
The Choices Are Fake and the Truth Is All Made Up - dshipper
http://danshipper.com/the-choices-are-fake-and-the-truth-is-all-made-up
======
javajosh
Hey Dan, at risk of being targeted in your next post, I'm going to give you
some advice about private sector success:

 _Make things that people want to buy._

Really, that's about it. In the private sector you will either be doing this
or working for someone that does it. And when it comes to innovation, it's
wierd when you think about it: humans have lived thousands of years without
[whatever it is you invented]. So why would they want it? The thing is humans
are curious creatures, always interested in new things, so it's always
possible to get them to try new things. (It's not always about innovation
though, sometimes it's about being more efficient and winning on price.)

(Also contained within this directive is the (sad) fact that you can spend
quite a lot of time focused on the 'want' side, manipulating people into
wanting to buy something.)

The innovation route is a daunting task. There is already so much good stuff
out there, created by people no less intelligent or diligent than yourself.
But that innate human restless, curious quality will always favor the
underdog, so why not make _new_ things that people want?

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it! Good luck, Dan!

~~~
dshipper
Thanks for your comment. Not 100% sure how it related to the post but I agree.
It reminds of a Dalio quote from Principles"

"Self-interest and society’s interests are generally symbiotic: more than
anything else, it is pursuit of selfinterest that motivates people to push
themselves to do the difficult things that benefit them and that contribute to
society. In return, society rewards those who give it what it wants. That is
why how much money people have earned is a rough measure of how much they gave
society what it wanted—NOT how much they desired to make money"

Innovation for its own sake is dumb. Don't build a house with 8 doors instead
of 8 windows just because you can.

~~~
javajosh
_> Not 100% sure how it related to the post_

It's related only in the sense that your post implied that you're filtering
out the advice you've been given. And I wanted to add this in because I think
its the most important thing, and easy to lose sight of.

One more thing, before I forget: another useful thing to do is to contrast
"make things that people want to buy" with some common alternatives: "make
cool things" or "make something the way it _should_ be made" or even "think
about how to make things". These are all easy traps to fall into.

In many ways, I feel like "make things people want to buy" is the economic
equivalent of the Buddhist prescription to end suffering, "Eradicate craving
and aversion." Simple enough sounding, but it has far-reaching repercussions
and quite a lot of fruit for thought.

I'll look up Dalio - although strictly speaking he is wrong. There are plenty
of ways to make money without making what people want. For example, any kind
of passive income. You would have to stretch the definition of "thing" beyond
breaking to let it describe "capital". Passive income is at best a kind of
'second-order' "making things" fraught with every kind of moral hazard.

------
rayiner
I always like to keep in mind that while Zuck may have been in college when he
came up with Facebook, Bardeen and Brattain were 39 and 45 when they invented
the transistor (respectively), Tim Breners-Lee was 35 when he invented the
World Wide Web, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce were both around 40 when they
founded Intel, etc, etc.

~~~
dshipper
Did not know that about Tim Berners-Lee. Thanks for commenting!

~~~
BerislavLopac
That's the fallacy of the startups at work: just because advances in
technology allowed 20-somethings to invent/build something with world-changing
effects, it doesn't mean that the older people stopped inventing.

------
ChristianMarks
One thing you should avoid is advice from people who have an interest in
exploiting your ability. I wasted time listening to them. Especially avoid
advice from your elders. Now that I am joining their ranks, I have to say that
I am profoundly unimpressed, and I certainly would not allow myself to be
influenced by the overwhelming majority of them. If you are going to act on
advice from someone, wait until after they are dead. There is plenty of advice
from the disinterested dead to choose from.

~~~
chipsy
This is amazing advice, but you clearly aren't dead yet.

~~~
ChristianMarks
You should wait until after I am dead to follow it, of course. If I were to
write a commencement speech, it would begin that way.

~~~
mpweiher
I initially read that as "If I were to _give_ a commencement speech..", which
would probably make said speech quite a newsworthy event, despite being a very
short speech.

------
hayksaakian
Couldn't get this alternate title out of my head as I read the article:

"Welcome to Startups, where the truth is made up and the choices don't matter"

~~~
dshipper
Probably better :)

------
ScottBurson
_[T]he total agony of loving two things can help you be better at both. The
choice between one or the other is fake._

This is brilliant, and I think that combining strengths in this way is going
to be the key to success in the new economy. There can't be very many people
in the world who are the best at doing X when there are only O(N) possible
X's, but when you go for being one of the best at combining X and Y, now you
have O(N^2) choices.

------
evalapply
An interesting take on things Dan, however I think the tendency for writers
and VCs to focus on youngsters is their desire to find enormously outsized
returns; specifically, those in the league of Facebook, Microsoft, Apple,
Google and Amazon.

Take, for example, this list of companies worth more than 1 Billion dollars:

[http://blog.minming.net/post/35553963889/a-billion-dollar-
so...](http://blog.minming.net/post/35553963889/a-billion-dollar-software-
tech-company-is-founded-every)

You will immediately notice that most of the companies valued over $1Bn are
valued at or around the $1Bn dollar mark. Contrast this with companies like
Facebook and Google which are tens or hundreds of times larger than this.

The key is - the companies that have such a huge risk involved that they can
only be tackled by young founders are the ones most likely to produce an
outsized return. While most investors won't complain about a $1Bn exit, they
would froth at the mouth at the thought of a $100Bn one.

That said, most entrepreneurs would be satisfied with a $10M exit, let alone a
$1Bn one. With this in mind, no age can truly be considered 'over the hill'.

------
orionblastar
Well if you are in your 20s and don't have a lot of experience, you might want
to hire some consultants with experience to guide you. If you have venture
capitalists you want to listen to their advice as well. Don't make an excuse
that you are young and don't have experience and the opportunity cost is it
eats up your younger days. You can't be a Lone Ranger, you need to be
developing a team, a diverse team of people with different backgrounds and
different skill sets. Don't limit yourself to just people in their 20s by the
way.

I spent my 20s and 30s writing software for companies, inventing new things,
and having managers taking credit for everything I did. I expected pay raises
and promotions, but those went to the people in the managers' social kliqs who
had people skills (bullsh*tting, backstabbing, drinking at happy hour with the
rest, gossiping, schmozing around the office instead of working, watering
office plants, making coffee, etc.) instead of technical skills (developing
code, coming up with new ideas for inventions and software, writing
documentation, debugging, knowing how a computer works, knowing how to do
research analysis and design, quality control, keeping up with trends via
Hacker News and other sites) and my problem was that I was too good at the
technical skills and I had to go. So I was 'used' to get to 'goals' and once
those goals were reached I'd be fired and then find work at another company
where it started all over again. Until the stress of it all made me too sick
to work and I ended up on disability. (Programmers are a dime a dozen these
days, we get 500 resumes a week for your position and we can hire a programmer
for a fraction of your salary that won't get sick on the job!)

I guess I should have developed some 'people skills'?

Anyway now that I am in my 40's even if I was well enough to work, nobody
would hire me, I'm too old. I have dual degrees in computer science and
business management, but it just don't matter anymore.

The second myth, yes you need to focus on more than the business. My mistake
was not focusing on my emotional, physical, and mental health and I got really
sick doing my "balls to the wall" software development and focusing 100% of my
energy into my job. Always keep a backup career as well in case software
development or whatever doesn't work out. Find something you love to do and
turn it into a hobby, that you might be able to turn into a business. Or else
if you don't love it you might hate it and it makes you sick anyway.

------
hndude
Glad to see you haven't bought into the hype and bullshit from the media over
young whiz kids eating sleeping and breathing code around the clock in order
to become successful. Kudos.

~~~
dshipper
Thanks! Although to be honest I have been guilty of that. It's just a matter
of finding balance as cliche as that sounds.

------
zgm
As a college junior myself, I am tired of the perpetuation of the unrealistic
(and false) idea that if you don't start a company right out of school, you're
doomed to failure. Thank you, Dan, for being the voice of reason.

------
dmor
Choose something, immerse yourself in it, and course correct as you go. The
dichotomies are false, but you do have to choose something.

------
nnq
> But the problem with being in your early twenties is that in general you
> have very little idea of what the fuck is going on. Trust me, I’m 21.

funny, but it really made me stop reading any further... in these information
overdose ADHD-ed times you shouldn't joke with things that can make readers
subconsciously mark what you're writing as "not informative enough" and
instantly switch to another thread :)

------
JoeAltmaier
Success is mostly luck.

------
drivebyacct2
I like this post even if for no other reason it doesn't imply that I'm living
life wrong if I don't want a family and kids.

~~~
dshipper
I love when people apply what I have to say to situations to things I've never
thought about. Good luck out there :)

