Comment by ivankirigin
19 years ago
"I really don't want to spend years of my life on something which has a 90% chance of being worthless."
How does that mesh with the fact that a failed startup is probably worthless (in the literal sense that you can't make money from it), and most startups probably have >90% failure rate?
I know there is a learning experience in startups and that working hard on something fun is valuable, so worthless is really just talking about immediate money here.
I don't think my probability of failure is 90%. :-)
This isn't as naive as it sounds: If you take VC with standard liquidation preference terms, the company needs to do really well before you get anything back -- so the amount of money you need to avoid "failing" is dramatically increased.
In my case, since I don't intend to take any VC, there's a wide range between "failure" (making less money than I would have earned risk-free by working at the university for the same duration) and "success" (making enough money that I never need to work again).
Also, on a more self-serving note: I'm a heck of a lot more competent than 90% of startup founders. Or even 90% of YC-funded-startup founders for that matter -- and YC-funded startups have distinctly less than a 90% failure rate.
Well, if you want to impress people with your startup prowess, you're better off succeeding in that context before bragging about it.
I have no opinion of you or your entrepreneurial abilities in the same way a physicist has no opinion of gravity.
If I can measure what you've done (e.g. in terms of customers, revenues, successful exit sale, etc.) then I'll respect you (or not).
"Or even 90% of YC-funded-startup founders for that matter"
Not to deny this, as I don't know anything about you, but... that is a very bold statement.
Of course it's a bold statement. But if I wasn't bold, I wouldn't have started university at age 13, set three world records for calculating pi (a stunt, I admit), ranked in the top six mathematics undergraduates in North America, received a $100k+ scholarship to Oxford University (not the Rhodes, unfortunately -- their mistake), received a doctorate in computer science from said university, and become the security officer for the FreeBSD operating system.
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