[olalonde]

Yeah, we have this same rant every few weeks on HN (I admit this one is pretty well written and features an interesting back story). The biggest problem I see with the expected value math is that it only factors in the money side of the equation. A lot of entrepreneurs (most entrepreneurs?) are doing a "go big or go home" startup for many reasons, money not necessarily being the primary one. If all Melanie cares about is money (I bet that's not the case), she'd probably have a higher "expected value" at studying medicine and becoming a surgeon.

Anyways, as a Silicon Valley outsider, it's weird to see those blog posts encouraging people not to take VC money. Is there actually so much pressure on taking VC money that people actually feel the need to write posts like this? Seems like a first-"first world" problem to me...

edit: Here's an interesting take on expected value by a statistician: http://simplexify.net/blog/2012/5/6/i-am-a-statistician-and-...

> So why do I still buy lottery tickets? Definitely not for the expected monetary return on investment. I think of it as a discretionary entertainment spend. I get literally hours of enjoyment from fantasizing what I’d do if I won. I happily spend $25 for two hours of entertainment at the movies, and I don’t judge the value of that experience based on its expected return. For me, a lottery ticket for the occasional big draw has just as much entertainment value, or more, than the many other things that I spend money on to entertain myself.

I bet this line of thought applies to a lot of startup founders.