Here is an essay version of class notes from Class 10 of CS183: Startup. Errors and omissions are mine.
Class 13 Notes Essay— You Are Not A Lottery Ticket
I. The Question of Luck
A. Nature of the Problem
The biggest philosophical question underlying startups is how much luck is involved when they succeed. As important as the luck vs. skill question is, however, it’s very hard to get a good handle on. Statistical tools are meaningless if you have a sample size of one. It would be great if you could run experiments. Start Facebook 1,000 times under identical conditions. If it works 1,000 out of 1,000 times, you’d conclude it was skill. If it worked just 1 time, you’d conclude it was just luck. But obviously these experiments are impossible.
The first cut at the luck vs. skill question is thus almost just this bias that one can have. Some people gravitate toward explaining things as lucky. Others are inclined to find a greater degree of skill. It depends on which narrative you buy. The internal narrative is that talented people got together, worked hard, and made things work. The external narrative chalks things up to right place, right time. You can change your mind about all this, but it’s tough to have a really principled, well-reasoned view on way or the other.
Roger and Mike's Hypernet Blog: HTML 5: The Next Big Thing for Content
“Hypertext Mark-up Language 5 (HTML 5) is just a programming language.” A famous investor said this to me 18 months ago. The statement is true, especially if you delete the word “just.” But it misses the point.
As programming languages go, HTML 5 may be unusually disruptive….
The time to experiment is now. Failures don’t cost much at this point, and wins are likely to translate into businesses advantages that can be compounded over time
Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 13 Notes Essay
There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.
(Source: nicolembee)
What’s happening in Waterloo is fantastic. If you look at the history of Silicon Valley, you’ll see that startup hubs grow because of the success and ultimate demise of tech companies. In a forest, the trees start as saplings and grow, and then a fire happens, and the forest is blighted, and from the ashes the forest grows even bigger and brighter.
i don’t normally tumbl my own quotes but i think this point is not well enough understood. so i’m doing it with this one.
If RIM Folds, What Happens to Waterloo? - Businessweek
(via fred-wilson)
The kids who grew up inside AOL chat rooms and came of age on Facebook have an intuitive understanding of the power of networks that our generation will never have. They are not asking us to fix the problems we left them with. They are asking us not to get in their way as they try to dig themselves out. I think we owe them that.
my partner Brad Burnham’s speech at the Center For Democracy and Technology’s 2012 Annual Dinner.
(via fred-wilson)
(Source: tristancofer)
(Source: bitchimrickjames)
Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.
(Source: wetbehindthears)
keep looking…
“Bill Cunningham owned 2011. Softer than soft, harder than hard, Bill is the realest New Yorker alive. And Occupy? Bill had it down in 1988: ‘Money is cheap. Freedom is expensive.’ Never take the money.”
—Sasha Frere-Jones
Love this quote.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
- Steve Jobs
