Is attitude more important than knowledge?

I assume you’re referring to particular kinds of knowledge and particular kinds of attitude, but you do leave this ambiguous.

Most “know-how” technical knowledge—what I assume you’re referring to—is like having a set of solid well-known tools in a toolbox. Useful, but you still need to figure out what to use those tools to do.

Many highly-educated people believe they can think their way into a business, in the style of “build it and they will come” — not a useful attitude.

Instead, try “how can I figure out what people’s real problems are, problems they’re willing to pay to have solved” — a more useful attitude. It requires you to talk to people, find problems, and only then bring your existing technical toolbox to bear in prototyping, etc.

Credentials and a network can get you in the door, to reach those people with problems and enough money to pay someone to solve them. Having your own money gives you more retries.

Money and a network also let you hire people with their own toolboxes, changing what tools your personal toolbox needs to contain.

A toolbox alone, without the knowledge of what to build, is just a box full of junk — or worse, full of shiny toys that distract you from creating value.

Attitude and knowledge are complementary.

I find it conspicuous that the poster doesn't speak definitively about either their attitude or their knowledge. What did they study in college? What domains did they try to start businesses in?

But also, putting oneself through higher education later in life takes some grit and perseverance. Having started "a few companies" demonstrates some real willingness to take risks, and a continuing entrepreneurial drive. This whole conversation shows some amount of introspection, self-knowledge, and a desire to learn and grow. Is that not the right attitude?

Is attitude more important than knowledge? No it isn't.

Success is dependent on so many factors, the most important being your connections. I've seen many smart developers fail in their businesses, while a well-connected sales guy sold an app via powerpoint slides until he got enough money to hire a couple developers. The sales guy is now worth millions.

In my opinion for success, you need a good network, money to burn, knowledge, and then attitude. The variables affect each other a bit though.

If you have a good network, ALOT of money to burn, and a little knowledge you will probably be successful.

If you have a good attitude, good knowledge, no money, no network, then you will probably fail. At least the knowledge will help you get 9-5 job.

Success is a combination of both. It’s not an either-or situation.

There are many people with entrepreneurial attitudes who fail because they don’t have the necessary skills to execute and they can’t (or won’t) hire and lead people who can execute.

There are many smart people who fail in their careers because their attitude gets in the way of working with others or delivering results. This can be anything from deep cynicism about the workplace to being combative with others or even simply being an unpleasant person to be around.

We like to glorify the idea of lone wolf programmers using their extensive knowledge to deliver everything by themselves, but the reality is that businesses are all about people and teams. Knowledge is part of the foundation, but interpersonal skills and leadership abilities are necessary to actually leverage those skills. People who have a lot of knowledge but who can’t execute or work well with others are really just critics operating from the sidelines.

There's really only one thing you need to do to be a successful entrepreneur. You need to sell stuff.

If you're good at selling, you spend a lot of time doing it, and you do it at a profit, your business will almost always succeed. You'll be making money which you can throw at any problems that come up.

This isn't to say that nothing else matters at all. For example if you have the skills and knowledge to create a great product, that's useful. But at most what it will do is amplify the results you get from the core activity of your business.

Which is to sell things. All the rest is useless if you don't sell.

I strongly suspect that many (most?) folks purporting that attitude outweighs competence have significant tailwinds: inherited money or connections, or similar.

You want to stack as many unfair advantages as you can. Attitude and knowledge are among those. Some folks have other unfair advantages over you, and you’ll have to work harder to compete than they would. That’s why they’re called unfair.

I bounced around a lot in college. I started in chemical engineering, moved to math, and then finally graduated with a degree in English. After graduation, I attended coding bootcamp.

I was a good programmer, but my core computer science competency was weak. Really weak. However, I was able to land a gig at a very technical company with lots of computer science problems because I had the attitude I can learn anything.

You can learn anything, but you can't learn everything. And you need the right knowledge base to learn effectively. After that, attitude can take you a long way.

Attitude scales. It adapts to what others actually want. Knowledge is leverage, which is decisively valuable, but only appropriate when you are solving a problem using leverage, and less often when you are responding to desire.

I asked someone the other day if he met a lot of people who he seemed a lot smarter than, and if he had to spend a lot of time explaining his ideas to others. When he answered, "yes," I asked whether he had considered that he had to spend so much effort explaining his concepts was because he was an objectively terrible communicator? If explaining my ideas is hard, it's possible that's because I just suck at explaining them, and not that they are so amazing nobody can understand them. If I thought people who didn't understand me were clearly just more evidence of my superior intellect, you'd think I was insane.

I've had a punk-ass attitude for most of my career, and at the root of it was feelings of being an impostor because I relied almost exclusively on my knowledge (security) and intensity (consulting). What's changed is I have developed what I call a "fearless ignorance," which is that I share what I know as openly and efficiently as possible, while treating points where I have gaps as an opportunity to create openness on the teams I work with by asking the questions that reveal my often humbling ignorance.

Nobody owes me an explanation of anything, but I don't worry about who it bothers because I'm merely ignorant, not stupid. Knowledge is valuable and I respect competence above everything else, but it's also just temporary leverage. So I'd bet on attitude every single time.

I believe so. Attitude represents action. Knowledge represents potential.

You don’t have to be that smart to be successful in life. You do have to have an attitude of placing the next brick to create something of value.

Your wealth of knowledge is your unfair advantage. But your attitude is what will put that into action in the first place.

> Give a boy a purpose and determination, no matter how poor his chance, and you will hear from him.

> Good fortune consists of untiring perseverance and a right heart.

- Orison Swett Marden

I would replace “attitude” with “worldview”. I think that’s what this quote is really getting at because worldview dictates attitude.

(Please note I’m about to make some generalizations and simplify some complicated things. Please read the following in good faith, grain of salt, etc.)

Having also grown-up poor with parents who only finished high school, and one barely at that, my worldview was one of scarcity and viewing education and success with suspicion. I’ve since changed that. But you can see how that worldview would hobble someone who’s trying to create a successful business.

If someone’s worldview was that there’s always enough, and success is inevitable given enough effort, luck, and help, they would never give up. They would happily gain whatever knowledge and skills were necessary because they knew they would succeed.

Is it possible that your worldview is hobbling you? Or, success includes luck and maybe you’ve just been unlucky.

I can teach someone technology (assuming they have a minimum baseline knowledge of the tech space). It's much much harder to teach attitude.

You need both to succeed, but it's much easier to teach the knowledge.

Aptitude is more important than both. People can have a lot of knowledge but without aptitude they can be unflexible and not learn new things. If you have aptitude, you can gain knowledge quickly.

Attitude to me is complex because it is general manners and politeness, which to me are mandatory, but it is also attitude to culture and people don't always fit. If you are wired to move fast and break things, you won't have the right "attitude" to work somewhere with high compliance requirements.

I think you need to look within your circle of competence for know-how that few others possess, which can translate into solving problems that a particular customer set will pay for. You can start by offering services and develop products that embed your differentiated expertise over time. These problems must satisfy two other constraints: you have to want to work with and serve the customers who have them; you have to want to get better at solving them over time. This motivation is usually a mix of intrinsic interests that you have had for a while and a willingness to work for money to solve them. Happy to chat, or you are welcome to drop by a Bootstrappers Breakfast see https://bootstrappersbreakfast.com/2022/06/29/roundup-of-eve... for a roundup of events this month. see https://bootstrappersbreakfast.com/2022/06/29/roundup-of-eve... for a roundup of events this month.

To answer your actual question about success, it is simple to define and hard to action for many people.

"Sell something that people want" is how Paul Graham puts it but with a bit more flesh, I would say that being successful in business is about being able to evaluate all moving parts of a company, see what isn't working and fix it.

If you are not getting leads in the door, there is an issue with marketing, that you should understand might relate to the person in the role or the lack of resource etc. even without understanding much about marketing.

If you are not making money, the product is not valuable enough to people or you are not selling it for enough money. How can I find out what it is worth? How can I evaluate whether this product is worthwhile? You only need to see the questions and work out where to get answers, you don't always have answers yourself.

Lastly, any business is about people and you need to be self-aware and confidant enough to not take things personally, to confront things that need confronting, to evaluate candidates effectively and to sometimes tell people to p*ss off.

Most successful business people I have met are fairly tough to the point of seeming uncaring so that probably says something about the reality of running a business!

Knowledge is necessary but in some cases not sufficient, I’d say. Nobody is going to give you a job where you don’t know what you’re doing, except maybe in politics.

I've heard this expression used in the context of teams of people working on a project, but not in terms of entrepreneurship. I've heard a very smart principle engineer claim he would rather have a team of non-experts with the right attitude than a team of experts with the wrong attitude, essentially saying he'd rather work with a less knowledgeable team he likes than a team of very smart people he didn't. I'm not sure if this sentiment transfers to the realm of business management, where there are probably fewer opportunities to "learn on the job" and mistakes are more likely to be potentially ruinous to the overall enterprise.

I think it's probably best to take this saying with a grain of salt. Is attitude important? Definitely, in the context of team cohesion and morale, but you don't want a bunch of dunderheads on your team no matter how loveable they are. In terms of business leadership I'm iffy on how much a good attitude can do for you in lieu of experience and knowledge.

Yes, attitude, but you also have to ask what you think makes a "successful entrepreneur".

Sales; knowledge rarely helps here, attitude, being able to read people, knowing people, knowing how to make people want your solution to their problem. Being able to handle rejection over and over (those first 10 legitimate paying customers can be tough)

Software development; knowledge is important for a proprietary technology (a search/data algorithm) but most web technology projects aren't top secret. Knowledge might help much more at a defense think tank. But for non proprietary stuff, attitude is important because you want to connect with the business use cases, you'll likely have to do "stupid" stuff for repeating obvious solutions.

Executive; much more in line with sales; attitude is important; many other people have knowledge here and your job is to choose the one that you sell to your customers, employees, and executives.

--- Otherwise, "ignorance is bliss", attitude will help you much more than knowledge in life.

Knowledge is only part of it. Experience, luck, network, iterative steps, product/market fit, timing + time invested, talent, focus/discipline and most of all financial margin for risk are all as important.

The good news is if you put enough time into something, those key components emerge.

In a way you also need to listen to people but not listen, and know when to do that. New ideas will be pushed back against, following the existing successes will always be encouraged, but the latter is a form of survivorship bias, FOMO and buying in at the top. If you know something is there and others say it isn't, you might have something. Additionally, if it is already done, doing it better is another way to create value.

So yeah, attitude in pushing through against headwinds is key. Don't always listen to the critics, but take it in, it is a balance and one that everyone battles in most things. Grounding down the fluff/hype into a good plan with results takes all those things.

Sure. Knowledge is actually relatively cheap. You are unlikely to be the most knowledgeable person in the given niche in which you want to operate, anyway. It is relatively easier to pay somebody who has the knowledge but not the appetite for risk, than to acquire that level of knowledge yourself. It is unfortunately a trend for engineers to start failed business enterprises based on the mistaken belief that their edge is their unique knowledge.

Entrepreneurship is mostly about being able to manage your resources well, strategizing, risk taking, forming connections and hiring the right people.

> And how can I leverage my wealth of knowledge to become a successful entrepreneur?

This is the wrong mindset. You just cannot, unless your knowledge is entrepreneurial experience. You have to become an entrepreneur and stop being an employee, if you indeed want to be an entrepreneur.

Technical chops are important indeed, I'd say in a 40-60 proportion with attitude, respectively.

From my previous work (when I was a Manager), I know a 98% attitude dude who is deep roots into the post and cannot be fired. No one wants to fire him, he's too loyal to the company; but he's also very hard to work with technically-wise. He just doesn't have it, he sometimes screws up a simple upload CSV file procedure, and his mistakes have costed several thousand dollars over many months to the company he works for.

The political cost of firing someone like him is just too high for any Senior Manager there. He is regarded as a force-to-be-reckoned-with in terms of cultural fit, but on the financial sheets, he's just deep into the hole.

You can always skill up some technical knowledge you might have, but attitude is hard to build. However, no extreme is good, as you put it by being over-educated.

The two ideas of knowledge and attitude aren't mutually exclusive. And one isn't necessarily more important than the other. The context matters. But in the context of starting and running a successful business you need more than just skill or a good idea.

I find understanding people and effectively communicating essential skills in business. Also I think starting a business is different from running a successful established business, which is further different from running a large corporate entity. But in all of them you have to have a vision for where the company should go. Your idea should be something people need/want/don't realize they want. You have to be able to outline what's important and be able to get that out of others. You can't do it all yourself.

Though I don't think I'd call those interpersonal relationship skills "attitude".

> Over the years I have heard here and there various versions of "Attitude is more important than knowledge" and __each time I was furious__

I'd start there, because if such a simple statement makes you furious, I can only imagine what your reaction (attitude) is in scenarios an entrepreneur might find themselves in.

Having grit and working hard are important recipes to be a successful entrepreneur. However, knowledge and experiences will allow you to work smartly, better size people, cut learning curve, and be able to set smart goals.

Yet, most of the time, it seems to be a combination of both but it does not stop right there. Being knowledgeable and having the right attitude for sure helps, but there are other factors such as luck, timing, location, having the right team or people around you, and a lot of uncertainties.

There is no silver bullet for this question. Becoming a successful entrepreneur is more of a process which will vary for every people.

Wisdom is the gold in knowledge. Hang on to it. Being habitually relatable and having a graceful disposition will carry you through relationships that prioritize a good attitude.

The real thunderbolt for entrepreneurial success is to use your worldly knowledge to reason your way to a rational business position that the market doesn't know, can't easily replicate/discover and can't survive without. Usually these are setup over decades of research, like neural networks were.

If you have that bolt of divine logos, the relationships and good attitude types have no choice but to follow you otherwise they'll walk themselves out of the market. We haven't seen a lot of those lightning bolts in the past couple years. Being paid to relate your knowledge can be a good second place.

>Over the years I have heard here and there various versions of "Attitude is more important than knowledge" and each time I was furious, since I have invested a lot of time and money into acquiring knowledge. Alas I am starting to suspect that I was wrong all along.

Attitude is the right and wrong word. If you understand what this means, you get it. Someone who doesn't get it, can't figure it out because of the word attitude. this is the same problem as the 'people skills' or 'soft skills' sayings.

Want a book to jump start you? How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie(1936)

In terms of your primary question though. I imagine "attitude" and "knowledge" as but multiple sliders from many sliders/traits in your character sheet. Who is to say what is better or not.

I looked at your username.... and then looked to make sure it wasn't a throw-away account... because that was a bad first sign...{of an attitude problem} but you seem to really want to know.

If you want someone to pay you, you have to solve a problem for them that is beyond their current resource limits to solve themselves. They likely have a strong clue as to the nature of the solution. They certainly have all the domain knowledge as to the pain points and inefficiencies they are currently suffering.

You have to make yourself a student of their problem, let them teach you the nature of the situation... and fight the urge to solve it. There are likely ambiguities between what they meant and your perception... and these must be found. Restating what you heard in new words can help... "Let me explain it back to you, and tell me if I've missed something".

Your job in support is to route around the vocabulary, knowledge and world-view differences between you. Example from my tech-support days:

  Q) Have you installed anything lately?
  A) No
  
  Q) So, you don't have any new things you can do with the computer?
  A) Oh yeah, I've got this thing that lets me do X

Why did that happen? You install a car stereo... at the time (1980s) it (install) wasn't a common term... they hadn't opened up the computer, thus didn't think they'd installed anything.

Those are some of the things it's your job to route around.

If you can do that, and keep in mind the computer is a tool, in service of a job, and nothing more... you might be humble enough to do support, learn the pain points people have, and then apply the actual other skills you've spent so much time and energy acquiring, to solve their problems for their money.

I have ZERO idea about how to deal with fund raising, etc... I just know how to relate to users in a kind and effective manner.

This whole answer was based on my guess of the nature of the brick wall you've been hitting... and I fully admit I could be completely off the mark.

Find someone with the right attitude that is looking for someone with a wealth of knowledge ;)

I think Machiavelli had it right: fortune is more important than anything else. Secondary to that is the capability to adapt to or take advantage of fortune. To do so (or to advise others so), Machiavelli studied history and drew conclusions.

If you invest time in learning things you can't apply, that may seem unprofitable to you. However, if your attitude inhibits learning, whatever fortune does befall you may as well be useless.

But I think "attitude" here is code for the unreasonable optimism that keeps one trying again and again despite repeated failure. It really seems intended as a religious tenet of faith to replenish the entrepreneurial spirit.

You need both. Being an ignoramus but having all attitude makes you like the emperor with no clothes - everyone will easily see through your charade and afford you the corresponding amount of respect. Likewise, being super knowledgable while being very timid or always finding the dark spots in the silver lining isn't very useful. You can't put that knowledge to use.

That's why you need both. You also need someone who's honest and will tell you which one you should be working on. It's a mistake to work on one to the exclusion of the other. Keep them in balance and you'll go far!

Your post equates "schooling" with "knowledge." If that's the context, then I'd take experience + attitude > knowledge every single day of the week. If "knowledge" includes schooling + work experience, then it depends. If you have a shit attitude you need to be very top tier in "knowledge" to make it worth the rest of us dealing with you. If you have a fantastic attitude you can get away with a lower level of "knowledge" as long as you show progress when trained.

For this particular flavor of success... luck plays a massive part, and anyone and everyone successful knows it, whether they admit it or not.

And being furious is not really a replacement for luck.

This resonates with me, in my experience I think there's a fallacy in believing the world is a meritocracy when it's not. I also noticed a lot of patterns at different companies over the years. Venkatesh Rao writes about these pattern nicely, he calls it the Gervais Principle. If you can bear it, it's worth a read.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

Yes it is. People with the right attitude are always looking to learn and are gaining new knowledge. People with knowledge but the wrong attitude think they know everything and aren't willing to learn. They cant react and re-evaluate. Even if you know a lot, you never know enough, and every project/startup that does something interesting will throw up new problems where relying on knowledge of how things are done in the past wont be enough.

Not only attitude, but also personal connections ("it's not what you know but who know"), social skills, chance ("being in the right place at the right time"), being tall, culture fit, product-market fit.. I think also the right kind of knowledge, not only technical, but knowing what problems people are having in some specific niche markets, or knowing how to solve something that people need..

"Attitude" would be dedicating your work to satisfying the desire of the customer. "Knowledge" would be your ability to economically execute on that. "Luck", good or at least not bad, and "wealth", enough to execute with until you are successful, would be the necessary third and fourth pieces of that "how to succeed". ... That's my interpretation of the conventional wisdom.

> And how can I leverage my wealth of knowledge to become a successful entrepreneur?

Entrepreneurship is a distinct skill that's different from being an engineer; or even being an administrator in a business.

You can start a business around your knowledge; just assume that using your knowledge is going to be 1/3rd of your day-to-day activities. The rest of the business is going to be doing things that are probably unrelated to your knowledge.

Utilizing knowledge to its potential for success for you depends on your attitude, and not the other way around.

You can be the world's leading expert at something, but if you don't have the motivation to build something that people want to buy, you won't succeed. And if you're a jerk to your customers, they'll find someone else. Same with employees if you start to grow. And so on, and so forth.

Very difficult to answer. What is more important in a car, the accelerator or the steering wheel?

You need both for both academic and entrepreneurial work.

Another thing to mention is skill. Skill is not attitude or knowledge. It is the result of practice. I think a collection of skills is of very high importance too.

Maybe more than knowledge for entrepreneurs? I think so.

Attitude is needed to turn fail into more skills into try again with better odds.

That's too general. What attitude and knowledge? Winning is what matters and for that you need both a good attitude and a lot of relevant knowledge and skills and talent and money of course. When selling things a good attitude and confidence is more important, when making important decisions knowledge is more important.

I think you can leverage your wealth of knowledge and be successful by finding a balance, most of the comments describe how in various ways. The good life, the successful life, all require sacrifice. Think of sacrifice as the scales of your tolerance to succeed.

Find the balance. Not out there. Find it… In there.

Very good comments here, so I'll just add that knowledge without attitude is as dangerous as attitude without knowledge. For an entrepreneur is best to develop both.

"Justice without power is empty, power without justice is violence. To be strong to protect yourself and others is your goal."

Knowledge / education can be a curse! I cannot tell you the number of people I’ve met who are insanely smart but lack the ability to just do it when it comes to starting a business.

They overthink by planning everything when in reality you need to be like a roach (keep going) with a touch of naïveté.

I've been a part of two publishing startups. We were 80% attitude, but without that 20% of business savvy, we would have never gotten out of our "sitting around the cafe being too cool" phase.

(Actual percentages may vary, because I left the math to smarter people than I.)

Knowledge can come quicker with attitude. Because you're curious and want to try new things, learn how things work under the hood, you gain knowledge faster compared to someone who only learns it because a particular task at the job requires it.

The two are not mutual exclusive. In fact, you need both to be successful as an entrepreneur. Some people are amazing at executing but need to "sell" their work. Some people "sell" but cannot deliver. Merry the two together? Boom.

Both are important. It depends on context. Some challenges/problems are easier to overcome with knowledge, some through attitude. Attitude is "more important" because a poor attitude renders all that knowledge completely irrelevant.

It's simple. You just need to sell something someone wants. That's the only thing that matters. Your education and skills should help you identify things that you can sell that people need and are willing to pay good money for.

attitude is key when managing other people. so is respect. i dont hire people i dont respect. and whom dont respect me.

knowledge, not as much. i started a house framing business without knowing everything i needed to frame a house. but i hired someone who did. and because of my attitude, they like working for me, and are productive.

my attitude also helps me sell my services to builders. and build goodwill. early on it was apparent that i didnt know everything, and i never tried to hide that from my customers. but i did demonstrate enough knowledge that it was apparent i knew how to run a business, and who to hire.

You can always find knowledge in books, blogs,and through hard work and perseverance. Being confident that you can learn as you go and on the job is important.

Attitude plus zero will to work to learn and no prior experience is a total disaster.

You can't do without either of them, but one can hide flaws in the other

I was listening to a podcast the other day and something caught my hear: the difference between a VP and a C-level is that the C stands for confidence.

No, but it can pull you through where knowledge and skill might be lacking.

Knowledge is the cumulative result of a particular attitude over time.

People skills are more important than attitude, intelligence, and knowledge.

Except in so far as people skills benefit from particular attitudes, forms of intelligence, and practical knowledge.

Knowledge can be farmed out to the internet & peers

Grit, creativity, and int stats are what matter the most

Never. Never. Never give up

Anything is possible. We sent a man to the moon with kbit computers

There’s literally no point asking abstract questions about such abstract definitions.

Any answer is correct and wrong at the same time. Depending how you look at it.

"It is nice to end up where you wanted to be, but the person you are when you get there is far more important."

- Richard Hamming

Hire someone with attitude as the entrepreneur and do what they tell you to do in your field of knowledge.

What a silly question. Would you prefer to be operated on by a skilled brain surgeon with 20 years of experience or a person off the street with a great attitude? Unless by attitude you mean “ability to bullshit VCs into giving you money” of course.

Find a successful entrepreneur. Make him/her your mentor.

The only two things that matter for success in entrepreneurship are who you know and who you decide to trust. Both knowledge and attitude only matter insofar as they influence those two things.

i think recent politics shows you can go far with a lot of attitude and not very much knowledge

fundamentals and charisma is all you need.

Yes.

Absolutely

attitude is the reason why the west is in decline

knowledge is the reason why asia is rising again

a good entrepreneur is a good manipulator, a good liar and a good seducer

are you willing to trade your knowledge to become someone like that?

use your wealth of knowledge to find people like you and build nice things for your surroundings

but more importantly, do what you like, don't chase people for their attitude, look, they are already trying to sell you something and you fell for it