22) Ok, so those are a few anecdotes. But how about more generally?
Almost all startups fail. Is it really correct to think big, even if you’re risk neutral?
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26) And the most impressive parts of the EA community are the ones full of people who chose, very intentionally, to end up there.
nytimes.com/2007/12/20/us/
Together they’re discovering big problems; scoping out approaches; and generating hundreds of millions of dollars for them.
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30) And so if you do push yourself--you do motivate yourself to do everything you can, and you do think strategically, and you do identify massive opportunities--maybe the odds of success aren’t all that low.
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Linear wealth utility functions (conveniently driven by effective altruism!) are a form of edge in markets where most are log... twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status…
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31) And so that brings us back to the Bank of America lobby.
It was a detail, a mundane task that anyone could have done, theoretically.
But in fact, very few people did it. Most of our competitors didn’t.
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One of our most memorable lessons from YC was "do all the things." We came with a list of 20 ideas for how to grow, and asked the YC partners which to prioritize. I think it was @paultoo who said something like "How would I know? Do all the things."
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32) And you might think it was because we thought to hire a low-level employee to sit in a bank all day.
But as it turned out, it was our COO.
Maybe it “shouldn’t” have been him, I don’t know. What I do know is that if you think that way, instead it’ll be no one.
This is a good example fallacy for young startups. Nearly every job can be done better in someway.
I'd bet your COO was going to be a better negotiator and cared more about pushing to get limit raises than any low level higher ever would. Always more expensive to hire an amateur
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Probably a good choice that it was the COO - usually the most fragile part of ~anything is where humans interact with humans, so that better be someone who handles that really well
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As this is the core part of the business, sending someone who is trustworthy to deal with bank is crucial. Ummm... the most fragile part often screwed up by low-level employees.
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