Dinosaur error
Do you know a lot of companies that are over 200 years old? If we discard the marketing life hacking — take a long-dead company to write in advertising — we have been making watches since 1785, then there are almost no clocks.
I know one - a bakery in London. Rare exceptions, only confirming the rule. It is known that 87.9% of all statistics are invented, but 99% of old companies, even very successful ones, who worked in countries respecting the rights and freedoms, have disappeared.
Where is the East India Company? Why we do not hear about the Venetian companies? Where are the old ship holdings, logistics, trade, technology? Why spices are not packed by those who made a condition on them in the era of great geographical discoveries? Where are the coffee houses from those who were the king of coffee? Suppose you know some of them, but where is the everyday business community of those times?
For each of them there is some explanation, but how to explain the extinction of all? I often have to communicate with investors and thanks to them I have come closer to understanding the answer. These wise, measured, dictating startups rules, knowing how to succeed investors - all will disappear, become extinct like dinosaurs.
You can answer is trivial: changing business models, what led to success in the past, does not lead to success in the future, people, products, economy change. But it was always and smart people knew it. Yes, it is changing, but this is not a reason to voluntarily go to the cemetery of elephants?
So, gentlemen, businessmen and investors - you will all die. Most likely in life you will have time to see how your business will die. Your trading company or factory, from which you are now thinking of investing in some “bitcoin startup” will go bankrupt (perhaps because you will still rely on cash or, if you are very progressive, then on payment with cards). Your business line will terminate now or later. There is only one way to avoid this.
Do you think this was before, and all new companies are armed with a scientific method, statistics, research, models of sustainable development and everything from the time of the Internet, books and business coaches will live forever? Hardly. We still see that new companies are replacing old monsters. Instead of Google and Apple, the first place will be taken by the producer of ASICs, a cryptocurrency exchange or service, the new Facebook will be built on the blockchain. A few years ago, I didn’t know who could claim Microsoft’s place ... Now they don’t seem innovative, cool or even too rich. Yesterday, Bill Gates, and tomorrow bitcoin-evangelist Brock Pierce. Yesterday you made an ICO with a new best unnecessary cryptocurrency, and tomorrow you buy a bulk holding with a portfolio of brands, technologies, stores and people. Yesterday you begged the NASDAQ to include you in the listing, and tomorrow some Bitfinex will buy them along with the building and send the Board of Directors to retire.
So, the old companies also had their own effective tools and sound methods characteristic of those eras. Now they look at the statistics, before they looked at the origin and "in the eye" Now we need to make a working version and first proceeds; we have to endure the look of a tiger or fight a bear. This gave the same guarantees for the success of the enterprise, just in different eras. For example now, if you fight a tiger, the qualities that reflect this are unlikely to be of great help in business. And earlier, the first revenue and the product will most likely be a minus for the future of the enterprise, for you mean you are a dirty bargainer and a businessman, and you will not step further into your low position with such skills as the ability to trade or make.
In general, the conditions can be considered the same, but each time, as if by a Tunguska meteorite, it sweeps away all the business dinosaurs of the era, leaving only their bones in museums and reference books.
The answer lies in the cognitive error of investors and entrepreneurs. And the fate of extinction awaits you, almost guaranteed. Once you know the answer, you can try to avoid extinction, but in doing so, you probably only hasten your end.
If someone is familiar with mind-altering substances, then he will probably understand why I am doing such a long introduction before a simple answer. The noise of thoughts in my head and the dust of life experience makes it difficult to see things clearly, or rather to accept them, being in the future, now in the past. Therefore, I try to describe the taste of a banana, instead of the exact answer: "delicious."
The main problem is the right decisions. In them is the strength that has given all that you have and in them the weakness that will lead to the end.
Any dinosaur knows that flying is stupid. Especially when meteorites are falling from the sky. And only one of them, the ancestor of all birds (did you know that birds are former dinosaurs?), Decided to fly ... Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not needed by anyone, because there are banks, money, cards. In the end, as the old man Soros said, what could be better than a dollar? And it’s better than useless gold, for sure there is nothing ... Bitcoin is money out of thin air! Another thing is gold, money from the earth ...
Why is the right decision bad? Because in a changing world, all the right decisions lead to death in the process of changing the world itself. Do you think you are responding to change, armed with theories of sustainable development, etc.? You just do not see them, living in them. The world is like a child. He lives nearby, always being a child. Although it can be considered proven that children change their height, weight and intelligence throughout their lives. By the way, creating a curious problem of fathers and children. Everything that you do, all the “right decisions”, are obviously wrong in the long run.
An experienced impenetrable investor can say that he has invested in startups, and in new ideas, and nothing has come of it. It seems to me that everything that looked convincingly, deliberately old. The same ideas, only with files and chips. The same models and evidence base, the same approaches (you yourself demand them, knowing the economy best of all), but being made less experienced by people. Therefore, as they say, Caesar Caesar. From there, and the causes of failures.
Want to increase your long-term survival chance by 1%? Invest in the wrong ideas, crazy people, weird products. Invest by sowing, listen to them, give a chance, do not say how correctly, do not demand statistics, first profit, business plan, etc. But it should be remembered that not all the mistakes of nature become the crown of creation.
Sounds like madness and gibberish? Of course, RIP!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/410725/