Agree with certain aspects, but the risk-reward is clearly easier for VCs who can hedge their bets across multiple startups and earn nice salaries regardless(even after ignoring the carry). As an entrepreneur, you can't hedge bets and unless you have a had a huge B round are probably work at 50% of your market salary.
> the risk-reward is clearly easier for VCs who can hedge their bets across multiple startups and earn nice salaries regardless
That's only a small percentage of investors who have basically already won though. Right now there is a local startup accelerator for pretty much every city worldwide with more than 250k residents, plus at least one for every major college town (e.g. Madison or Ithaca). So there are easily 500+ total, maybe even a couple thousand at this point depending on what you count. The vast majority of those have made dozens of investments without even a single major exit.
Most of the folks drawing a salary are getting paid far less than you'd make as a decent developer, and many aren't even getting paid at all. The folks on 20-minute VC talking about how they got started after making a few million as hobby investors are about as representative of the average investor's experience as Mark Zuckerberg is of the average junior PHP developer's experience.
They create companies that are broken from inside, and just pumped with marketing money.
Most traditional VCs don't touch Rocket companies, they raise funding from oligarchs, old school industries trying to go "online".
[1] www.livemint.com/Companies/rYKC6HjnShogjE62jO5lpK/The-trouble-with-Foodpanda.html - Pretty typical of Rocket companies. Fake numbers, related party transactions, skimming money.
I worked in several and I disagree. Take the fashion companies (Lamoda, Zalora, Dafiti... I think they're called global fashion group or something now): branded stuff has a 50% gross margin and the private label stuff up to 90%. That kind of economics leaves room for a lot of error and learning - basically, if you can get your costs under control, manage your inventory correctly and so on, you have a new Zara or H&M. So long as you can see this trend towards improvement, it's worth investing in (and will probably IPO eventually).
I used to think Rocket was operationally not that great, but then I started consulting with normal medium sized businesses and by comparison, they are regional leaders (dunno about global, as I haven't had any American clients yet, but based on my interviews with large Californian companies I won't name who still have interns do all their reporting in Excel, I wouldn't be surprised if Rocket was ahead there too). Same applies to marketing - the ones I worked in were surprisingly efficient with up to 10x the conversion rate I witnessed in competitors and a CPO perhaps 1/5th as high.
Could they do better than they are doing? Absolutely, but generalizing from FoodPanda ("pretty typical") or the Samwer "Blitzkrieg email" is like saying Uber and Palantir will end like Pets.com because they're Californian tech startups with VC funding pre-profit. They've made a genuine effort at building sustainable and sellable businesses globally and I learnt to respect that.
Owen Hatherley's _Militant Modernism_ is a good overview of what modernism (Le Corbusier's side) was supposed to be about, what went wrong, and some ideas for the future. I helped Owen translate some documents for the research behind the book, but I don't agree with him on many of the conclusions in the book.
Where I think Alexander's work comes in is where the Modernism movement started - rationalism in architecture. _A Pattern Language_ is essentially a set of inductive inferences about what works in urban planning and what doesn't. A lot of what went wrong with modernist projects stem from ignoring reality.
I think project cities like Germany's Vauban (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/science/earth/12suburb.htm...) embody this spirit. Soleri's Arcosanti is also built with very much the same intentions. I think Soleri's work can actually be a good example of "Corbusier meets Alexander," but most people seem to only remember him for the arcologies in Blade Runner...
Exactly. Top hedge fund managers regularly make over a billion every year. Even last year, with the stock market meltdown, the 25 top earners made more than $11 billion.
You're entirely correct, but what always amazes me, is the amount of time I spend on MS software, but if you look at the market cap of MS vs Oracle vs Apple, something seems out of whack.
234.89B MSFT
112.40B Oracle
170.08B AAPL
I can kinda see why apple is worth so much, although, of all apple consumers, how many hours a day do they spend on Apple vs how many on MS. And I really don't even see how Oracle is in this same race, but they are.
I suspect that Oracle is responsible for a lot of "invisible" software that runs some really important systems. Apple is big because of their portable consumer electronics as much as because of the Mac, and the typical consumer probably spends more time with their phone or music player than their computer. FWIW, I use Microsoft software maybe once a week at best, and I don't use anything by Apple (unless you count CUPS).
I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that harshly competitive environments have their value systems straight, but it bears mentioning that at Enron traders and deal makers were on the evaluation boards for the risk assessment group.
The good thing is you will need to make comparatively very little amount of money. If you can make around $25K/year you can live very well in S & SE Asia, parts of S. America and I would guess Africa.
If you work as a freelance developer, and have already established a good network, it is fairly easy to lead this kind of life. Working remotely is very common, and if the client knows you are good, he would not care where in the world you are. But if you don't have an established network, it is harder to find work while you are on the road.
Starting your business is also claimed as a possibility. But I personally have not come across anybody running a successful business and spending a lot of time on the road. But I am sure some people pull it off, a la Tim Ferriss.
Oh, and teaching English. Great way to see the world, and money is good in places like Japan, Korea and increasingly China.
Even if you cannot figure out a way to work from the road, just save some money and get going. It really requires very little money, e.g. you can explore the whole of SE Asia for about $1K/month.
To teach English, you should know another language too, isn't it?
Nope. In fact if you are the stereotypical American with no accent, speak great English and know none of the foreign language you are usually far better off because they only want you speaking in English and teaching in English.
Not to mention the better schools get to have their American "poster boy" so they can show they've got quality English teachers in their school.
(This is at least what I gathered from a number of teachers over in Taiwan when I considered doing it).
How do they teach then? Are they teaching students who already have some English knowledge? Your friends are helping them improve, instead of teaching from scratch? Its understandable if thats the case.
Second language acquisition beyond entry level should be in the target language. There are methods ( http://www.everythingesl.net/inservices/language_stages.php is a quick example ) that require no actual native language knowledge on the part of the teacher.
I haven't taught a second language myself, but I am around a few people who teach or have taught languages, and I've picked up on it a bit.
Most of the times they have some prior background in the language. But often you teach to very young kids as well, in that case you are usually paired with a local teaching assistant.
not necessarily. the example i know about is japan -- many places prefer people who don't speak japanese. it forces interaction in english, the language they want to learn.
