I don't rope rescue, but I sure do rock climb. You can rock climb with ropes or without. Ropes = a large safety margin, and the majority of people who climb, utilize them, as part of their safety system. Unless you're pushing your own grade level, the actual safety system isn't actuated - you're just using it "just in case" (like, "just in case you fall from a cliff, 500 feet up - gee it's nice I'm tied to something).
There are also those who climb without ropes. Perhaps you've heard of some of them [0], and most likely, because they actually climb without a rope. High Risk. Your idea of startups, let's say.
But that's just what the public sees. The free soloist has to be absolutely comfortable to go without the safety margin of a rope. Because of that, the majority of their climbing is done, still with a rope. When they go ropeless, the climbs they do are much, much easier. Yes, the risk is there, but also there is the understanding, clearly, what the risk is really about.
The death rate of climbers that are unwilling to ever use a rope, because they find that high risk = high reward would be close to 100%. But those who do survive are not going to be doing too well - they're never going to progress.
So, perhaps startups have this illusion of high risk, but maybe also they're also kidding themselves. They're burning through their lives, and offloading the real risk onto their safety systems - whoever is putting up the money. And they can do that (the investors), as they've diversified their portfolio enough that risk is spread around.
The analogy breaks right at the start, start-ups are not 'fatal' in the same sense that rock-climbing is fatal. So the GP is right, the race really would be won by those willing to cut corners and sacrifice safety and procedure even though statistically quite a few of those would end up 'dead' for those exact same reasons with possible fall-out for their end-users as well (hacked, data loss and so on).
The strategy widens the bell curve and lowers it, whereas the rock-climbers try very hard to narrow it to where there are no outliers and everybody makes it to safety.
Imagine a strategy where every start-up would survive in the long term, there would be very few outliers in such a situation and that's why start-ups that are comfortable with some risks at the expense of safety but a huge increase in productivity will be more likely to be amongst the winners than those that play it safe all the time.
I don't think this is a huge problem anyway because very few people doing start-ups are risk averse.
I don't rope rescue, but I sure do rock climb. You can rock climb with ropes or without. Ropes = a large safety margin, and the majority of people who climb, utilize them, as part of their safety system. Unless you're pushing your own grade level, the actual safety system isn't actuated - you're just using it "just in case" (like, "just in case you fall from a cliff, 500 feet up - gee it's nice I'm tied to something).
There are also those who climb without ropes. Perhaps you've heard of some of them [0], and most likely, because they actually climb without a rope. High Risk. Your idea of startups, let's say.
But that's just what the public sees. The free soloist has to be absolutely comfortable to go without the safety margin of a rope. Because of that, the majority of their climbing is done, still with a rope. When they go ropeless, the climbs they do are much, much easier. Yes, the risk is there, but also there is the understanding, clearly, what the risk is really about.
The death rate of climbers that are unwilling to ever use a rope, because they find that high risk = high reward would be close to 100%. But those who do survive are not going to be doing too well - they're never going to progress.
So, perhaps startups have this illusion of high risk, but maybe also they're also kidding themselves. They're burning through their lives, and offloading the real risk onto their safety systems - whoever is putting up the money. And they can do that (the investors), as they've diversified their portfolio enough that risk is spread around.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR1jwwagtaQ