
Your high IQ will kill your startup - niyazpk
http://blog.cubeofm.com/your-high-iq-will-kill-your-startup
======
wheels
The title is just flame-bait. The message is: (a) being lazy will kill your
startup, (b) smart people are lazy.

But, well, all you really need to kill a startup is (a), and we already knew
that. The next possible conclusion is that maybe smart people underestimate
the challenge of starting a startup, but I think everybody does. What's more
critical is how people react when they realize they're in over their heads.

~~~
maxklein
My original article was 6 pages long, this is an abridged version. So I was
not able to convey all the concepts I would have liked to as clearly as
possible. That said, let me throw myself into the fray.

It's not about "being lazy". I know people who come in by 7:30 and leave by
9pm. They are not lazy. They work really hard. But they will never be CEO of
the company.

It's about challenging yourself. Becoming better. Training. When you can do
stuff good, then you have to find stuff you can't do as well that is even
harder.

If I am a Django programmer, after 6 months the challenge in Django is
minimal. I can work 10 hours a day on Django and it's not really a challenge
anymore.

So it's not about laziness really. It's about not being complacent in your
current abilities.

~~~
wheels
I see what you're getting at, but don't believe that it really has much to do
with intelligence. It doesn't help that the analogy in this case is
particularly bad. The guy who's a stand-in for someone pushing himself just
went through the same training that everyone else from his country did.

I believe ambitious people find their way to things that challenge their
abilities. I also don't believe that there's a strong correlation between
intelligence and ambition.

It's that missing positive correlation that you seem to be getting at, and
most people tend to assume exists, but by recasting it as a negative
correlation it offends my sensibilities. ;-)

~~~
maxklein
I wouldn't say that Ofer was pushing himself. He was superior to the guy with
the knife, by virtue of his past training. It's like a brilliant lisp coder vs
a mediocre C++ programmer. The C++ programmer will be much faster than the
lisp programmer in achieving some task using C++, simply because he has past
training.

So basically, the effort put in over time will keep you ahead of any
competition, unless a person of superior inherent ability also decides to put
in effort in the same area you are in.

Will an ambitious person always find something to challenge their abilities? I
know many people who are ambitious - they talk about money all the time. But
if you observe their actions, they are basically doing nothing, or doing
something unimportant and easy.

I'm not convinced there is a correlation between ambition and an active search
for things that are difficult to do. I'm sure there is such a subset of
people, but the proportion compared to those who are content with not
challenging themselves, I believe, is low. But I don't really know, that's
just a guess.

~~~
infinite8s
Since when does talking about money all the time imply ambition? Usually the
people who spend the most time talking about something are the least likely to
go out and do something toward it.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
From Hamming's "You and Your Research":

    
    
      You observe that most great scientists have tremendous
      drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell
      Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or
      four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey
      was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and
      I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's
      office and said, ``How can anybody my age know as much
      as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his chair, put
      his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said,
      "You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know
      if you worked as hard as he did that many years."
    
      I simply slunk out of the office!
    
      What Bode was saying was this: "Knowledge and productivity
      are like compound interest." Given two people of approximately
      the same ability and one person who works ten percent
      more than the other, the latter will more than twice
      outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you
      learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more
      you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much
      like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate,
      but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly
      the same ability, the one person who manages day in and
      day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be
      tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took
      Bode's remark to heart; I spent a good deal more of my
      time for some years trying to work a bit harder and I
      found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don't like
      to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect
      her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to neglect
      things if you intend to get what you want done. There's
      no question about this.
    

The entire essay is well worth reading and makes many excellent points. It's
been mentioned many times here on HN, and is one of the essays on PG's site:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=229067>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=852405>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=915515>

[http://searchyc.com/you+and+your+research+hamming?sort=by_da...](http://searchyc.com/you+and+your+research+hamming?sort=by_date)

Unsurprisingly, it's all over the 'net:

[http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22You+and+your+research%22...](http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22You+and+your+research%22+Hamming)

~~~
dschoon
Related, I think, to OP's point: Smart People Can Rationalize Anything:
[http://habitatchronicles.com/2006/12/smart-people-can-
ration...](http://habitatchronicles.com/2006/12/smart-people-can-rationalize-
anything/)

------
Sukotto
For me, this is the money quote as I pasted it into my fortune file

    
    
      I knew there were a lot of other people as
      intelligent as I was, and who had all [the
      same] advantages [as me]. The only way to be
      successful then would be to gain a slight
      advantage over them - I had to work and
      train harder than they did, I had to get to
      know more people than they did, I had to
      learn more about more things that they did.
    
      We started off equals, but at some point all
      the effort I put in started to pay off, and
      where they stopped improving themselves, I
      continued, and I got better and better.
      Where they were afraid to try new things
      because they would fail, I tried and I got
      better and knew more, till I was good enough
      for the job I hold now.
    

I recently figured out that compounding interest works for personal
development and business just as well as it works for money.

------
araneae
It's true that currently, some intelligent people can fail to develop a work
ethic because they've found things easy.

However, this is not an inherent problem of intelligence; this is an inherent
problem with one-size-fits-all schooling.

They found things easy because the difficulty level of their challenges were
well below them, but that's hypothetically easy to fix; you make their
challenges a little above their current level. Practically, though, it's more
of problem.

~~~
mattmcknight
Seems like a good problem for a more software oriented learning approach.

I remember daydreaming in class wishing I could just go through the book
myself and be finished with a grade in a few weeks. I did get this experience
in math for a while when I was living in Texas. You didn't have to take any
topic upon which you could pass a pretest, and then you got to take a test on
a topic as soon as you were ready for it. I was able to zip through multiple
grades until I reached some material where I needed instruction. Of course,
once I moved up to the next school, I was back in the standard classes,
daydreaming.

~~~
araneae
Was it a public school? That sounds awesome.

------
nazgulnarsil
people often come out of school thinking that life will apportion its
challenges to meet their skill level. after all, that's the sort of designed
environment they've been in since they were 5. intelligent people get caught
in the trap of relative comparison: thinking that they're awesome simply
because they were better than their immediate peers.

this is one of the big benefits of going to a "good" school. not that you're
receiving a qualitatively better education, but because you're thrown together
with some of the best and brightest. this resets your scale at a much higher
level.

of course the most successful people tend to put in a supreme effort
constantly without reference to any artificial scales.

------
coryl
That Israeli soldier had balls to take on a guy with a knife. I thought it was
kinda funny and ironic that he used that situation as an analogy for
intelligence.

The intelligent thing to do would have been to hand over the money and NOT
risk being sliced open lol.

~~~
kls
I disagree with you assessment, the individual could have intelligently
reasoned that disarming the man would make him think twice before confronting
another individual. If more individuals took that tack robbers would give more
though to what used to be an easy crime. No to mention in certain parts of
South America the punishment for robbery can be as sever as murder so if you
are going to do it you might as well not leave witnesses. There are a lot of
variables that go into the decision to fight and making the decision to do so
does not necessarily mean that you have made a foolish or less intelligent
choice.

~~~
coryl
Its nice to think that people factor benevolent principles into situations
like this. However, when people fight back under high stress situations like a
robbery, it is probable that the moment is not about defending society; its
about survival.

Statistics say if you cooperate, you're less likely to be harmed. If you
decide to push a physical confrontation, then you're more likely to be harmed.
If you measure the cost/benefit ratio to each action, its a no brainer.

~~~
kls
\--Its nice to think that people factor benevolent principles into situations
like this. However, when people fight back under high stress situations like a
robbery, it is probable that the moment is not about defending society; its
about survival.

To some it is, to some it is not. I personally have been in a similar
situation (assailant had a gun). As well, I have trained since a young age in
defensive combat. I can honestly say that when that moment was upon me, the
rage that ran through my mind was not for saving myself but the idea that a
little old lady had most likely stood in my same position and that the people
around me are being victimized. I think most that do decide to stand, stand
for a sense of honor that is beyond them or their personal well being, because
even to them, logically the money is not worth it, it is the principal of the
matter. Given the original post's description of the gentleman as an
individual who dislikes violence he sounds to me like he is a man that does
not compromise his principles even if it costs him his life, which it looks
like it eventually did. Being a man of principals in not unintelligent and
that was the summation of my previous post.

~~~
jbooth
Yeah, but the dude had a gun. Maybe you held it together enough to not pee in
your pants and still have some perspective about the situation, but I'm
guessing there wasn't much question about what you were going to do.

~~~
kls
Contrary to popular belief in close quarter combat a knife is far more
dangerous than a gun. A gun requires action on the part of the assailant while
a knife can be dangerous with only reactionary movement. For example one of
the key tenants of close quarter combat is explosive violence, basically when
you go you go off. When you do the assailant has a small window of time to
chose an action e.g. aim and pull the trigger. With a gun the slightest
movement moves you out of trajectory which require a new action on the part of
the assailant these calculations are not as fast as reaction time. Conversely
with a knife it can be wielded in a reactionary fashion e.g I go to grab it
the assailant flinches back and I get slashed. The weapon can be used without
the assailant consciously choosing to do so.

Unfortunately the best (read safest) method for dealing with a knife
telegraphs your intention and throws explosive violence out the window because
the most assured way is to either pick up a longer instrument (bat, tire iron)
or to take off an item of clothing to act as the item to trap the arm either
of which let the assailant know what the score is.

Knowing this and reading that the gentleman still opted to use the element of
surprise, gives some insight as to how confident this individual was with his
abilities. The fact that he first used his feet to disarm the knife says that
he analyzed the situation and decided that the element of surprise was more
valuable than opting for a telegraphed safer method.

------
brlewis
Summary: People who breeze through school but are not hungry for knowledge are
less likely to succeed than those who struggle but have that hunger.

------
MrDynamite
Ofer was a trained Isreli soldier dodging the knife of some local 2-bit
thief...probably child's play for him. Though I think he reached a bit with
the whole knife-intelligence analogy, I get what he was saying.

------
patrickk
Nice analogy.

I think this is why Steve Blank talk so much about founders 'getting out of
the building'. The first instinct of a highly intelligent tech nerd when faced
with the challenges of a startup is to bury their head in code and not engage
directly with the customer at all, i.e. focus solely on improving the product
and not testing if there is a market for the product in the first place:

<http://startup-marketing.com/the-startup-pyramid/>

Fortunately, Steve Blank has designed his 'Customer Development' roadmap to
mitigate against this. For a brief, free synopsis, see:

<http://www.socrated.com/courses/4?home=1>

This was posted on HN recently enough, and it's brilliant. It sums up the
entire Customer Devlopment roadmap quite nicely. I'd still recommend buying
the book too though, also excellent.

------
alexro
Intelligence is hardly a knife. One can put a knife aside and try training
without it to better improve the "other" skills, same is not true for
intelligence. And also, isn't true intelligent people are more inclined to
self-improving? I think that declining your experiences is NOT intelligence.

~~~
nagrom
I disagree that you cannot put intelligence (which in this context means
mathematics and language skills, hence 'IQ') aside and practice other skills.
Developing a sense of empathy and charm can have almost nothing to do with how
intelligent you are. Selling a product has almost nothing to do with this
version of 'intelligence'. And building a decent level of physical fitness,
learning a musical instrument, learning a trade or craft such as carpentry or
painting a picture have almost nothing to do with intelligence as defined
here.

Lots of mathematicians, scientists and academics are hard-working,
'intelligent' people who are completely underdeveloped otherwise - there's an
argument for saying that I am one... - so I think that this analogy holds
better than you give it credit.

I can't help but think that you are using the word 'intelligence' in a
different manner to that intended by the post. The trait that you are talking
about, applying your intelligence to as many situations as you can, is closer
to wisdom, I feel.

~~~
alexro
Mybe your right. To me intelligence is how one processes information,
definitely not how she cracks on problems (this is "smartness"). True
intelligence in my view is when one pays attention to what the world tells her
and reacts accordingly. It can finally lead to wisdom, probably the absolute
intelligence.

------
pedalpete
I disagree that this is about IQ or intelligence. A truly intelligent person
understands how little they actually know. It is only those who think they are
intelligent who have they ego to think that things will always come easy.

~~~
iBercovich
"A truly intelligent person understands how little they actually know"

This is one of those statements that really bother me, almost as much as
someone telling me I need to prove the non-existence of God if I want to be an
atheist. Yes, intelligent people should have a good understanding of how big
and complex the universe is and how little they know compared to the total
amount of knowledge available. And given that they are aware of such, it
wouldn't make sense for them to walk around claiming they are a big deal.
However, people do not always act rationally, even geniuses. There is no
negative-correlation between claiming to be smart and being smart, in spite of
the obvious contradiction. Claiming to be smart and being cocky about it, it's
just a personality trait. Think about this: you IQ is defined and practically
unchangeable by the time you are a young teenager, but your personality
continues to develop for many more years after that. So there is no way your
personality can affect whether you are smart or not.

Just a thought though.

~~~
dgordon
"Think about this: you IQ is defined and practically unchangeable by the time
you are a young teenager, but your personality continues to develop for many
more years after that. So there is no way your personality can affect whether
you are smart or not."

I don't know whether the two claims you made are true (the one about IQ may
be, the personality one probably is) but "there is no way your personality can
affect whether you are smart or not" doesn't follow. It's possible that your
personality may often continue to develop after your IQ is mostly set, but
only in a highly restricted way dictated by what your personality was before.
In fact this seems to me likely to be a common outcome.

------
char
This is definitely me, though I'm sure I'm not the only one. My laziness
didn't come from simply being intelligent, but from everyone always telling me
how smart I was. As a result, I was terrified to fail and disappoint. Straight
A's were effortless, but I never tried anything 'risky'.

This all changed when I started doing start-ups. I learned to fail many, many
times, but instead of quitting, I just kept trying again and again. I actually
kicked my 20-something year old habit of being lazy, because the reward that
comes with doing all the hard work is much greater than the fear of failure.

------
theBobMcCormick
Sigh... this is why including an interesting and memorable anecdote often
isn't a good idea. The OP has an interesting article about the relative power
of innate gifts (intelligence in this case) vs hard work and effort. It's one
of the major focuses of Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, and certainly a
worth topic of discussion on HN...

But all anyone seems to want to talk about is the damn knife fight story.
Sigh.....

------
btilly
This was said much better by ESR in _The Curse of the Gifted_. Yeah, I don't
like ESR that much, but this time he actually said something insightful. See
[http://www.vanadac.com/~dajhorn/novelties/ESR%20-%20Curse%20...](http://www.vanadac.com/~dajhorn/novelties/ESR%20-%20Curse%20Of%20The%20Gifted.html)
for details.

------
keefe
To extend the metaphor, you must also keep the knife sharp. It's not enough to
just practice and work hard and be intelligent. We must also be insightful
into our own lives as humans. At least in my life, my emotional and physical
state impact my productivity more than anything else. Sometimes you will see a
very dedicated, intelligent person flame out or they get into personal drama
and cannot focus like they used to. For me, the answer is to workout 5 days a
week and make time for family and women.

------
Groxx
To extend it to a number of recent articles about kids (summarized):

\--------------------

Kids who were told "you must be smart" when they succeeded were less likely to
take on harder tasks later because they might fail, and seem stupid.

Kids who were told "you must have worked hard" when they succeeded tackled
harder problems later and ended up learning better, because they perceived
greater reward for _doing_ better, not _looking_ better.

\--------------------

If you're smart, but you don't do anything you can fail at, you won't learn.
Try. Fail. Try _again_.

------
nkohari
I agreed with this, but then I thought of the scene in Indiana Jones with the
sword expert...

Seriously though, while I think the metaphor is a little weak, the article
makes some good points.

~~~
keefe
It fits nicely thinking of that scene as well. Every now and then an Einstein
shows up and breaks the regular rules.

------
dimas
I do not see a correlation of level of intelligence and ability to work hard,
especially it cannot be said of verse correlation. I do not believe that
Intelligence cases man to be lazy and less prepared for challenges. On the
contrary, intelligence helps man to cope with challenges and problems if he
chooses to do so and has a strong character and mostly important desire and
ambitions. Intelligence helps dealing with challenges efficiently and
successfully.

------
brandnewlow
Or your startup will help you learn how to work hard. I've failed at least 8
times by my count with mine. I'm getting better at this with each time.

------
Concours
generally , peoples who fight to get everything done in life are more
successfull than the rest, they learn really early, that life's hard, and you
have to fight for everything, so meeting difficulties is just an everyday
business, at the other side, peoples who always have access to everything will
struggle when the first problems show up, and they just tend to give up.

------
NIL8
Well said. A very motivating speech to those of us without the advantages.

------
nanijoe
"People who are born intelligent"....now that's a whole different debate

~~~
greyman
Yes, that would make it a better title. But the article is surprisingly spot
on.

------
sireat
Maybe 15 years ago I was watching a knife defense course,

the only thing I remember from that course:

"Respect the knife"

it seemed hilarious at the time, yet at the same time very apt.

------
agbell
[Smart people] focus on things they can't fail on, and ignore the other
important things.

------
icono
“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” -
Thomas Edison

~~~
philwelch
“If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with
the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the
object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a
little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his
labor.” --Nikola Tesla

------
maxer
smart people never start startups... due to the fact that they will
rationalise the risk as being too great

~~~
johnrob
I wouldn't say never, but I think there are times when ignorance can make you
stay the course while rationality would have you quit.

------
napierzaza
This is going to stay popular for a while...

"I have a high IQ" _click_

~~~
pw0ncakes
Also, it gives people behind computers the opportunity to opine on the
intricacies of knife fights.

~~~
keefe
run away unless you have special training is solid

~~~
kilps
If you're confronted by guys with knives you're going to run away? It's
generally safer to give them what they want and be done with it.

~~~
keefe
I put a detailed discussion of this in another post - if I'm getting robbed, I
probably have some small bills in my pocket and more in my wallet along with
stuff that can ID me. So I'll toss those small bills out and I'm going to
bolt. Now, I am a damn fast runner, I'm big, trained in martial arts and in
very good shape. If I don't see any way out then yeah I might just submit, but
that puts me into a vulnerable position. If I toss some money out there, it's
unlikely he's going to chase without grabbing it that gives me a few seconds
lead and I'm probably faster than this guy in the first place, so by the time
he reacts he has got $40 guaranteed and I'm at least a football field away. If
he chases me and manages to catch up as I am getting tired, I'm going to do my
very best to kill him. The vast likelihood is if I'm in a rough neighborhood
I'm carrying a knife of my own, which he probably doesn't expect and I also
carry one hand openers so when I feel I have an advantage I'll let him close
get it into him and then take off running again. If no knife I'll go looking
for a brick or a stick.

~~~
ido
I'm glad I don't live where you do.

