One thought on this...
If startup success is mostly random then how can someone like Elon Musk create startup-after-startup shooting for a goal against-all-odds, but always come out on top?
Does he define the "mostly" in the argument?
If startup success is mostly random then how can someone like Elon Musk create startup-after-startup shooting for a goal against-all-odds, but always come out on top?
Does he define the "mostly" in the argument?
Could Elon have started Tesla if he didn't previously make $165M from PayPal? I say "unlikely". Could he have started X.com/PayPal if he didn't make $22M from Zip2? I don't know. Was Zip2's success partly due to luck? I don't know but I'm sure it played a part.
In July, 2003, Tesla Motors was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning (who both initially financed the company).
A year later Elon Musk invested in the company and became Chairman. Musk made Tesla’s long-term vision to produce affordable electric vehicles available for the public.
Which brings me to a point regarding this article: I don't want to be a dick but most startup postmortems don't tell the truth. Besides that most founders fail to realize exactly where they failed the fact is that the startup environment itself isn't transparent at all.
On that last point: a year ago I was talking to a friend who just closed his startup and he gave the typical "not enough traction/not enough funding" explanation they should be selling as hallmark cards already. Last month I bump into him after a meetup and the story was quite different: his startup was unfortunately used as filler along many others by a group of investors who needed to put a show because they were using government funds to finance these companies. All the participant startups got some seed money but at the end of the day all the full amount of funding was given to one single company with no employees a half-baked product that failed to launch and founded by none other than the younger brother of one of the investors who then moved his entire operation to singapore, and then nothing.
There are tons of stories like that, and founders can't say anything because when something like this happens and in the heat of the moment its most likely they would look like sore losers and the last thing they need at that point is to scare away other potential investors by looking like a rogue founder.
My point is that we rarely if ever get the whole story.
Musk works hard, no doubt. But that is a necessary, not a sufficent, condition for success. Many people have worked just as hard as Musk and failed. Furthermore, successful people who start second businesses tend to fail slightly more often than first-timers, which is hard to understand if you believe business success is a learnable skill.
So I don't think Musk is a counter-example to the OP's point, but rather a predictable consequence. In a world were 95% of startups fail and tens of thousands of people start companies, you'd expect the odd one to have multiple successes.
Again: this does not mean that Musk isn't incredibly smart, hard-working and most of all courageous. It means he's all of that, and lucky as well.
Every successful entrepreneur is going to be hard working etc, but that says nothing about all the hard working entrepreneurs who aren't successful (I'm belabouring this point because in this kind of discussion one often sees "All the successful people I know are hard-working" as if that had anything at all to do with the claim "All hardworking people are successful."
Survivor bias is a huge problem in learning from case studies. A particular tactic may work well through a particular combination of market, environment, team and timing. That doesn't mean it's a good tactic for your particular situation.
You absolutely have to study and learn from the failures as well as the successes.
He may have been extended, but that doesn't mean he was almost in the poorhouse.
Billionaires getting ruined doesn't happen any more.
1. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/sorkin-elon-musk-of-p...
2. http://www.carbonated.tv/technology/spacex-founder-and-tesla...
I don't follow - would you elaborate?
The parent post is saying that "starting to watch someone" constitutes naming the #56.
Second time replace luck with publicity. Same reason why Paris Hilton has success selling parfume.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/tesla-motors-fre...
That's in the nature of car manufacturing. If one government starts subsidizing a high capex industry, others have to follow suit or throw up trade barriers or their industries will drop off a cliff.
This has been going on since at least the 50s when Japan threw monumental sums of cash at its (at the time), pathetic and failing car industry.
Aerospace is similar. Best of luck trying to create a competitor to Boeing or Airbus unless you have the backing of the Chinese state. No amount of magic pixie startup fairy dust is going to get you there.