
Entrepreneurship Thrives from the Unknown - nandorsky
https://medium.com/@NateAndorsky/entrepreneurship-thrives-from-the-unknown-c7f8ee50811d
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rafiki6
This applies to a narrow definition of a start-up. How do you account for
businesses that require high-level or academic expertise of the product? Or a
sound understanding of the market? Your chances of success are much higher
with any endeavor, when you eliminate risks of failure. I found this article
rather enlightening
:[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0269094215589143](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0269094215589143)
It speaks about entrepreneurship education which is a form of mentor ship and
training. A wise person will learn from the mistakes of their predecessors.
Granted, every business will have some slight differences and required
ADAPTABILITY. But there's plenty of value in learning from others. Companies
the likes of FANG etc. all seemed to bring in expertise and experience or what
is colloquially known as adult supervision once investors got involved. Don't
believe the hype that these companies are successful because some 20 something
is brilliant.

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blrgeek
Right, entrepreneurship is the only field of human endeavor where amateurs can
become the best in the field without any study or training whatsoever. Welcome
to the mythologizing of the startup world.

For one counter narrative, you should understand why serial entrepreneurs are
more successful, why almost the only correlation with success is how many
startups a person has done before.

Another counter point is why there's a PayPal mafia and a whole host of
successful founders coming out of specific startups.

Yet another counter point is how successful businesses built by people with
experience in the same domain somehow don't get counted as 'startups' because
they didn't take 'risk'.

Don't fall for the jargon and hype. Expert entrepreneurs have transferable
skills that will reduce your risk of failure. It's your bravado and ego that's
failing to recognize the difference.

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nandorsky
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I happen to agree, especially with your
first point. Entrepreneurs learn by doing, the more they do, the more they
learn which is what post is talking about. Wouldn't my piece support your
point about serial entrepreneurs then?

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blrgeek
Yes. Your post goes into the first point about serial entrepreneurs, but fails
to see the value of learnable entrepreneurial skills, and the value of coming
from a successful startup, or with deep domain expertise.

If you're addressing fresh grads, then telling them doing a startup vs
learning about a startup vs working in a startup are of different value, would
be better. Even Mark suster and Ben horowitz and Steve blank suggest working
in a fast growing startup is very useful before doing your own. So there is a
way to learn those skills without risk, with a good salary and some small
upside potential. As one of them has it, a time to learn and a time to earn...

I guess I reacted a bit to the language which speaks about taking risk very
lightly.

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nandorsky
I never said anything about quitting your job to do a startup. Much of what I
said could be done while having a full time job. My point was in order to
learn you should start executing.

