Stochastic Thinkpiece Parrots in Risky Domains
99% of what you read isn't relevant. Please disregard social media marketing managers that somehow got a fund.
midjourney prompt was something like: a gambling stochastic parrot on the radio
I have an irrational ~disgust-like trigger for stochastic VC thinkpiece parrots. I may have an over-active detector. I include almost everyone with a podcast that somehow managed to raise a fund as a result. I have a far-more-active radar than most, it seems. Maybe even too-active. I can’t enjoy a lot of niche-famous media-stars-with-a-fund like Dave Perrell, Harry Stebbings.
What puzzles me especially is Tyler Cowen, who seems fine on this front, working with Daniel Gross to write a book on Talent. Tyler is not a thinkpiece parrot, to be clear. But he seems to hang with some (gross, perell, etc.). I haven't figured out that association. Maybe they have an audience he wants to talk to? Maybe I’m wrong. And granted, they’re more “successful” than me on some dimensions, so take it with a grain of salt, I guess.
The thing I look for is whether any thinker incorporates the ~luck of tech startups in their analysis: high variance outcomes, path dependence on something lucky, and then preferential attachment flywheels after the initial luck. Those forces are way bigger than what you personally did and how hard you worked. I’ve seen way too many people who were (a) smarter than Big Deals, (b) worked harder than Big Deals, and (c) were cleverer than Big Deals. But market luck and timing didn’t land in their favor.
Almost every single person in tech doesn’t really understand it. It’s a variant of how nobody really understands power laws.
That which we discount to fate in failure, we must also discount to fate in success. Don’t trust your fate to those who don’t.