Be a founder—do something that involves starting a company
what is the added value of starting a company? I mean, if what you want to do is not done by anyone, badly done, you think you could do it better, etc, it makes total sense. But I don’t think that founding a company intrinsically adds value. Additionally, starting a company is something with high risk of failure and so overwhelming that you basically cannot do anything for quite a long time.
Another thing is choosing a path to impact that is being a serial entrepreneur: starting one company has a high risk of failure, but also high expected returns if you succeed. Being a serial entrepreneur leverages on the experience obtained during all the possible failures to eventually achieve high returns. I’m really not sure that, on average, the experience obtained by starting a (one) company—unless you have a great idea that maximises the options to succeed—outweighs the opportunity costs it entails.
[First comment was written without reading the rest of your comment. This is in reply to the rest.]
Re: whether a company adds intrinsic value, I agree, it isn’t necessarily counterfactually good, but also that’s sort of the point of a heuristic—most likely you can think of cases where all of these heuristics fail; by prescribing a heuristic, I don’t mean to say the heuristic always holds, instead just that using the heuristic v.s. not happens to, on average, lead to better outcomes.
Serial entrepreneur seems to also be a decent heuristic.
“I don’t mean to say the heuristic always holds”
I understand that, I’m not going that way.
“on average, lead to better outcomes”
That’s what in this case I don’t see. Starting a company entails a large opportunity cost—you can basically not do anything else for a period of time—coupled with a large chance of failing. My intuition is that, as a general advice, it may well be net negative, at least as personal advise.
Now I see that it may well not be net negative in the aggregate if the successful instances more than compensate the failures, so it may be a good community heuristic. Was that your idea?
When I read the post, I interpreted this list as heuristics addressed to individuals, not community heuristics.
I haven’t thought about it deeply, but the main thing I was thinking here was that I think founders get the plurality of credit for the output of a company, partly because I just intuitively believe this, and partly because, apparently, not many people found things. This is an empirical claim, and it could be false e.g. in worlds where everyone tries to be a founder, and companies never grow, but my guess is that the EA community is not in that world. So this heuristic tracks (to some degree) high counterfactual impact/neglectedness.
I’m confused by
what is the added value of starting a company? I mean, if what you want to do is not done by anyone, badly done, you think you could do it better, etc, it makes total sense. But I don’t think that founding a company intrinsically adds value. Additionally, starting a company is something with high risk of failure and so overwhelming that you basically cannot do anything for quite a long time.
Another thing is choosing a path to impact that is being a serial entrepreneur: starting one company has a high risk of failure, but also high expected returns if you succeed. Being a serial entrepreneur leverages on the experience obtained during all the possible failures to eventually achieve high returns. I’m really not sure that, on average, the experience obtained by starting a (one) company—unless you have a great idea that maximises the options to succeed—outweighs the opportunity costs it entails.
[First comment was written without reading the rest of your comment. This is in reply to the rest.]
Re: whether a company adds intrinsic value, I agree, it isn’t necessarily counterfactually good, but also that’s sort of the point of a heuristic—most likely you can think of cases where all of these heuristics fail; by prescribing a heuristic, I don’t mean to say the heuristic always holds, instead just that using the heuristic v.s. not happens to, on average, lead to better outcomes.
Serial entrepreneur seems to also be a decent heuristic.
“I don’t mean to say the heuristic always holds” I understand that, I’m not going that way.
“on average, lead to better outcomes” That’s what in this case I don’t see. Starting a company entails a large opportunity cost—you can basically not do anything else for a period of time—coupled with a large chance of failing. My intuition is that, as a general advice, it may well be net negative, at least as personal advise.
Now I see that it may well not be net negative in the aggregate if the successful instances more than compensate the failures, so it may be a good community heuristic. Was that your idea?
When I read the post, I interpreted this list as heuristics addressed to individuals, not community heuristics.
I haven’t thought about it deeply, but the main thing I was thinking here was that I think founders get the plurality of credit for the output of a company, partly because I just intuitively believe this, and partly because, apparently, not many people found things. This is an empirical claim, and it could be false e.g. in worlds where everyone tries to be a founder, and companies never grow, but my guess is that the EA community is not in that world. So this heuristic tracks (to some degree) high counterfactual impact/neglectedness.