidence in your ability to make sound decisions even when it isn't working out at the moment.

One key difference that I see is that business formation is a much more unbounded "game" than poker. Also the feedback loops on whether you are making good or bad decisions are much longer in business than in poker. In poker I get feedback in minutes on each hand. If I am astute I can learn continuously and rapidly and improve my odds in a particular local game.

Another key difference is that in poker there is no ambiguity about who my competition is. In business, especially with new innovations it is not at all clear who the competition is. Is competition an internal process with a stakeholder defending their own position out of fear of losing their job (think B2B) is it another company or set of companies? Or is your competition just tradition and inertia?

Anyway thanks for a stimulating and thoughtful analogy.