Comments on: Understanding Ignorance and Humility

By: Jay_Levitt

Jay_Levitt — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:57 +0000

Hear, hear!

I get annoyed by certain very bright entrepreneurs, because all they talk about is what worked for them. Who cares? "This worked for me" doesn't mean "the true path to success"; it doesn't even mean "important". (In "Founders at Work", half the founders swore that Aeron chairs were critical; half swore that plywood desks were critical. Talk about a distinction without a difference…

Success is nice, but I'd much rather hear about what didn't work, and why. Only then can you start comparing successes to failures, and find out what's important.

Richard Satava gave a great talk at BIF-4. He said that DARPA had a rule: If more than 10% of their projects succeeded, they considered it a problem; clearly, they weren't taking enough risks.

By: smurchie

smurchie — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:32:00 +0000

Truly successful people appreciate the value of luck in their careers. Take two equally smart, driven, capable people; put them in the same start-ups or corporate environments at the same time; set the timer and say "go". After an arbitrary period, it's very unlikely they will be in the same places, respectively. Does that make the more successful one smarter, more driven and more capable?

So timing and other exogenous factors play a huge role for the entrepreneur, and the same is true for investors. A single success as an investor or entrepreneur doesn't make one an expert. Even a "string" of three or four doesn't. I like to see a few failures mixed in: makes for that all-important self-awareness and humility.

By: Steve Murchie

Steve Murchie — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:32:00 +0000

Truly successful people appreciate the value of luck in their careers. Take two equally smart, driven, capable people; put them in the same start-ups or corporate environments at the same time; set the timer and say “go”. After an arbitrary period, it's very unlikely they will be in the same places, respectively. Does that make the more successful one smarter, more driven and more capable?

So timing and other exogenous factors play a huge role for the entrepreneur, and the same is true for investors. A single success as an investor or entrepreneur doesn't make one an expert. Even a “string” of three or four doesn't. I like to see a few failures mixed in: makes for that all-important self-awareness and humility.

By: Jay Levitt

Jay Levitt — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:17:45 +0000

Hear, hear!

I get annoyed by certain very bright entrepreneurs, because all they talk about is what worked for them. Who cares? “This worked for me” doesn't mean “the true path to success”; it doesn't even mean “important”. (In “Founders at Work”, half the founders swore that Aeron chairs were critical; half swore that plywood desks were critical. Talk about a distinction without a difference…

Success is nice, but I'd much rather hear about what didn't work, and why. Only then can you start comparing successes to failures, and find out what's important.

Richard Satava gave a great talk at BIF-4. He said that DARPA had a rule: If more than 10% of their projects succeeded, they considered it a problem; clearly, they weren't taking enough risks.