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<p>Uh, how is it a non-sequitur? YOU were the one who brought up the notion of ‘expected value’. Perhaps you ought to look up the definition of EV. EV is the average, by definition. It has NOTHING to do with medians. </p>
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<p>Wealth was still created, BUT NOT BY YOU. Hence, you didn’t get rich. Sure, somebody else may have gotten rich. But that doesn’t do anything for you. </p>
<p>It’s like saying that if somebody offers you a great job, and you turn it down, then that job will probably go to somebody else. Sure, of course, but how exactly does that help you? Why would you want to turn down a great job to see it go to somebody else? You’re out to help yourself. </p>
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<p>Uh, see below. The essential point is that the guy who drops out of school can just go back. What is he really risking? </p>
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<p>And, again, opportunities don’t wait around for you to get credentialed. If Bill Gates had waited to graduate, his opportunity to start a company making the first commercial programming language for the Altair would have closed, as somebody else would have done it (and indeed, others entered that space not long after Microsoft was founded). If Gates fails, so what? He just goes back to Harvard. </p>
<p>The logical endpoint of your argument is that EVERYBODY should ALWAYS wait all the time. Why not? After all, the longer you wait, the more you will know and the larger your network, right? Anybody who is thinking of starting a company, by your logic, should never start it, but should always wait another year, and then another year after that, and another year after that, right? After all, you’re always getting better, right? If I just wait another year, I will know more, I will have met more people, I will always be better. But opportunities don’t wait for you to get better. They come and go. If you don’t seize them, somebody else will. </p>
<p>Let me tell you a story. I know a guy who, as a grad student, got called onto the gameshow Jeopardy. He could have turned it down, under the notion that if he waited until he graduated, he would know more and hence would do better. But so what? If he turns it down, they’re not going to call him back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. His spot will be given to somebody else. So who cares if he knows more? He no longer has the opportunity.</p>
<p>Startups are like that. If Brin and Page had waited until they had finished their PhD’s, they wouldn’t be Google billionaires right now. If Mark Zuckerberg had waited until he graduated from Harvard, he wouldn’t be a Facebook billionaire right now. Somebody else would have snatched the opportunities. These openings don’t wait for you to finish school. </p>
<p>You keep talking about risk as if a 19 year old college dropout is really risking anything. He is not. Like I said, in the worst case scenario, the company fails, and he just goes back to school to graduate and ends up in the EXACT SAME situation as if he had graduated and THEN started a company that fails. The operational difference is that he attempted to exploit an opportunity when it was topical, not years later.</p>