Years ago, I heard Woody Allen say that line, "80% of life is showing up." I think he was trying to be modest, but it's true. On the other hand, I have been around truly talented individuals whom are crazy, shut-ins, had horrid childhoods, or just anti-social. I sometimes think they make up the real talent, but will never get discovered?

What I like about this tech economy is the poor kid can still make a lot of money if they have the right combination of skills, ideas, and salesmanship? My generation was pretty much, going to a in-demand professional school, or having a rich father who would back you. A rich-caring father is still the an important factor though. It seems like poor kids are given one chance of making it big. The rich kid can fail a few times? I gotten more flack for bringing up rich kids, but I grew up in a wealthy/blue collar community.(Weird combination of families.) If you didn't ruin your brain at UC Santa Cruz, and had a somewhat understanding father; you are wealthy right now. I just saw it happen too many times to not be true. I can list rich father success stories at nausium.

The one that kills me is the inventor of the disposable dental pick.(you know--those white tooth picks you see thrown everywhere?). This kid's father invented all the products for this company. This kids father was a dentist and saw the need for consumer dental products. This kid had a sailboat in high school. This kid went to a private college, but was bored. His dad decided set him up in a nice office, a nice car, a nice house, a bigger sailboat, and speedboat, funding, prototypes, the best contacts(networking), and paid help. This kid just needed to --show up--at a few trade show meetings(first class only), and make a marketing pitch to Target. Well, the company, after the Target account is worth millions. The irony is I think the kid moved the company to the Midwest in order to get away from dad? Dad was overly nice, and just wanted to be a part of his son's life?

The tech industry overall is rapidly becoming more professional. In many places, looking and sounding "right" can outweigh superior technical skill. I wouldn't be entirely shocked if some day, most of the industry renders those "outcasts" as unwelcome.

Eh, maybe. Tech goes in cycles. I remember waaaaay back in the early 90s when IBM bought Lotus. Mitch Kapor commented that software was no longer startup industry. It had become corporatized. In the meantime the outcasts found new stuff to build.

"The surprise is half the battle. Many things are half the battle, losing is half the battle. Let's think about what's the whole battle."

Understanding the battle is three halves the battle.

"the other half is actually winning"

And there's short term winning and long term winning. You can win short term as a founder and screw things up long term.

I'm curious what inspires people to go three levels deep into a game of tautological platitudes.

Increases the absurdity, which increases the chances someone will notice the flaws, instead of blindly integrating useless platitudes.

Maybe in some spaces at some point in history, but certainly not in today's hyper-competitive startup scene, wherein showing up is the merest of prerequisites.

Showing up means you have plenty of company.

> Showing up means you have plenty of company.

And yet you are probably in the top 0.1% if not 0.01% of the human race.

That's still 7,000,000 people though.