
Nassim Nicholas Taleb on startups - eugenejen
https://www.facebook.com/nntaleb/posts/10153701042473375
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fasteo
>> People start thinking in terms of other people's perception of the
business, for raising cash. Like prostitutes.

This. The only startup vitamin poster you will ever need.

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tryitnow
Sorry, but Taleb just seems to have turned into a bitter old man. Yes, that's
personal, but that's my point. A lot of his arguments really boil down to
criticizing people's personal characteristics rather than challenging their
arguments.

Earlier Taleb wasn't like this (although the seeds of bitterness were there).
The works he is known for are pretty solid, interesting and thoughtful.

This is one of several blogs posts/comments/articles he's written lately where
it really just serves as platform for criticizing all those people "who don't
take risks", or "bureaucrats."

Bottom line: he's just not that interesting any more.

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AnimalMuppet
On his list of what's needed: "Convexity". Um, what? What does that mean, in a
startup context?

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tim333
He means the gains from doing well are greater than the losses from doing
badly I think, kinda.
[http://www.advisorperspectives.com/articles/2013/07/16/nassi...](http://www.advisorperspectives.com/articles/2013/07/16/nassim-
nicholas-taleb-to-prevail-in-an-uncertain-world-get-convex)

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dbpokorny
These facts are just wrong. Google and FB both received massive funding early
on.

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tim333
>Google began in March 1995 as a research project

>Some Rough Statistics (from August 29th, 1996) Total indexable HTML urls:
75.2306 Million Total content downloaded: 207.022 gigabytes

>The first funding for Google as a company was secured in August 1998 in the
form of a US$100,000 contribution from Andy Bechtolsheim

>

>In January 2004, Mark Zuckerberg began writing the code for a new website,
known as 'theFacebook'.

> Within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at
> Harvard was registered on the service.

>In the summer of 2004, venture capitalist Peter Thiel made a $500,000 angel
investment

>

So both were up and running before getting investment. And not massive amounts
to begin with. I do kind of disagree with Taleb's point:

>What is needed? 1) .... and above all, 5) risk loving

Neither Page nor Zuckerberg took much risk. If their projects failed business
wise they just would have ended up with a PhD from Stanford and a degree from
Harvard respectively. What they had that was needed was enthusiasm for
building cool stuff.

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jorgecurio
can't believe this has only 8 upvotes and largely ignored by people because
it's the inconvenient truth about startups, largely founded by people who are
empty suits, highly optmisic headless chickens who are against risk taking and
juice behind the charisma.

I think it's great that HN is celebrating nassim taleb's black swan theory
with the black bar at the top

