I was an economics major (also technical) who started his own company in college. Generally it doesn't help, or at least not that I noticed.

Economics is mostly theory about how the world should operate based on certain laws... supply and demand etc. They go through rigorous derivations using calculus and statistics. You might get a top level overview of the driving forces behind an industry, but in a startup that's hardly useful.

Also in microeconomics, you are taught how a prototypical consumer might behave under canned conditions. Not at all representative of the real world.

There's really a single law book for running startups, and the first commandment is talk to your customers. Literally everything else is bs, at least in the beginning stages.

I feel like we took different values from an economics degree. I also have one, but it wasn't really the details about Macro or Micro at an intro level (which is where you get told all these laws, before more advanced stuff just tells you how they aren't quite right). It's more about a way to think about a problem or set of problems. The only hard skill that I'd say I got out of it was being able to do regression analysis (which has proved useful many times). But the more valuable skill was opening my mind to another way to look at and approach problems. Certainly the vocabulary and basic understanding of the area also helps when dealing with business. It's not the only lense to look at a problem, but as an entrepreneur, I think it's one I have to look through a lot and quite regularly. Something as simple as opportunity cost, that's a daily trade off at a startup. Knowing some behavioral economics might help you make better and more informed decisions rather than simply going with your gut in situations where you gut might be misleading you. That's maybe harder to quantify, but I think it helps more than you give credit.

I have a finance career and am also the technical partner of a startup. This answer mirrors my opinion. Economics is nearly 100% theoretical and not useful at all for entrepreneurship which is nearly 100% practical.

Most other answers here are confusing finance or accounting or business-sense for economics... which shows how little they know about economics. And by the way, formal finance and accounting also has little value for an entrepreneur too (just hire an accountant).

My startup partner has a background in marketing and is doing great building the business (while being inept in finance, accounting, technology or economics). If you aren't familiar with marketing, as said above, it's all about knowing your customers.

Thanks, danm07, now it makes sense often time people don't differentiate in between knowledge and applied skills. I was asking for things that are applied in real world and also take me better decision talking to customers is also the way I am moving forward too.

Externalities usually become obvious after the fact. The problems we aim to solve through our inventions are multi-dimensional topologies. Like tree, at any given point we can only see portions of it, leaving other perspectives unaccounted. Trimming leaves or branches would reveal deeper previously unseen parts.

The human brain and our tools thus far are more adapted to solving linear problems, so the higher the dimensionality and non-linear the relationships, the less we're able to produce determinist results.

I personally believe problems of this kind we cannot arrive at perfect solutions, only optimal ones. By optimal, I mean making trade-offs on certain variables so as to minimize total cost. The weights are also variables depending on trends of the epoch (environmental factors not such a big deal a decade ago, big deal now --> need to update our equation)

The other factor comes as a form of bureaucracy. It takes time to push the change through the chain of politics, re-aligning incentives, carving new markets and distribution channels, changing market sentiments, etc.

Management makes less than devs in my experience.

That's like half the world's population!

There are the rushing waves mountains of molecules each stupidly minding its own business trillions apart yet forming white surf in unison

Ages on ages before any eyes could see year after year thunderously pounding the shore as now. For whom, for what? On a dead planet with no life to entertain.

Never at rest tortured by energy wasted prodigiously by the Sun poured into space. A mite makes the sea roar.

Deep in the sea all molecules repeat the patterns of one another till complex new ones are formed. They make others like themselves and a new dance starts. Growing in size and complexity living things masses of atoms DNA, protein dancing a pattern ever more intricate.

Out of the cradle onto dry land here it is standing: atoms with consciousness; matter with curiosity.

Stands at the sea, wonders at wondering: I a universe of atoms an atom in the Universe.

Feynman

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,

Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,

Out of the Ninth-month midnight,

Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot,

Down from the shower’d halo,

Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive,

Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,

From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,

From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,

From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,

From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,

From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,

From the myriad thence-arous’d words,

From the word stronger and more delicious than any,

From such as now they start the scene revisiting,

As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,

Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,

A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,

Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,

I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,

Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,

A reminiscence sing.

(First verse of Whitman's Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking)

It feels like the material is a little rote and that I can learn it on my own. I have a much harder time learning math on my own, and I figure it might be more worth my tuition to do that instead.

Dumb as it may sound, have a list of todos that each takes no more than 10 minutes. We generally think linearly, so go through the list of what you must do one at a time, and make the physical gesture of crossing out the item on completion.

After leaving the startup I had founded, I had the option of earning a six figure salary and a senior position at another company. I passed this up to go back to college. I love math and physics and always regretted not finishing. I’m still in the midst of this so it’s hard to tell whether it’s the right decision.

Being the dumbest guy in the room, and knowing so is probably good for you in the long run.

Boy is this article filled with unwarranted hyperbole. And Tim Ferris, really?

Substance is overwhelmingly like a self-improvement article, cherrypicking details to support whatever point the author stands to posit.

>Substance is overwhelmingly like a self-improvement article

Because many believe that if they just work or behave like a genius or successful entrepreneur they will be one as well. It's the mental equivalent of a trendy diet. It's not that there's not some interesting habits in the article, but people will focus on the easy bits and start riding unicycles, not reading their emails and leaving checks uncashed.

Like diets, people want to hear things like: Eat a lemon with every meal and only poop on Thursdays. Allowing yourself to be mentored is hard, if it doesn't come natural to you. Being patient and keep working on problem for years on end is equally hard. It's not bad advise, it's just really hard to implement.

In my experience, everything but "yes" means no.