21st
The Lottery of Startups
Last week on a hike with friends I was explaining to someone how my view towards startups is that I am never going to win the lottery. What I meant by this is that I am 
never expecting some crazy break away success to happen to me. So I always build with a rational model that will work with low investment to test the idea and even get to break even before too much investment is incinerated.
Then 2 days ago Mark Suster wrote a post about happiness and said:
“Startups are hard. When you read the press you only read the glamorous bits. You read about Mark Zuckerberg or the guys at FourSquare, Twitter or Zynga. But that’s a bit like reading about your state lottery winner and feeling bummed out because you haven’t won despite years of trying.”
I sort of felt like Mark might have bugged my hike because that is exactly what I said. In fact I used Facebook as my example. While I was in college in 1999 people were building social college sites like Facebook. I am not sure of the exact number of sites like this but I would guess that well over 100 people tried to build a site like Facebook which all ended dead, Zuckerberg’s took off and has since made him one of the richest people in the world.
I think one of the most important points I have learned in the last 10 years of having my teeth kicked in doing startups is to see through the bullshit. Thinking that you are a lottery winner when doing a startup is delusional and can get you in trouble.
