if somebody is doing something that is useful to
the rest of society i think that's a good thing like it doesn't have to change the world like
if you're doing something that has high value to people and frankly even if it's something
if it's like um just a little game um or some improvement in photo sharing or something if it
depends if it has a small amount of good uh for a large number of people um that's
i mean i think that's that's fine like stuff doesn't need to change the world just to be good
my advice if somebody wants to start a company is they should bear in mind that the most likely
outcome is is that it's not going to work and they should reconcile themselves to that plus strong
possibility and they should only do it if they feel that they they're they're really compelled
to do it the way starting company works is like usually in the beginning it's the very beginning
it's kind of fun and then it's really hellish for a number of years there's a friend of mine
who's a successful entrepreneur started actually his career around the same time as i did and he
has a good good good phrase his name's bully he said yeah your starting company is like eating
glass and staring into the abyss and if you don't eat the glass you're not going to be successful
you know a lot of life in general in any job there's like you have to do your chores you know
there's no nobody out there can do that for you well it's yeah i think to be successful at almost
anything you can't if you have to do the tough stuff and as well as the enjoyable stuff you have
to do the boring stuff as well as the non-boring stuff and if you don't do your chores then bad
things will happen but if they don't do the things that they don't like to do then the company will
be in trouble like you have to you basically like it's more fun to cook the meal than to to to clean
the dishes okay but you need to clean the dishes you need to do both yes you need to both exactly
really really liking what you do whatever area that you get into
given that you know even if you're if you're the best the best there's always a chance of failure
so i think it's important that you really like whatever you're doing
if you don't like it life is too short um you know i'd say if and and also if you
if you like what you're doing you think about it even when you're not working it's something that
your mind is drawn to and and if you don't like it you just really can't make it work i think
the odds of you losing the money that you've invested or your friends have invested is pretty
high i mean that's just those are just basic facts if you don't mind things being really
hard and high risk then starting a company is a good idea otherwise it's it's probably unwise
and we'll certainly stress you out so i think you have to be pretty
pretty driven to make it happen um otherwise you'll just make yourself miserable and once you
have a family you start taking risk not just for yourself but for your family as well it gets much
harder to do things that might not work out so now is the time to do that before you before you have
those obligations so i would encourage you to take risks now do something bold you won't regret it
when you're building something new there's going to be mistakes
and it's important to to recognize those mistakes acknowledge them and take corrective action
and the success of a company is very much more about
how quick are you to fix the mistakes not will you make mistakes or admit mistakes yeah
absolutely yeah and if you see the difference between a startup that is successful and one
that is not and it's because the successful one they both made mistakes but the successful one
recognize the mistakes fix them very quickly and the the unsuccessful one tries to deny that the
mistakes exist yeah it's not like i like failure i mean who likes billy was terrible but if you
only do things that are certain to succeed then you're only going to be doing very obvious things
i mean i think there's sort of there's like some entropic basis for this like there are many more
ways to fail than to succeed so you i mean you have to explore i mean particularly for a rocket
there's like a thousand ways a thing can fail in like one way it can work so uh you could you
could have a lot of rocket failures to explore all the ways in which you could fail so failure is not
a not a big stigma so it's like if you if you try hard and it doesn't work out uh that's okay
like you can learn from that and you know do another company and it's not a big deal
i think um it's very important to to seek out to actively seek out um and listen very carefully
to negative feedback and this is something that people tend to avoid because it's it's painful
yeah um but but i think this is a very common mistake is to to not actively seek out and
listen to uh negative feedback a well thought out critique of whatever you're doing is as
valuable as gold and you should seek that from everyone you can but particularly your friends
usually your friends know what's wrong but they don't want to tell you because they don't want
to hurt you so they're you know they say oh i wouldn't encourage my friends so i'm not going to
tell him what i think is wrong with this product yeah it doesn't mean your friends are right
but very often they are right and you at least want to listen very carefully to what they say
when friends get a product i say look i don't tell me what you like tell me what you don't like and
because otherwise your friend is not going to tell you what he doesn't like this kid's going
to say oh i love this and that and and then and leave out the this is the stuff i don't like list
because too much of your friend want you know it doesn't want to offend you so you really need
to to sort of coax negative feedback um and you should you know that if somebody is your friend
or at least not your enemy and they're giving you negative feedback then they may be wrong
but it's coming from a good place and sometimes even your enemies give you good negative feedback
if you're creating company or if you're joining a company the most important thing is to
attract great people so either you would join a group that's amazing that you really respect
or if you're building a company you've got to gather great people i mean all the company is is
a group of people that have gathered together to create a product or service and so depending upon
how talented and hardworking that group is and degree to which they are focused
uh cohesively in a good direction that will determine the success of the company
so do everything you can to to gather great people if you're creating a company when you
hire people or really what you're trying to when you hire people that just means you're
convincing people to join you in in the endeavor you should hire people that are that are also
passionate about what you're doing so it's not just that they're not just there for salary that
they really need to care about what they're doing and and then they will stay during the dark times
if you're going to create a company you have to come up with a product or service that you think
would be compelling that would you know serve some need and then really a great company is just
built around great product or service that's the whole purpose of a company is to propagate that
product or service and put it in the hands of people who'd find it useful and yeah so i think
that's that's the main thing is try to try to think the most useful thing you could do for
your fellow human beings and uh and then try it and then a company is
the process of scaling that up and in scope increasing that in scope and scale when you're
trying to create a company what you're really trying to do is organize a group of people to do
something useful something useful is as measured by by other people who are the consumers of your
products and services this scene may seem like an obvious thing but but often people will organize
groups into a company that doesn't produce something useful