<story><title>Don&apos;t Start Big, Start a Little Snowball</title><url>https://blog.nugget.one/2016/09/04/dont-start-big-start-a-little-snowball/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bsder</author><text>&amp;gt; Start a small company. &amp;quot;Hustle&amp;quot; diligently for a while. Profit. Repeat. Now you have a large, successful company.&lt;p&gt;And, also, survivor bias.  Lots of companies hustled and hustled and died.&lt;p&gt;Elon Musk is a &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; good example.  At one point he couldn&amp;#x27;t meet cashflow--and then the government contract for SpaceX finally came in.&lt;p&gt;3 months of delay on that contract and Musk is a goat instead of a hero.</text></item><item><author>pjlegato</author><text>This is somewhat interesting, but relies on the all too common tautological device of &amp;quot;hustle,&amp;quot; a quasi-magical activity whose details are usually elided over.&lt;p&gt;Start a small company. &amp;quot;Hustle&amp;quot; diligently for a while. Profit. Repeat. Now you have a large, successful company.&lt;p&gt;What makes a successful company? &amp;quot;Hustle.&amp;quot; What is &amp;quot;hustle&amp;quot;? Why, it just means &amp;quot;working hard at doing all the things that make a company successful.&amp;quot; It&amp;#x27;s a perfectly circular definition.&lt;p&gt;Proposal: always avoid the word &amp;quot;hustle.&amp;quot; Instead, talk about specific actions and decisions that led to success in particular cases.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>taneq</author><text>This one drives me crazy. Sure, you have to be good and smart and you have to hustle, but you also have to be lucky, and luck is a bigger factor than anyone likes to admit. People who make it big forget the luck aspect and start believing that because it worked, they did everything right. They then go around dispensing questionable advice on the basis of &amp;#x27;it worked for them&amp;#x27; while knowing full well that they&amp;#x27;re a massive outlier.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s like when old successful people give &amp;quot;life-affirming&amp;quot; advice like &amp;quot;quit your job, follow your dreams, take risks, LIVE!&amp;quot; Which is great advice if you&amp;#x27;re already financially secure and you know that doing so didn&amp;#x27;t result (in your case) in you ending up as some peon working in a fast food joint. Never mind the other 99% of people who did the exact same thing and it didn&amp;#x27;t work out, because who listens to a failure?</text></comment>
<story><title>Don&apos;t Start Big, Start a Little Snowball</title><url>https://blog.nugget.one/2016/09/04/dont-start-big-start-a-little-snowball/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bsder</author><text>&amp;gt; Start a small company. &amp;quot;Hustle&amp;quot; diligently for a while. Profit. Repeat. Now you have a large, successful company.&lt;p&gt;And, also, survivor bias.  Lots of companies hustled and hustled and died.&lt;p&gt;Elon Musk is a &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; good example.  At one point he couldn&amp;#x27;t meet cashflow--and then the government contract for SpaceX finally came in.&lt;p&gt;3 months of delay on that contract and Musk is a goat instead of a hero.</text></item><item><author>pjlegato</author><text>This is somewhat interesting, but relies on the all too common tautological device of &amp;quot;hustle,&amp;quot; a quasi-magical activity whose details are usually elided over.&lt;p&gt;Start a small company. &amp;quot;Hustle&amp;quot; diligently for a while. Profit. Repeat. Now you have a large, successful company.&lt;p&gt;What makes a successful company? &amp;quot;Hustle.&amp;quot; What is &amp;quot;hustle&amp;quot;? Why, it just means &amp;quot;working hard at doing all the things that make a company successful.&amp;quot; It&amp;#x27;s a perfectly circular definition.&lt;p&gt;Proposal: always avoid the word &amp;quot;hustle.&amp;quot; Instead, talk about specific actions and decisions that led to success in particular cases.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hoodoof</author><text>You make a good point.&lt;p&gt;This blog post is a common line of messaging in the &amp;quot;how to succeed in startups&amp;quot; - &amp;quot;see what (hugely successful company X) did? That&amp;#x27;s what you should do, that&amp;#x27;s how you succeed!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Truth is that success comes from a somewhat magical mixture of timing, luck, spotting of opportunity, knowing how to build it, having the resources to build it, meeting just the right people at the right time who will play a role in that success, somehow making the product &amp;quot;slightly more right&amp;quot; instead of &amp;quot;slightly more wrong&amp;quot; and sometimes seeing some incredible new way of viewing the world that others don&amp;#x27;t.  Like a magic spell it&amp;#x27;s a bit of all these ingredients put together in a recipe that, well, works.&lt;p&gt;Then the bloggers and venture capitalists come along, timeline what you did and say &amp;quot;ha! there is the recipe for success!&amp;quot;.</text></comment>