I have a few thoughts on startups. Let me know what you guys think:
1) People have commented that they are bad businessmen. "Business" isn't mysterious. Business is Like Chess. People tend to (at least implicitly) treat it as a barrier rather than an overcomable obstacle. (Paul Graham said he made this mistake of "being afraid of business".) If you're a rational person, you could read a few books, apply your rationality skills, and probably be a very competent businessman.
2) Startups are hard, but doable. Very doable. There are tons of things people want, and to generalize, it really just comes down to making something that people want. Sorry, I don't really know how to support this belief. It really just comes down to me believing that there are so many opportunities to start multi-million dollar businesses.
3) Startups are by far the best way to make a lot of money and contribute to the world (assuming that the value of money is rather inelastic). Way better than things like jobs in finance. This really comes down to what I said in 2), that they're doable and you have a high chance for success if you're rational. Also, even if you apply normal standards for chances of success (rather than my proposed standards that are much higher), it's still much better than things like jobs in finance. See this. The reason people choose safe jobs is because they are risk averse, but if you are mostly interested in doing good for the world, you wouldn't be so risk averse, and you'd choose startups because they have the highest expected value.
People have commented that they are bad businessmen. "Business" isn't mysterious.
It's not mysterious but it's a set of specific skills. Depending on who you are, some may be hard to acquire. For example, it will be hard for someone on the autistic spectrum to acquire good salesmanship skills.
Startups are hard, but doable.
Clearly so, but that's not the right question. The right question is "What is my estimated probability of success for a given startup?" Keep in mind that the prior is pretty low.
...you have a high chance for succe
There seems to be a non-negligible deal of overlap between this community and Hacker News, both in terms of material and members. For those not aware of HN, it's a news aggregator for people interested in startups, technology, and other intellectually interesting topics, with a reputation for high-quality material and discourse.
While rationality and LessWrong gets its fair share of attention over at HN, I haven't heard of much discussion about startups over here. Off-line, I've heard a claim that in terms of contribution to existential risk prevention charities, startups are suboptimal when compared to jobs in finance, but not much else other than that. I find this odd, as many of the contributors in this site seem to be prime founder material, and rationality should really be of use when working in a high-stakes ever-changing environment.
My intention with this post is simply to kickstart a discussion around startups and gauge the attitudes of fellow LessWrongers. Does anyone (else) aspire to becoming a startup founder in the next few years? Do you believe startup founding to be a viable means of contributing to groups existential risk prevention?