I think no matter your lot in life, if you're competitive, you get the feeling that you missed out on a lot that you could have accomplished. Stories of kids learning programming at 6, or starting companies at 16, etc, feed into this.
Even I feel like I would be much farther "ahead" if I had only started programming before high school, if I had been more gung-ho about college, if I had gone to California in 2010 after graduation instead of remaining in New Hampshire. I don't even know any programmers in person outside of my work. My "network" isn't something to put on a pedestal.
And yet by all accounts I live an extremely comfortable life, I wrote enough to get noticed and get a book deal just two years out of college, my friends think I'm of superhuman intellect, I'm able to walk to work every day, etc.
I think the kind of worry in this post is a response to the world born out of hyper-competitiveness, and I don't think its a healthy one. It's not a positive message, and the events that could turn it into a positive message for this person, the qualifications for "not being a loser", should never involve anything five or six sigma from the norm.
Look around you and relax. You've probably already won.
Now, even in New Hampshire (to steal your example), you can subconsciously see yourself competing against folks in NYC or San Francisco or Beijing, who have entirely different sets of circumstances, etc.
It's almost cliche that the 'hometown hero' will have a hard time in the 'real world' (subject of many movies, etc.), but the Internet makes this play out on a daily basis.
Like you say, it's all a matter of perspective. Can you really settle for 'winning' locally, knowing that you're barely competitive globally? I think that's a question many folks struggle with.
I'm of a similar age, and a similar childhood. I get where he's coming from, even though he's far more successful than me. He's comparing himself to what he knows his potential to be. Or what he believes it to be, anyway, which might as well be the same thing in its effect.
That gets to be a complicated thing. It's delusional in part, of course. But it's also not, in part. He likely really could have achieved a lot more if he'd put more of himself into it.
Maybe not all he imagines, but he's clearly saying he knows there was more to do than he's done.
I don't think that's a bad standard to hold yourself to. I think a lot of progress depends on that kind of standard.
My senior year of high school I had this long running fight with one of my teachers. I'd cruised through school to that point, putting in just enough effort to pass everyone else, but no more than that. This teacher started grading me lower, writing "You can do better than this" on my papers. I was furious with him. Furious. I'd stay after school and we'd literally yell at each other about it for hours. I said he had no right to expect more from me, I was giving him more than anyone else was as things were. He had to grade me on the same scale. He completely refused to do it. Being a very stubborn boy, I refused to do more.
I "won" that argument by just not giving him what he wanted from me. But he was right to demand it, and I was wrong not to work harder. I paid for that attitude in college and for many years after.
I think in the end it's about not cheating yourself. I think that's that McClure is on about, and I think he's right.
I find the same effect on HN to be even worse. HN now has over 100k uniques/day[1] .
That means that on any topic you'd ever like to comment on, odds are good there are many HN visitors who are better at that you are.
[1] traffic from last year: http://ycombinator.com/images/hntraffic-9feb11.png)
By his standards, I'm worth less than a handful of dirt. While I have achieved some modest level of financial freedom, I didn't do anything as cool as that guy yet. And if I do some day, I'll remember to be thankful for it instead of whining publicly about not being Bill Gates.
For some people the realization that you're never done, that there is always something cooler to do, is apparently very depressing. Personally though, I'm glad it's that way. As long as you're healthy and capable the future is wide open. I find this much more inspiring than the idea that somewhere there is a big cosmic finish line waiting just for you to fall short of.
So all he needs to enjoy the spoils of his success is to change his point of view. It can be done. But if it is not done, then it may be impossible to truly enjoy life.
The modesty, anyway, is false, because clearly the OP is proud of his children. However he is wrong not to consider it an accomplishment - it's easy to have children, but difficult to bring them up well. I have met so many people who put their career before their children, who are not prepared to give something up (e.g. money or career prospects) for their children.
Didn't the parents of Gandhi, for example, accomplish something for having brought up Gandhi?
I agree with you that it could have something to do with being born in a hyper-competitive world. But I agree with the authors standpoint and feel the same way. The above paragraph for me echoes my sentiments perfectly. It's about making something of your life.
Of course, as some of the others have pointed out. There is a certain amount of delusion in it. But that might as well just be passion.
I agree with @PeteThom on creating your own space. Competing with the world is never the right way to go. Everyday there is someone doing what you want to do, better than you. So, it is only distracting to worry about what others achieve, and leads to achieving even lesser.
Finally, I'm still in my mid twenties, with my only achievements being one of the best developers in any place I work. Did a brief stint as a freelancer, so I could have the financial means to support development of my own ideas, but found out Qt/C++ wasn't so hot in the freelance market. So, now i'm working a permanent position at a small and flexible company, leading a team, creating an enterprise solution on iOS, for some of the biggest companies in the world.
Interesting challenges help keep me occupied, but, ideally what I want is to work on my ideas on my terms and produce something amazing! And live my life having time to think about it, instead of having it mapped out to some mundane comfortable existence.
It's really hard to explain the viewpoint, so excuse me if it seems like i'm rambling.
@moses1400: I'm like you, twenty years ago and have always worried about being in your place and feeling that way. But, I think there is always hope. I hope too, that I find my way to the right path. Wish you luck. Keep fighting the good fight.
Not attacking personal philosophies here, but this seems to run along the same vein as the desire to be "famous for being famous". Focus on building something, on creation and life. All the dents you make will be relative anyway, because as many have said - there's always someone doing something better. First, know what you want to do, second, do it to the best of your abilities. The dent that makes on the world is dependent on a plethora of influences most of which will be beyond your control.
This does not guarantee you success or that you ever find that space. But it does keep you on your toes on your own terms.
Hey, far be it from me to criticize someone who's trying to make a mark in the world. I myself am just past 40, a former child prodigy, not very successful in Silicon Valley, and still feel I have some creative works in me which are yet to be realized.
Where I have sincere worries for Dave is that he doesn't seem to have a specific idea of what would count as success -- other than, maybe, it would be big enough and impress enough people that it would silence his demons. I don't know Dave, but I have a strong suspicion that this is also what led him to slack off at university -- rebelling against this idea that if he isn't the smartest and most successful, he's nothing. Because it makes every minor setback a bitter failure, and even success turns to ashes in your mouth.
His mission statement shouldn't be that he wants a better epitaph. Other people get to write his epitaph, and by that time he'll be fucking dead. It's out of his control. What is in his control: whether his life was meaningful to himself. Did it express his unique talents, did it give him and others joy, did it help others? Did he make his own rules about how to evaluate his life or was he a slave to the caprices of fame and fortune? And this is about so much more than just a career.
I think I'll just leave this here. A clip from The Wire.
"The job will not save you."
In my experience, the degree to which you're successful has no effect on those doubts. I've put out a number of highly successful pieces of software, had a ton of attention in the press (technical and not), etc; I still feel like I'm largely failing to live up to my abilities, and that I peaked when I was 17. Maybe I need something hyper-successful that makes me a ton of money, but I doubt even that will kill the doubts.
At the end of the day, it just comes down to saying "this is what I've done, and who cares if I could've maybe, possibly done better?" but that's not so easy.
It's been done! http://www.salesforce.com/chatter/overview/
Anyway, I related a lot to the first few paragraphs (maybe until he was about the same age I am now actually, which makes me hopeful :) ): I was good in school, got accepted in the best French engineering school where I discovered as well that "hard work and regular, consistent effort was also required". I did not really produce that hard work and consistent effort.
The thing is that I hadn't really thought about what I wanted to do at that point: HS students that are good in Math and Physics go to Engineering schools and that's just what I did. Check. But now what?
So I went for Computer Science a bit after eliminating the other options. Then moved to the US still without thinking in terms of career and what I really wanted to do. This has lead to taking jobs in tech but without enough consideration to where it would lead me.
So now, after a few years of jobs as "not a developer but something else" and years doing programming as a hobby after work, I realize that maybe I should just find a job as a developer. Problem is that companies look at my resume and it doesn't quite "match" what they're expecting for someone who is that many years after his master.
Long story short: I, too, feel like a late bloomer that hasn't filled his expectations from earlier successes. However, I don't run a fund, haven't worked for successful startups and am not friend with Sean Parker. Does that make me a failure? No, but I know I can do better. The good news is that I have 15 years to catch up with you, Dave!
In my early thirties, I sobered up a little and noticed that my career was going nowhere. I decided to sack in my reasonably secure job in publishing and move from Manchester (a provincial city in the UK) to the capital London. Big mistake. I struggled to get a job, got into debt and, eventually, in desperation, asked to move in with my parents.
So there was I - a guy who had always valued his independence, who had on several occasions even mocked people who lived with mum and dad - staying in a tiny room in his parent's house. I was the epitome of a loser.
I am now nearly 40 and my life situation has improved immeasurably. I am married to a wonderful lady, I own a house, I have a couple of reasonably successful projects-cum-start-ups that pay the bills and free me - hopefully forever - from having to work for someone else. I am not a mega-success on the world stage but, compared with where I was at 33, I am in a very good position.
I suppose what I am saying here is that one can bloom at anytime, early in life or late in life. I would also add that being a programmer (I got a job as a web developer a couple of years after leaving my parents house) gives one a far greater chance of financial and business success than if you are involved in most other professions. Try doing a start-up if all you know is nursing or stacking shelves.
So we are lucky in that we have a skill that can turn-around our lives at potentially any time.
I personally wouldn't call it "a provincial city" (it's very sparse, but overall Greater Manchester is home to 3 million people, on par with Birmingham and Glasgow for the title of "most populous urban conglomerate in the UK" just behind London); of course it's nothing like the capital, but it does provide a fairly good lifestyle at a fraction of London prices. There is usually at least one good restaurant for almost any cuisine you'd care about (except maybe my beloved Erithrean), and any movie worth watching will be at the Cornerhouse at some point. Granada/ITV also attracts quite a few glamorous models, if that's your thing. The only real problem in Manchester is the depressing weather, but it's not like London is so much better in that regard.
My point is that London is on a scale shared with very few cities around the world, but that doesn't make all other British cities "provincial" -- some of them are, some of them are not.
I did not intend to use 'provincial' in any derogatory way but to explain to non-UK readers that Manchester is in the UK's provinces.
The real kicker is that I actually consider myself a pretty good programmer, at least for my experience level. As stated, I've been programming for about 2 years and I'm the primary contributor on a project that is deemed to be the "number one priority" for our application. But how good of a programmer would I have been had my parents bought me a computer when I was a kid? Or even when I was a teenager? I didn't even really know I liked computers until I was around 21 and even if I knew what the hell programming was then, I definitely wouldn't have been able to afford college.
So I guess there's still a decent likelihood that I'll need to be transitioning out of programming less than 15 years into my career, but hopefully there's still plenty of other opportunities for me to do great things for the next 20 or so years after that.
Now to wait for replies from people who designed OSes when they were 12 :)
I called it an OS, even though it was just a text-based visual shell running in DOS that let you do pretty much anything. Actually used it as my primary "OS" for a few months.
Another cool thing was a game I wrote in BGI graphics with Pascal. Was fun to play, but I didn't know about arrays so there were roughly 200 global variables.
Oh and all the code I wrote before I was ~15 tried to use as short variable/function names as possible for some reason. When I used up the alphabet I'd go to aa, ab ... I want to slap my young self for that.
PS: I started programming when I was 9, in Logo. That was fun too. But the real fun started when I "unlocked" Pascal at 11.
However, the idea that people who start this early have a 10 year head start on someone who starts at 22 is silly. Maybe for child prodigies this is true, but I was neither driven nor intelligent enough then to learn at the rate I do now. I distinctly remember being incredibly confused by the syntax of for loops, and being unable to solve trivial C++ compiler errors because I had no idea how to approach debugging them or where to find more information. I also had a casual hobbyist approach, where if something wasn't working, I would just give up and go play outside with my friends. Even with all the resources we have today, I don't think I had the mental faculty back then to design an OS. :)
Also, learning programming now is an order of magnitude more effective nowadays, with all the free online resources, new languages and frameworks, and public interest in the subject. Back in 2000, Arduino didn't exist, there were no decent web frameworks or JS libraries, and I remember sadly giving up on trying to build a robot because the only books I could find on the subject were university textbooks that required proprietary tech provided by the prof.
My first programs were text-based games written in QBASIC. I also wrote a program to help me with my math homework. Later on, one of the Java books had a 3D game engine so I dabbled in that.
After I discovered C from a Windows programming book (age 11-12) I quickly started experimenting with various lower-level things. I wrote a DOS-based 3d engine. I studied printouts of the Allegro source code. I used DJGPP (remember that?!). And I played around with BIOS interrupts, and real mode extenders, etc.
It was around this time (when I was 12, in 2000) that I was introduced to Linux (Red Hat), and I also got a printout of a shell/OS written by some guy in Obj-C, which had assembly code and stuff to do with context switching and registers. That lead me down the path of making my own OS. My first attempt was via a ASCII-HEX to binary conversion program. I wrote a HEX file that switched to mode 13h and filled the screen with blue, copied it to the boot sector of a floppy, and booted from it, and it worked. I was hooked.
My teen years were spent working on different versions of that OS, and also doing 3d graphics stuff.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/12-year-old-finds-critica...
I think it's natural to think that way.
But how you need to look at it is: You didn't really miss anything. There are a whole bunch of new things you can get ahead on, right now. In 5 years you can be doing something that other people will look at and think, "I should have started on that 5 years ago".
There is no one good moment in life to get started. It's always now.
My code has significantly improved compared to what I wrote a decade ago (or even a few months for that matter), but it's due to better resources (GitHub, etc), and exposure to better programming practices (SCM, TDD, CI, etc).
Computer science and software engineering is a relatively young field, and there is still plenty of room for improvement.
But when you have so many smart people trying to be more successful than their peers the definition of success changes. The bar rises and just building and selling a successful company doesn't seem good enough. You have to start the next Facebook, or the next Twitter.
IMHO, the best measure of success is not absolutes but a relative one. Compare your current self with your self from 2 years ago and ask if you are a better, more successful person.
By that measure Dave has done exceptionally well in the past few years.
You cannot accurately compare yourself over a time period. Moreover, on which dimensions are you going to compare? Say if I had a successful software company, but I give it up and move to Paris to become a mediocre painter, a vocation I'm currently enjoying a lot (but can't say if I keep enjoying it forever), have I made a good or a bad decision? Have I "progressed" in life or not?
Key should be to not overanalyze life, but rather simply live it as if it is not that important (in face of death, it isn't). Life should not be obsessively optimized. You can spend your whole life analyzing what you have done and still find yourself dissatisfied.
This is definitely true. But you probably have a better idea of how successful/happy you were 2 years ago than your peers right now.
>Moreover, on which dimensions are you going to compare
Yes the dimensions have to be defined. If you wanted to be more creative or wanted to live abroad (assuming you are not from France), then you have progressed in life. But if you wanted to write more software than this is a regression.
>Key should be to not overanalyze life, but rather simply live it as if it is not that important.
Different strokes. You don't have to. But if you ever ask a question to yourself about whether you are successful or not, or happy or not you might want to measure somethings. I don't think it's a bad idea to look back once in a while and see where you have come to in life.
As I have been doing a lot more financial planning I have started to second-guess whether I want to look for funding in the Valley or bootstrap with a partner.
Yes, I think we can be a billion dollar company in 20 years or less with a couple million in investment. Yes, I think we could bring open source ERP into the mainstream.
However we aren't in the hot areas of the day. We are entering a market which is dominated by an increasingly small number of vendors (which we see as an opportunity). And according to my model, if we are willing to make a lot less on the first three years, we may be able to reach the billion dollar mark at most 10 years later, and we could do this without losing the freedom of operation--- without pressure to be acquired or go public.
So the delimma here is pitching ERP to VC's for money we might not really need that badly, in the hopes that taking money will get us there faster and build new connections, or going on our own.
We aren't going to be the next Facebook. We do however expect to become as big as RedHat, perhaps significantly bigger.
I don't know what we will do. It will depend on discussions with others on the team yet.
I do know though that the decision has become harder than it was before.
Once you are beyond basic poverty, your basic self (and happiness levels) more or less remains the same (no matter what you do or where you go). It's a myth that "success" _should_ be had and a worthwhile life is the one in which something worthwhile (as defined by the society, and not you) was achieved.
Musk: Do I sound optimistic?
Wired.com: Yeah, you always do.
Musk: Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we’re going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I’m hell-bent on making it work.
Whatever the odds you face, there is nothing in life you cannot achieve, if you have committed yourself wholeheartedly to the cause.
Old/Young. Experienced/Inexperienced. Adept/Inept. Knowledgeable/Ignoramus. Prodigy/Late Bloomer. Nothing matters in the end.
Cause when we are done and dusted and look back at our time, we will find that it was a journey that couldn't have been any other way. We made it what it was and it lies their for us to cherish.
So don't hold yourself back. Nothing in this world is to be done or not to be done. The conscious/unconscious/subconscious rules that we follow every day were not there to start with and they are neither eternal.
Go out there and change your world. Become the Newton. Become the Napoleon. Become the Buddha. Become the Gandhi.
Remember, there are no rules and there never will be.
The least usable fuel in this industry is depression. Don't subject yourself to it and ignore everyone else. Support them in their endeavors, high-five them in their success but do not compare yourself to anyone else otherwise it won't take but a few days to arrive at the bottom of $some-random-vice and you'll be writing blog posts like this one second-guessing yourself.
(I second guess myself daily and often wonder what the hell I'm doing pretending to be a CEO of an IT firm of all things. Yet have managed to remain in business as long as I have -- and help all sorts of people pay their mortgages, support their families and challenge themselves daily in the work they do for me. That's something I derive sheer joy from.)
Admittedly the remainder results from my faith, but that's another post altogether.
On the other hand, Silicon Valley creates a dynamic where things change rapidly and some of the smartest people in the world are constantly pushing the limits. This creates an opportunity where if you are honest with yourself you have to say "I need to get better" - and this self-perception is a gift to be cherished over and over again. No losers when you look at the game this way.. just people who will grow and grow and others who won't.
In short, it's easy to feel like an ugly girl when you're standing next to the prettiest girl in class.
Dave seemed like something of a child prodigy. Like he said he didn't get an advanced degree. He was around people at PayPal who went on to create $1B+ companies. He's worked with Sean Parker. Those are achievements in themselves. But when you keep that kind of company and you haven't done what they did, it's easy to feel like you're lagging.
My old manager from my first job was one of the founders (and current CTO) at Gilt. One of my old college buddies who was also a coworker (under that same manager) went with him early on to build Gilt. Today I consider both of them incredibly successful. In comparison to them, they've achieved way more than I have.
Pressure to succeed in ones youth is ubiquitous in certain industries.
I think this song about the music industry pretty much sums it up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca9GJ6mMxLw
-- Teddy R.
Perhaps it's all relative and compared to Sean Parker's bank balance he's a dismal failure but to reach 40 and have "a little under a million" in liquid assets and to have been able to dabble in angel investing for several years just doesn't seem that bad a life.
I hope to God I'm a late bloomer, too.
Having "a little less than a million" as a pad would reduce my stress considerably.
I find I have the same self-crisis about once a week and maybe more often now. Nobody on HN knows me. I haven't shaped anything in the industry. Even if I'm ultimately successful by my own standards, nobody will probably know. I don't care. My stealth agenda won't make me rich or famous or even worth noticing. I just want to fundamentally change the way we test software and the way we think about quality ("the 'q' word" - ugh). Nobody's gonna care about that until a change happens that nobody now thinks is worth pursuing. It doesn't mean that it's not worth accomplishing, though. But that's who I am.
You, sir, are not I. You are known and have accomplishments. You're already living the dream. Well . . . some dream. Not mine and I guess not yours. But the point is that you're already doing your thing. Damn the torpedoes! Go as fast and as hard and as broadly (and as whatever you like) as you can in the way you'd like to most. Nobody's going to lift a finger to stop you. People will likely complain one way or another after the fact but at the end of the day all you have left is your life and your loves and there's no other way to measure your success than those things you hold closest to you.
Don't give up!
We rarely compare ourselves to the people we consider we've already firmly surpassed. We might hang out with existing friends that we feel we're more successful than, but we're trying to meet that new potential employer that's above where we think we'll go next; we're trying to hook that huge important client; we're more eager to network with people we see as hugely successful; we want to learn from the people we consider smarter than ourselves, and so on.
Not only that, but outside our own circle, the successful people are far more visible. For every successful founder there are hundreds that failed, gave up, never even got a company funded, and so on that we will never hear about.
I've been through several startups. Some I co-founded. Others where I was the first guy or first 2-3 people brought in, on substantial equity. Been involved in a number of VC deals. But no big exits. Nothing enough to retire on. Not paid of my mortgage.
It'd be easy for me to write a similar post about my career. Lots of companies that could've, should've made it big.
Yet, years ago I realized that the moment I founded my first company, I was more successful as a founder or "startup guy" than most people - most people who want to start a company never even try, and fewer succeed. Each subsequent one, I've left some mark or other. So I've not founded another Google. But I've done enough. I want to do more. Lots more. But I've still done enough that I have plenty to be proud of without feeling a need for everyone to know about it.
(though he things I'm the most proud of these days no longer have anything to do with my work at all)
Not that I don't understand the point. It's all relative.
Well, he opened himself up. In a world where opinions about others are far more numerous than people standing up and saying "this is my story, from the heart. these are my faults and failures, and my dreams". I find that more valuable than 100 posts blowing their own horn. It's the most basic story of all, shared by many, and one of the hardest to write.
It's fun to watch this thing develop.
Besides that, as a reader, it's easy to detect the Svbtle "look" & know that this article will probably be worth my time.
That he managed to convince that many high-calibre people so fast is very impressive. (especially since they have better things to do than thinking about joining a blog network. Most of them don't need that at all)
Sounds like the myspace vs. facebook argument.
if he considers that kind of life "failure", he is going to lead a very depressed life unless he wins a few lotteries
enough money to live in one of the most expensive places on earth, probably without having to work too much? check. a family and (apparently) happy marital relationship? check. moderately successful times working at important companies? check.
Sure, it's good to be ambitious and set high goals. But the dude needs to get a grip. If he wants to achieve more, fine. But there's no universal standard by which he's a "failure". At the end of the day it's up to him and he'd do well to admit it.
http://www.gladwell.com/2008/2008_10_20_a_latebloomers.html
An excellent quote from the article:
"The Cézannes of the world bloom late not as a result of some defect in character, or distraction, or lack of ambition, but because the kind of creativity that proceeds through trial and error necessarily takes a long time to come to fruition."
But regardless this post made me think that if you treat your body well (healthy food, gym, as little stress as possible) and you hadn't had some genetical disadvantages then your brain stay quite young forever, and you are like a fine wine: you age well and gather wisdom all the time. Truly, the only thing stopping OP from learning from his mistakes and trying again, learning and trying again and again is his approach that I may be too old. You are not! How old you are only matters whether you will personally make a big deal out of it or not. Don't let it stop you from trying again.
The fact that Dave is still going strong at 46 and trying to make a difference shows there is much more substance to him than many others I know in this business. If there is one thing I've observed, it's how the perceived "lack" of success in those who expected great things of themselves have knocked so many people off their perch.
Good job, Dave. In my book, the very fact you recognize this in yourself qualifies you as successful.
I've never worked for a start-up but imagine the start-up scene works the same given the common stereotypes: success stories of 20-year-olds, hyper intelligent ivy-league drop-outs, etc. I don't know whether they're the rule or the exception to it.
I guess he's just in a rut. I read a great book called "How High can You Bounce?" It's all about if you've taken a downturn how can you spin it to your advantage so you rebound better off than where you were before the fall. Knowing this is possible is simply the first step.
Think Dave just needs some bounce.
Virtually everyone is a failure depending upon who or what they compare themselves to.
The odds against being a pro basketball player are astronomical -- everyone in the NBA is a huge success relative to those who didn't make it, but if they aren't Kobe Bryan, Lebron James or Dwyane Wade they may consider themselves failures. And even the top active guys live in the shadows of Jordan, et al.
I'm pretty sure this is the root of dmc's problems. The nature of his work has him surrounded by insane statistical outliers (some of whom are probably more lucky than 'good', though I'm sure there are both). His feeling like less than a success in this situation is unfortunate, but probably a perfectly normal human response.
The best place to store extra food is in someone else's stomach.
Dave has built an incredible network in the valley. He's helped 100s of people form companies. Those are a lot of great bonds.
Is that not success?
This really made me see that I don't have just a few year window to do well, but it's a life long thing. I would have never guessed I'd be doing what I'm doing now a year ago, and I have no idea what I'll be doing a year from now, but I figure if I just keep doing what I love and building awesome products, I'll always be happy.
It's funny though, I read your story and in my mind you are way ahead of your time at age 19. I guess that kind of shows how you never think you are moving fast enough.
You're so ahead of most people, it's almost tempting to downvote you for humblebrag. It's like people who complain because they do only [good measurement of self in a domain] in [said domain]. (I would give a sport example, but I couldn't give you a realistic one)
Or to speak more plainly, cash is but one axis on the graph of success, and often it is the very worst of them. Winning is having the strength to disregard it.
As in "holy shit that was inspiring."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/magazine/05RATPACK.html?_r...
Interesting to note how many of them have become billionaires in just a few short years. Peter Thiel, Mark Pincus, Reid Hoffman, ...
> and so here I am: still standing in the arena, in hand-to-hand combat with demons mostly of my own > making, aiming to make a small dent in the universe. nowhere near a great success story, yet > fighting the good fight and perhaps helping others to achieve greatness as I attempt a bit of my > own.
[1] http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ae-0624-proli...
as long as we are so lucky to be here another day to keep going.
I wish you good luck with the business, but much much better luck with your family.
"Whatever your situation right now - its okay. Keep working."
Loved this quote.
A modern Robert Frost....
I'm in a similar demographic as @Dave, live in palo alto, near his age. Had some really good successes 10-15 years ago, and nothing since then.
My big activities for the past decade have been climbing, skiing and raising my kids. Some of my friends kept working and now have vineyards and foundations. And sometimes it stings that I don't fly private jets or have anything really impressive to brag about.
But I had years of board-meetings, soaking up the one-upmanship. Once you become conscious of the non-stop compulsive attention seeking, there is a certain emptiness to it. So I stepped away from that, and I wouldn't trade a vineyard for the experiences I've had.
Now I'm starting on a new company, working very hard with high confidence. But if this company doesn't see a monster outcome, I won't feel like a loser. My prime motivation is the products, the people, and the competition, all of which I love.
IMHO we are in a golden age of software. To me it feels like being in the major leagues where everyone who participates is lucky as can be.
The bottom line is you need to figure out what you want in life and how you define success. Hopefully at some point we all come to realize that while wealth, power or fame/recognition, etc. are excellent motivators, as an end such goals are rather hollow and empty. If and when one finally realizes that, then it really doesn't matter at what age you realize that, just as long as you've enjoyed what you've spent your time doing, and have picked up some good friends and family along the way. That's when you throw out the self-induced angst and hurry to "achieve something" and just do your thing, living in the moment. Of course, life is much easier the earlier one clues in on this. :)
http://chrisyeh.blogspot.com/2005/12/meaning-of-life.html
Here's the money quote:
"In the book, Deci talks about a study which discovered that humans have six basic aspirations. The first three, the extrinsic aspirations, are to be rich, famous, and good-looking. (Actually, rich/powerful and famous/well-liked, but why ruin a euphonious phrase?) Sound familiar?
The second three, the intrinsic aspirations, are to have good relationships with the ones you care about, to achieve personal growth, and to feel like you contribute to your community.
Deci's work showed that people who focused on extrinsic aspirations (regardless of whether or not they achieved them) tended to display narcissism, anxiety, and depression, while the people who focused on instrinsic aspirations displayed a strong sense of well-being."
I can relate a little. I dropped out in grade 11. Built N. America's first fully graphical ecommmerce site (1992), Canada's first Windows IIS webserver (sorry), country's first 56K internet access, $10M IPO in 1998, client list includes Eckhart Tolle and Oprah.
So what.
I recommend you learn success from those that who mastered it over the eons, and they don't live anywhere near Silicon Valley.
Here's one example;
"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" -- Jesus Christ
How does this relate to OP? DMC is a highly talented person, but he's in his mid-40s, he's worked in the supposedly meritocratic startup sector (and, as with trading, the definition of success in VC-istan is making money; if you've been in VC-istan for 2 decades and haven't made fuck-you money, you haven't won) and his net worth (as he admitted on Quora) is less than $1m. Given that, it's fair to say that he probably hasn't played his cards right. That doesn't make him unskillful or weak or "a loser"-- far from it, and I'm sure that none of those are true. It doesn't make him any less of a person, or any less smart, than the more successful people. It just makes it a good bet that if he could rewind to 20 and play from there again, he'd have a lot more success.
And ultimately, the reason why many of us are sitting here not being rich and outlandishly successful when people of similar or inferior talent smash $500m+ exits is that, when faced with a thousand identical-looking doors, one with a pot of gold behind it, they had the "insight" to pick door #467 while we picked #822 or #134 or #915. Some of us pick #467 at the next opportunity but, of course, the next time the pot of gold is behind #719.
I think the best thing to do is to back away from the VC-istan insanity, and pretend all that garbage doesn't exist. As long as I'm growing my skillset by 20 to 25% per year (which is not hard to do, because returns from increasing skill in technology are exponential) I feel like I ought to be happy with that. It can be difficult to be satisfied with this (first world problems) when you see unqualified idiots getting funded in enormous amounts, and then getting acquisitions and EIR gigs as welfare checks because they have powerful friends... so it takes some discipline and maturity not to be annoyed... but sanity is worth it.
On one hand, there are academics saying it's always mostly luck, and their typical argument goes roughly like this: Say 100,000 orangutans enter a coin-flipping contest in which 'heads' wins and 'tails' loses; so around 50,000 orangutans will win on the first throw; of those orangutans, around 25,000 will also win on the second throw; and of those, around 12,500 will also win on the third row; and so on, until after ten throws, there will be close to 100 orangutans who will have won every throw in a row due only to pure luck -- just like investors who have only a string of hits in their track record.
On the other hand, there are successful investors like Warren Buffett who say that luck is a factor in the short run, but skill becomes the more important factor over long periods of time. You can read his detailed response to the 'orangutan argument' in this article he wrote for Columbia Business School's magazine in 1984: http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/null?&exclusive=filemgr.dow...
Edit: corrected typo.
In any game of more than 2 players, there's a third element: strategy. That's a mix of both. People are pursuing their own interests and sometimes it affects other players disproportionately. Or, we might be sitting together at a 3-player game and I win, even though you're a better player, because that 3rd player is either lousy or unpredictable and does things that hand me advantages. (The most extreme example of this is the "king-maker scenario" where a player can't win but gets to choose the winner.) Puerto Rico, although very skillful and deep, is notorious for its table-position effect.
For an aside, part of what makes German-style board games is this strategic "interaction term" resulting neither from chance nor from individual skill alone. Pure skill games like Chess are a bit dry, in the sense that if the skill levels are different by much, the outcome is predictable: the more skillful player will win pretty much every time. German-style games leverage this third "strategic" factor to make games that aren't very luck-driven (you never feel "screwed by the dice") but that also don't have the same winner every time.
This is why most of the "serious" mind-sport games are two-party games. In Chess, if your opponent's strategy hurts you, then he (by definition) had a better strategy and therefore played more skillfully. In Bridge, any player's strategic affect on your outcome is likewise indicative: if your teammate hurt you through a strategic interaction, then you're not as good a team. In luckless 2-player games, the party that wins is the party that played better. In 3+ player games, this isn't always true.
Economic and business games are like that. They're massively multiplayer, which means that there are a lot of strategic-interaction teams that can't be attributed to skill or luck, and the quality of information most people have isn't very high. This is especially true in technology where, by definition, we're trying to do things that haven't been done before. That makes it fun, but also really, really noisy.
Do startups actually succeed based on technical merits, or on how well they market themselves? In this social media bubble, it's the latter. I'm not going to claim that technical skill doesn't matter. I just don't think it matters as much. You can back-fill the technical stuff by hiring the right people (contrary to our overblown claim that non-technical CEOs have no hope of finding technical talent because they can't individually judge it) but if you build great technology and can't sell it, you never get off the ground.
It's exceptionalism that leads people to think that the VC ecosystem is in some way (or should be) morally superior to Wall Street, Hollywood, the fashion industry, or Madison Avenue. Sure, what we do is cerebral, but so was advertising in the Mad Man era. VC-istan isn't worse than these other industries, but it's not better. When you have a "creative" industry, there are a lot of opportunities to do great work and profit by doing so. But there are also smiling-idiot narcissists who pile in and fuck everything up because they think they're "creative"... and of course, what gives them this opportunity is that there are other idiots in power who will put them ahead of the people of substance like us because they don't know any better.
It's the expectation of meritocracy that makes us unhappy, but human organizations and ecosystems and societies all turn to shit over time no matter what so this is an unreasonable expectation.
There is a place for people like us, the virtuous soldiers who get rich slowly, building our skillset until we're just really good at a few things... but there's also a place for smiling idiots. And smiling idiots are always going to be the "cool kids", and it's the cool kids (not people of substance) who get those stupid TechCrunch articles written about their 7-Couric products. It's the expectation of fairness in human structures, which is just unreasonable at scale, that creates the unhappiness.
http://chrisyeh.blogspot.com/2010/07/entrepreneurship-is-abo...
"Let me reiterate--you have a less than 50/50 chance of founding a successful startup, even if you manage to raise VC every time (which is not a forgone conclusion) and even if you devote essentially your entire professional life to it."
On the other hand, if you enjoy entrepreneurship, don't let the lack of success get to you. After all, there's always the next company!
For example, there's a major correlation between your career success and how visible your role is. Maintaining internal systems will almost never pay off as well as working on the flagship product. This, and many other considerations, matter as much or more than your individual performance/talent. But the majority of people never consider them.
(A quick sampling of major strategic decisions: your elevator pitch, the elevator pitch other people use when introducing you, how visible your role/projects are, making sure your day-to-day responsibilities don't take up much time, refusing to work on projects that will pull your career in the wrong direction, working at successful companies/projects, and perhaps most importantly, understanding how connections are really formed).
Still, how do you advise one go about "making sure your day-to-day responsibilities don't take up much time, refusing to work on projects that will pull your career in the wrong direction"?
On the first, it seems that the solution a lot of people take is to have short job tenures, because (in the absence of mentorship or high-level interest in career development) responsibilities accumulate while learning opportunities tend to get rarer, so a lot of people leave once the responsibility/learning balance tilts out of their favor. The problem with this strategy is that, at some point, having a string of 6- to 18-month job tenures starts to look really bad.
The second is even more tricky. Most people aren't in the position of being able to "refuse to work on" bad projects, especially since it's obvious what the person's doing. It seems like this is a recipe for getting fired (which may help a person's career in the long run by preventing a rut, but is something most people would rather avoid).
On top of that, there's the even harder question of how to know that the direction a project will pull a person's career in the first place. It's rarely obvious. Sometimes, doing the grunt work makes a person more trusted and puts him in line for the best projects. Sometimes, it leads to more grunt work and otherwise goes nowhere. These depend on the individuals involved and it can't easily be broken down into simple if-then rules.
The strategy that most people seem to follow is to change jobs frequently until they find a fit. The problem with that is that, although the "job hopper" stigma is much less severe than it was 20 years ago, it still exists.
"[P]erhaps most importantly, understanding how connections are really formed"
How are they really formed? There are a lot of pet theories on this one, but it's not clear which of them (if any) is right. And people tend to be different enough that I'm skeptical that there is a general-purpose answer to the social engineering problem.
DMC had choices to make and his talent didn't extend to making the right choices.
Forgetting luck for a second which is obviously important, talent could be thought of as a collection of features that all come together to create success.
So simply saying that DMC has "talent" and that someone else who has made it has "inferior talent" ignores that you need varying degrees of talent and quality in many areas which also depends on what you are doing. Not a jack of all trades, master of none but a proper balance (just like you would want in a product). Stylish, good gas mileage and plenty of headroom say for a car.
In addition to luck then DMC was lacking talent in a few areas that would be required to be successful (to the degree he or anyone thinks is success).
As only one example consider the ability to have attention to detail and product quality. That might be super important when selling an expensive luxury product but an impediment if creating products for dollar stores.
Take any super successful person (by whatever definition) and put them in the wrong field. Do you think Bill Gates would be teacher of the year? Do you think pre-presidential Obama would be good running an incubator?
There's nothing generally wrong with not getting rich, but there are certain things people only do in order to get rich, and VC-istan startup life is one of them. If you're a writer and you make $100,000 per year mid-career, you're kicking ass, because most people never get anywhere near that point. If you're a stock trader or VC-istan denizen (whether engineer or founder) and that's where you are mid-career, you're a fuckup.
Actually, I'm simplifying quite a bit. Most people in VC-istan don't necessarily want to get rich personally in the same way that traders do, but they want to become the social equals of the VCs and established founders. They want their ideas to be taken seriously, and that unfortunately requires social status. So there is a bit of difference. A derivatives trader who makes $25 million and retires could give fuck-all about social status, whereas most VC-istan types would rather have a mediocre financial outcome if it got them access and status. They'd rather be at $2 million net worth with the contacts to try another "game changer" startup than $25m without it. Still, though few people will admit this, VC is a better life. You already have status and access, and if you want to start a company as a Real Founder, you can do that any time you wish.
Dave has only been a VC for a few years, in a game that takes a few rounds to go either way. In terms of "late bloomer" my guess is he's talking about life, not VC.
What I did read wasn't very interesting anyway, so no big loss.
That said, at least I can follow 5th grade English conventions.
The other reason may be that he sees capitalization as unnecessary as punctuation already performs the same task (akin to the JS semi colon debate.)
Personally, I find it a bit arrogant to ignore such a basic grammar rule, but it does not bother me so much as to not read it.
I would like to know his reasoning behind it.
