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 success if you're rational
Nope. I think there is a lot of empirical evidence against this proposition.
By the way, startups are not the same thing as small businesses.
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?