Comment by 6gvONxR4sf7o
6 years ago
>Working for Microsoft cost me $200 million
And not playing the Mega Millions Jackpot lotto cost me $1.6 billion. I had the opportunity to pick the winning numbers, but instead, I didn't even play! What a chump I was.
Don't make my mistakes.
Well, if is to use your analogy then you had the opportunity to turn down somebody that gave you free money to play the lottery, because that's what Thiel did to Garry, it gave him a check that covered one year of what Microsoft paid him.
The analogy does not hold because you still lose time, which is IMHO the most valuable commodity because it represents opportunity cost.
In built into a lot of these discussions is a major assumption - that a startup is a "typical" silicon valley startup with the goal of being a massively valued entity. That changes the risk structure dramatically. If instead you tried to bootstrap something into a 2M annual revenue enterprise with minimal (say 200k) worth of investment, the equation changes quite significantly.
I'd assert that in that situation, playing the role of "early tech adopter" into new problem spaces dramatically reduces the risk as well.