I remember a conversation I had with my doctor once. She was talking about her son, and mused that she thought my disability had made me a much grittier and conscientious person than most of my peers.
That's a nice sentiment, but something I noticed when I eventually managed to graduate college was that there was no substitute for a good safety net and parental support.
I watched dumbfounded as some of my classmates went on to found or join risky startups during the great recession. For me, failure would have been catastrophic. I'd have likely wound up sleeping under a bridge. I was amazed they were so fearless! Only, I later learned the reason they were so fearless is they knew their parents would step in and pay for their living expenses while they got back on their feet.
TLDR: Some folks can swing for the fences, take outsized risks, and reap the rewards, because failure is always an option.
It's been observed that the homeless work harder just to get through an average day in more-or-less one piece than almost anyone with a job does (and hell, quite a few homeless do have jobs, in addition to the rest of what they deal with every day)
no substitute for a good safety net and parental support
you don't need parental support if you live in a country that actually has a decent social safety net.
my parents were/are poor. once i moved out i never needed any money from them. however when i was a child we had to live from social services. and that was enough for us to have what we needed.
that safety net gave me the same feeling of security that your friends got from their family. i was able to travel the world from money i earned myself. i took jobs and contracts wherever i wanted, because i knew, if all else fails i can go back to my home country. (edited to clarify)
and even though many people complain how social support is not enough to live on, i have learned to live frugally, and i know that it would be enough for me.
i know that, no matter how bad things could get, i'll never have to sleep under a bridge.
as a society, that should be a minimum standard to aim for. seeing how cities in the US deal with homelessness leaves me dumbfounded. how can a society allow that to happen? it absolutely makes no sense to me. you really need to fix that.
If that was true, then shouldn't Norway, Denmark and France be where all the exciting moonshot startups are founded? Instead, it's the US and China where essentially all innovation and major risk-taking is happening.
Empirically, there must be some other critical variables your hypothesis is leaving out to explain what we see in reality.
good point, and yes, there are other variables. a big one is risk tolerance.
america was built by immigrants who all took a great risk getting there (with apologies to the native americans who were there first), so given equal conditions, a lot more people in america are willing to experiment.
as one consequence americans also have more rolemodels of successful risk-takers.
pretty much elsewhere in the world (at least western and asian countries that i have been to) taking a risk is considered something bad. the hackerspace in singapure has a sign that says: "this is singapures only kiasu free zone". kiasu means "extreme fear of losing", something prevalent in asian culture. european culture is better in that regard, but not much.
so yeah, despite the benefits, most people in europe are afraid to try.
also, as i mentioned, at least in germany people are complaining that the support is not enough.
they didn't have the experience to see the system working like i did. i am willing to take a risk because i have already experienced what will happen when i fail. most people don't have that advantage.
also, because of the lower risk tolerance it is much harder for startups in europe to get money. there are few investors and banks will only give you a credit if you have a proven business model.
most rich people in europe are rich because their families had been rich for centuries. it's almost all old money.
I understand where you're coming from, but there's a fine distinction. Most never wind up testing their safety net. In my mind, the real benefit is the risk tolerance you develop knowing you have one as a young adult.
When you don't that drive for safety can leave one with a very risk adverse mindset. So yeah, you can be FI at 40, but that won't magically change the temperament that got you there.
Except you're not 20. You don't have the same vitality as someone half your age, and you have relationships befitting a 40 year old and not a 20 year old so you still can't take the same risks. You're better capitalized and have deeper relationships than a 20 year old but you're not 20 years old able to. live off ramen and going out for a night of binge drinking with a fellow 20 year old who's going to go on to write Napster or Facebook. You won't wake up at 7 am after that night to roll into class at 9am where you'll network and build relationships where you can both drop out of college to start a new computer company. Where do you find fellow 40 year olds that can also take risks like you're both 20? I'm asking seriously because I'm also 40 and able to take a risk thanks to saving up some money, but imagining that I'm in the same boat as if I had this kind of backing when I was 20 is, I'm sorry, delusional.
but many successful startups are by people in their 40s. i don't think you need to act like a 20 year old in order to start a business. on the contrary. you can start without taking huge risks.
i am obviously not in the same boat as when i was 20. at 20 i knew nothing, i had dumb ideas, and i would have worked my ass off building something that noone needs. now i have experience, and i know that i am not going to waste one minute on coding until i have found customers that will pay for it.
i am building a new consultancy right now. i just need a partner to help me with sales. once we get projects i can start hiring and together we can grow the business.
it's low risk because looking for projects is more or less like looking for jobs. anyone interested?
At 20 you knew nothing and that was a strength. You didn't know any better and went against giants to start Microsoft, Apple, and Google instead of joining HP or IBM. At 40 we could start McDonalds, LinkedIn or Walmart.
Hi nice to meet you I’m a 40 year old with no safety net but the one I made for myself
I was just out of for a year and had to live off savings and do small gigs. My community I’ve built on my own for the last 20 years (including my friend jacquesm) sent me money and bought me food and took me to the doctor…
Luckily I got a full time startup job a month before i was insolvent but i have to rebuild my finances
Oh and simultaneously I’m starting a residential waste cooperative that won’t make me any money by design
Risk taking tolerance can be taught but you need to have an unquenchable fire and be intelligent
> Where do you find fellow 40 year olds that can also take risks like you're both 20? I'm asking seriously because I'm also 40 and able to take a risk thanks to saving up some money
On HN, apparently! You guys should get together and take some risks. Frankly, I'd much rather work with 40-year olds than 20-year olds. You may not get the same energy, but you're also much less likely to see your coworker throwing up in the office for half the day after that binge drinking night before.
I think being "20 years old" in this context is more about "20 years ago". Where are the successful young 20yo founders in 2024? Recent golden-child SBF is 31 and ran a failed crypto scam! It would be unhealthy to misinterpret "youth" and "economic golden age" as the same thing. It is purely a coincidence that they may coincide for some generations.
Successful people come from bimodal distribution: 1. people who have good safety nets
2. people with absolutely traumatic backgrounds
In both cases you “have nothing to lose” in the sense of, if your attempt fails, you’re back to where you started.
For the middle-class person failing hard, but having no safety net means you do get a reduction and so most people who fall into this category are the most risk adverse.
On the other hand, people who have been homeless or in excessively traumatic situations are basically like it’s never gonna be that bad again, and I survived it so I can handle basically anything.
I fall into that second category, which is why I start so much stuff including building communities, literally everywhere I go
>> "Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something."
>> "Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on."
>> "Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work."
>> "Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it."
Perhaps that's objectively true or maybe that's just your perspective (ie, what your level of resilience can handle)
Like your classmates I joined a risky startup as employee 1 during the great recession, but unlike them I didn't have any backstop. Failure would have hurt but it wouldn't have been catastrophic - including rent and income-based college loan repayment my monthly nut was maybe $1k. When I was short on cash I took a job at nights doing phone tech support and later building websites for local businesses in my spare time. That isn't to say there weren't bumps (had my first run-in with the IRS -- and debt collectors) but to me there was always a way to make ends meet. Of course i owed some of that to being young and healthy without dependents, and the availability of $600/month apartments...
For myself, I think it was true. Other grads that 'failed' either took a job in the trades, or moved back in with parents. I had a disability, trades were off the table. It wasn't really safe for me to live under the same roof as my father, so living at home was out as well.
Maybe 'living under a bridge' is hyperbolic. I'm sure I could have couch surfed, or at worst lived out of my truck, but my life back then revolved around how many weeks or months living expenses I had on hand.
So true.....I had to turn around and give up many times because the bills needed paying, my parents were just as broke as me, and no rich friends....
I know a ton of people who had their credit cards paid, student loans paid, housing paid, car payments, etc .... parents all gave them the hand outs and helped them and they were able to constantly have fun, socialize and party and meet more and more people....I have been forced to work for reality
Yep, and it's made me reconsider my conservative risk tolerance now that I'm finally financially independent. I'm not sure if I should 'swing for the fences' or 'take a knee and run out the clock'. Probably the latter. I'm not sure I'm hungry enough to put up with a startup in my 40's.
according to statistics, many successful startups are by people in their 40s. ok, so if you are not hungry enough, that's fine, but i think being financially independent at 40 seems to be the best time to throw yourself into a startup. since you are already financially secure you don't have to overwork yourself, but you can take it a bit slower.
That's how some people operate. But I've met plenty of business owners who literally put their life savings on the line for their business ventures. In short, they do everything in your tl;dr, excepting that failure is absolutely not an option for them. I think many of us like to believe having the cushion is the thing that would set us free, but I know many people who took risks with no cushion, and many more who have the cushion and take no risks, to question that.
That's a nice sentiment, but something I noticed when I eventually managed to graduate college was that there was no substitute for a good safety net and parental support.
I watched dumbfounded as some of my classmates went on to found or join risky startups during the great recession. For me, failure would have been catastrophic. I'd have likely wound up sleeping under a bridge. I was amazed they were so fearless! Only, I later learned the reason they were so fearless is they knew their parents would step in and pay for their living expenses while they got back on their feet.
TLDR: Some folks can swing for the fences, take outsized risks, and reap the rewards, because failure is always an option.