I'm not sure the typical LWer who makes it through the sequences is necessarily good at this. We've had discussions on social skills and empathy and the trouble with inferential gaps. The population (rationalist | understands potential customers) appears to be worryingly small.
I'm struggling to communicate this (let alone argue it), but I think the main problem is the inability to think specifically, not the inability to understand what it is people want. Ask yourself: once you break a demand down far enough into its components, is it still hard to say whether or not those components are things people want? Again, sorry for the poor communication; I wish I could do better. This is why I meant this article to be more of a starting point of discussion. Do you have an idea of what I mean? Could you word it better?
This is probably easier for the typical LWer, since autodidacts appear to be a non-negligible population around here, but again, much more easily said than done.
My conditions for my claim of high likelihood of success were 1) rational and 2) hardworking.
Regarding other things (hiring, cofounder, investors...) keep in mind that you just really need to satisfice, not optimize. I always try to be honest about my level of understanding, which is why I'm explicit in saying that I don't have first hand experience. But that doesn't mean I'm wrong, or naive, or idealistic. I'm judging by what I see from other first time startup founders. People who want cofounders and are hardworking and persistent usually find them. Same with investors, just keep peeling back those layers of risk. I'm talking about the chances you raise money given that you have a good idea and successfully built it. And same with hiring. Companies that have a good idea, hardworking founders, and funding rarely fail because the people they hired were so bad that they couldn't sufficiently build the product.
Just focusing on a few issues, it seems incredibly optimistic to estimate a probability of 80-90% chance of success (where success is measured in millions of dollars). The probability of each must be above 96%:
See Eliezer's comment: http://lesswrong.com/lw/jj8/why_dont_more_rationalists_start_startups/aeza. And note that I'm taking a Weak Inside View (my level of understanding isn't really strong enough to be making empirical predictions). But still, a lot of the bullet points I listed I think are >99% chance of success.
Ask yourself: once you break a demand down far enough into its components, is it still hard to say whether or not those components are things people want?
The problem is people don't want things independently of how they are presented and packaged. Design, UI, and marketing matter.
Regarding other things (hiring, cofounder, investors...) keep in mind that you just really need to satisfice, not optimize.
How do you know this? How do you know what level of optimization you need, and when satisficing is good enough?
It's good that you acknowledge that yo...
My motivation behind this post stems from Aumann's agreement theorem. It seems that my opinions on startups differ from most of the rationality community, so I want to share my thoughts, and hear your thoughts, so we could reach a better conclusion.
I think that if you're smart and hard working, there's a pretty good chance that you achieve financial independence within a decade of the beginning of your journey to start a startup. And that's my conservative estimate.
"Achieve financial independence" only scratches the surface of the benefits of succeeding with a startup. If you're an altruist, you'll get to help a lot of other people too. And making millions of dollars will also allow you the leverage you need to make riskier investments with much higher expected values, allowing you to grow your money quickly so you could do more good.
A lot of this is predicated on my belief that you have a good chance at succeeding if you're smart and hardworking, so let me explain why I think this.
Along the lines of reductionism, "success with a startup" is an outcome (I guess we could define success as a $5-10M exit in under 10 years). And outcomes consist of their components. My argument consists of breaking the main outcome into it's components, and then arguing that the components are all likely enough for the main outcome to be likely.
I think that the 4 components are:
The Idea
Your idea has to be for a product or service (I'll just say product to keep things simple) that creates demand, and can be met profitably. In other words, make something people want (this article spells it out pretty well).
What could go wrong?