did you have any questions echo yeah i
have a question sure echo charles
chiming in
yep for the second time you know how
like we're gonna go
to entrepreneurship sure you know how uh
it feels like anyway that it's kind of
become like a trendy thing
to be an entrepreneur whereas a lot of
times like you might even notice people
they don't know what they want to do
they don't know what problem
they want to solve or product they want
to develop they just want to be an
entrepreneur because it
it seems like it's like this cool the
cool thing now
do you find that to be the case and if
so
is that a good thing ah
yes entrepreneurship i think that it is
highly romanticized and uh
it's easy to believe all you got to do
is drop out of college and next thing
you know
you're a zuckerberg yeah and you have a
company with billions of dollars but
that's not how it works folks
and uh i so i do think that
entrepreneurship
is a mindset you don't have to start a
company to be an entrepreneur
it's a and if you were to look at the
spanish equivalent you know like
emprender to like undertake it is
someone who makes something happen
and you can innovate within a company
that is not your own
within an organization that is not your
own or you can create a company
so it's someone who makes things happen
at the end of the day so
who is it is it in a are we in a boom
cycle i think if we're looking at tech
entrepreneurship absolutely
i think that there are certain
experiences every human being should
have even if they fail
i do think that starting a business or
enterprise even if it's a side gig that
they moonlight
is worth the education
but there's a huge survivorship bias out
there meaning
so you open a barrens let's say and lo
and behold you see all these
mutual funds advertising oh my god
they've had incredible returns for 10
years straight
well uh maybe they're just the mutual
funds that happen to survive
by luck for 10 or 20 years they happen
to place the right bet so of the 500
well the other 490 are no longer
advertising so you're getting if you're
getting a false sample size
and you see that a lot with
entrepreneurship they don't talk enough
about the failures they don't talk
enough about
the vast majority who will fail is it
good
i think that it's good for certain
groups
it's certainly good for investors if
they can play the game well
because even if there are a thousand
shitty ideas
that might mean if more people a higher
percentage of
say high schoolers or college students
or otherwise are going into
entrepreneurship that you get an extra
five that change the world
at the end of the day so i am i am a big
fan
of entrepreneurship even though much
like anything else
that is perceived as high risk and
therefore
treated sometimes with reckless abandon
where people are throwing hail mary's
when they should be doing risk
management
you're going to have a high fatality
rate yeah
and i don't view that as a bad thing
necessarily uh but i do think that
and this is actually uh a question that
brian johnson
who's a friend of mine he started a
company called braintree it was sold for
i think 800 million cash
to ebay and uh he settled huh
yeah he said he uh
say he shows up in uh in tools titans as
well but
a question that he has because he's
constantly flooded with
various questions from entrepreneurs who
want to make 800 million dollars
let's say oh what should i do this
should i do that what about this idea
what about that idea and he just asks
them
is it an itch or is it a burn and he's
like if it's just a little
itch don't do it you're going to fail
because for the other people out there
where it's a burn
they can't not do it they're going to
rip your face off
and uh that i think is a very good
question
and you know the other one uh which i
think originally
came from let me think about this now
evander holyfield's first coach
told him that he could be heavyweight or
at the time a probably cruiserweight
champion of the world
and he asked amanda if he wanted to do
it
and uh he said he didn't know he had to
ask his mom so he went back
asked his mom yes i would like to do it
he said well is that
is that a is that a dream or is that a
goal
those are two very very different things
so i think that uh
if you feel like you can't not do it or
on the flip side
as i would probably approach it if you
can look at it as a short-term
experiment where you're doing a phase
one
to see if you can develop any traction
or get 10 friends to buy whatever it
might be
and you can cap the downside i always
think about this first i don't think
about the 800 million i might make how
can i cap the downside
then by all means you're taking in my
opinion the measured intelligent
approach
hey yeah throw a bunch on the wall and
see if anything sticks yeah because it's
not really
like the the trend the fad you know that
i
mentioned um that's not really what it
says
um it's like saying i mean now we kind
of have this emergence of like
the grind work hard and that's now
that's kind of cool
you know the the working sure 20 hours a
week like that's kind of becoming like
you know uh who is it
a gary vee how he you know grinding 20
hours a day yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah it's it's it can
work i think that
you just have to be careful what i would
suggest everybody do
and i'm not sure if it's still on
wikipedia i believe it is
study cognitive biases yeah humans get
themselves into a lot of trouble with
cognitive biases whether it's sunk cost
fallacy you've put
x amount of money or time into something
and therefore you continue to put
good money after bad because you feel
like you have to make it back the same
way you lost it
or the survivorship bias that i talked
about you have there's a big difference
between correlation and causation things
that happen at the same time
things that for instance and things that
cause
something else to happen so you you just
have to ask like
of a thousand people who do x how many
are going to get the outcome that is
being showcased
and if the answer is i don't know then
you should be really careful about
assuming
that a leads to b right uh and for me
it also comes back to the adherence so
if
i'm trying to coach a hundred
entrepreneurs and if i'm talking to
three entrepreneurs it's very case by
case but if i'm talking to a class which
i did for a long time
class of high-tech entrepreneurs 100
students hypothetically
i want the advice i give them to apply
to
the greatest percentage of people in the
class as possible or to be usable
and if i say 20 hours a day
there might be one or two mutants who
can do that and sustain it
the rest are going to flame out and
for me in that environment it's about
finding
first the the good program you can
follow
as opposed to the best program that will
knock out 99
but environment dependent
now if we're in buds okay that might be
a different situation
if you're training dogs for say military
or police
utilization probably a different story
if you are looking for athletes for
ultra endurance competition or 24 hour
plus competitions
you are looking for mutants make no
mistake about it
but if i'm trying to encourage the
greatest number of people
to attempt entrepreneurship and succeed
then i'm going to
adjust my advice accordingly hey do you
ever i get a lot of sleep for instance
people are like oh my god that ferrous
guy is a four hour you must get two
hours of sleep a night
i've done all sorts of weird stuff with
sleep deprivation i've done
polyphasic sleep where i've gotten
whatever it is two to four hours
a night for ages on end
but my default is eight to nine hours a
night i love
sleep i'm sorry jacko but i just love it
hey do you ever get um
like you know how like entrepreneurship
as like this the trendy thing to do do
you ever get annoyed when you see like
posers you know you know how they
subscribe to all the things
and then they always want to talk about
it and they use all the jargon
you know
i would say i'll tell you what annoys me
more i don't mind people who
are blissfully unaware
and extremely enthusiastic because quite
frankly well i shouldn't speak for
everybody but i think everybody's been
there like i remember
graduating in 99 oh my god was i excited
to get into tech and entrepreneurship
because i remember this fact i we
i kind of knew a friend of a friend who
sold the company for some ungodly sum of
money 340 million i was like
what that guy's smart but he's not that
smart yeah
and it was a very exciting time and i i
don't think
in that in that world that excitement
can be undervalued
really i think it's the fuel i think
it's it's a big part of the fuel
the people who bother me are
the b players who think they're elon
musk
or the
or the once you're lucky couldn't pull
it off twice or didn't attempt like once
you're lucky twice you're good the
people who had good timing
and now think they walk on water yeah
like like they can they start like a
course now those kind of guys oh they're
a million different varieties
and i mean i'd like i'd love to see them
all run off a cliff like lemmings i mean
they make me
absolutely insane because the best of
the best of the best when you meet them
they don't act like dicks well i should
take it back there are
probably a few but in general they have
nothing to prove
they have nothing to prove like marcelo
garcia he doesn't walk around with
invisible lat syndrome
yeah yeah like mean mugging people in
the street are you kidding me he could
he could destroy all he just doesn't
he's so far above it he doesn't care
he's a nice guy to begin with but uh
yeah
the folks walk around with a lot of
attitude and are acting here's the
here's the description
entitled people who feel like the world
owes them something
those people make me insane and there's
a lot of in silicon valley that's part
of the reason i stopped all of my
early stage tech investing two years ago
i was like i'm out i'm out
this is no fun anymore for a lot of
reasons but that was one of them i was
like i'm sick of sitting down with
people
who have something sketched out on a
piece of paper
and now they're asking for 20 million
dollars or a 20 million dollar valuation
i'm just like what have you done
hey good on you great plan
i know you want to change the world like
everybody i've talked to today with your
photo sharing app
fantastic what have you built before
because you walked in here like you're
you know levitating because you walk on
water
and i appreciate the confidence slash
arrogance but what have you actually
built
the entitlement is what i can't stand
and
one of my favorite answers i ask people
a lot of the time if you could put
anything on a billboard
what would your answer be so there are a
few favorites
discipline equals freedom that's one
another is
no one owes you anything that's good no
one owes you
anything it's from a multiple time world
champion
and uh yeah i think that
by hooker crook a lot of the
entrepreneurs and otherwise
who feel entitled will get served
humbled by whether it's by competition
or by the universe so
i don't have to do it myself yeah i was
going to say i don't think this even has
anything to do with entrepreneurs
you know you just get people that are
actually yeah that's tough that's just
the way it is
yeah yeah it's interesting it is
interesting to be that guy
yeah my uh my brother he goes to san
francisco from time to time he has a
tech company
um and they uh he he he said it's
interesting that it's this
fad now like you have like groupies of
tech entrepreneurship like you have
fanboys you have posers
to be a business person you know it's
not like you know like a rock star
anymore it's like
i'm a tech entrepreneur oh yeah it's uh
it's a weird environment but
i'm very much of the opinion that as
perverse as it might seem
or as perverse as it is on many levels
and weird
and unsustainable there's good that will
come from it yeah
um the more entrance you have in the
race it's just like the more freaks and
mutants you're gonna find and those
those people are interesting
so i'm cool with it i'm just gonna wait
until there's blood in the streets and
the game's a little easier for me
