The Drowned Entrepreneur

Last night, while reading Nicolas Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan, I came across his mentioning of the story of the drowned worshippers.

In case you are unfamiliar with the story, I will provide you the cliff notes. A man sees paintings/hears the gospel of people who prayed and then are saved from drowning, so those people go on to spread the word that praying saves you from drowning. Skeptically, this man responds along the lines of, it is impossible for those who prayed and drowned to let others know of their outcome.

What on earth does this have to do with entrepreneurship?

Well, I feel that the voices of the successes are heard much more often, and resonate much more clearly, than the voices of the failures. Think about it, we can put a story, face and voice to Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, but would have to seriously stretch our mental capacity to vividly describe just one or two of their failed counterparts.

I am completely aware that chances are that my current endeavors will fail, it will be much safer for me to take my mom's advice to go work for big corporate america, that it will take the perfect mixture or skill, luck and market to succeed, some of which is out of my control and some of which is in it.

If you end up in the perfect storm, you're fucked from the get-go, but you still have to risk drowning in order to swim in the ocean.