As a for­mer pro­fes­sional poker player, Matt Maroon got a lot of enquiries from peo­ple ask­ing him if they should ‘go pro’. Now an entre­pre­neur, he gets sim­i­lar enquiries from peo­ple ask­ing him whether they should start their own com­pany. He dis­cusses the sim­i­lar­i­ties between pro poker and start-ups in A Lit­tle Bet­ter Advice.

My goal was to help them at least real­ize that going pro means a hell of a lot more than just quit­ting your job and gam­bling all the time. And it even means a lot more than just being good at poker, because some­thing like 30% of peo­ple are win­ning play­ers, but only a tiny frac­tion of them could suc­cess­fully do it for a liv­ing. Suc­cess as a pro­fes­sional is more about bankroll man­age­ment than poker skill, and avoid­ing going broke is a lot harder to do well than beat­ing a $10/$20 game.

[…]

They’re not really look­ing for a yes or no answer. Most of them are just think­ing out loud or look­ing for con­fir­ma­tion of the deci­sion they’ve already made.