Why haven't European investors fully accepted the failure is good mentality yet? - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2014/03/02/havent-european-investors-fully-accepted-failure-good-mentality-yet/ <comment><USER2> "As European talent in the form of startups and entrepreneurs continue to flock towards the USA, the question remains: why? Is it attitude or is it money? Is it bureaucracy or is it poor infrastructure?"

This is a loaded assertion. And, sincerely very cliché.

Oh Europe is bureaucratic and expensive? And yet there's nothing like this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giro](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giro) in the US. Ridiculous

Funny how several of these big US companies open offices in Dublin (offices, not merely a mailbox and a shell company) guess they didn't get the memo.

Cell phone plans are way cheaper in Europe (no paying to receive calls).

Overall quality of life in bigger European cities, mass transit is ubiquitous.

So, in overall, I think the US has a lot to learn from Europe. But I understand, while in the US people think "Why not, let's do it!" in Europe people think "What can go wrong"

<comment><USER3> That has absolutely nothing to do with why European investors are more risk- averse (they are).

<comment><USER2> Yes, they are

This is not all bad, since it would be harder for them to invest in companies like Color

They still invest in risky stuff, like a Sound startup in the most picky country w.r.t. intellectual property online [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundcloud](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundcloud) (and what are the issues in Germany can be summed by this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesellschaft_f%C3%BCr_musikalis...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesellschaft_f%C3%BCr_musikalische_Auff%C3%BChrungs- _und_mechanische_Vervielf%C3%A4ltigungsrechte) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To desire failure, this probably means you are trying to do something new. Below I am speaking purely on conjecture, no real sound theory.

I get the distinct impression that Europe cares more about tradition and therefore less about disruption. As such, there is not as big a desire to try something new, and therefore no reason to consider whether failure is good. In fact, if the emphasis is on tradition, failure is frowned on not because it is bad, but rather, because it is evidence that someone tried to do something new.

My thoughts on this come from a chapter of Alan Greenspan's memoirs on his experience in Vienna and thoughts on cultural differences, especially when it came to Vienna's timelessness and beauty.

<comment><USER5> > My thoughts on this come from a chapter of Alan Greenspan's memoirs on his > experience in Vienna and thoughts on cultural differences, especially when > it came to Vienna's timelessness and beauty.

Then you're talking about Austria, not all of Europe.

<comment><USER4> Just because the example that inspired the thought was drawn from Vienna, it does not mean I cannot extrapolate it to across Europe when I look at the beautiful and ageless cities and traditions that exist throughout Europe. And I put the disclaimer first that I am making conjecture only and nothing more.

<comment><USER5> You making a conjecture so to speak on flimsy grounds doesn't stop me from pointing out that it's bullshit. I'm sick and tired of being lumped into one big homogeneous pile because I'm from some part of Europe because of, what? You've read a book or two and noticed that quite a few European cities have an old and really nice-looking architecture? Try harder.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry if I made you upset, but I'm not looking to insult anybody here. It's a civil conversation. If you disagree with what I said, you can say why without getting antagonistic.

The fact that I used a weaker word like conjecture instead of something stronger should say a lot about what I really think on the matter. I'm used to constructing comments a bit more carefully for serious opinions if you look at my comment history. :) No harm, no foul, I hope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a brit we do not fear failiure, its well known that Up to one fifth of the 400000 businesses that start up each year fail within the first 12 months of operation in the UK.

investors dont write blank cheques is the main difference. we are blunt and dont flower up potential so monetry failiure is more relative to business size.

<comment><USER7> >we are blunt and dont flower up potential

This nails it. You're not going to even investigate potential - your investors don't have that kind of vision (or interest). Not a snowball's chance in Hell a Brit VC would have acted as Peter Thiel did when he came on board with Facebook. Because that would have been "flowering up potential".

Or as I like to call it, vision.

<comment><USER8> I find it interesting in a thread about failure you are going to use an example of highly improbable success to highlight what you call vision.

That is a cool anecdote and all but it smells like confirmation bias. I'm sure the one guy who won the lottery yesterday had a vision too. Maybe I'll have a vision tomorrow when I play a slot machine or maybe I'll have whatever-its- called when you dump a bunch of money on a long shot and it doesn't come through (were there no visionaries to see the social graph for myspace and friendster?). There's a line somewhere where a can-do attitude becomes naive and the other side of it is where practical sensibilities become choking to fresh ideas, right now I feel we are in a place where having a go is a good thing but it won't always be that way (at least in our industry).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would hypothesise that there are two reasons for this.

1\. The size of the US market is a huge advantage. Startups targeting and operating in the US market can grow bigger. China has the same advantage.

2\. Americans are less risk-averse because Americans are mostly descendants of immigrants. And immigrants are more likely to have a less risk-averse DNA.

<comment><USER10> 3\. The opportunity costs of failing are higher in Europe. Thanks to welfare and lots of vacation, the founders of a startup have to sacrifice much more leisure time vs. the alternative (working at an existing corporation). For the same reason, it is also harder to find risk-seeking employees. They prefer doing financially ok with lots of leisure time over having the chance of getting rich without leisure. In the US, they don't have much holiday in either scenario.

<comment><USER11> What about the frequently (and generally??) much higher difficultly in letting people go, which I'm told results in it being much more difficult to get hired in the first place?

To the extent that's true, that would make it much more difficult to find good, "risk-seeking" or at least risk tolerant employees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt)

[http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/](http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Because failure is much more expensive to European investors and it's not as easy to build huge successes in Europe.

So if they did they would quickly be out of money.

This is why the Samwer Brothers from Rocket Internet is doing things the way they are and can have so many startups they do.

Their copy-cat approach is very un-european but in reality the only way for European investors to be less risk-averse.

The safty-net comes with a price. Even in Denmark which is rated as on of the easiest ways to start a business the reality is that it might be easy to start a business, but it's very hard to scale it.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "it's not as easy to build huge successes in Europe."

Why? Could you explain this further?

<comment><USER3> Here is just a short list.

a) Different cultures

b) Different languages

c) Different tax systems

d) Different company types

e) Different legality

All these in combination creates a lot of friction that makes it harder. There are obviously exceptions (ex. skype) but in general it's just very hard to navigate compared to the US.

<comment> k-mcgrady Most kids are (and have been for a while) taught English in schools. If you create your site with English as the first language you can target most European countries + the US. Regarding company types you set up your business in the country you're based in - you don't need a separate company for every country you operate it. I believe the same applies to tax. You pay it in the country you are based in.

<comment><USER3> Yeah good luck building a startup in europe with that view. There is a reason why ex. Facbook localized their content.

<comment> k-mcgrady I's a strategy for getting the business going. Obviously you begin localising once you've got some traction.

<comment><USER13> No, you need localisation to get traction. People are surprisingly fond of their own language, even if they are almost fluent in English. At least if you're dealing with consumers.

<comment><USER2> If you do localization, don't think only language will cut it.

Address systems, payment systems, "simply taking credit cards" may not cut it.

But in the end you have to launch targeting one or more countries, whatever comes beyond that is "free".

And of course, you start from day 0 to make your system Unicode compliant.

<comment><USER13> Curiously, charsets actually is less of an issue within EU - Latin1 should cover. (Not that anyone should use that in a modern app today)

But otherwise I agree with your sentiments - Language is just one of several problems. Most of which are external to the product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems to be a lot of patriotism in these comments. Today I've learnt that Americans are genetically superior to Europeans because they have genes that make them more likely to take a chance and Americans have "vision" where as Europeans don't (yes I've exaggerated these a bit).

To be honest, even treating Europe as a collective is silly. When each country has different tax laws, traditions, outlook on life; how can you really, meaningfully compare them?

<comment><USER3> Which is why europeans are more risk-averse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There are no cited sources that support the premise of the article, that Europeans fear failure too much.

The cherry-picked 2011 was about the peak of the Eurozone crisis and austerity measures, obviously a special time.

Compare the EBAN 2011 slide in the article with optimism of the 2012 slide:

[http://www.eban.org/e5-1-billion-market-shows-european- angel...](http://www.eban.org/e5-1-billion-market-shows-european-angels-on- the-rise/#.UxMoGNyJJ7E)

<comment><USER3> It's pretty well established though.

Check out this article.

[http://www.economist.com/node/21559618](http://www.economist.com/node/21559618)

<comment><USER15> I disagree.

If you compare Europe and US, I think there are hotbeds in each one.

However, the articles seem to compare Europe with Silicon Valley / San Francisco, which is silly.

Obviously San Francisco is special, even within the US.

Edit: Also, the Economist article doesn't address Europeans having a fear of failure.

<comment><USER3> There are hotbeds but Europe have far less success stories than the US and therefore you have as I explained further up the risk-averseness of the european investors.

At least those that I know, and I do know quite a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is something that annoys me about comparing the US to Europe here. I feel that the world is going through a process of learning how to create tech companies and that movement springs out of SF and SV. That is where the most innovation is taking place, in terms of technology and business development. The rest of the world, including the rest of the US, is following along and steadily catching up.

Being a member of the HN community for a while now has made me feel much more connected to this than was possible 5 years ago (I'm in Europe). In the co- working space where I work, everybody talks about lean startups, nodejs, go, etc. and a random discussion is basically indistinguishable from my few experiences in SF offices.

Now, when it comes to funding everybody knows that trying to do it locally is ridiculous if you don't have a good specific reason to do so, but this applies to major US cities as well, perhaps with NYC slowly catching up. I think this will change as well, as more and more entrepreneurs have succeeded by the SV model and go into investing themselves. It probably won't even out completely but I think it will become more uniform.

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow, awesome article. As someone who has lived in both the U.S. and Europe, this hits the nail on the head re: the difference in attitudes between U.S. entrepreneurs and most European ones.

I actually come away from this article inspired to try another start-up, after a pretty significant failure last year.

</comment><comment><USER18> How about because "failure is good" is an absurd proposition? Failure in this case typically means people lost money and jobs. It also means customers probably got stung buying into something new and that could make them more hesitant to buy into something new next time, which is harmful to successful innovation.

Learning from failures is good, and might help entrepreneurs to develop a more viable proposition if they try again. But that still doesn't make failures good. It just means there is a silver lining for some of the participants, if they have enough left to try again later.

Hit-it-out-of-the-park success is good, and from an investing perspective funding a number of failures may be a reasonable cost of doing business if it means you get the occasional smash hit as well. But that still doesn't make failures good. It just makes them tolerable.

Moreover, the hit-it-out-of-the-park outliers in SV are mostly part of one big pyramid scheme these days. It may be a while before the bubble bursts, because at the top of the chain you've got the outlying outliers like Google and Facebook that really have managed to bring in actual revenues and build up huge war chests, but even then the theoretical valuations for some of these giants are dubious. There literally aren't enough people in the world to continue growing their core offering at historical rates in some cases, and attempts at diversification have mostly been failures propped up by those core offerings. Even if these weren't the case, the biggest giants in technology rarely manage to remain dominant for more than a decade or two before newer ideas from more nimble competitors start to intrude.

Meanwhile, smaller companies being bought for staggering sums of money when they have yet to demonstrate a viable business model for monetizing what they do is just silly in most cases. In the ones where it isn't, the acquisition is often for strategic reasons rather than a genuine investment in expected actual value.

So the bottom line is that European investors have less time for boom and bust than US ones. SV couldn't happen here, _and we don 't want it to_. Culturally, while there are start-up incubators and the like around, we tend to be more interested in investing to grow something after its foundations and basic viability are already established. That could be demonstrated either through having a working business model that only needs cash immediately to accelerate growth that could have happened anyway, or through at least having a plan with clear potential to generate real money, for example. While I don't have any hard data to back this up, I suspect we also tend to put more emphasis on bootstrapping your own business or going to the bank for a loan rather than taking angel investment, and use more informal support networks such as old university connections here in Cambridge for the non-monetary benefits that angels might provide in somewhere like SV.

<comment><USER19> Maybe the way to put it is - "failure is not something to be _that_ scared of."

I didn't like the article. It felt shallow. The real issue is that in the US we have a tendency to not second-guess people's decisions about how to invest their money. Yes, this means that some people will be ripped off, but it also means that they, and the society as a whole can be in rapid learning cycles about what makes a good investment.

It's clear that the US has a very different take on acceptable risk and as a result they more big wins and big losses. Can't have one without the other.

<comment><USER18> _It 's clear that the US has a very different take on acceptable risk and as a result they more big wins and big losses. Can't have one without the other._

Is that really true? If you ever make a big loss, in the sense that backing something like Google or Facebook would have been a big win, you're probably doing investment wrong. The dominant US tech investment strategy today appears to be accepting many relatively small losses on the basis that one smash hit will outweigh them all.

I've noticed that in US-centric discussions, the distinction often seems to be stated in terms of "risk-aversion", with a focus on how much downside is acceptable and how US investors tend to accept more risk. In discussions on this side of the pond, we might rather distinguish based on "expected returns", with a focus on how much upside is likely across all outcomes and an emphasis on the mean rather than modal return.

<comment><USER19> What if we shift the discussion from investor risk and reward to founder risk and reward? In the US it's possible for founders to win big and I suspect that is the reason why startups gravitate to the US. On the risk side, yes you can lose your shirt and so can your investors, but the system considers it normal to get up and try again.

I don't like the fact that we don't have much of a social safety net in the US but that can be considered one of the larger risks founders face as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This article is missing more-than-anecdotal evidence that failure is good.

What are the total number of start ups in Europe versus the US? How many succeed, for some various metrics of success? What is the total revenue of companies started in the last X years? What are the returns to investors, both absolute and relative to the size of their investments?

Without knowing the outcomes of the different investment strategies, you can't pick a winner.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know if the whole VC industry is profitable? A chart with yearly startup investments and profits would be really interesting.

</comment><comment><USER21> Snarky but true answer: _failure is not always good._

Look, I'm all for removing the social penalties to good-faith failure. I've failed before (in good faith) and I'm a good guy. Some problems are harder than they look, and sometimes the solution is brilliant but no one wants it. However, I can't share that cavalier attitude toward _failure_ that I often encounter in the HN-sphere. I would love to see society become more tolerant of good-faith failure or just bad luck, on the small scale (R&D efforts within companies) as well as the large (bankruptcy laws, a healthcare system that isn't psychotic and mean-spirited like US insurance). However, I've also seen what bad-faith failure looks like: businesses that might start with earnest intention but evolve into long cons. People who call themselves "entrepreneurs" are not all ethical. Some are, some aren't.

Failure hurts people. Money disappears, jobs are lost, and sometimes peoples' careers get ruined. I've lost about $500,000 (mostly, opportunity cost and career retardation) to bad startups.

Sometimes failure is no one's fault and a learning experience. Sometimes, there's some serious malfeasance behind it. If you've been around tech as long as I have (and I'm only 30) you know that there are some really wonderful people, but also some really terrible people, in it.

There are some severe issues involved in the question of how to handle business failure: moral hazard, asymmetric risk. Most people attack these hard ethical questions by falling back on instinct and social proof: the way they separate bad-faith and good-faith failure is by asking around, checking references, reading news articles. That's how the Valley works: it tolerates failure if you can convince it that you failed in good faith, but the waters are so murky that social proof rules the day. That, predictably, makes the worst kinds of people (social influence peddlers) powerful, and they evolve into extortionists and manipulators. It turns into a feudalistic reputation economy. It's not a scalable solution. It's actually hypocritical, because a world in which reputation and social access matter that much is _exactly_ the sort of world that becomes risk-averse and sclerotic. (That takes time, but you see it happening in the Valley.)

The happy medium is somewhere in between the risk-averse conservatism of Europe and the Midwest, and the pro-failure attitude of California, which arrives either at recklessness or hypocrisy. Maybe Seattle? (I'm considering moving to the PNW in 2015, so I've given this a lot of thought.)

<comment><USER3> Oh there is failure in Europe too it's just that a lot of it is based on loans so many of the people who fail have no way to "try again"

<comment><USER21> Yeah, that's horrible. It really drains the culture when personal loans/savings are the only way to finance a business. The US Midwest actually has a lot of talent (and geat schools) but so much of that talent ends up on the coasts.</comment></comment></comment>


It's a Tesla - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2016/its-a-tesla/ <comment><USER2> > General Motors first unveiled the Chevy Bolt as a concept car in January > 2015...

> As Pam Fletcher, GM's executive chief engineer for electric vehicles, > recently put it to me with a confident grin: "Who wants to be second?"

Yah but... it's a GM.

I own the finest luxury automobile GM makes, the Cadillac Escalade. It is a chrome lined bucket of bolts. If they can't do this right how can they do a $25k car right? As I type this my GM is in the shop RN with a hard to reproduce transmission issue. Oh and it cost as much as a Model S. o_O

OTOH the Model S is the most well manufactured _anything_ I've ever sat in. It boggles my mind why anyone would buy a second GM. They've had enough time to get it right. Instead they've a consistent track record of mediocrity with an epic failure about every decade.

Tesla tho...

All I can say is, the people baffled by Tesla's success can't have spent much time behind the wheel of a Model S. I didn't realize how much cars suck, even luxury cars, till I spent a day driving an S up and down the PCH.

<comment><USER3> > OTOH the Model S is the most well manufactured anything I've ever sat in.

Have tried out a full-option Audi A8 or an S-Class or 7 series? During my time in the US I was shocked by the bad interior quality of GM.

Apart from the actual software running on the cars, I think German manufacturers still have very high quality interior in their flagship models.

RE: Software: Current Audis take ~15 secs to boot up the navigation, and during that period you cannot input anything / the screen just hangs.

<comment><USER4> Re: software... So the first time you get in it the A8 has a zero to 60 of 20.4 seconds? That sounds about right.

I drove an A4 for a while and the gas response was absolutely terrible. You had to press it gently if you wanted it to respond immediately. If you gunned it or even just pressed a little quick to get across oncoming lanes -- expect about a half second delay. One of the worst cars I have driven. Taking it to the dealer the response was -- "that's normal". My boring ass accord responds to the gas pedal better than the A4. Maybe their higher end cars are better, but I wouldn't get another audi.

<comment><USER5> Which cars don't have a delay? If you have a gas (i.e. relatively low torque) car with automatic transmission, it needs to shift in a lower gear if you want to accelerate rapidly, so that's where the delay comes from.

<comment><USER6> GP was probably referring to turbo lag.

I love my 2014 Mazda 3's Sport Mode. When I hit that button, the engine goes from being more than adequate to chomping at the bit. It just flies. Love that thing. Paddle shifters so I can downshift without even moving my hands.

Test drive one someday, Mazda isn't kidding around with the "zoom zoom".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That table of "U.S. Sales of Large Luxury Vehicles" is pretty uhh selective. When I search for "Large Luxury Vehicles" on Google it lists other four door models and even manufacturers that don't appear in this table.

Their claim that the reason for the selection is "comparably priced four-door sedans" is also inaccurate. They've skipped similarly priced "large luxury vehicles" while including some on the list which are much more expensive (almost $100K).

Obviously this was created to wow Tesla's investors. But I think you'll find it was designed to create a picture that Tesla owns 50% of the "large luxury vehicle" market with the highest growth and to accomplish that they had to selectively include and exclude vehicles that didn't fit that narrative.

<comment><USER8> So according to your research, which comparable large luxury vehicle sells more than the Model S?

<comment><USER7> > So according to your research, which comparable large luxury vehicle sells > more than the Model S?

That wasn't a claim I made.

I said the table was set up in such a way as to read like Tesla controlled 50% of the large luxury vehicle market. If you include more vehicles, even if they sell worse, then Tesla's proportional market share drops.

But since you brought it up, if you wish to tell us which comparable large luxury vehicle outsells the Model S then I invite you to do so?

<comment><USER8> Yes, but what are the other comparable vehicles you found? Are you considering near-luxury vehicles like Cadillac and Lincoln? Because that's not in the same class as a Model S. The closest competitors were all in that list as far as I'm aware.

<comment><USER7> Well there is the rub. There is no set definition of what should or should not appear in that list. They're including vehicles (e.g. S class) which are $25-30K more than the Model S, so what is stopping us from including vehicles which are $25-30K cheaper than the Model S? What is the standard to appear on this list?

Just to give an example, if I search for "Large Luxury Vehicles" and click the first link here is the list of vehicles:

\- Tesla Model S

\- Porsche Panamera

\- Audi A7

\- Cadillac CT6

\- Mercedes-Benz CLS-Class

\- Kia K900

\- Infiniti Q70

\- Cadillac XTS

\- Hyundai Equus

\- Acura RLX

\- Lincoln MKS

Now there are two interesting things about this list: We see a lot new vehicles not on Tesla's list, and the price of these vehicles are a lot tighter than Tesla's list. For example no $96K S-Class listed here.

It is hard to justify why some of these wouldn't be in Tesla's list, they're in the same ballpark price wise, they claim to offer luxury, and even the fit & finish seems to be as nice. So I'd argue Tesla's list is very arbitrary, there's no rhyme or reason, no set standard. Just a list that makes Tesla look good.

<comment><USER9> The absence of Lexus from the list is deafening. It is the highest quality brand in this group (not an opinion, a fact - please check a couple of rankings, most notably JD Powers Initial Quality survey, etc.)

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I agree the LS should be on the list

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lithium Ion battery prices have come down 40% since 2010 (see third graph[1]), and that is /caused/ by the increasing demand (it's called a manufacturing learning curve[2] of which Moore's law is just an example).

Tesla's strategy is to drive volumes with gradually more affordable cars to bring down battery costs until there is a crossover where gasoline cars are impractical. That also explains the Gigafactory and the wall battery. So far, it's working.

[1] [http://rameznaam.com/2013/09/25/energy-storage-gets- exponent...](http://rameznaam.com/2013/09/25/energy-storage-gets- exponentially-cheaper-too/)

[2] [http://www.strategosinc.com/articles/strategy/learning_curve...](http://www.strategosinc.com/articles/strategy/learning_curves.htm)

<comment><USER11> > Leaf battery pack at $270/KWh in 2014.

Tesla is expected to have $200/KWh batteries once the Gigactory starts making batteries. Bolt is already said to use $145/KWh batteries, but I figure that's mainly because they're using cheaper batteries with much shorter life (kind of how Tesla's 10KWh PowerWall was cheaper than its 7KWh PowerWall).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Tesla had to first _build_ the market for their electric vehicles by proving that they were powerful enough to satisfy the "petrolheads". Even starting at the high end, they had trouble breaking through the public perception [1], but nowhere near as much as if they had started at the low-end (IMO).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Gear_controversies#Tesla_R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Gear_controversies#Tesla_Roadster_review)

<comment><USER13> Yup, that's the most incredible part about the whole thing to me, bootstrapping a market that didn't existing in such a high capital industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "And yes, Tesla has a history of delivering cars late and with a higher price than expected."

The article closes with a similar sentiment. I see this a lot, and I wonder where it comes from. Late, no question, but higher price? I think the Roadster may have had a price increase, but both the Model S and Model X hit their price targets. I think there's a lot of confusion because prices are sometimes quoted with the Federal tax credit (and even state credits in some cases) and sometimes without, and because the Model S 40 was discontinued pretty much immediately due to low demand.

I won't be at all shocked if the Model 3 ends up being late. But I think it's a safe bet that it will cost $35,000 as announced.

<comment><USER15> Most Model S's sell for waaaaay more than the list price, because they're bought by wealthy people that pile on the options. It's a safe bet that most $35k Model 3's will sell for $45k+ for the same reason.

<comment><USER16> The average price from all the bookings is ~$42k.

<comment><USER14> Elon Musk posted a guess that the average Model 3 configuration will cost about that much. There is no average price from the bookings, as the bookings are just a $1,000 option to purchase, and no options pricing or configurations have been made available yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> When I purchased my last car in 2014, the order from mom was safety above all else. It had to have 5 stars in the 3 major categories.

Dad had to give up performance. The car is jumpy, very loud and sluggish when accelerating 50-60 mph and the stereo is just bad.

Tesla has satisfied both mom and dad by achieving both the safest and highest performance car ever mass produced, and, the total cost of ownership, factoring in depreciation, fuel, maintenance, insurance, is 1/2 an equivalently priced gasoline car over 10 years.

That is why they have >300,000 pre-orders for the Model 3.

Environmentally friendly, never have to smell gasoline again, drive in the car pool lanes, these are all icing on the cake.

<comment><USER18> > It had to have 5 stars in the 3 major categories.

Every vehicle I care about seems to have 5 stars in all categories. Safety of modern vehicles is exceptionally better than even just 10 years ago. You can achieve 5-stars in the original three categories with a $15k Honda Fit (Moderate front, side, and roof)

[http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/honda/fit-4-door-...](http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/honda/fit-4-door- wagon/2015)

> highest performance car ever mass produced

Take a look at Leguna Seca lap times. Model S isn't doing as well as "high performance" cars.

EDIT: Focus on the 1:48 laptime, the best one. It looks like it was a casual race for the most part. The 1:48 time however is a record not only for Tesla Model S, but for electric vehicles in general and should be taken as the "serious" indicator of the Model S's overall performance.

[https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/model-s- laguna-s...](https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/model-s-laguna-seca- lap-times)

5-stars in every safety category with performance and cheap is like... Subaru WRX. Fords are a bit easier to maintain though, so I'd go with Ford Focus ST or Focus RS (and switch out the tires, because stock tires on that suck apparently)

<comment><USER19> > Take a look at Leguna Seca lap times. Model S isn't doing very well.

It all depends on how you like to 'measure' performance. The model S dominates when it comes to acceleration, pedal response and road (!= track) handling due to the low center of gravity. However, the S does very poor on a circuit because the motor/inverter tends to get hot and the software will reduce the maximum output power accordingly.

You have to keep in minds that the model S is a 4 door, 2 trunk luxury sedan, not a race car.

<comment><USER18> > The model S dominates when it comes to acceleration

There are multiple Model S here. The P85D which "dominates" acceleration has a curb weight of 5000lbs and likely handles like a boat. (The typical F150 truck actually weighs less than the Model S P85D).

The older, more typical Model S, have Zero-to-Sixty scores in the 5-seconds to 6-seconds range, which is easily bested by the Subaru WRX STI.

The Model S probably wins on rolling-start 5-to-sixty, as the ICE engines won't be able to rev-high and drop the clutch.

Only Model S P85D "dominates" in acceleration, and that car comes with its own compromises.

> road (!= track) handling due to the low center of gravity

Model S measures .87g for road holding according to Car and Driver ([http://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-s](http://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-s)), while the other cars I was talking about are all easily above .9+g. I'm unsure which model it is, I can only assume that's a more typical Model S as opposed to the heavier-than-a-Toyota-Sienna swagger-wagon P85D.

Electric vehicles are __heavy __, and that negatively plays into its performance characteristics.

> You have to keep in minds that the model S is a 4 door, 2 trunk luxury > sedan, not a race car.

Indeed. But if you want to step into the arena of "high performance", what better comparison is there than a standardized track?

As for the apples-to-apples comparison, try 1:40 for the Cadillac CTS-V Sedan on the Leguna Seca, while 1:48 seems to be the best time for the Model S. Luxury sports sedan vs Luxury sports sedan, both are $85,000+ large cars claiming awesome performance after all.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TcCuzaRFIw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TcCuzaRFIw)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _a phenomenon that is nearly unprecedented_

Not at all; people camped out/stood in line to buy Windows 95.

Tesla popularity is a pop culture fad/novelty. Not to say the car isn't a great technical achievement, but these kind of responses have been seen before.

<comment><USER21> where was this line? I was around when 95 came out and don't remember that much excitement. Also in this case people are parting with a $1k for years just to save a place in line. Has that happened for any car before? that's what's unprecedented.

<comment><USER22> Thats pretty standard in the upper-end of car purchasing, Ferrari, new models from BMW or Mercedes. All dealers hold waitlists -- its just likely you've never purchased a model that has one.

Also Windows had huge lines... the iconic photo: [http://i.imgur.com/oc2EDhE.jpg?fb](http://i.imgur.com/oc2EDhE.jpg?fb)

<comment><USER21> wow. thanks for that. I must have blocked it out of my memory. and the comments on that photo are hilarious

<comment><USER23> It was fantastic. I was living just south of Redmond at the time. There was news coverage about it. Ballmer and Gates were driving around town in a Ballmer's Porsche blasting "start me up" (the theme for the Win95 launch), congratulating shoppers.

<comment><USER21> haha! oh I wish there was footage of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It is interesting how my understanding of innovator's dilemma perfectly explains Tesla.

\- there is market for luxury cars

\- luxury cars market was full of expensive but uninteresting, crapy and low quality cars.

\- Tesla make cool car for same price as other luxury cars but it was way cooler. It worked well.

\- Tesla now goes to conquer low end of the market

So it is typical market disruption: make something better than others for lower price.

NOTE: People say Tesla Model S is expensive but it is actually less expensive that Mercedes CLS which is has 2 stars reliability rating by JD Power.

<comment><USER25> Actually the way the Innovator's Dilemma" uses the word disruption is very specific and doesn't match your explanation or the article's for that matter. Christensen doesn't use disruption to mean "making something better than others for a lower price". Disruption, as he defines it, is specifically about making a product that is actually inferior on the metrics valued by the existing market.

The canonical example from his book is about hard drive manufacturers increasing the storage space of their hard drives for mainframes (something the market asked for). They got disrupted by manufacturers making hard drives that had much less storage space (so considered inferior by the existing market), but were physically smaller allowing them to be used in minicomputers, a new market.

Now, it might still be possible to apply disruption as Christensen defines it to the market for cars, though arguably it might be stretching it. It seems to me that Tesla sacrificed some of the metrics used by current buyers of luxury cars, but appealed to a previously ignored segment of "green" or "techie" buyers. Compare for instance the interior of a Tesla model S against a Mercedes S class and the Tesla would lose. However, Tesla correctly identified that there appears to be a market for electric cars where customers are willing to pay a premium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The author shows a poor understanding of car making business.

He tackles the whole topic from the demand side (how to have people liking and buying the product), but the real issue with the model 3 will be: can they PRODUCE it right?.

All the comparisons with Apple the iphone clearly show he's approaching this business as it was just consumer tech, which is really not.

Just think about the effects that shifting from a low volume-high margin business to a high volume-low margin one can have on return on capital... And that's happening in a very capital intensive business, so tons of money re/invested at low ROE..

I wish Tesla can really make it happen but if I was a shareholder I would be quite reasonably scared.

<comment><USER27> You show a poor understanding of Musk's track record.

I just don't get people who hold this opinion. What exactly do you think is going to happen?

Do you envision Tesla admitting, say Q2 2018, "Serious supply shortages continue to prevent us delivering on the Model 3, we now hope for Q1 2019 delivery," and ultimately just go out of business, meanwhile competitors suddenly come up with incredibly compelling cars that they've somehow never managed to create before? Is that _really_ the outcome you anticipate??

This is the same guy who's now successfully _landed rockets_ . . . but you think manufacturing cars will be unachievable for him, even after Tesla has continually demonstrated rapidly climbing production and sales of the S and X?????

<comment><USER28> It actually seems like a pretty good understanding of Musk's track record to me.

They're obviously not going to go out of business as a result. But considering Tesla has already had earnings calls pretty much exactly like that with respect to slower than expected Model S production, yes I would expect Tesla in 2018 to admit that most people on the pre-order list are going to be waiting a very long time.

That leaves Tesla in the awkward position of either needing to massively ramp up every aspect of its production pipeline now (which is a HUGE undertaking) at the cost of not producing Model S and Model X on schedule, or facing a significant number of pre-order people giving up on waiting, and a constrained production capacity well into 2020.

The OP's comment was with respect to shareholder confidence, which is currently propping up the stock price based on future expectations. I believe the point was that if Tesla can't come even close to meeting the market demand for its vehicles, that's a signal of weakness on several fronts that would need to be priced into the stock.

I'm also not sure what landing rockets has to do with mass-producing cars. SpaceX's achievements are indeed amazing and I watch all of their launches, but figuring out how to land a first stage is an engineering challenge. Figuring out how to produce 300,000 cars in a short time is a logistics challenge. Not to mention no one yet knows how Tesla's model will scale to the larger market with respect to service, support, parts replacement, etc. Scale in the automotive market just brings with it a huge number of issues to tackle that don't exist in smaller volumes.

<comment><USER27> Most of your post there is valid. But for the record, if they meet their goal of delivering ~85,000 cars this year and can sustain the previous growth from 25k->50k->85k, then 2017 would see deliveries of ~100-110k and 2018 would see ~130k-150k, and 2019 ~160k-185k, which puts them very on track.

That's assuming continued linear growth of adding 20-30k per year. Musk has said repeatedly he is aiming for 500k by 2020. While I don't doubt that will be missed, it implies we'll see more than linear growth.

I understand there will be challenges -- I just have strong faith in their ability to surmount them.

<comment><USER28> Good point. However, Tesla also missed its 2015 production target because retooling the factory to produce Model X and to produce more Model S took longer than expected and impacted the existing production line at the same time. I think the exact same thing will happen with Model 3, only moreso given the huge ramp-up needed. Rather than linear growth it's probably going to be more like big staggered increases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> >an astounding 115,000 of them sent in their deposit before they even knew what the car looked like.

Talk to Porsche enthusiasts who buy GT cars from their motorsport division. They'll view such an ideal as not only normal, but required. The common phrase is, "This is how the game is played."

Want the next GT3 RS (991.2)? Too bad, but you're already too late. Yes, the car will probably not be announced for another 2-3 years, but Porsche dealers/OPCs probably have enough deposits in hands TODAY in which 95% of them are likely spoken for. Second hand at massive premium is your only real chance at one. Hell, add the GT4 (and GT3, of course) to that as well.

Want the RS of 991.2's successor? That you have a chance at. Just get your deposit in today. In five years you'll know what the car is, and you'll have bought yourself right of first refusal. Porsche doesn't care if you don't want it and want your money, because there's already a few people in line behind you.

What is different is this isn't a low-volume enthusiast car. This is a volume seller. This is targeting the 3-series, which moves over 100K units/year in the US alone. As a result, that's what is impressive. It's the game normally played by people wanting hard-edged Porsches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens, etc., but for a volume seller.

</comment><comment><USER30> Oddly I'm in the market for a "neighbourhood electric vehicle" \- a cheap, limited, electric car that can get two people to the station and back daily (a distance of around 4 miles).

There are really no good options. The closest is probably the Renault Twizy, essentially an enclosed electric bike with 4 wheels. It's very expensive, and more worryingly there are lots and lots of them available on the second hand market, almost new, at greatly reduced prices.

<comment><USER31> Does it have to be electric? A vespa would get the job done with a pretty small carbon footprint.

<comment><USER32> Two-stroke engine pollution is massive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Heh: "suped up golf cart". I drove one of those. It was called a Citicar: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicar)

My dad owned a GM dealership. I was in high school when the 1973 oil embargo happened. Around the same time, the 1973 issue of Scientific American showed how bicycles where 46x more efficient that cars. (I think this was the issue where Steve Jobs got the inspiration for "Bicycle of the Mind") So, I gave up cars. But then, my Dad started to carry Citicars.

It had a couple issues: First, it had a 40-mile range. Second, the body was ABS Plastic. Because there was so little mass, drivers would stomp down on the accelerator, rear-end the car in front, and do $500 damage to the body. So, after the first shipment, the dealership stopped carrying them.

[EDIT] 40 not 20 miles, though the last 20 didn't go up hills very well.

</comment><comment><USER34> Does anyone know if the power grid handle charging all these in the next 3-4 years?

</comment><comment><USER35> I for one am still waiting for an actually useful electric car.

For reference, I currently have two vehicles: a 2008 Jeep Liberty and a motorcycle. The motorcycle is the commute machine.

The Jeep is family travel and hauling machine. The latter is the killer use case for a car for me. Recently cleaned out old furniture from my garage, simply opened the backdoor of the car, folded the rear seats over and loaded all the crap in. The car is dented, scratched, I don't care. A workhorse, at my disposal. Ski trips, bike trips, shit weather commute.

Where is the electric version of that?

<comment><USER36> It doesn't exist yet because major car manufacturers don't believe it's possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> If you're like me and wondering what the title refers to - it's a play on an old Ford commercial - "It's a Ford"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-YO5gzw6xg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-YO5gzw6xg)

<comment><USER19> I think the author refers to "It's a duesy", which refers to the brand Duesenberg [0], once the builder of the most luxurious cars on the planet, now very rare and very valuable collectables.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duesenberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duesenberg)

<comment><USER38> The "Etymological Note" section of the Wikipedia page you linked directly contradicts you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> electric cars are the new: "if you black you never go back"

</comment><comment><USER40> _Moreover, given the fact that Tesla only delivered just over 50,000 cars last year, no matter how quickly Tesla scales it will almost certainly be years before this first week of reservations is fulfilled_

Yes, because there's no such thing as production scaling

</comment><comment><USER41> Better to ignore the writing of somebody who is blindly hoping that iPhone SE will solve Apple's problem and capture indian marketshare.

<comment><USER41> Apple's iPhone SE may have already flopped in India. The Friday launch of the company's latest device had the weakest demand for a new iPhone on day one, with barely 2,000 units

[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/iPhone- SE-...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/iPhone-SE-first-day- demand-weakest-for-Apple-phones/articleshow/51752289.cms)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> "Tesla means something: yes, it stands for sustainability and caring for the environment"

Nope #1: [http://www.evworld.com/news.cfm?rssid=32951](http://www.evworld.com/news.cfm?rssid=32951) Nope #2: [https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3)

<comment><USER43> Only 30% of electrical generation in the US is coal (this number decreases yearly). All new generators coming online this year are solar, wind or natural gas.

Yes, natural gas still emits CO2 compared to a coal fired power plant. But, those natural gas emissions are much cleaner, and those combined cycle plants can be throttled much faster on demand from the ISO authority, _which helps solar and wind generation_.

Electric cars get cleaner every year because of this. Gas cars will always burn gas their entire life.

2016 EIA Generator Turnups: [http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c....](http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c.png)

2016 EIA Generator Retirements: [http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_d....](http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_d.png)

Also, Tesla has a closed loop recycling process for their battery packs.

<comment><USER44> "Electric cars get cleaner every year because of this. Gas cars will always burn gas their entire life."

This might be true in the future but we aren't there yet unfortunately. This is due to the incorrect assumption that natural gas is a clean bridge fuel. Once you take into account the methane emissions/leaks from natural gas you end up with a fuel just as bad as coal and oil from a global warming perspective. This is due to methane being very dangerous greenhouse gas in the sort term (now - 100yr time period). This plus the emissions required to produce any consumer product like a car probably means for now electric cars not much better than a traditional gas car.

The only way to make these cars truly emissions free is to remove ALL carbon based energy from the chain. That includes car and battery production, charging, maintenance, and disposal. Until you do that your just switching the source of emissions around. The climate system doesn't care if the greenhouse gas comes from a car or a power plant.

The best thing we could do in the short term until we have a 100% green grid is to hold off on buying the car and walk/ride a bike :)

[http://www.thenation.com/article/global-warming- terrifying-n...](http://www.thenation.com/article/global-warming-terrifying- new-chemistry/)

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL067987/abst...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL067987/abstract)

<comment><USER43> My math, extrapolating out current install velocity of utility/distributed solar, as well as utility scale wind, shows a complete replacement of fossil fuel generation in the US in 12-15 years (Congress finally did something right extended the production tax credit for 6 years for renewables).

I agree natural gas isn't perfect, but we won't need it for very long.

<comment><USER44> I wish I could share this outlook but I see a few things slowing the installation velocity of zero emission energy generation. These are a mix of technological and political. What we are seeing currently in the install velocity is probably the low hanging/small scale projects in politically favorable states (in the US anyway).

On the technological side as projects get bigger they are running into issues. Take the large solar plant in California for example:

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601071/one-of-the- worlds-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601071/one-of-the-worlds- largest-solar-facilities-is-in-trouble/)

Naturally, these are typical issues that we see when scaling any new technology up for the first time. They will be resolved, but how soon?

Secondly, and this is probably the bigger issue, without a Manhattan like project for zero emissions energy production the political drive to switch will be painfully slow. Remember how much MONEY there is in fossil fuels and these companies are not going to go silently into the night. There are large states where significant numbers of americans live (think Texas, Arizona, Florida) where the politicians won't even acknowledge global warming! (IE see who funds the campaigns). Homeowners in Oklahoma face a fee for using solar.

[http://www.climatecentral.org/news/oklahoma-solar- surcharge-...](http://www.climatecentral.org/news/oklahoma-solar-surcharge- bill-becomes-law-17335)

Nevada got rid of net metering

[http://www.marketplace.org/2016/02/23/world/nevada- solar](http://www.marketplace.org/2016/02/23/world/nevada-solar)

There was this collapse of the Cape Cod wind project last year...

[https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2015/01/30/what- really-...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2015/01/30/what-really- toppled-cape-wind-plans-for-nantucket-sound/mGJnw0PbCdfzZHtITxq1aN/story.html)

Even though we NEED to be off fossil fuels for energy generation in 12-15 years I fear we won't be anywhere close.

The best thing that can be done for the near term is limit consumption as much as possible until we are completely off ALL fossil fuels.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


India bans PUBG and over 100 additional Chinese apps - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/02/india-bans-pubg-and-over-100-additional-chinese-apps/ <comment><USER2> Just a matter of time before now apps like TG, WA, IG, FB are blocked coz not friendly with the party-in-power.</comment>


The future of Rails is Ruby 1.9 - real performance of 1.8, JRuby and 1.9 compared - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pluron.com/2009/05/ruby-19-performance.html <comment><USER2> Not to mention about a 20-30% reduction in memory usage (from our recently ported, non-rails app)</comment>


The concept of antifragility: Shockingly Happy - <AUTHOR> http://williampeng.com/post/38700040137/shockingly-happy <comment><USER2> I want proof that the "Entitlement Generation" actually exists. I see it talked about everywhere, yet never experience it. Why, exactly, is my generation different from an older generation that thinks it's entitled to social security that a shrinking workforce could never possibly sustain? If we have entitlement problems, our _entire society_ has entitlement problems, not just a bunch of sheltered kids.

<comment><USER3> This is what one calls anecdotal overload and should set one's bullshit alarms blaring.

No data. No definitions. Just entrepreneurial feel good bullshit.

I stopped reading these types of articles for the purpose of trying to discern any type of value other than trying to understand how delusional people think. There are oh so many of them - I try to make sure I don't get freight trained by them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, I just found something _really_ insightful. It was in the _link_ that the parent article offered.

On Quora, the _second_ highest response is excellent. It's from Michael O Church, and here's the heart of it:

"Resiliency comes from an ability to realistically analyze setbacks, which often have complex causes. People who aren't resilient have a variety of unhealthy tendencies, listed from the most unhealthy to the least:

* Internalize the rejection. ("It happened because I'm a loser.") This leads to depression and implosion.

* Exaggerate the damage or long-lasting nature (perceived autocorrelation) of the rejection. ("Now that I got fired, I'll never get another job.") This leads to bitterness and "cold" anger, which is more dangerous than the "hot" kind because it's long-lasting and tends toward generalization.

* Get angry about it. ("It happened because he is an asshole.") This leads to "hot" anger and, often, stupid behaviors (revenge).

* Prematurely generalize about the environment. ("It happened because <industry X> is full of sharks.") This doesn't usually impair general psychological health, but it creates an inaccurate model of the world and leads to sub-optimal choices and lost opportunities in the future."

I'm going to have to find some way to get this in front of my face every day for a few months until I internalize it. I have found myself making each of those mistakes at times, and when presented in this manner, it is crystal clear that they are nothing more than reasoning errors.

</comment><comment><USER5> There seems to be a trend to invent new words for an old concept when writing articles. I don't know if the intention is to attract eye balls or to claim that "hey I invent this concept". But most of the times, what you discover is not new. Why invent "The concept of antifragility" when there is a word called "resilience" . Since English is not my first language, please correct me if I am wrong.

<comment><USER6> This is quite thoroughly explained in the book, the anti-fragile benefits from adversity, the resilient does not.

<comment><USER7> Nothing new under the sun, kids. Hormesis. Look it up.

<http://gettingstronger.org/stoicism/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> " _The prototypical entrepreneur is highly risk-seeking to the point of irrationality. A simple cost-benefit analysis would dissuade most people from traveling down this path; yet, the entrepreneur is an entrepreneur because of the risk involved._ "

If that is his understanding of Taleb's book, then he has misread it completely.

Taleb says the best approach is a dumbell strategy, combining conservative choices with convex options whose downside risk is fixed or finite but whose upside is unlimited.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the comment - appreciate it and thanks for reading. I qualify that point with the following paragraph:

"When you look at the decision tree from that perspective, it seems not so bad: failure is always the same, a zero, while the return (however you define it: monetary, happiness, utility, etc.) is astronomical, and worth it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Taleb's Antifragile book has a number of direct entrepreneurial references and many other ideas that are relevant but of more general interest (economics, technology, health related, etc). For example, he talks about the concept of options (based upon the financial vehicle) applying in other areas of life. In general if you have something with a small downside potential and large upside potential, it is an option that is antifragile. Learning new technical skills seems to me to fit into this area. By sacrificing a bit of time and a few bucks on training / books / videos you can develop a product that will delight users, address a need in the workplace, or otherwise create value. Limited downside and great potential upside.

</comment><comment><USER11> Antifragility sounds exciting, but there's really nothing there. In the context of economics, it simply means relying on competition instead of central planning (by government or by TBTF banks). Outside of economics Taleb has no real examples of antifargility. Engineering is always about robustness, you have 0 examples of engineering systems that are "antifragile".

<comment><USER12> The idea is that the evolution of engineering systems is antifragile because they benefit from trial and error. Computers keep getting better over time because of how the industry identifies and fixes issues. An obvious (but not the best) example would be the Macbook power connector. A given system cannot be antifragile (unless it learns on its own), but the evolution of technology can be. Contrast with economics, where (he argues) policy makers learn little or nothing after each boom-bust cycle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If that's what helps you deal with failure then go for it. I agree with most of the points mentioned in the article but I don't see how that leads to 'antifragility' as the solution. A healthy dose of realism (perhaps cynicism..) works fine for me.

</comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of pg's Relentlessly Resourceful essay.

<http://paulgraham.com/relres.html>

</comment><comment><USER15> Tell you what's fragile: taking out college loans. Great read by the way.

</comment><comment><USER16> Antifragility? Why not 'resiliance'?

<comment><USER17> The difference is explained in the book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> burdening the world with 6 (six!) descendants sounds pretty entitled to me.

</comment><comment><USER19> I really hate this "entitled Millennial" schtick. It's complete fucking bullshit. Are there some overprivileged, sheltered assclowns in my generation? Sure, as with every other. The idea that this applies to the whole set is insulting and ridiculous.

Most of us just want a fair shake. We don't want to be given the prize for doing nothing, because that makes it vacuous, but we want a fair opportunity to compete-- not some bullshit meritocracy that has already been set up to make the well-connected rich kids come out the winners. When it comes to excellence, we know that _we_ will have to do the legwork. We just want the entrenched, incompetent morons who are currently in power to get out of the fucking way so we can do something great. We're not asking for a meaningless victory. We're asking to be liberated from the meaningless defeat that most people get.

<comment><USER20> So, you could be successful if only the morons in the previous generation would let you? Is that how the previous generation became successful? Sounds like entitlement to me.

<comment><USER19> _So, you could be successful if only the morons in the previous generation would let you?_

This isn't about me, personally. I'm fine. However, I think most people in my generation have been screwed, and the ones who have avoided it (present company included) tend to be fairly privileged. If you were born in 1990 in the U.S. with average means, then chances are that you're not beating away venture capitalists with a stick.

What's especially hilarious to me is that the age obsessions of VC-istan are thinly-veiled classism. A meritocracy wouldn't give a shit how old you are. The age narcissism is just a way for rich people to brand themselves, because people of average means don't get their startups bought at age 24. They have to work normal people jobs for a few years. The age bullshit is to keep the latter crowd out.

We need a society where the best people are free to excel, rather than wasting their lives taking orders. We'd have such a better world if the incompetent morons currently running it just stepped down and let some actually smart people take the reins. They can keep all their private jets and gaudy houses, but the decision-making power should go to people who actually have a few brain cells to rub together.

Entitlement, to me, suggests people wanting to be rewarded for just existing, with no desire to actually do anything. I don't see that in my generation. Yes, there's some of it, as there is everywhere, but it's not a defining trait. I see a lot of pissed-off people, but I see people who work really hard.

<comment><USER4> >>>"A meritocracy wouldn't give a shit how old you are. The age narcissism is just a way for rich people to brand themselves, because people of average means don't get their startups bought at age 24."

Holy cow! I never thought about that, but now that you mention it, there's no doubt that explains at least part of it.

I had thought either that they wanted (1) the coolness factor, (2) naive entrepreneurs that they could sway more easily, and/or (3) to make sure there was no family, so the entrepreneurs would work like crazed zombies.

I'm sure those factor in somewhat, but what you mention is probably a bigger factor.

The good thing is that the "real world" doesn't give a shit whether or not you start out rich. In other words, if you can overcome all the obstacles and produce something disruptive that succeeds, you will get the rewards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Rejection Therapy [1] is what I would think a perfect example of antifragility in the wild. [2] People learn to manage their anxiety in stressful social situations and become more resilient to rejection after playing for awhile. Entrepreneurs like Jia Jiang even leverage rejections to launch and grow their startups. [3]

[1] <http://rejectiontherapy.com>

[2] [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and- fitness/healt...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and- fitness/health/can-we-really-immunize-ourselves-against- rejection/article5817930/)

[3] [http://www.entresting.com/blog/100-days-of-rejection- therapy...](http://www.entresting.com/blog/100-days-of-rejection-therapy/)

<comment><USER22> Rejection therapy has its ideological roots in Stoicism, just as the central ideas of this article does. Seneca talks about spending a few days each month wallowing in the things that you fear the most, so that they can't control you.

And with regard to the anti-fragility thing, this is discussed at length also in Letters from a Stoic. Seneca talks about not being overly dominated by your fears, but also you can be a slave to _hope_ as well. The idea of being happy and free when poor, and cautious when prosperous is also straight out of stoicism.

When I read Seneca in Letters from a Stoic, I get the impression that he's a mental martial arts master, constantly training to be in control of his mind and his happiness, always pursuing excellence.

[http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/04/13/stoicism-101...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/04/13/stoicism-101-a-practical- guide-for-entrepreneurs/)

<comment><USER7> You would enjoy this site <http://gettingstronger.org>

Likewise <http://mises.org/books/stoics.pdf>

As a long-time fan of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the links between them and modern anarcho-capitalists like Hazlitt and Mises.

<comment><USER22> Hey this is really good, thank you for sharing it! I've already started reading the stoics book.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hackers can steal your AppleID in 10 seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.shootitlive.com/2012/10/hackers-can-steal-your-appleid-in-10-s/

<comment><USER2> This is a huge security issue. I imagine that someone post this on Facebook and encourage others in the same school (on same wifi) to log in to their AppleID. In this way you can access other people's accounts directly. Buying things at store.apple.com, AppStore, iTunes.</comment>


Qt Creator 4.0.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://blog.qt.io/blog/2016/05/11/qt-creator-4-0-0-released/ <comment><USER2> I'm using Qt quick (LGPL version) for development. After a bit of a learning curve, i really like it.

Its important to recognise that QtQuick and QtWidgets are _different_ systems. Quick is all on the GPU. It awesome for building touch based apps. I'm currently targeting desktop development. I haven't found much else that will use the GPU pipeline in an easy way.

<comment><USER3> QtQuick is definitely a step forward with respect to touch input and slick animated UIs, but there are things I _really_ dislike about it.

* Javascript. Ew.

* Deployment is a bit of a nightmare. They have windeployqt.exe which helps, but it doesn't automatically copy the MingW DLLs, and all the QML files aren't compiled as resources which is a bit ugly.

* The apps are _huge_. It's like 50 MB for hello world.

* There isn't very good encapsulation of QML components. All object IDs seem to go in one big namespace.

<comment><USER4> Another problematic part is styling. QtWidgets can be styled using css and it works really well.

QtQuick controls on other hand can't be styled using CSS, which is bit of a bummer IMO.

<comment><USER2> good point. what do people do for themes and styles in QML?

<comment><USER5> Not sure how many people use it, but you could check this out: [https://github.com/Ableton/aqt-stylesheets](https://github.com/Ableton/aqt- stylesheets)

<comment><USER6> NICE!

Thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I used to use Qt heavily for Python development (PyQt and PySide) a few years back, it's a fantastic framework. This looks good as ever.

It seems a bit odd that on OSX you can get the offline installer for Android, or the version for Android and iOS, but not a version just for iOS. Does the iOS package have a dependency on something in the Android one?

</comment><comment><USER3> This is awesome. Qt Creator is one of the best C++ IDEs there is (I'd say second only to Visual Studio, and that's debatable).

<comment><USER8> Don't forget CLion, its Visual Studio with Resharper C++.

<comment> chaotic-good I find QtCreator superior to CLion. It's faster and more polished, has better vi-emulation and clang ecosystem integration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What if we can use golang with Qt Creator...

<comment><USER10> Hear. I want to give go a try but the lack of a decent gui solution is keeping me from investing too much time.</comment></comment>


Chernobyl survivor's message for Japan: Run - <AUTHOR> http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/22/chernobyl-cleanup-survivors-message-for-japan-run-away-as-qui/

<comment><USER2> My first reaction was "but there's no way Fukushima even gets close to Chernobyl", but then I realized I sound like a nuclear apologist. So I looked up the most recent news about the plant.

The evacuation zone only covers 20km - and the IAEA just recorded levels of 161 uSv/h in a town that far away. That's 1410 mSv/y, compared to 2.4 mSv/y normal from background radiation. These are levels high enough to cause health effects, and one has to wonder why the government has not extended the evacuation radius if there's proof that health-affecting levels of radiation has gotten that far into the general environment. It seems like the US NRC's recommendations are wiser than the Japanese government's. That's a disturbing thought.

I really wonder how history will look back upon this - a well-executed response to a unforeseen disaster in the most difficult of circumstances, or an example of governmental coverup exposing civilians to unnecessary danger?

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing 161 uSv/h is a local maximum, and that over the course of the upcoming year, that number is expected to dramatically fall. I suggest multiplying 161 uSv/h by 24h to see the daily effect: 3.86 mSv/day. That's not too bad, as long as it starts dropping.

<comment><USER2> No doubt the 161 uSv/h figure will drop as the plant becomes more contained, and it's unlikely sticking around for a full year will net you the full 1400 mSv. That being said, right now we're looking at 3.86 mSv/d, which in and of itself is not a number to scoff at, and is _well_ above dose limits, conservative as they are. This is considerably different than when people were panicking over 50 uSv/d.

When you are in an area that exceeds the _yearly_ dose limit in a single day, it seems like evacuation is prudent. The fact that the government hasn't widened the evacuation area despite rising ambient radiation is concerning.

<comment><USER4> The radiation levels are getting a lot of public scrutiny - because _the information is public_. I don't see how this compares to a Chernobyl-style government coverup.

<comment><USER2> The numbers are IAEA numbers - not released by TEPCO or the Japanese government. Certainly this isn't on the order of a Soviet-era coverup, but from the appearance right now information is as open as it perhaps ought to be, and preventative/remedial action not as aggressive as might be justified.

It's hard to say in this giant void of information, which is why I wonder how this will be viewed in time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Being a victim does not make you an expert.[1]

It gives you a different perspective, an emotional perspective. There are surely lessons and warnings to be learned through such anecdotes and experiences. But the heightened emotions accompanying a victim's portrayal of an event should give them no more credentials than any other informed, researched perspective.

All that said, I have severe sympathy for Natalia and all the other victims and sufferers of Chernobyl and Fukushima.

[1] Being victimized can motivate one to _become_ an expert on a topic by way of thorough research after the fact.

<comment><USER5> I think an important lesson here is that none of those people are in official death toll of the incident. They died long enough after the incident to not be considered radiaton-induced deaths by WHO standard. Yet the fact that only one of the crew lived to their 50s certainly poses some statistical significance, one that authorities are inclined to overlook.

Think about it next time you read that Chernobyl had only 40 victims and that's it.

<comment><USER4> Nothing I said implied that there weren't a large number of people affected by the Chernobyl disaster. You are making valid points regarding efforts to lowball the count, but it also seems as if you misunderstood my previous comment.

To be clear, many people were afflicted by radiation poisoning long after the event.

I'm sensitive to the situation in Japan, both in terms of the human tragedy and the FUD, so I think I'll leave it at that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been watching documentaries recently of the Chernobyl cleanup - it is stunning. The bravery of the soldiers(or ignorance) is amazing.

The fact that they were called "Liquidators" and "BioRobots" is very interesting.

It is also interesting that they say they evacuated 100K residents then used _800K_ liquidators is crazy.

If you haven't seen footage of the accident - check it out. When they first drilled into the reactor, they were stunned to find that it was empty. The rods had melted entirely and poured through the bottom of the reactor and fused with sand to make a massive graphite-fuel-rod-glass blob that was extremely radioactive.

They got close enough to it to film it.

<comment><USER5> "Biorobot" was mostly an inside joke. "Liquidator" however was, and is, an official term in former USSR, there are no derogatory connotations with it.

<comment><USER7> "Robot" is already derived from the russian word for work. Is that connected or no?

<comment><USER8> Biorobot refers to the people who cleaned up the reactor roof with shovels after a remote controlled shoveling car, a "robot" had its electronics fried from the radiation. The pun is robots are expendable, so are biorobots. It's not related to the work word origin.

The biorobots wore handmade suits of lead armor, so they were covered in metal, like robots. I'm getting it from here [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5384001427276447319...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5384001427276447319#)

Even if you speak Russian it's hard to decipher their puns. "Liquidator" is an official term, but also has connotations. Not sure, but I remember it's associated with death squads.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Generating Unique Referrer Codes in PHP - <AUTHOR> http://hasitha.posterous.com/generating-unique-referrer-codes-in-php

<comment><USER2> "There's a very real possibility that 2 completely different usernames could result in the exact same md5 hash."

Errrmmm - no. Well, yes, but only where "real probability" equates to something like a 1:10^18 chance of collision even after you've signed up every human on the planet. An MD5 hash is 128 bits, or ~10^38 possible values. Even considering the Birthday attack, there is no actual chance worth worrying about of 2 MD5 hashes accidentally colliding. (See the table near at top of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_attack> )

That doesn't mean MD5(username) is the right choice, but the reasoning in the article about why not to use it is flawed.</comment>


Pearls Before Breakfast (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

<comment><USER2> You can see this guy at the Met for what, $200? Could I pay you $200 to be an hour late for work? (Maybe I could - the HN crowd of startuppy professionals often doesn't have to be in on time - but not the kind of people who were listening in the article).

I wonder what would've happened if they'd done it in the evening rush hour rather than the morning one.

</comment><comment><USER3> This was a delightful article, that provided a real window in human behavior and perception. Such fun!

I am reminded of a story that I am unable to locate, about a violinist who composed works and passed them off as more obscure classical music by big names (Mozart, Bach and similar). He liked composing music in the style, but he couldn't get people interested in the pieces. By passing them off as more obscure famous works from the period, people would listen to them, and respond favorably. A very similar problem, from a different perspective.

If anyone recalls the article or names, I would appreciate a link.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like Fritz Kreisler, though generally the composers he "credited" were one or two notches down from Mozart and (J S) Bach -- Vivaldi, Boccherini, Couperin, W F Bach, Tartini, Pugnani, etc. You can find a list by going to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Fritz_K...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Fritz_Kreisler) and searching for "falsely".

Apparently, when called on his deception he said "The name changes, the value remains".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Gene Weingarten is an amazing writer. He won a Pulitzer for this article in 2008. He won one other Pulitzer in 2010, for his (very harrowing) article about parents who forget their children in the back seat of their car.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/02...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022701549.html)

<comment><USER6> I don't know much about Pulitzers, but I'm shocked by this. I thought this piece was terrible. Maybe the people who award Pulitzers are into symphonic music.

Specifically I thought the writing had a forced enthusiasm. I think the whole premise is dull and obvious. I really didn't like the philosophical allusions. And I like classical music, DFW essays (long, poetic), and philosophy.

Maybe I'll check out what it was up against...

[http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2008-Feature- Writing](http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2008-Feature-Writing)

Fellow finalists (seem equally boring): Also nominated as finalists in this category were: Thomas Curwen of the Los Angeles Times for his vivid account of a grizzly bear attack and the recovery of the two victims, and Kevin Vaughan of the Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colo., for his sensitive retelling of a school bus and train collision at a rural crossing in 1961 that killed 20 children.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder what would happen in a similar experiment where a large sign makes it clear how high-status the violinist is. Would people be persuaded to stop, or are the passers-by in a Metro station naturally going to be too busy and hurried to take in a performance?

<comment><USER8> I also wonder what would have happened if it were an instrument other than violin. I've long been an orchestral musician myself, and I'm one of a great many people who feel unaccompanied solo violin sounds scratchy and annoying (or thin and lacking in context at best), no matter how skillfully it's played. A really great cellist, however, would grab my attention much more effectively. Or imagine a top-notch bassoonist launching into Rite of Spring out of nowhere. I'd stop to listen.

<comment><USER9> I agree. My dad _loves_ solo violin, and I personally don't care for the sound. I definitely prefer a cello or someone playing a woodwind.

Alto sax is my personal favorite solo instrument.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I assure Beyoncé would have drawn a crowd.

<comment><USER11> Only because people would recognize her from face or music or voice.

To replicate this you would need to put some make-up / prosthetics on to hide the fact it was her and make her sing something not particularly famous on her own.

I think the result would be the same assuming no one recognized her voice.

<comment><USER12> I think we might be able to get the. Same effect by transporting her to somewhere else in the world where American popular music isn't as popular.

<comment><USER13> Serious question: where would this be? Outside of North America, I've only been to Brazil and multiple European countries, and American pop music is still ubiquitous in these places.

<comment><USER12> I'm having a hard time coming up with something concrete myself. The 'cheating' answer would of course be North Korea.

For something more practical, targeting an older segment of the population, or a remote area in a non-English speaking country might do it.

<comment><USER11> Lady GaGa playing a piano in the same location is probably your best bet.

Practically no one recognises her without here insane make-up and get-ups (Which I think is a pretty smart ploy) and a piano is a piano yet she is in the same "Generally recognised superstar" category as beyonce and she is a very good pianist.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: prove commitment within two months? - <AUTHOR>

I am worried that my CV doesn't really mark me as the ideal founder. It seems to me I wasted so much time in my life (35 years old now), and even the projects I finished successfully (most I didn't finish) usually took too long, and did not reach the scope I was hoping for. In essence, there are not many achievements I am really proud about. It might just be my personal assessment, but still (agents love my Java consulting CV, but it doesn't mean anything to me). I have even publicly admitted to burnout syndromes on HN - big red flag? My karma also shows that I procrastinate a lot...
Anyway, I wonder about your opinions: is it possible to turn around that impression within two months, which is the time I could hopefully dedicate to preparing the next YC application?
I suppose the obvious path to take is to work on a demo day and night, and anyway, giving up is not an option (I might just have to try without YC funding). But still, I am curious about suggestions and opinions.
It is of course also the question if I will be able to pull it off, since historically I tended to get sidetracked. Why should it be different this time? It's not that I don't believe in me, I am just trying to be realistic - for this time to play out differently than the previous attempts, maybe I should have a better grasp on what went wrong and how to counter it, and I am not really sure I have that.
For YC application I have some hope to also come up with an intriguing idea, even though they say they don't care about the idea so much. But what about something like, say, Anybots? They ask for cool projects I have done, and I don't have any - so I didn't even apply in the end... Again it seems kind of obvious to just try to make something cool in the future. Anyway -maybe this post is just weird, or maybe some interesting comments will come in...
Edit: the question is of course a bit related to the "am I too old to startup" type of question. While I demand of myself to be intrinsically motivated, it might be too much to ask. Hoping to be accepted into YC (for example) could provide a good motivation boost.
The one thing all my successful projects had in common: I didn't do them alone. I might still have been the driving person behind them, but it seems I need to have at least some other person take an interest to actually go through with it. (I know that is not the kind of motivation YC provides, that is what co-founders are for. But working towards the application would have an effect, compared to working towards a void). <comment><USER3> > Anyway, I wonder about your opinions: is it possible to turn around that > impression within two months, which is the time I could hopefully dedicate > to preparing the next YC application?

Yes. The hardest thing is to get it going. And even, if you didn't get accepted into YC, you would have started a habit of creating and working on projects that you want to work on. Which is invaluable.

What is your definition of a cool project? I've posted about this before - <USER2> I hate to sound like a broken record player but some of the most interesting projects were done in a very short time. Yes, you might not be able to create something in 4 hours but once you get the momentum going, a weekend project might produce something.

"So, imagine my amazement when I had a glance at Twittervision, which was created by David Troy using Ruby on Rails in 4 hours"

In the fair chance, you haven't heard this Ira Glass segment about the process of creating/making (which I learned about from News.YC) - it inspires me and may well you <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, will watch the video at home.

I definitely try to make my projects simpler and shorter, especially because I worry about my endurance. One problem is that I constantly have new ideas that often seem even simpler than the one I am currently working on. So it is tempting to switch to the even simpler project, which ultimately leads to too much distraction.

<comment><USER4> be like MC Hammer: "Break it down!" You have to take things in small chunks for two reasons:

* You can't do it all with a few days of coding * You need little wins along to way to keep the wind in your sails.

For a website-based project, you want to put pen to paper and come up with a plan for "What Has to Happen For Me to Make My First Sale":

* Demo

* Website

* Marketing

* Processes in place post-sale

Those are easy - so focus on coming up w/ a plan of action and timeline/budget for implementing those. It's amazing just how much the planning process gets you starting to feel energized and, "I'm actually doing it!"

Good luck :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "I might just have to try without YC funding"

> "Hoping to be accepted into YC (for example) could provide a good motivation > boost."

YC should not affect your motivation at all!

It sounds like your goal is not to start a successful business, but to be accepted into YC. This brings up two things.

1) If you don't seem dedicated and committed to an idea, you are not an attractive investment. Anyone reviewing your application is likely to pass. Investors look for people that will succeed without them. What will your motivation be in the case that you are accepted into YC? Why do you equate YC with success?

2) Don't even think about YC right now. Like with all deals, you should assume it won't happen until after it is set in stone. You can avoid the discouragement and de-motivation that comes with rejection by keeping your focus on the most important thing, the improvement of your product.

> "...the projects I finished successfully (most I didn't finish) usually took > too long, and did not reach the scope I was hoping for."

You need to finish a project by yourself. Start small if you have to, but the only thing that matters is that you finish something that you start. I think this will help your confidence and help you get out of this pattern. Don't get discouraged if it doesn't turn out the way you had hoped, but don't let it drag on forever if there doesn't seem to be potential.

> "I suppose the obvious path to take is to work on a demo day and night, and > anyway, giving up is not an option..."

I suggest reading some 37signals on this one. Just because you work on something day and night does not mean it is time well spent, and sometimes giving up is indeed the best option.

On a side note, don't get your identity in your achievements, failures, or age. You are never too old or too much of a failure to do anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> My primary goal is not to get into YC, but the odds of making it probably have an effect on how I will spend my time untill the application deadline. Maybe that was the main reason for my post, to figure out if focussing on the YC application even makes sense. I do believe that YC would increase my chances of success by a big factor.

I think it wouldn't be a loss to focus on the application, because whether I would be accepted or not, I would make progress with my project/startup. But without the YC application, I would probably choose different projects. For example smaller targets or less "sexy" projects. Maybe I would finish my old projects instead of starting a "YC potential project".

This kind of "double-win"-thinking might be a frequent cause of my downfall, because I don't focus on the most important point: what do I really want to do. Instead, all the decision factors might get too confusing in the end.

I take your point and will try decide on my favorite project irrespective of it's imagined YC potential.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The you that wrote this won't make it. Cleanse yourself of doubt and fill it with (false if it has to be) confidence. You have 2 months to do a project you are proud of and do complete.

Take a deep breath. Zoom out and for the next 2 months do nothing else but focus on yourself. When you leave work don't have the idle thoughts about what to eat for dinner and such. Cut the AC cord off your TV (or whatever usually distracts you). Focus on doing only 1 thing, improving your self. Start and finish a project that makes you proud. It doesn't have to be the most original thought in the world, so don't waste time coming up with the 'big idea' - in a way, it doesn't really matter what it is.

Just make sure you know 1 person who's life will improve because of it.

If you really want to change your life and put your stamp on something meaningful, you have to dig deep. You are totally capable of this!

<comment><USER7> Amen. And stop treating life like a series of college interviews. You win by winning, not by convincing people you can win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think you're coming at this from the wrong direction. The goal, presumably, is to create a successful business. If you're going to reverse engineer a process, start from that goal, not from an arbitrary step along the way (YCombinator).

It sounds like you:

\- don't have an idea you're passionate about

\- don't have much (any?) entrepreneurship experience

\- have difficulties finishing a project once you lose interest

\- want to "make it"

My advice would be:

\- evaluate what "making it" means. Hint: it's not YC. Is it just working on something cool? (you don't necessarily need to start a business for that). Is it setting up a successful "lifestyle" business? Is it getting seed/angel/VC funding, hiring employees, and dealing with the responsibility towards your investors/employees/customers, and working towards an IPO or acquisition?

\- Find someone who has what you might be missing: passion about an idea, ability for long-term commitment to a project, (possibly) entrepreneurship experience. Provide the technical strength, and rely on them to keep you motivated when you need it.

\- I want to say "just do a cool project", but it's not necessarily that easy - if you haven't so far, maybe there is a reason for it, like the ones you outlined. On the other hand, I AM going to say it - just do a cool project! It's up to you to make this time different.

</comment><comment><USER9> You are thinking too much. If your idea excited you, just get to it. Stop thinking if you can do it or not, just start trying and see if you enjoy the process.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point - also, the law of sunk costs. What is past is past, ideally I should only look forward (except for learning from mistakes). It's not always easy not to worry, though.

<comment><USER10> Worrying is fine. It's how you find problems. If you worry to the point of not acting, you won't last very long. The process of finding and solving problems doesn't have much room for delay in the context of entrepreneurship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was 33 and I had always been an "idea" person but I had never finished any of them; I'd barely ever even started them. I had a new idea that I knew would work and I just started working at it a few hours a week, then 10 hours a week, 20 hours a week, then pretty soon I was working 40-50 hours a week for a client and struggling to find the 30+ hours my company needed. It took me about 3 years working part-time to get my company where I could go full-time that way.

Is it possible that might fit what you're looking to do?

<comment><AUTHOR> I avoided to mention the "ideas" aspect as it is always met with so little respect on HN ;-) So good to hear that an ideas person can eventually get something done.

I find it hard to work on something else while I am consulting (day job), so maybe for me your scenario is unlikely. On the other hand I need to earn money, so it certainly is a possible road.

<comment><USER4> _"I find it hard to work on something else while I am consulting"_

No ####! Of course it's hard. Do you think I wanted to work 70-80 hour weeks or play with my 2 year old? I wanted to play of course but the long-term vision of creating lifetime security for my family over weighed the short-term work. Read PG's essay "Inequality and Risk" (<http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html>) for more.

I don't know YC's deal but can you tell me whether or not the term sheet they put in front of you is a good one? If you say, "I don't know" or "No" or if you haven't even thought that far, I'd say you are rushing into it. I would guess that, if you have the mindset of, "If I get funded I'll do it", it's gonna be hard to get funded.

<comment><USER11> Looking back, do you think sacrificing time with your kid was worth it for lifetime security? Like, do you guys have a good relationship now, or did all the work do any damage?

Just wondering -- I don't have kids yet, but I'd be worried that all that money/security may not be enjoyable if I hadn't built my relationships with my kids when they were young.

[edit: sorry for the offtopic, BTW.]

<comment><USER12> I fear that a wife and kids will be a game changer too. I feel a sense of urgency for many reasons, but that is definitely one of them.

There are many others, the opportunity cost to your corporate career for example. The reduced bank account balance from where it could be if you sold your soul. And the list goes on.

As much as we like to romanticize the process, there are a lot of risks and pitfalls. Luckily for a lot of us, it is not a choice and we just aim to minimize these hurdles!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find that if you can't keep focussed, that's because you are merely excited but not passionate about your work. When the excitement wears off, you crash.

Why do you want to do a startup? What would you do if you didn't need any more money?

<comment><AUTHOR> A good point. I easily get excited about new ideas and then I start to compromise in the decision to work on the idea that interests me most, or the one that seems the most promising in terms of money making.

I used to want to do research, but these days if I wouldn't need the money, I would probably still do research in terms of doing a startup. I would like to see something useful come off the things I research. I need to do a startup because it is the only way I can see to be able to work on my own ideas and make them real. Not needing money would probably just mean riskier startups.

In theory I could imagine that would be possible within a corporation, too, but I don't see the path for me to get into such a position in a corporation. So the only option I see is to startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think there's anything in your history which ensures that you are not going to be a success. Lots of successful people have lots of failures in their past and many are procrastinators. Lots of them question their own motivation and aren't totally confident about themselves.

I think the only thing that bothers me is that you don't seem to know why you want to do a startup. Prove something to other people? Yourself? Make money?

</comment><comment><USER15> if you are going to wait for the perfect storm for your profile to start a company, you'll never do it. To quote nike, just do it.

Something like 90% of people want to start their own business, but only 1% actually does. Don't really remember exact stats, but that should be pretty close

</comment><comment><USER16> you sound like me... maybe we could help support each other... and keep each other going. if you like the idea should me an email email@example.com.

I think one of the things that makes YC successful is the constant pushing and positive re-reinforcement.

</comment><comment><USER17> thinking and typing too much. Take the two months and prove your worth by building something GREAT that has a great growth rate and happy users. If you manage that, you remove a LOT of the risk that YC takes on by funding stuff this early.

</comment><comment><USER18> when you say "game design" in your profile; and " <http://3boobs.de/> "

... your've gotta be kidding right?..right?

<comment><AUTHOR> That was just a fun side project. I used to want to become a game developer. I worked for a mobile games company for a while, and developed some mobile games and applications of my own. Except for the moon calendar, none got published, though. And they had the scope aspect I mentioned, meaning, they were still not really the kind of games I ultimately had wanted to create. Still, I should give those unpublished games their finishing touches and publish them myself - or maybe not, since the J2ME industry sucks...

These days, I am still interested in games, but it is not a priority anymore. My main interest was always AI, and I thought games would be a nice area for experimenting with AI. On the other hand, sometimes I still think that maybe I should just create a really nice browser game, never mind that there are already zillions of them around. I enjoyed programming games, so writing a browser game would most certainly be enjoyable.

I wouldn't call something like 3boobs game design, because it is mostly an existing game concept, not much to design. Programming a chess client (which I also did) is also not game design.</comment></comment>