that's what a lot of people say, but I think it's more of an excuse/laziness around explaining the actual problem. any entrepreneur who raises a series A will be managed by his investors. if he is not the CEO he will be managed by the CEO and the investors/board.
You will always have to compromise with people. That will never go away. But the social relationship between you and your investors - and definitely not with your fellow c-levels or co-founders - will never be quite like to that between a regular employee and their boss.
Your mileage may vary if you're on the brink of collapse, of course.
One critical difference between investors and management: investors have a lot of other things to do, so they're more inclined to stay out of your way on technical details. I can't imagine a VC telling a CTO what programming language to use. Managers are under pressure to spend 40 hours per week telling others what to do, so a lot of them get trader boredom (zero-expectancy noisy activity) that adds annoying process and micromanagement.
I didn't intend it to be about money. I also said that entrepreneurs want a 1% shot at ruling the world (king vs. rich). It's really about perception of control and perception of fairness around hard work.
A 1% shot of ruling the world is pretty useless. That's a 99% shot at failure. Also, who wants to rule the world? All taken, it's a pretty fucking ugly thing and it has some awful people in it. I know some people have that ambition, but not me.
A 75% shot at never having to take goddamn orders, on the other hand, is something I'd do things I can't put in print for. That's what I'm aiming for. I don't want to be some despot or extortionist telling others what to do, nor do I want to be told what to do. I want to have the opportunity to lead, if others will follow, without entitled and artificially empowered jackasses (i.e. typical corporate management) getting in the way of that.
I belive the 1% example is referring to trust your heart even when people discourages you but you know your idea should work...
Also i belive, being able to take orders is very valuable to the team, even if you are the ultra master chief... Closed to not taking orders? Then you are starting with your left foot in being a leader...
Mark was actually only there for the China part which was four days including weekend. He's actually highly interested in the business climate there and wants his kids to learn mandarin.
Take a step back and think about what you just said. Many startups can be launched without any specific qualifications or experience. You can learn as you go, fumble around, yet still find product-market fit and grow. I've done it and so have many others.
Maybe I'm taking crazy pills, but once you enter the realm of teacher/speaker/mentor/workshop-runner, I thought it was sort of assumed that you've previously put your knowledge to the test and at least tried to build something. Hell, even if you tried something and it was a huge smoldering failure, that's better than jumping on stage as soon as you close your copy of the Lean Startup.
Sorry, I really don't mean any disrespect. I just don't want to see an ecosystem of "startups teaching people how to build startups that teach people how to build startups" I've seen it in other industries and it sucks.
No worries. I didn't mean to sound harsh in my tone. I thought your comment was a snap judgement without any real research. If you did do research you would know that I don't do all of the teaching, we bring in experts from every location, just like a conference.
> absolutely nothing qualifies me to run a lean/entrepreneurial workshop. except our workshops kick fucking ass.
If your advice isn't proven, by what possible standard can the workshops kick ass?
> what qualifies you to start a business? what qualifies anyone to do anything?
Starting a business isn't giving advice, it's doing the work to know what advice to give, and unless one succeeds at doing so, one doesn't have advice worth being heard.
If I want to be a successful entrepreneur, I'm not taking advice from someone who hasn't been a successful entrepreneur; I'm amazed anyone would. One shouldn't teach what one can't do.
Not necessarily the best tone for this crowd, although I definitely did enjoy and get much out of the multi-day workshop we did last year. We're still applying the principles company-wide, but Trevor does offer a solid product.
"It means the probability of a startup making it really big is not merely not a constant fraction of the probability that it will succeed, but that the startups with a high probability of the former will seem to have a disproportionately low probability of the latter."
The "not merely not" phrase here is a little confusing. What PG is saying is that the probability of it succeeding is inversely related to the probability of it being a big success?
Just doing it. I think that's really the key here. Love watching a few courses like this but at the end of the day you just gotta do it. Test some sh*t, realize that you're in a local maxima and that testing more button variations won't do shit, try other stuff. But again always keeping the main idea of Lean alive - identify hypothesis and understand the why not just the what.
