If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance.

In Advice
November 8, 2019
1 Min read
I

I came across this article and its opening line in MIT Technology Review:

The most successful people are not the most talented, just the luckiest, a new computer model of wealth creation confirms.

MIT Technology Review

I said something similar in a blog post 18 months ago, What if 99% of success is luck? And given the craziness of WeWork in the news, this idea that success is due more to luck than anything else seems truer than ever.

Talent vs. Luck: The Role of Randomness in Success and Failure, arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068

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4 months ago

The Next Step: Paperback

In Advice, Books
4 months ago
1 Min read
06December
The Next Step 10th Anniversary (header)

Nine of every ten startups fail. For the the last decade I’ve been sharing my 30+ years of experience to help lower that horrible statistic. And it is working. Eight of our ten of the companies at Africa Eats are still running, the oldest now over 10 years old and many soon to reach that milestone? How? Business planning. By not stopping with a Plan A, as Plan A rarely succeeds. By not only...

5 months ago

All positive feedback

In Advice
5 months ago
1 Min read
05December

A common problem early in the startup process, in the market research phase, is too much positive feedback. Positive feedback feels great. Positive feedback is confirmation that your product or plan will work. Everyone loves hearing positive feedback and no one get mad at you for giving positive feedback. Trouble is, Plan A rarely works and you need the negative feedback to fix those flaws. I was...

6 months ago

Financial Ratios

In Advice
6 months ago
1 Min read
27October

While the expectation of investors is to receive periodic financial reports from investees, in reality few of the raw numbers in those reports are what we’re interested in, but instead ratios of those values. Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Pinterest...

7 months ago

Growth is hard to predict, especially exponential growth

In Advice, In the news
7 months ago
2 Min read
01October

I’ve talked about the proverbial hockey stick growth in years past, as well as the challenges of predicting the future, but what I’ve yet to mention is the tendency to expect future growth to be linear rather than exponential. Above are four graphs of four technology products, three of which which have seen exponential growth in the last few years: Solar panels (PV), Electric cars...

7 months ago

AI is a (misnamed) tool

In Advice, In the news
7 months ago
2 Min read
19September

AI is a tool. A misnamed tool at that, as the AI in the news these days is a complex web of statistics and matrix multiplication that resembles human intelligence, but which is far from actually intelligent. They are big, innovative, step-function-changing tools, like the printing press vs. hand copied books, like the typewriter vs. hand copied letters, like word processors vs. hand typed...

By "Luni" November 8, 2019

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