I'll take a break from my mammoth postings and bring you this post sure to excite at least a couple of your brain cells.
I'm sure you're all aware of various psychological phenomenon that plague our every day lives. To describe a few:
* The herd mentality where people seem to mindlessly follow others.
* Survivor bias where peoples judgements are based on a biased sample. We often see the successful people but not the unsuccessful people. How many times have you heard Bill Gates being used as an argument for not needing to finish University? "_Bill Gates is the richest man in the world and he dropped out of University, so I can too!_" Er no. Bill Gates got lucky, he's probably a genius, but there have been plenty of similar people who have tried and failed.
* Take a chance on a loss, and take your winnings when you can.
This type of stuff interests me a great deal. Anyway, I came across "this post":http://earlystagevc.typepad.com/earlystagevc/2005/12/the_power_of_ve.html earlier from a Venture Capitalist. He talks about "the myth", where the myth is that starting a dot com venture will lead to fortune and fame.
From the article...
"_All random. In a casino you have a choice of games, and some games have better odds than others. Some games have odds that actually can be influenced if you are smart enough to know how. The casinos call it counting cards, and will throw you out. The VCs call it risk minimization and will reward you for it._"
and this...
"_The median venture capital investment loses 36%. This is a hits business, and the rates of return are positive in aggregate because the hits are so big as to swamp the losers. But if VCs lose 36% on the median investment, it means that the Preferred Stock loses money. If the Preferred loses money, the Common sees nothing. The Myth is built on Survivor Bias, not base rates._"
I don't come across this type of chatter on the net that often. I'll be keeping a closer eye on that blog.
I will continue my "How To Buy Back Time":http://alexpooley.com/articles/2005/12/14/how-to-buy-back-time-part-1 series in a coming post!