Random Life Advice
I spoke today with a very successful entrepreneur. He worked in very senior strategy roles for a F50 company where he admitted to earning well over a mill a year all in comp before leaving to join a start up that offered him 1/10th his previous pay and stock options which at the time were worthless.
I asked him, what about that start up gave him the motivation and inspiration that he believed in it so much to jump ship.
His response was that he never had a choice. He was so enthralled, so obsessed and in love with the business idea, he had to do it. His advice was that if I was ever considering joining a start up company, and I think I have a choice, don't do it. Go to the biggest, baddest firm you can with the most powerful people and network. But once you do fall in love with a company and can't help but go join it, God help you, may you be stronger for it.
Just wanted to share, and see if folks had thoughts on entrepreneurship in general, and what to think about before joining a venture.






entrepreneurship is for
entrepreneurship is for sissies. It's either IBD or bust.
Depends on the risk/reward.
Depends on the risk/reward. The start-up opportunity out of college would have to be very attractive for me to not pursue IB.
This is going to be my one
This is going to be my one serious post on this website:
At the end of the day the world is still correct in that it rewards entrepreneurial talent, or taking risk that pans out correctly: Google, Microsoft, etc. were all once startups, and today their founders have an obscene amount of wealth. The founders were not afraid to stray off the conventional path. The most successful people in the business world are not content to work at successful companies. They want to create the fucking successful company.
That being said, it is the thrill of the business idea that has to captivate me. A lot of people on this forum can twist their little penises into a knot about risk and reward and projected free cash flow in a start-up or whatever bullshit fundamental analysis they can string together, and I can bullshit better than most of them.
What is beautiful about entrepreneurship is that you can change the world by supplying a need to people who didn't know that need existed in the first place. You might even make the world a better place. I'm sorry, but charging a fee to some jackass while pulling off a transaction is nowhere near as high on the list of Shit That Matters, i.e. making a positive difference in the lives of people around you. Yes, maybe one day I'll stop being a hypocrite and break the golden shackles I have created for myself and maybe start my own hedge fund (as entrepreneurial as it gets in finance) or maybe just find a business I believe in and help it grow into something meaningful.
What separates America from the machine-like efficiency of the Asian academic system is that people are not afraid to take massive amounts of risk: Bill Gates was a Harvard-dropout. Matt Damon was a Harvard-dropout. Granted, there are plenty of successful Harvard graduates, but it's passion and luck and hard work that will make you 'successful,' not some business card you show to some brain-dead pussy on legs.
I am willing to bet that none of the kids that get an erection to the notion of working in IBD would drop out of Harvard. The one thing that pisses me off about America right now is the fact that so many people want to end up as doctors or lawyers or bankers: these are all service industries that just require some tolerance for bullshit. Very few kids and top universities want to take real risks that are intelligently thought out. Even things that have their roots in good causes, like TFA, just turn into a prestige circle-jerk. Even "Entrepreneurship" clubs at universities just turn into resume-building pit-stops that completely destroy the notion of starting out on your own.
In the end, I am patiently waiting for the day I can proudly call myself an entrepreneur. Hopefully that killer business idea comes before I get too attached to the notion of working in high finance.
gsduke, If you want to drop
gsduke,
If you want to drop out of college, chances are, you should have a very good reason for doing so. If I somehow don't run into a once in a lifetime opportunity or develop one myself during college, why should I risk losing everything for something that isn't there yet? Even you aren't willing to quit your college/job until you find the right time to do it. There's a lot to learn from entrepreneurship, but clearly it's not for everyone.
Fair enough, but please kill
Fair enough, but please kill me if I spend the rest of my life doing more or less the same jackass shit that my unquestionably prestigious job entails.
What no one manages to factor
What no one manages to factor in is the price of failure. For every Bill Gates there are a thousand kids who dropped out and there lives went down the toilet - no money, no girl, living at home with no future prospects.
well they clearly took the
well they clearly took the wrong risks. i'm glorifying intelligent risk-taking, not trying to quote a price on failure. and plus if those fucks are worth half of a cockroach's ass, they would try to find the next venture instead of moaning about their failure
...romanticism imo... all
...romanticism imo... all romanticized, glorify the failed entrepreneur and ill believe you
all the dropouts were making
all the dropouts were making bank before they actually dropped out
gsduke wrote: well they
well they clearly took the wrong risks. i'm glorifying intelligent risk-taking, not trying to quote a price on failure. and plus if those fucks are worth half of a cockroach's ass, they would try to find the next venture instead of moaning about their failure
You talk of "intelligent risk-taking" like it's the safe version of entrepreneurship. The wrong risks? Man, all the risks entrepreneurs take are basically risks of total failure. The thousands of people that failed where Gates succeeded took the very same risks, Gates just got lucky (ok, maybe not all luck). And for every entrepreneur and for every successful idea there are 9 failed ideas. My point is that you can't just glorify successful entrepreneurship, failure is just as integral to the concept "entrepreneurship". Just ask any real entrepreneur.
I lied and this might be my
I lied and this might be my second serious post on this site.
...romanticism imo... all romanticized, glorify the failed entrepreneur and ill believe you
Hahaha the concept of 'at least he tried' or noble defeat is really Western, and defending it seems like a cliche Philosophy 101 final. I won't try to defend that notion, because my industry is one with an attitude of 'well you blew up and lost a metric fuckton of money.' Most of the people reading a defense of that will point to that aforementioned notion. Wall Street is all about how much money have you made lately, with a few smarter people being able to accurately assess the viability of sustaining that.
The only crowd that the failed entrepreneur would appeal to is the people that subscribe to the notion that going out with a bang is far more interesting than languishing in mediocrity. In the end, in our brilliant lingo, they are the sucker on the losing end of a trade. Isn't there some value to the people who get Darwin-ed out though? At least the rest of us can learn something from their spectacular fuck-up, which makes for more efficiency.
What I find particularly interesting is that finance is the derivative of entrepreneurship, and we have the luxury of basically facilitating their transactions or betting on businesses we have a real opinion on. When finance mistakes itself for invention instead of innovation is where the industry gets into trouble: we are so convinced about our own bullshit that we do shit like LTCM/subprime mortgages/etc. (Hey we're creating market efficiency by levering up 100x and betting on convergence patterns in fixed-income securities! Hey somebody wants to buy the pieces of my shittastic CDO so obviously I can justify my existence and charge a fee, and now I'll lev the shit out of this process and earn more fees!)
So by staying in finance, I think we are romanticizing second-rate entrepreneurs that have the luxury of still being around. Now that REALLY sucks.
I apologize for this raging drunk rant; I am an Internet menace in this state.
gsduke wrote: I lied and this
I lied and this might be my second serious post on this site.
...romanticism imo... all romanticized, glorify the failed entrepreneur and ill believe you
Hahaha the concept of 'at least he tried' or noble defeat is really Western, and defending it seems like a cliche Philosophy 101 final. I won't try to defend that notion, because my industry is one with an attitude of 'well you blew up and lost a metric fuckton of money.' Most of the people reading a defense of that will point to that aforementioned notion. Wall Street is all about how much money have you made lately, with a few smarter people being able to accurately assess the viability of sustaining that.
The only crowd that the failed entrepreneur would appeal to is the people that subscribe to the notion that going out with a bang is far more interesting than languishing in mediocrity. In the end, in our brilliant lingo, they are the sucker on the losing end of a trade. Isn't there some value to the people who get Darwin-ed out though? At least the rest of us can learn something from their spectacular fuck-up, which makes for more efficiency.
What I find particularly interesting is that finance is the derivative of entrepreneurship, and we have the luxury of basically facilitating their transactions or betting on businesses we have a real opinion on. When finance mistakes itself for invention instead of innovation is where the industry gets into trouble: we are so convinced about our own bullshit that we do shit like LTCM/subprime mortgages/etc. (Hey we're creating market efficiency by levering up 100x and betting on convergence patterns in fixed-income securities! Hey somebody wants to buy the pieces of my shittastic CDO so obviously I can justify my existence and charge a fee, and now I'll lev the shit out of this process and earn more fees!)
So by staying in finance, I think we are romanticizing second-rate entrepreneurs that have the luxury of still being around. Now that REALLY sucks.
I apologize for this raging drunk rant; I am an Internet menace in this state.
Make sure you wipe off the computer when you've finished masturbating to yourself
gsduke wrote: I lied and this
I lied and this might be my second serious post on this site.
...romanticism imo... all romanticized, glorify the failed entrepreneur and ill believe you
Hahaha the concept of 'at least he tried' or noble defeat is really Western, and defending it seems like a cliche Philosophy 101 final. I won't try to defend that notion, because my industry is one with an attitude of 'well you blew up and lost a metric fuckton of money.' Most of the people reading a defense of that will point to that aforementioned notion. Wall Street is all about how much money have you made lately, with a few smarter people being able to accurately assess the viability of sustaining that.
The only crowd that the failed entrepreneur would appeal to is the people that subscribe to the notion that going out with a bang is far more interesting than languishing in mediocrity. In the end, in our brilliant lingo, they are the sucker on the losing end of a trade. Isn't there some value to the people who get Darwin-ed out though? At least the rest of us can learn something from their spectacular fuck-up, which makes for more efficiency.
What I find particularly interesting is that finance is the derivative of entrepreneurship, and we have the luxury of basically facilitating their transactions or betting on businesses we have a real opinion on. When finance mistakes itself for invention instead of innovation is where the industry gets into trouble: we are so convinced about our own bullshit that we do shit like LTCM/subprime mortgages/etc. (Hey we're creating market efficiency by levering up 100x and betting on convergence patterns in fixed-income securities! Hey somebody wants to buy the pieces of my shittastic CDO so obviously I can justify my existence and charge a fee, and now I'll lev the shit out of this process and earn more fees!)
So by staying in finance, I think we are romanticizing second-rate entrepreneurs that have the luxury of still being around. Now that REALLY sucks.
I apologize for this raging drunk rant; I am an Internet menace in this state.
Make sure you wipe off the computer when you're done masturbating to yourself.
"So by staying in finance, I think we are romanticizing second-rate entrepreneurs that have the luxury of still being around. Now that REALLY sucks." Really? You really believe that. Go fuck yourself.
The average case in business
The average case in business is failure. Entrepreneurship is a side-effect, an emergent property of a great deal of thought, planning, passion and hard work. If you are joining a start-up simply to be an entrepreneur, you will fail.
Part of the reason people
Part of the reason people want to work for an IBD is its signaling power. Remember job market signaling? Michael Spence?
Signaling helps solve the coordination problem. WHO has the best information and skills to do a particular job? Then there is motivation problem - the why part.
A stint in IBD signals the liquidity of the labor resource. That the resource (labor) is acceptable to some of the most COMPETITIVE minds (supposedly) in the business world as a highly productive resource. That the resource (labor) is not without choices (means valuable) and that the resource (labor) is attempting to reduce the bidder's search & information costs by signaling and that the resource (labor) will need least amount of policing and monitoring because the resource (labor) is used to working hard and in intense manner.
I went in VC thinking it
monkeysama wrote: What no one
For my aspiring Entrepreneurial Nomads, check out my blog.
CharmWithSubstance wrote: But
I can only speak from
I rich, smarts, and totally in debt.
I have more respect for the
Midas, you are the man. I'm
Head of Metal Website: www.headofmetal.com
https://twitter.com/headofmetal2012
As far as the failure being
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses - Henry Ford
happypantsmcgee wrote: As far
For my aspiring Entrepreneurial Nomads, check out my blog.
Pfalzer wrote: Midas, you are
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses - Henry Ford
Pfalzer wrote: Midas, you are
mehp wrote: Pfalzer
Pfalzer wrote: Midas, you are
Victor252 wrote: Pfalzer
chubbybunny
YOU JUST GOT TROLLED
http://www.troll.me/images/red-foreman322/dont-you...
gsduke wrote: Fair enough,
YOU JUST GOT TROLLED
http://www.troll.me/images/red-foreman322/dont-you...
UFOinsider wrote: You IVY
^^^If you are going to dick
Where I unload on Twits and take verbal S***s
CharmWithSubstance wrote: I
gsduke wrote: UFOinsider
YOU JUST GOT TROLLED
http://www.troll.me/images/red-foreman322/dont-you...
UFOinsider
chubbybunny
YOU JUST GOT TROLLED
http://www.troll.me/images/red-foreman322/dont-you...
UFOinsider wrote: I'm not
gsduke wrote: UFOinsider
YOU JUST GOT TROLLED
http://www.troll.me/images/red-foreman322/dont-you...
gsduke wrote: I am willing to
Work hard, play hard.
UFOinsider wrote: I'm not
Work hard, play hard.
IlliniProgrammer
YOU JUST GOT TROLLED
http://www.troll.me/images/red-foreman322/dont-you...
Quote: Yeah, I'm the first to
Work hard, play hard.
I'd take working as an