Here's a few thoughts for today.

(BTW - thanks for all the thoughtful replies I got to my last email. Keep those coming!)

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A common estimating mistake

A classic human estimating mistake:

This is the subject of one of my all-time favorite Derek Sivers' posts:

Founders make this mistake all the time:

“If only 1% of visitors buy, then we’ll earn $millions/year!”

But until you know (until there's real evidence), you don’t know.

As long as you’re pulling numbers out of the hat, you also have to consider numbers below one percent:

0.5%, 0.0009%, 0.000000002%, and even 0.

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Quick bits

🔀 I enjoyed this episode of No Plans to Merge: dev salaries, hiring, Laravel jobs vs React jobs, Javascript drama

🛹 Chad Muska was the biggest pro skater on the planet from 1997–2005. Great doc on him: From Homeless to Pro-Skater

🕴️ "I expect to find somebody else to run Twitter over time."
(WSJ / Apple News)

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In what ways is the business world different than school?

One of the challenges for entrepreneurs (and perhaps other careers?) is that you don’t get rewarded for the same things in the market as you did in school.

In school, it feels like there are less variables, and there’s more in your control: “If I show up, study, practice, and execute at a high level, I’ll succeed”

Business, on the other hand, seems to have more variables, and less is in your control:

right market x idea x execution x timing x unit economics x distribution

One of the reasons business is hard is you don’t get rewarded for the amount of effort you put in, you only get rewarded for the results (and most of the time, the effort / reward ratio isn't 1:1).

In what ways is the business world different than school?

(Reply and let me know your thoughts)

Cheers,
Justin Jackson
​justinjackson.ca​

Mastodon: @mijustin@mastodon.social​

PS: I hired Josh to help me with the Transistor marketing site, and I love seeing progress like this: quick video.