Food for thought: Startups, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship

Untangling skill and luck in entrepreneurship??

Nurture or nature. Ask ten people and you can easily get ten different answers.?

We came across this beautifully written article by Thomas Waschenfelder who expounded more on this topic.?

While we can’t remove the role of luck in any successful endeavour, not all “luck” is the same.?

Blind luck as it is called is like winning a lottery – they occur entirely out of the blue, with little to no input on your part. It’s exciting to experience one, necessary to keep an eye on it, but never to count entirely on it.?

There is another more common, more accessible type of luck that comes from constant action.??

According to Naval Ravikant, this is the kind of luck that comes through persistence, hard work, hustle, and motion.??

A third kind of luck comes from preparation.??

The adage that fortune favours the bold is probably the closest to luck of this form. It’s when researchers and scientists, after years of honing their skills in a field, finally get a lucky break to create a technological breakthrough that changes the world.??

The internet, for instance, came from the world wide web, came from solving a problem for machines to talk to each other to make researchers life easy.??

Lastly, the fourth type of luck is luck that’s unique only to you.?

In Dr. James H. Austin’s own words – chances favours those with distinctive, if not eccentric hobbies, personal lifestyles, and motor behaviors.??

What does good look like for a VC??

We recently came across a thought-provoking LinkedIn Post by Jeremy Tan , co-founder at Tin Men Capital on the ongoing debate in the startup industry: Investor or Operator VC.?

The reality is if “better” VC means delivering higher returns on invested capital, there are no conclusive results – sometimes the investor VC does better, at other times it’s the Operator VC who performs better. This CB Insights analysis bears this out.??

Jeremy argues that perhaps it’s not a matter of seeking a binary answer, but we might have been asking the wrong questions. He advocates that it’s more empowering to identify key traits that make a good founder, a good VC and then match for those traits.?

Interesting Reads:?

Here’s why you shouldn’t ignore Asia Tech: Don’t ignore Asia tech | TechCrunch?

Tech startup funding in Southeast Asia in Q1: Tech startup funding in South-east Asia falls 13% in Q1 as late-stage deals decline: Tracxn (businesstimes.com.sg)?

Hear from this PayPal Mafia insider on what it takes to win in a tough market: HTBV Series 2 Episode 6- PayPal Mafia Insider on Winning in a Tough Market | Jack Selby (youtube.com)?

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