You Get 20 Shots at a Successful Venture

Author’s Note

20 Shots at Success

Warren Buffett once said that the great thing about a stock is that it can only go to zero. You can only lose 100% of your money. While the downside is capped, the upside is unlimited. You could see returns of 200%, 500% or even 1000% on a given stock over a long enough time period.

Bonds, on the other hand, give you a small but fixed return over a certain period. You will never just lose all your money on them. The bad news is you will also never 5x your money just by holding bonds.

I feel this analogy maps surprisingly well onto most people’s careers. Careers are relatively predictable in terms of where they can lead. The downside is limited because most people will always be able to find some kind of job, but the upside is limited too. 99% of careers will only progress to a certain salary level, with rare exceptions like founders, CEOs, and a handful of others.

The safe corporate career is basically the bond. You get a certain amount of money over a long and predictable period of time, and the risk of your income going to zero is very low.

On the other side, you have the stock, which in this analogy represents the entrepreneurial path. An entrepreneurial endeavor can absolutely go to zero, despite all the time and money you put into it. But guess what it can also do. It can 10x, 100x, even 1000x.

Now, the conventional wisdom is that this path is extremely risky and uncertain. Some would compare it to glorified gambling. And honestly, if you look at it as a single startup that either succeeds or fails, it kind of is. It is well known that most entrepreneurs do not succeed with their first business.

But here is the thing. Your career is long, let’s say roughly 40 productive years. And two years is more than enough time to get a feel for whether your startup project is going somewhere or not.

That means you could realistically take up to 20 serious shots at a startup or entrepreneurial project if you start early and stay consistent. And if you genuinely dedicate your career to this, the chance that you actually hit a home run with one of those 20 shots is pretty damn high.

So there it is. You have 20 shots at building something of your own. The earlier you start taking them, the sooner one of them will land.

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