How to Start Google(paulgraham.com)
paulgraham.com
How to Start Google
https://paulgraham.com/google.html
680 comments
Less startup, more starting a business.
The older I get the less I want to build a startup and more I want to start a business. Something that takes a little bit of capital, lots of hard work, gets some customers and provides goods or services, without venture capital firms and 100x returns and everything that comes with that, just a standard business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1SLHEC98I
The older I get the less I want to build a startup and more I want to start a business. Something that takes a little bit of capital, lots of hard work, gets some customers and provides goods or services, without venture capital firms and 100x returns and everything that comes with that, just a standard business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1SLHEC98I
As you get older it becomes harder to start a business, simply because of financial concerns.
As a just-graduated poor student I was used to living on practically nothing. By 40 I had a mortgage, kids, wife etc. The penalty-for-failure at that age is substantial.
When I stopped getting a salary in my 20s my wife was earning so we just lived on her salary. That lasted a few years until the new business found its niche.
So, how to start a business later in life? Slowly and carefully. First do it as a side hustle. Night's and weekends. (Which is good to see if you still gave the energy for that.)
Price things "as if its full time". If you're selling ceramics on Saturdays figure out what your daily sales need to be and price accordingly. If you're teaching piano ditto.
Side hustles also let you experiment with marketing. See if the market will bear more than just a Saturday here or there.
When you can, take a paid vacation from your day job, and see how busy you are (and what income) from the eide hustle. Figure out if you enjoyed that more than the day job.
Save every penny from the dide hustle. You'll want at least 6 months of cash before you make the leap. 3 months to get income back up, 3 to look for a new job if it fails.
It's harder to start a new thing in your 40s. But it's also more likely to succeed, IF you plan and execute right.
As a just-graduated poor student I was used to living on practically nothing. By 40 I had a mortgage, kids, wife etc. The penalty-for-failure at that age is substantial.
When I stopped getting a salary in my 20s my wife was earning so we just lived on her salary. That lasted a few years until the new business found its niche.
So, how to start a business later in life? Slowly and carefully. First do it as a side hustle. Night's and weekends. (Which is good to see if you still gave the energy for that.)
Price things "as if its full time". If you're selling ceramics on Saturdays figure out what your daily sales need to be and price accordingly. If you're teaching piano ditto.
Side hustles also let you experiment with marketing. See if the market will bear more than just a Saturday here or there.
When you can, take a paid vacation from your day job, and see how busy you are (and what income) from the eide hustle. Figure out if you enjoyed that more than the day job.
Save every penny from the dide hustle. You'll want at least 6 months of cash before you make the leap. 3 months to get income back up, 3 to look for a new job if it fails.
It's harder to start a new thing in your 40s. But it's also more likely to succeed, IF you plan and execute right.
This is true if you require the same amount of income to maintain your lifestyle, but if you've been working in tech for 20 years, you have savings. I'm not in my 40s yet, but it's much more viable for me to take a risk now than it was when I was just starting out because I can afford to fail for a couple years without, you know, becoming homeless.
This so much.
I'm 36 and I can afford to not work for many years with my savings.
It's definitely easier now for me.
I'm 36 and I can afford to not work for many years with my savings.
It's definitely easier now for me.
I wish. My savings are all going to go into a house, kids' college, and my retirement. Not everyone on HN is making $300-500k TC for a decade before having their first child.
Using savings when younger can significantly increase your overall retirement age. There, however, is also a risk of not starting a company in time (or having enough time to complete and perhaps exit a business) by waiting until you are fully retired. How one wants to slice that risk to reward ratio is up to them. My option is the higher parent's one, starting side hustles until slowly they take over my main income, such that I feel no loss of quality of life and I'd still retire when I want to. It is akin to rolling green-blue deployments rather than shut-down-the-server deployments.
While I also consider myself lucky, not everyone works as a software engineer earning high salaries. Being older also (usually) means more responsibilities and less tolerance for risk.
Very true, I think that while my savings are very good, I would have much less risk tolerance if I had kids.
I wish we had an online space for talking to people with these concerns. Its much different for a single guy - he can make his 100k savings last years, specially if allowed to go back living with family.
You can do this if you're in US, salaries elsewhere for tech jobs are more inline with salaries for specialized professions (doctors, lawyers). They're still larger than other jobs but it goes nowhere near the levels of western/eastern US (exceptions exist ofc).
Then there's a question when you start a family, that's subjective and something you can control but the model of creating career and then having kids (in late 30s/early 40s) seems more common in US. If you have your first child in mid 30s, then few laters 2nd one for example, you still need to be very hands-on, attentive and provide at least until your late 40s/early 50s.
Then there's a question when you start a family, that's subjective and something you can control but the model of creating career and then having kids (in late 30s/early 40s) seems more common in US. If you have your first child in mid 30s, then few laters 2nd one for example, you still need to be very hands-on, attentive and provide at least until your late 40s/early 50s.
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You have a much better idea of what demand is tangible and grounded, which means you are in a great position to start a bootstrapped small business. Some people have been calling them boring businesses which is actually pretty exciting to me, since they are tangible machines you can put work into.
All my attempts at starting a SaaS when I was younger were basically me building a cool thing and then yelling into the wind. I am looking for a more concrete market for my next venture, and it doesn't have to be cool or cutting edge.
All my attempts at starting a SaaS when I was younger were basically me building a cool thing and then yelling into the wind. I am looking for a more concrete market for my next venture, and it doesn't have to be cool or cutting edge.
That's a romantic idea until you realize you're now dealing and subservient to the dredges of society, the worst kinds of customers, the worst kind of people. Far worse than a niche market specialized technology sales prospect. Get ready to have a new contempt for humanity. Get ready to be raked over the coals by Yelp.
Man you gotta get outside more often. Most of the world doesn't work in tech and has for thousands of years and surprise doesn't suffer from a new level of contempt for their fellow human.
GP didn’t actually mention what kind of business (B2B or B2C, tech or another sector) — the description was broad enough to encompass my IP licensing business, which is about as tech-focused as it gets.
Lol hell yeah brother my local coffee shop regulars are well known for being the dredges of society.
Coffee shop? Customers fine, but health inspectors and rent increases are your antihero. As well as too much competition.
There's a study that often gets shared around, purportedly "Debunking the Myth of the Young Entrepreneur", showing data that most successful startup founders start their companies in their mid-to-late 40s, including tech/social media companies.
It depends a lot on how you qualify and categorise founders, companies and "successful", but of course you can understand why it can be somewhat truthful: people in their 40s have had 2-3 decades to build up experience, networks and a track record, making it much easier to build a team and attract investors and initial customers. I'm sure almost all of these founders in their 40s have had at least some partial success in their past.
So it still affirms that it's best to start as young as possible, allowing time to experiment with ideas, markets, co-founders, etc. I've seen plenty of founders bounce from one-to-another-to-another startup from their 20s to their 40s, each one being vastly more successful than the last.
But as you point out there are still all kinds of opportunities to build new products to address needs that are overlooked by younger founders, so you should absolutely go for it if you're inspired.
I feel the same as you about being less interested in "unicorn"-scale success after 40; as you mature, have kids, experience illness in your family and become more observant of problems in different segments of society, you become much more focused on just providing well for your family and doing some good for the world than having to be some kind of all-conquering hero.
If you want to connect privately to talk more about what kind of company you want to build and how best to go about it, feel free to get in touch (email in bio).
It depends a lot on how you qualify and categorise founders, companies and "successful", but of course you can understand why it can be somewhat truthful: people in their 40s have had 2-3 decades to build up experience, networks and a track record, making it much easier to build a team and attract investors and initial customers. I'm sure almost all of these founders in their 40s have had at least some partial success in their past.
So it still affirms that it's best to start as young as possible, allowing time to experiment with ideas, markets, co-founders, etc. I've seen plenty of founders bounce from one-to-another-to-another startup from their 20s to their 40s, each one being vastly more successful than the last.
But as you point out there are still all kinds of opportunities to build new products to address needs that are overlooked by younger founders, so you should absolutely go for it if you're inspired.
I feel the same as you about being less interested in "unicorn"-scale success after 40; as you mature, have kids, experience illness in your family and become more observant of problems in different segments of society, you become much more focused on just providing well for your family and doing some good for the world than having to be some kind of all-conquering hero.
If you want to connect privately to talk more about what kind of company you want to build and how best to go about it, feel free to get in touch (email in bio).
> "Debunking the Myth of the Young Entrepreneur"
There might be others, but this one is clear and to the point:
The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45
https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...
There might be others, but this one is clear and to the point:
The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45
https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...
Give yourself a break. When I studied in uni I was stuck at tables with 'old guys' and 'old ladies' and I had a lot of respect for them. They paid attention, wanted to learn, were there to learn. When I didn't understand something, I asked them before I asked the teacher and they generally were happy to help. I have fond memories
>Also being older I don’t care about making a unicorn. I see that as an odd goal for a founder of any age but a great goal for an investor.
Looking at the state of open source software today a google is simply impossible because the ecosystem has rotted from the inside.
Look at how much effort it took to write the cgi-bin scripts google started with vs whatever flavour of the week JS framework you have to use now.
Not sure what the solution is but we need fewer sheep in development and less permissive licenses so developers doing unglamorous work can capture more of the value. There's a reason why every shop which supports massive open source projects is running away from legacy licenses as fast as they can and that reason is Amazon.
If you don't care about developers from the user side of things it's just as bad. The GPL in the age of cloud services does as much to protect user freedom as the MIT license did in the 1990s.
Looking at the state of open source software today a google is simply impossible because the ecosystem has rotted from the inside.
Look at how much effort it took to write the cgi-bin scripts google started with vs whatever flavour of the week JS framework you have to use now.
Not sure what the solution is but we need fewer sheep in development and less permissive licenses so developers doing unglamorous work can capture more of the value. There's a reason why every shop which supports massive open source projects is running away from legacy licenses as fast as they can and that reason is Amazon.
If you don't care about developers from the user side of things it's just as bad. The GPL in the age of cloud services does as much to protect user freedom as the MIT license did in the 1990s.
Creating something from scratch is so much easier today than it ever was, and I’ve been creating crap for decades now. All the fancy JavaScript crap is purely optional. You can still write something in CGI if you want. My last prototype I wrote with Vue and JQuery and as pure html and .js files. It was an absolute blast! And the users loved it! Have you tested streamlit? FastAPI? Everything is so easy now.
Today if I were to write a cgi script it would have to send json payloads to the JS front end because round trip latency on phones is between 100 to 500ms to hit a dns server. I was getting lower latency on dialup in 1996. On my desktop it's 2ms on a bad day.
You can't just use HTML because browsers have mutated to fat clients for a X like protocol which is a mishmash of html, css, js, and whatever else someone's decided to throw on top of it.
We're using screwdrivers as axes and everyone is acting like this is some type of acceptable outcome.
You can't just use HTML because browsers have mutated to fat clients for a X like protocol which is a mishmash of html, css, js, and whatever else someone's decided to throw on top of it.
We're using screwdrivers as axes and everyone is acting like this is some type of acceptable outcome.
You absolutely can just use HTML. You're writing this on HN that just uses HTML and is one of the more responsive websites on mobile connections.
You can't make as rich an interavtive experience as you can with JS, but you never could.
You can't make as rich an interavtive experience as you can with JS, but you never could.
Just because a site is responsive doesn't mean it's HTML. The fact that a lot of people assume that you can't have a responsive site with JS is all the indictment of $current_year front end development you need.
These are some of the JS functions HN runs in the background, on top of the CSS:
These are some of the JS functions HN runs in the background, on top of the CSS:
function $ (id) { return document.getElementById(id); }
function byClass (el, cl) { return el ? el.getElementsByClassName(cl) : [] }
function byTag (el, tg) { return el ? el.getElementsByTagName(tg) : [] }
function allof (cl) { return byClass(document, cl) }
...I didn't say you can't have a responsive site with JavaScript, I said that you can have one with plain HTML. HN may use JS for a few things (upvotes?), but it's mostly full page reloads including for loading threads and posting comments.
No need for JSON and JS, you can use pure HTML streaming: https://lamplightdev.com/blog/2024/01/10/streaming-html-out-... and pure CSS interactions like tabs, accordions, dropdown menus.
I agree.
I think the parent poster was referring to how much noise there is, and I'd agree. The moment you start learning, just the fanciest stuff is shoved down your throat. So you just assume its the best and roll with it.
I find myself tinkering more with PHP now that I've been using js for the past 7 years.
I think the parent poster was referring to how much noise there is, and I'd agree. The moment you start learning, just the fanciest stuff is shoved down your throat. So you just assume its the best and roll with it.
I find myself tinkering more with PHP now that I've been using js for the past 7 years.
> Looking at the state of open source software today a google is simply impossible because the ecosystem has rotted from the inside.
The Oxide route is one of the better approaches for backend. "Apple" of enterprise OSS, but I think their ambitions are too small. Prefab containers full of seamless and modular amounts of each food groups: CPU, GPU, RAM, SSD, HDD, interconnect, and uplink all in and managed. Not rack-up but dirt-up and totally managed offering IAM, VMs, 12factor PAAS, serverless, volumes, and object storage with multitenancy, accounting, security, data lifecycle, config management, appropriate redundancy, and other cross-cutting concerns harmonized in a way that is necessarily managed but sufficiently customizable.
Frontend, the trick is standardizing on the least fragile tools that are widely used enough. Churn on tools and dependencies is a distraction and a time waster.
The Oxide route is one of the better approaches for backend. "Apple" of enterprise OSS, but I think their ambitions are too small. Prefab containers full of seamless and modular amounts of each food groups: CPU, GPU, RAM, SSD, HDD, interconnect, and uplink all in and managed. Not rack-up but dirt-up and totally managed offering IAM, VMs, 12factor PAAS, serverless, volumes, and object storage with multitenancy, accounting, security, data lifecycle, config management, appropriate redundancy, and other cross-cutting concerns harmonized in a way that is necessarily managed but sufficiently customizable.
Frontend, the trick is standardizing on the least fragile tools that are widely used enough. Churn on tools and dependencies is a distraction and a time waster.
> Looking at the state of open source software today a google is simply impossible because the ecosystem has rotted from the inside.
There’s lots of reasons a Google is impossible to start today (the main one being “Google exists, whatever the next explosive startup-to-giant is [0], it will look nothing like Google, and such things aren’t cookie-cutter, each is sui generis), but the explanation you offer above is… unconvincing as a bare conclusion, but maybe could be fleshed out with more description and support.
> Not sure what the solution is but we need fewer sheep in development and less permissive licenses so developers doing unglamorous work can capture more of the value.
The two halves of this sentence are in tension, and the first seems more reasonable than the second.
> Look at how much effort it took to write the cgi-bin scripts google started with vs whatever flavour of the week JS framework you have to use now.
You don’t have to use a flavor-of-the-week JS framework in place of cgi-bin scripts. (And, in some ways, the lowest-friction backend options are lower friction to get up and running than cgi-bin scripts on a server you set up, because you’ve got things like “serverless” FaaS hosts.)
[0] OpenAI?
There’s lots of reasons a Google is impossible to start today (the main one being “Google exists, whatever the next explosive startup-to-giant is [0], it will look nothing like Google, and such things aren’t cookie-cutter, each is sui generis), but the explanation you offer above is… unconvincing as a bare conclusion, but maybe could be fleshed out with more description and support.
> Not sure what the solution is but we need fewer sheep in development and less permissive licenses so developers doing unglamorous work can capture more of the value.
The two halves of this sentence are in tension, and the first seems more reasonable than the second.
> Look at how much effort it took to write the cgi-bin scripts google started with vs whatever flavour of the week JS framework you have to use now.
You don’t have to use a flavor-of-the-week JS framework in place of cgi-bin scripts. (And, in some ways, the lowest-friction backend options are lower friction to get up and running than cgi-bin scripts on a server you set up, because you’ve got things like “serverless” FaaS hosts.)
[0] OpenAI?
But, no one is forcing you to use the latest JS framework, you can still write cgi-bin scripts if you wanted...
There is no need to follow the trend du jour, it is some fallacy that you're describing that somehow it's easier then than today when the technology is largely backwards compatible.
There is no need to follow the trend du jour, it is some fallacy that you're describing that somehow it's easier then than today when the technology is largely backwards compatible.
> Not sure what the solution is but we need fewer sheep in development and less permissive licenses so developers doing unglamorous work can capture more of the value.
This is the nuts of it.
This is the nuts of it.
Sounds like you might want to start a lifestyle business. You should read and listen to everything by Rob Walling, especially his “stair step approach”. Wish someone had told me this at your stage.
For meeting founders, find someone in the area you’re interested in and build stuff with them. Also consider using the YC founder network, but they may be too ambitious for you.
Lifestyle businesses are probably less dependent on cofounders for success.
You’ll need to work hard at your tech skills if they’ve atrophied. The good news is, this part is incredibly fun.
For meeting founders, find someone in the area you’re interested in and build stuff with them. Also consider using the YC founder network, but they may be too ambitious for you.
Lifestyle businesses are probably less dependent on cofounders for success.
You’ll need to work hard at your tech skills if they’ve atrophied. The good news is, this part is incredibly fun.
Here are a couple links if you want to get started with my work, all focused on bootstrapping profitable SaaS companies:
[Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping] https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stair-step-method-of-b...
[Podcast] https://startupsfortherestofus.com
[Book] https://saasplaybook.com
[YouTube] https://microconf.com/youtube
[Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping] https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stair-step-method-of-b...
[Podcast] https://startupsfortherestofus.com
[Book] https://saasplaybook.com
[YouTube] https://microconf.com/youtube
"Research: The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45"
The link above links to the article I was going to post. Just adding the headline here, since it was missing.
The link above links to the article I was going to post. Just adding the headline here, since it was missing.
Thanks, this is the link I've been looking for with regards to this thread.
Wow, the older I get the more ambitious I get about what to build. A lot of the companies I created in my 20s and 30s I wouldn’t waste my time on in my 40s. I’m so the exact opposite it’s kinda funny.
Go big or go home, it’s no fun to chew bones.
Go big or go home, it’s no fun to chew bones.
That Steve Jobs advice of saying no to a lot of things seems such a natural thing to do as you age.
As years that remain shrink, you have to pick and choose the battles you want to fight.
As years that remain shrink, you have to pick and choose the battles you want to fight.
That’s interesting. Aging hasn’t been limiting my thinking about time remaining. Maybe it should. It’s been pouring on the gas about enjoying the ride as much as possible instead. Worry less, lean in more, focus on defining a success that is yours in a way that’s deeply meaningful.
I think PG addresses this subtlety where he says: "when you're young it's easier to know what you are interested in, than what people need." This inverts as you get older.
// Also being older I don’t care about making a unicorn
You can use that term as a proxy for delivering large impact to the world. It's approximately the same thing. If you do something like "aged care" and "dealing with kids schools" in a way that helps millions of people, you'll end up a billionaire whether you want to or not.
I don't use the term "unicorn" but I think keeping score in financial terms helps because that's how you know you've delivered something people want and at scale. If you remove money out of the equation it's easier to fool yourself thinking you're making some difference and you're not.
You can use that term as a proxy for delivering large impact to the world. It's approximately the same thing. If you do something like "aged care" and "dealing with kids schools" in a way that helps millions of people, you'll end up a billionaire whether you want to or not.
I don't use the term "unicorn" but I think keeping score in financial terms helps because that's how you know you've delivered something people want and at scale. If you remove money out of the equation it's easier to fool yourself thinking you're making some difference and you're not.
Counterpoint: Rudolph Hass, creator of the original hass avocado, barely made anything from it. I’m not gonna say that the Hass Avocado had more impact than Apple or Google, but it’s definitely more impactful than any $1-10 billion company I can think of.
Isn’t the story that some crazy old seed man gave him a Hass seed and we don’t really know where it came from?
Such a Californian, colloquial tale.
I'd had never seen an avocado in any grocery story growing up, never tasted it until I visited California.
Is this "changing the world"?
Well I suppose it could be, after all myriads of people have never used or even heard of slack.
I'd had never seen an avocado in any grocery story growing up, never tasted it until I visited California.
Is this "changing the world"?
Well I suppose it could be, after all myriads of people have never used or even heard of slack.
You can fool yourself with money too. Often it is more profitable to do the unethical thing.
But perhaps he doesn't want to make THAT much impact. Some decent impact would be fine, of course. It seems a lot of responsibility to have impact on millions of people, might lead you down the road of drugs and alcohol, killing your health to be able to handle it.
If I have a business that impacts millions of people, then every hour I spend on it, would have huge influence, and if I don't spend the hours on increasing that percentage, I'm also letting down millions of people.
If I have a business that impacts millions of people, then every hour I spend on it, would have huge influence, and if I don't spend the hours on increasing that percentage, I'm also letting down millions of people.
But unicorns and the people who fund them are all about disconnecting from actual returns today, and caring about projected returns in 10 years. Accidentally becoming very popular is great. Aiming for that as the goal distorts the business into something unsustainable and inevitably leads to enshittification.
Same boat here.
I would suggest using your network and consider a path of least resistance such as building a side-business while working that either solves niche enterprise problems or makes enterprise capabilities more manageable for small businesses.
Starting a business is really easy. The bullshit that every business needs to do isn't particularly magical or mysterious. Don't get too invested in the bureaucratization process, but also be sure to implement what needs to happen just in time.
Find cofounders from your friends and coworkers, and go to startup events. Find people who you respect and who respect you, have integrity, and are the most fun. It's important to find people who don't turn into arrogant SOBs or raging sociopaths when large sums of money become involved. Honesty, awareness, navigating/prioritizing ambiguity, and conflict resolution skills are damn important.
Avoid external funding if at all possible unless it unblocks time-to-market that would otherwise miss market time or grow too slowly to survive. (Growing slower is often easier and more sustainable!)
Have sensible cost controls that are pennywise and poundwise.
If not changing the world or building a startup per se, focus on building a business that something people want. ;@] Expect it to take 20x longer, 50x more effort, and 4x more money than you think.
I would suggest using your network and consider a path of least resistance such as building a side-business while working that either solves niche enterprise problems or makes enterprise capabilities more manageable for small businesses.
Starting a business is really easy. The bullshit that every business needs to do isn't particularly magical or mysterious. Don't get too invested in the bureaucratization process, but also be sure to implement what needs to happen just in time.
Find cofounders from your friends and coworkers, and go to startup events. Find people who you respect and who respect you, have integrity, and are the most fun. It's important to find people who don't turn into arrogant SOBs or raging sociopaths when large sums of money become involved. Honesty, awareness, navigating/prioritizing ambiguity, and conflict resolution skills are damn important.
Avoid external funding if at all possible unless it unblocks time-to-market that would otherwise miss market time or grow too slowly to survive. (Growing slower is often easier and more sustainable!)
Have sensible cost controls that are pennywise and poundwise.
If not changing the world or building a startup per se, focus on building a business that something people want. ;@] Expect it to take 20x longer, 50x more effort, and 4x more money than you think.
PG is remarkably consistent in his advice; much of his writing is about developing a nose for "what's missing" and having the chops and resources to attempt a solution.
Also, I think 'Google' in this instance is more for motivation rather than a literal comparison. He's leaving out the part that Google was founded by graduate CS students a) looking for a thesis, b) into node-link graphs, and c) inspired by academic citation metrics. Would PG advise anyone to go to grad school to learn how to find scientific-discovery-based startup ideas these days?
Also, I think 'Google' in this instance is more for motivation rather than a literal comparison. He's leaving out the part that Google was founded by graduate CS students a) looking for a thesis, b) into node-link graphs, and c) inspired by academic citation metrics. Would PG advise anyone to go to grad school to learn how to find scientific-discovery-based startup ideas these days?
This is what is fundamentally missing from most talk about "tech" startups by VC types these days. They're not actually interested in the nerdy stuff, just in the "disruption" stuff.
L&S were, and they hired other people who were. They didn't start with a business idea, but with a technical one. They filled in the blanks on the business side after they survived the .com crash.
I didn't get to Google until 2011, but it became clear to me after joining that in the past they had gone on a very nerdy mission to hire all the nerdy people and collect them into one place to do nerdy things.
(Unfortunately that nerdy thing ended up being selling ads really efficient, but that's another story.)
My fundamental point is that the Google story is very unlike the kind of stories that YCombinator or a16z like. It started, like you said, as a set of intellectual/technical interests. The other stuff, that VCs today like, came later.
In a way they did the opposite of the usual advice. They started with the hammer (the tech) rather than the nail (the business problem.) They certainly didn't start with a "Like X but for Y" statement like seems to be desired by VC today. And they didn't look like the typical .com story at the time (which was usually: give us lots of VC $$ so we can sell something on the web that is currently not sold on the web, but we'll just use the $$ to buy customers and make no profit...)
I would posit that if today's Google came to YCombinator today they'd be shown the "no thanks" door.
L&S were, and they hired other people who were. They didn't start with a business idea, but with a technical one. They filled in the blanks on the business side after they survived the .com crash.
I didn't get to Google until 2011, but it became clear to me after joining that in the past they had gone on a very nerdy mission to hire all the nerdy people and collect them into one place to do nerdy things.
(Unfortunately that nerdy thing ended up being selling ads really efficient, but that's another story.)
My fundamental point is that the Google story is very unlike the kind of stories that YCombinator or a16z like. It started, like you said, as a set of intellectual/technical interests. The other stuff, that VCs today like, came later.
In a way they did the opposite of the usual advice. They started with the hammer (the tech) rather than the nail (the business problem.) They certainly didn't start with a "Like X but for Y" statement like seems to be desired by VC today. And they didn't look like the typical .com story at the time (which was usually: give us lots of VC $$ so we can sell something on the web that is currently not sold on the web, but we'll just use the $$ to buy customers and make no profit...)
I would posit that if today's Google came to YCombinator today they'd be shown the "no thanks" door.
> Unfortunately that nerdy thing ended up being selling ads really efficient, but that's another story.
The irony is that both the thing and its side effects were anticipated very early on.
"Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. ... It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media, we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers."
(The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998)
The irony is that both the thing and its side effects were anticipated very early on.
"Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. ... It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media, we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers."
(The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998)
Hopefully 2 Stanford CS PhD students hacking on their project would be funded by YC today :)
You bring up a good point about starting from the tech rather than the problem. Usually the advice from VCs is to start from the problem and iterate on the tech until you solve it. What was very fortunate for Google is that the tech translated into a great business problem. Open up any CS textbook and 'Search' is always a major section. It was also a great business because the problem is important, frequent, and had not been properly solved by the big players in the mid 90s.
"And then we realized that we had a querying tool..." (Page)
You bring up a good point about starting from the tech rather than the problem. Usually the advice from VCs is to start from the problem and iterate on the tech until you solve it. What was very fortunate for Google is that the tech translated into a great business problem. Open up any CS textbook and 'Search' is always a major section. It was also a great business because the problem is important, frequent, and had not been properly solved by the big players in the mid 90s.
"And then we realized that we had a querying tool..." (Page)
> Hopefully 2 Stanford CS PhD students hacking on their project would be funded by YC today :)
Around the dawn of YC, IIRC, when PG did the "summer founders" or something like that, a group of 4 of us Lisp hackers applied as a team. No response.
We were mostly in grad student-like lifestyle modes, and not tied down, were energetic, and already had various applicable experience.
But I think PG was mostly looking for barely-20 year-olds to drop out of college, rent an apartment in Harvard Square together, and sit around hacking in towels.
Since that's what he wrote in one article. Which I guess trumped the article in which he said Lisp hackers are great for startups.
Now his latest article says he's going after 14 and 15 year-olds. :)
Around the dawn of YC, IIRC, when PG did the "summer founders" or something like that, a group of 4 of us Lisp hackers applied as a team. No response.
We were mostly in grad student-like lifestyle modes, and not tied down, were energetic, and already had various applicable experience.
But I think PG was mostly looking for barely-20 year-olds to drop out of college, rent an apartment in Harvard Square together, and sit around hacking in towels.
Since that's what he wrote in one article. Which I guess trumped the article in which he said Lisp hackers are great for startups.
Now his latest article says he's going after 14 and 15 year-olds. :)
I always wonder about the success rate of advice. Do we have any student from this talk of PG who succeeded later in life? Joined an ivy league school? Proceeded to create a startup? Had success with it?
Don’t get me wrong. This folklore is extremely important, if not just to raise the grades of one student. But as a founder, when I give advice, out of inflated ego generally, I also have vertigo from the height of everything that could go wrong about being mistaken about my advice.
Don’t get me wrong. This folklore is extremely important, if not just to raise the grades of one student. But as a founder, when I give advice, out of inflated ego generally, I also have vertigo from the height of everything that could go wrong about being mistaken about my advice.
I feel that worry too, but I can validate his advice, somewhat.
I'm 44 and spent most of my career working individually and with my closest friends on projects that felt interesting, and it went really well for us in all of the ways. I also met these friends at a selective school, though it was a state-funded high school (massacademy.org), not a university.
Also, someone once came to my very conventional elementary school in 5th grade on career day to talk about a very unconventional career path (being a full-time peace activist) and this had a huge impact on me, both because it validated activism as a career and perhaps more importantly because it validated not having a normal job.
Getting a very short lecture in school from an interesting non-teacher can be at least very memorable and perhaps life-changing.
I'm 44 and spent most of my career working individually and with my closest friends on projects that felt interesting, and it went really well for us in all of the ways. I also met these friends at a selective school, though it was a state-funded high school (massacademy.org), not a university.
Also, someone once came to my very conventional elementary school in 5th grade on career day to talk about a very unconventional career path (being a full-time peace activist) and this had a huge impact on me, both because it validated activism as a career and perhaps more importantly because it validated not having a normal job.
Getting a very short lecture in school from an interesting non-teacher can be at least very memorable and perhaps life-changing.
> Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.
(Excerpt from the “wear sunscreen” speech: http://plodplod.blogspot.com/2006/07/advice-like-youth-proba...)
(Excerpt from the “wear sunscreen” speech: http://plodplod.blogspot.com/2006/07/advice-like-youth-proba...)
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But that's the thing. "Search" was not a great business problem. It still isn't. I used Google for years before their IPO and people were always like "how is this thing going to make money" and believe it or not there was a lot of skepticism even at IPO time that they even had a possible reasonable business model. (Same for Facebook at their IPO, too.)
Search is not a good business. Ad sales over top of search turned out to be. AdWords is the thing that catapulted Google towards (insane) profitability. And for the first few years, Google didn't really sell ads, or market themselves as even aiming to sell ads. But AdWords could only be successful because they had already captured the market on search, and so had a captive audience to show ads to (and relevance information based on their searches).
AdWords rolled out in 2000. Many of us had been using Google as a search engine since before the company had even been founded (1998).
Search is not a good business. Ad sales over top of search turned out to be. AdWords is the thing that catapulted Google towards (insane) profitability. And for the first few years, Google didn't really sell ads, or market themselves as even aiming to sell ads. But AdWords could only be successful because they had already captured the market on search, and so had a captive audience to show ads to (and relevance information based on their searches).
AdWords rolled out in 2000. Many of us had been using Google as a search engine since before the company had even been founded (1998).
Totally agree. What I mean is many research topics can be very interesting from a technical perspective but don't translate into solving problems that are frequent and important enough to build a business around. In the case of Search many business gurus didn't understand at the time that you can make a fortune with a free product. What matters is who has the traffic and who they're selling it to = eyeball meets ad. Page and Brin initially "expected that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers" (foreshadowing). Also they tried to sell to Yahoo for $1M so it took time to see the full potential, as you describe.
When Google started, you didn't need a business model for a "dotcom" (as we called them, before "tech stocks" became the "tech" that we now call ourselves).
We already realized the necessity of finding information amongst the exponentially growing wealth of Web servers (sites).
And Google obviously worked much better than the existing crawler-based search indexes and curated directories.
And lots of people thought a "portal" was a good place to be, if you could manage it.
We already realized the necessity of finding information amongst the exponentially growing wealth of Web servers (sites).
And Google obviously worked much better than the existing crawler-based search indexes and curated directories.
And lots of people thought a "portal" was a good place to be, if you could manage it.
> And Google obviously worked much better than the existing crawler-based search indexes and curated directories.
Funny thing is I recall using Google from the very day I first saw it come across Slashdot -- probably late 1997 -- before they were incorporated even... but I also recall that at some point around 1999 I actually switched back to using AltaVista or something similar for a bit. Because I preferred the search results I got.
It was actually a more competitive situation than people might remember in hindsight.
The big difference is that Google made it through the .com crash filter better than anybody else. That and they kept the good will of their customers by keeping minimal and straightforward and (for a while) ad free.
Funny thing is I recall using Google from the very day I first saw it come across Slashdot -- probably late 1997 -- before they were incorporated even... but I also recall that at some point around 1999 I actually switched back to using AltaVista or something similar for a bit. Because I preferred the search results I got.
It was actually a more competitive situation than people might remember in hindsight.
The big difference is that Google made it through the .com crash filter better than anybody else. That and they kept the good will of their customers by keeping minimal and straightforward and (for a while) ad free.
I recall once google came on the scene I ditched altavista and never looked back. I was a teen but my recollection was that Google included the relevant paragraph of text from the page shown in in the search results whereas altavista showed one line that was often indecipherable gobbledygook - perhaps the page title matched a keyword - and it made it so much easier to scroll through ten results and identify the one that was the highest quality
Plus the no fast no clutter homepage for google compared to how many links can we fit in one screen for the portals
Plus the no fast no clutter homepage for google compared to how many links can we fit in one screen for the portals
I switched to using Google as soon as I saw it in the late '90s, because of much more relevant hits ranked at/near top.
Maybe AltaVista improved after that, which could explain how the parent commenter could go back to it.
Maybe AltaVista improved after that, which could explain how the parent commenter could go back to it.
There was a brief window where AltaVista improved and I went back to it after being Google since 98. Probably only for a few months. I often preferred the query hints you could give it to get very specific output. No matter, they went out of business.
The turning point that brought me fulltime to Google from then on (until recently switching to Kagi) was when they started having almost live results. It's hard to remember or imagine but search indices were often days, weeks out of sync for critical things like news, etc and Google was really the first to fix that.
The turning point that brought me fulltime to Google from then on (until recently switching to Kagi) was when they started having almost live results. It's hard to remember or imagine but search indices were often days, weeks out of sync for critical things like news, etc and Google was really the first to fix that.
I think there's a connection here to the old adage that "small companies make it possible, big companies make it inexpensive".
The purpose of VC can be viewed as trying to take a company from nonexistent to big while skipping the small stage, but small is where the action really is.
The purpose of VC can be viewed as trying to take a company from nonexistent to big while skipping the small stage, but small is where the action really is.
Yep, unless some new thing is acquired in a buyout, or if an entire group is spun off with almost no oversight, large companies are horrifically bad at creating new things. It's nearly impossible for them to do it in the case where the new product would affect existing revenue streams.
Very interesting to hear your thoughts and experience.
I wonder if we really shouldn't make a bit more out of the fact that there are different types of startups: those that pick off low-hanging fruit really well, those that combine novel technology with novel problems (for instance, the recent YC LLM meeting note-taking / transcription service), those that are scientific-discovery based (see, for example the NSF Small Business Innovation Research program), etc. I am not experienced enough to create an ontology of startup ideas, but I think it'd be an interesting exercise.
I wonder if we really shouldn't make a bit more out of the fact that there are different types of startups: those that pick off low-hanging fruit really well, those that combine novel technology with novel problems (for instance, the recent YC LLM meeting note-taking / transcription service), those that are scientific-discovery based (see, for example the NSF Small Business Innovation Research program), etc. I am not experienced enough to create an ontology of startup ideas, but I think it'd be an interesting exercise.
The nsf program basically exists to fill the gap between research and product market fit. Except They focus on commercialization plans which we know that in reality is subject to change (aka meaningless).
The real trick that made Google possible, and the following web 2.0 era startups, was that linux and commodity hardware was all that was needed at the time so engineers could strike out on their own. Comparing it to the current ML era where you need many millions of dollars of data and many millions of dollars of hardware to compete, the guys that wrote the transformers paper are stuck in bigcorp and aren't going to be the next Larry and Sergey. OpenAI might be one of the few new big companies but it's run by a VC/CEO, not the engineers that figured the stuff out, and he had to sell half the company to Microsoft anyway.
These things always happen at intersections. There are lots of smart people with ideas. The magic happens at the intersection of ideas, time (what technology is available) and luck. Apple Newton was too early. Apple iPhone was just right. Doom 3D was just at the right time when commodity hardware could do what the amazing software needed it to do.
The point I was trying to make is what are the situation where an independent small startup can make it big. Your examples are instructive, engineers were able to make id Software big because you didn't need a lot of hardware to invent 3D shooters, but Jobs gets the credit for the iPhone because the engineers needed hundreds of millions of dollars in capital to pull it off.
pg is giving advice based on him getting rich from that period of time where the small startup could make it big. But those conditions are probably rare going forward.
pg is giving advice based on him getting rich from that period of time where the small startup could make it big. But those conditions are probably rare going forward.
>is what are the situation where an independent small startup can make it big.
Yes, there are also all kinds of completely unrelated to your idea things that can succeed or kill your business.
Happen to launch your idea the day before a global economic collapse, well, better be exceptionally lucky.
Happen to launch when interest rates drop though the floor and banks are handing out money to anyone. You're going to have a harder time failing.
Yes, there are also all kinds of completely unrelated to your idea things that can succeed or kill your business.
Happen to launch your idea the day before a global economic collapse, well, better be exceptionally lucky.
Happen to launch when interest rates drop though the floor and banks are handing out money to anyone. You're going to have a harder time failing.
maybe. right now, if a startup has a new ML training technique or whatever, for a specific niche, cloud and VC capital will let them make a model that does way better for their niche than repackaging well funded models from OpenAI.
Wild to think that potentially the most innovative company of the last five years, and next five, was run/founded by a VC. It goes against all of the VC hate
How does a VC being a VC disprove anything? Just means he's good at raising money, and hiring good engineers.
Maybe? YC seems to have an inconsistent view on things that are research vs product. But it’s probably more nuanced than that. Search was a market though at that time. If you pitched an AI LLM before chat-gpt what would the odds have been?
I dunno, I toyed with the starting phase of YC application a couple years ago, and started working my way through what was involved in their application process and reading their materials, even watching some YouTube content, etc.
I didn't really see how a business that was starting from a more R&D angle would make it through.
And a lot of it seemed really pitched to the bizdev "hustler" founder personality, not to engineers/nerds.
I didn't really see how a business that was starting from a more R&D angle would make it through.
And a lot of it seemed really pitched to the bizdev "hustler" founder personality, not to engineers/nerds.
They're not actually interested in the nerdy stuff, just in the "disruption" stuff.
I disagree. The AI stuff seems pretty nerdy. Same for GitHub and other levels of abstraction. The disruption talk is just the branding by the media.
I disagree. The AI stuff seems pretty nerdy. Same for GitHub and other levels of abstraction. The disruption talk is just the branding by the media.
The foundational $$ that has gone into the research to make the LLM stuff happen... was inside the existing big corporations (Google, FB, MS, etc.) and only left there once it had been proven.
Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI) for example was employed inside Google doing that kind of work and only left when he ran up against the limits of what he felt he could get done there. But the fundamental R&D had already been done. When I was at Google I saw some of it from a distance before I ever heard of OpenAI.
The VCs have come along at the tail end of the R&D cycle on this stuff in hopes of cashing in. Same as they did with crypto and N number of trends before. They're trailing, not innovating.
They're primarily interested in successful business models capitalizing on existing technology, not the actual development of new technology. Unless one has distorted the meaning of "technology" significantly.
Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI) for example was employed inside Google doing that kind of work and only left when he ran up against the limits of what he felt he could get done there. But the fundamental R&D had already been done. When I was at Google I saw some of it from a distance before I ever heard of OpenAI.
The VCs have come along at the tail end of the R&D cycle on this stuff in hopes of cashing in. Same as they did with crypto and N number of trends before. They're trailing, not innovating.
They're primarily interested in successful business models capitalizing on existing technology, not the actual development of new technology. Unless one has distorted the meaning of "technology" significantly.
I wouldn't fixate on the Google part too much. It's pretty clear he is using it as a common point of reference for 14 and 15 year olds. "You guys know about Google?, the giant company with the web site? Okay well let me tell you how companies like that are built."
Building a successful company depends on many things. The point made here is that you are unlikely to be expert enough, and motivated enough to build a successful business in an area you are not interested in, and haven't played around in. So to increase the amount of domains that you could create a business in from 0 to a small positive integer you should build things that interest you.
Of course if you have money, or know how to persuade people who have money, you can be something of an idiot and still develop a successful business. Usually you are not really developing the business in this case, more attaching yourself to a business that smart people are running for you.
In a pool of high school freshmen, most probably have a better chance of success following the first path, than the second.
Building a successful company depends on many things. The point made here is that you are unlikely to be expert enough, and motivated enough to build a successful business in an area you are not interested in, and haven't played around in. So to increase the amount of domains that you could create a business in from 0 to a small positive integer you should build things that interest you.
Of course if you have money, or know how to persuade people who have money, you can be something of an idiot and still develop a successful business. Usually you are not really developing the business in this case, more attaching yourself to a business that smart people are running for you.
In a pool of high school freshmen, most probably have a better chance of success following the first path, than the second.
Google in 1999 had the the fortuitous alignment of every possible factor: brains, Stanford connections, timing, extremely scalable and lucrative business model, funding, etc.
Even more fortuitous was having no ads or anything else that the small number of early Googlers would have considered evil in any way.
Huh? Did we ask forget about the era of pop-up ads on the Internet?
That's what I mean, when Google became generally available they had none of that on their site.
For quite a while at least before they joined the crowd.
For quite a while at least before they joined the crowd.
Google had ads (AdWords) since 2000, only 2 years after it started existing.
It was very different from the punch-the-monkey style ads that had taken over the Internet, though. Google ads were exclusively text based and unobtrusive. They relied on showing you the right ad for what you happened to be searching for at the moment, rather than grabbing your attention and forcing you to think about stuff you didn't really care about.
Those were the best years.
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He should! As I hope to convince people of next month, there’s a wealth of classical AI knowledge that’s just begging to be applied to modern systems. That’s not to speak of the wizardry happening in neuroscience and drug discovery right now…
Isn’t “you shouldn’t focus on science to start a good tech company” a good indicator that our conception of “tech” company is completely broken? That we’re really talking about ways to milk money from gambling billionaires, not change the world with successful products?
Isn’t “you shouldn’t focus on science to start a good tech company” a good indicator that our conception of “tech” company is completely broken? That we’re really talking about ways to milk money from gambling billionaires, not change the world with successful products?
>go to grad school to learn how to find scientific-discovery-based startup ideas these days?
Nope, ended up going to scientific-discovery-based-startup-ideas-R-us instead, by client demand.
Nope, ended up going to scientific-discovery-based-startup-ideas-R-us instead, by client demand.
1. Get into Stanford just as Stanford is getting into the VC business.
2. Use Stanford bandwidth for your web crawler.
3. See how AltaVista does it; they're in downtown Palo Alto.
4. Get 100K from the guy who founded Sun.
5. Move into the space above the bike shop in Palo Alto. (9 major startups began there.)
6. Get more funding from the guy who founded Amazon.
7. Sell search ads.
8. Profit!
2. Use Stanford bandwidth for your web crawler.
3. See how AltaVista does it; they're in downtown Palo Alto.
4. Get 100K from the guy who founded Sun.
5. Move into the space above the bike shop in Palo Alto. (9 major startups began there.)
6. Get more funding from the guy who founded Amazon.
7. Sell search ads.
8. Profit!
In the zero interest rate environment it was easier to get good advice and orders of magnitude more more money. A lot of those companies are crap.
Google had good timing but importantly, a good product and market fit. Prior search engines sucked in comparison with obnoxious monetization.
Google had good timing but importantly, a good product and market fit. Prior search engines sucked in comparison with obnoxious monetization.
I think the UX was the main reason people flocked to Google - an empty white page with a single search text entry and a button.
No, that was a gimmick, it actually turned most people off the first time they saw it, along with the name and the clown color letters. It was the quality of the search results using pagerank being way ahead of the best curated alternatives. Then the quirky UX suddenly became a great brand for a product that Just Worked. For their first 5-10 years they hardly put a foot wrong, everything they did was something nobody had ever seen before.
IIRC a copyright notice was added to the bottom of the site, because in early user testing, people thought the page was still loading because it was so barren
Google succeeded because they built a useful service and later were able to monetize it. Their timing could not have been better, searching the Internet at that time was horrendous.
Which step is:
"Build a search engine so good all nerds on the early Internet abandon AltaVista and switch to it, no marketing required."?
"Build a search engine so good all nerds on the early Internet abandon AltaVista and switch to it, no marketing required."?
> 9 major startups began there
which?
which?
Stanford was in the VC business long, long before. It's been told many times but Frank Terman set up much of the infrastructure to enable this back in the 1950s, building Stanford Research Park which housed Varian (microwaves and other RF), HP (some digital electronics stuff), and Lockheed (some bomb stuff). And that work built off the incredible investments into California infrastructure by the US military during WWII (https://steveblank.com/category/secret-history-of-silicon-va...), which followed some amazing investments in education, transport, and housing since the beginning of the gold rush.
But, in all honesty, if you want to identify single factors that truly contributed to Google not just surviving but thriving, I'd point at Jeff Dean. When he joined, Google was unable to update its index due to the design of the indexer. Jeff (along with Sanjay, or as many of us know him, "The Wise One"), built seminal software that enabled google to grow rapidly - not just updating the index faster, but doing search quality on logs, early ad experiments, and more. Obviously, other people played critical roles (Silverstein, /proc/bogdan, SRE Lucas) but IMHO if they hadn't had Jeff and Sanjay, google would have died back in 97 or 98.
But, in all honesty, if you want to identify single factors that truly contributed to Google not just surviving but thriving, I'd point at Jeff Dean. When he joined, Google was unable to update its index due to the design of the indexer. Jeff (along with Sanjay, or as many of us know him, "The Wise One"), built seminal software that enabled google to grow rapidly - not just updating the index faster, but doing search quality on logs, early ad experiments, and more. Obviously, other people played critical roles (Silverstein, /proc/bogdan, SRE Lucas) but IMHO if they hadn't had Jeff and Sanjay, google would have died back in 97 or 98.
Jeff Dean joined in 99, although perhaps his impact was so great as to be retro-causal.
> Stanford was in the VC business long, long before...
Not at scale. In the 1980s, Stanford's biggest IP revenue came from FM synthesis for musical instruments. In 1991, Stanford started up the Stanford Management Company to manage the endowment. Offices were on Sand Hill Road, out by the venture capitalists. That worked out very well. Enough so that SMC became the tail that wagged the dog. But that's a long story.
Not at scale. In the 1980s, Stanford's biggest IP revenue came from FM synthesis for musical instruments. In 1991, Stanford started up the Stanford Management Company to manage the endowment. Offices were on Sand Hill Road, out by the venture capitalists. That worked out very well. Enough so that SMC became the tail that wagged the dog. But that's a long story.
It's interesting that this piece mentions "to get really rich" as one of the primary motivators. Especially to high school students. I wonder if that's good advice or if society is better served by motivating students to start companies that make the world better.
I feel like there was a moment where “love was all you needed” and people just followed their passions with real careers as a backup. Hollywood pressed that view (or echoed it) into the zeitgeist and I’m not sure what the turning point was, but people started getting filthy rich. Almost as if the dormant culture combined with the internet made it possible to amass an absurd amount of wealth. Since then, whenever that is, it feels like it’s socially acceptable again to do be driven by earning potential and nothing else.
I agree with you, wanting to become “filthy rich” is abhorrent given all of the known implications that comes with. At the very least people should have some shame and keep that to themselves.
I agree with you, wanting to become “filthy rich” is abhorrent given all of the known implications that comes with. At the very least people should have some shame and keep that to themselves.
Getting rich and making the world better are not incompatible, or even unaligned in general.
You get rich by offering a good or service that society desires.
You get rich by offering a good or service that society desires.
No, that only makes you well-off.
You get filthy rich by capturing as much of the market as possible by whatever means necessary and killing off competition - including user lock-in, artificial bundling, using successful past products to subsidize non-profitable new ones just to screw competitors etc.
You get filthy rich by capturing as much of the market as possible by whatever means necessary and killing off competition - including user lock-in, artificial bundling, using successful past products to subsidize non-profitable new ones just to screw competitors etc.
Which one did Google founders do to get filthy rich?
Well, you're right, initially Google is a great example of growing because it genuinely was a great well executed product whose time had come. I mean it was just such a fresh air to go from using Excite and asking Jeeves to just googling it.
> user lock-in, artificial bundling,
But eventually Google hit its peak and has had to for the last decade or so concern itself with just maintaining its monopoly position, and it's done a lot of shady things to abet that, if you recall from reading the news over the last decade. A few I recall offhand.
* The infamous developer wage fixing scheme! Remember when it was uncovered that Apple and Google had been secretly and informally following no-poaching and wage cap rules to try to use their market power against developers?
* Monopolizing the ad marketplace by constant mergers and acquisitions (eg DoubleClick)
* Just generally using M&A and hiring as an anti competitive tool, eg acquihiring, overhiring, acquire-and-shut-down, etc -- hiring and acquiring not as a way to legitimately add profitable capabilities but instead merely as a way to tie up valuable limited resources (devs) and thus deny oxygen to potential competition.
* Don't get me started on how they're currently abusing Chromebooks to infiltrate the schools and get kids hooked on watching addictive YouTube Shorts and otherwise being good online ad targets during class time
And I'm sure all the other usual monopolistic behavior companies in their position are often tempted into. Google's challenge has been that by the 2010s, there wasn't really anything left for it to innovate in that could possibly come close to adding more than a rounding error's worth of profit to the huge ad machine.
So since then Google has fundamentally been more like a petrostate or a traditional utility company or something -- just protect the cash cow at all costs and don't rock the boat otherwise. It still kept and continues to try to keep to wear the costume of its earlier younger hip innovative days, but I think that's falling away as a new generation grows up who now sees them as part of the Man, an institution that's been there forever and no longer have a memory of the days when they were new, fun, innovative, countercultural.
In summary, Google didn't do shady things to get filthy rich, but it did do shady things later to stay filthy rich once it became clear there was nothing else left to do but either that, or watch the business gradually decline and get eaten by newer, hungrier startups and competitors.
> user lock-in, artificial bundling,
But eventually Google hit its peak and has had to for the last decade or so concern itself with just maintaining its monopoly position, and it's done a lot of shady things to abet that, if you recall from reading the news over the last decade. A few I recall offhand.
* The infamous developer wage fixing scheme! Remember when it was uncovered that Apple and Google had been secretly and informally following no-poaching and wage cap rules to try to use their market power against developers?
* Monopolizing the ad marketplace by constant mergers and acquisitions (eg DoubleClick)
* Just generally using M&A and hiring as an anti competitive tool, eg acquihiring, overhiring, acquire-and-shut-down, etc -- hiring and acquiring not as a way to legitimately add profitable capabilities but instead merely as a way to tie up valuable limited resources (devs) and thus deny oxygen to potential competition.
* Don't get me started on how they're currently abusing Chromebooks to infiltrate the schools and get kids hooked on watching addictive YouTube Shorts and otherwise being good online ad targets during class time
And I'm sure all the other usual monopolistic behavior companies in their position are often tempted into. Google's challenge has been that by the 2010s, there wasn't really anything left for it to innovate in that could possibly come close to adding more than a rounding error's worth of profit to the huge ad machine.
So since then Google has fundamentally been more like a petrostate or a traditional utility company or something -- just protect the cash cow at all costs and don't rock the boat otherwise. It still kept and continues to try to keep to wear the costume of its earlier younger hip innovative days, but I think that's falling away as a new generation grows up who now sees them as part of the Man, an institution that's been there forever and no longer have a memory of the days when they were new, fun, innovative, countercultural.
In summary, Google didn't do shady things to get filthy rich, but it did do shady things later to stay filthy rich once it became clear there was nothing else left to do but either that, or watch the business gradually decline and get eaten by newer, hungrier startups and competitors.
Now this is going to be a fruitful conversation.
Getting people to pay for something isn't the same thing as making the world a better place. You'd need to figure out all the effects and costs of the service to know if you're doing good or bad. Tobacco companies sell things that a lot of people desire, but the effect on society is surely negative. Same could be true for social media and many other types of services, but we don't know because we're not really trying to figure that out. The only question we ask when we are starting a business is "are people willing to pay for this enough to make a profit?". We don't ask if the effect of that service is actually good for society or the world.
It's not the same and there are plenty of counterexamples, but it's aligned more often than not.
People want to stay in touch with those they love.
People want to have medicines to improve their stress.
Etc.
People want to stay in touch with those they love.
People want to have medicines to improve their stress.
Etc.
I'm not so sure about that. How many of the services and products we consume today actually increase our quality of life instead of just giving a small dopamine boost that before you would've gotten from simpler things?
Drug lords are making the world better?
It's controversial, but many would say that dispensaries make the world a better place.
Isn't Cannabis now a socially accepted and provided good in much of the Western world?
They said not incompatible, not that they are always compatible.
No billionaire made the world a better place.
Two problems with arguments like these.
First, "better" is so subjective that it almost becomes a moot point.
Second, a single counter example disproves it.
You don't think Ronaldo has entertained millions of kids around the world and made them very happy to watch him play? I would say that is a good thing.
First, "better" is so subjective that it almost becomes a moot point.
Second, a single counter example disproves it.
You don't think Ronaldo has entertained millions of kids around the world and made them very happy to watch him play? I would say that is a good thing.
Or LeBron, MJ, MacKenzie Scott...
Being really rich is awesome. There's never a downside to having more money. That's the whole point of money: the more the better.
I don't see any mention of being ready to completely pivot from your original, lofty mission ("best search with no ads") to exactly the opposite ("ads are money").
Google was a successful, unsustainable search engine before it was a successful business.
Facebook was a successful social network waay before it was a successful business.
Reddit was... You can see where I am going with this.
Google was a successful, unsustainable search engine before it was a successful business.
Facebook was a successful social network waay before it was a successful business.
Reddit was... You can see where I am going with this.
In a way, it became a pivot from "organize the world's information" to "organize the world's ads".
Ads pay.
Anything that gets eyeballs will be paid for by ad placement. I think that's the "dirty" (open) "secret". Many industries are paid for by ads, not just tech companies. Though, tech companies have taken a huge chunk out of the entertainment industry as YouTubers, Instagrammers and TikTokkers (etc.) are now creating that entertaining content for the tech companies. All in an effort to capture eye balls.
And Hacker News is no different. Everyone who's on here long enough will slowly learn about Y Combinator. HN is an ad placement site for YC and YC affiliates. HN is much more than that of course, and that is why the ad placement works so well. Personally, I find the way HN is doing it tasteful. Moreover, it's not the only reason why HN exists, it's a synergy thing. With that said, there's still the same dynamic in there.
It's because ads pay, one way or another.
Anything that gets eyeballs will be paid for by ad placement. I think that's the "dirty" (open) "secret". Many industries are paid for by ads, not just tech companies. Though, tech companies have taken a huge chunk out of the entertainment industry as YouTubers, Instagrammers and TikTokkers (etc.) are now creating that entertaining content for the tech companies. All in an effort to capture eye balls.
And Hacker News is no different. Everyone who's on here long enough will slowly learn about Y Combinator. HN is an ad placement site for YC and YC affiliates. HN is much more than that of course, and that is why the ad placement works so well. Personally, I find the way HN is doing it tasteful. Moreover, it's not the only reason why HN exists, it's a synergy thing. With that said, there's still the same dynamic in there.
It's because ads pay, one way or another.
I never disputed that (I think I actually said "ads are money" ;).
Google story is peculiar because their founders started with "ads are evil" mantra. If it wasn't for that (and support for free software communities), us geeks would not have recommended Google to everyone and their dog over Altavista, Yahoo or whatever else was there at the time. We certainly would not have gotten our non-techy pops and grandmas to use the Google of today.
At some point, I was proud to wear a Google shirt I got from them during the early days.
Google story is peculiar because their founders started with "ads are evil" mantra. If it wasn't for that (and support for free software communities), us geeks would not have recommended Google to everyone and their dog over Altavista, Yahoo or whatever else was there at the time. We certainly would not have gotten our non-techy pops and grandmas to use the Google of today.
At some point, I was proud to wear a Google shirt I got from them during the early days.
But topic is "how to start your own Google" not "how to run your own Google".
Still pivoting for monetisation is important.
Still pivoting for monetisation is important.
"Fool your users while you smother the competition with good tech" is an important part to Google's success: as PaulG mentions, Google is a good example because everyone knows about them.
People partially flocked to them (me included) because of their public stance on ads, and then they played me.
Without claiming things they did the opposite from, one can't help but wonder if they would have ever succeeded? And would that have made them a story to tell at all?
People partially flocked to them (me included) because of their public stance on ads, and then they played me.
Without claiming things they did the opposite from, one can't help but wonder if they would have ever succeeded? And would that have made them a story to tell at all?
He left out the part about starting your company at a unique point in history where a generational technology shift was taking place that also happens to be a time when antitrust laws had recently been enforced (making your main competitor wary) but were about to be completely ignored for the next 20 years, so you could exploit your initial market position and engage in anti-competitive behavior to grow huge.
Or the part where your parents are professors and provide the educational opportunities and financial freedom to take risks that 99% of people don't have.
I don't mean that to even sound bitter or cynical, but it's just a fact if you look at most founders, even the ones that fail miserably.
I don't mean that to even sound bitter or cynical, but it's just a fact if you look at most founders, even the ones that fail miserably.
> where your parents are professors
There is always an excuse. The parents are professors, or upper middle class dentists, or your mom does charity for United Way and managed to become the leader of the charitable organization and managed to meet some exec from IBM. Given how diverse these professions are and that they basically describe a slightly upper middle class family, im gonna guess their children account for more than 1%.
There is always an excuse. The parents are professors, or upper middle class dentists, or your mom does charity for United Way and managed to become the leader of the charitable organization and managed to meet some exec from IBM. Given how diverse these professions are and that they basically describe a slightly upper middle class family, im gonna guess their children account for more than 1%.
Yep, he's basically preaching to a subset of young people who can help him make more money and tech fame.
I mean, it's not the worst thing he could do but it would be great if he at least acknowledged the privilege filter once in a while.
I mean, it's not the worst thing he could do but it would be great if he at least acknowledged the privilege filter once in a while.
Take the risks you can with what you have.
YMMV
The happiest entrepreneurs I know got advanced degrees, had a solid career, developed plenty of contacts, then launched something in their 30s or 40s with substantially less risk than taking a punt on knowing what problems were worth solving while at University, or taking a punt on finding the right person to start a company with while at University, or taking a punt on having the wide range of skills required to actually make a company work without ever having any work experience.
This is the sort of hype that drew me in when I was younger and I think it's damaging. The real way to start Google is to be smart, hard working and incredibly lucky. IMHO the best way to start a company is to be smart, hard working and patient.
The happiest entrepreneurs I know got advanced degrees, had a solid career, developed plenty of contacts, then launched something in their 30s or 40s with substantially less risk than taking a punt on knowing what problems were worth solving while at University, or taking a punt on finding the right person to start a company with while at University, or taking a punt on having the wide range of skills required to actually make a company work without ever having any work experience.
This is the sort of hype that drew me in when I was younger and I think it's damaging. The real way to start Google is to be smart, hard working and incredibly lucky. IMHO the best way to start a company is to be smart, hard working and patient.
I agree, it is damaging especially when you don't have a wealthy relative to fall back on.
I spent 3 years trying to keep a startup afloat after graduating from college. Most of my peers own a (some of them multiple) house now. I have 75k in my savings.
I spent 3 years trying to keep a startup afloat after graduating from college. Most of my peers own a (some of them multiple) house now. I have 75k in my savings.
I have a somewhat comparable history: I've taken a decade to get to the point where my bootstrapped SaaS ARR income is about to surpass my full-time consulting income.
It has taken about a decade of switching back and forth between consulting and working on the SaaS until I run out of money. Some consulting stints took a few months, others a few years, depending on our needs.
As I grew older, our needs and risk aversion in the family increased, so I just took on longer or more financially interesting consulting assignments, to grow a bigger buffer and allocate some extra assets.
I'm quite sure that, if I had just been consulting the last 15 years, I would already have been able to retire (owning more real estate and other assets).
However, my life would have been very different, and every single time I took on an ad interim assignment, I noticed the impact of my SaaS building experience was a big plus for my consulting assignments...
I'm not saying it's all rainbows & unicorns - building a SaaS is romanticized a lot, but IME it's an infinite game that requires a lot of grit, and as you grow you move the goal posts, so you're always in "hard" mode -, but I beg to differ that it has led to a more interesting life for me personally, as I tend to get bored quickly.
I have a few friends that built, sold, and could retire, but every single one of them has started building something new...
You need to love playing the game and be willing to sacrifice things, as the odds are typically against you.
To quote Simon Sinek "The only true competitor in an infinite game is yourself." [0]
[0] https://twitter.com/simonsinek/status/1433808001375277080?t=...
It has taken about a decade of switching back and forth between consulting and working on the SaaS until I run out of money. Some consulting stints took a few months, others a few years, depending on our needs.
As I grew older, our needs and risk aversion in the family increased, so I just took on longer or more financially interesting consulting assignments, to grow a bigger buffer and allocate some extra assets.
I'm quite sure that, if I had just been consulting the last 15 years, I would already have been able to retire (owning more real estate and other assets).
However, my life would have been very different, and every single time I took on an ad interim assignment, I noticed the impact of my SaaS building experience was a big plus for my consulting assignments...
I'm not saying it's all rainbows & unicorns - building a SaaS is romanticized a lot, but IME it's an infinite game that requires a lot of grit, and as you grow you move the goal posts, so you're always in "hard" mode -, but I beg to differ that it has led to a more interesting life for me personally, as I tend to get bored quickly.
I have a few friends that built, sold, and could retire, but every single one of them has started building something new...
You need to love playing the game and be willing to sacrifice things, as the odds are typically against you.
To quote Simon Sinek "The only true competitor in an infinite game is yourself." [0]
[0] https://twitter.com/simonsinek/status/1433808001375277080?t=...
You really nailed the last part. The luck part is the funniest. It's a gamble with very low odds that pays out after a couple of years if not decades.
>The real way to start Google is to be smart, hard working and incredibly lucky. IMHO the best way to start a company is to be smart, hard working and patient.
Reward requires effort, but effort does not guarantee reward.
It's a fact of life that we really should teach our kids instead of the nonsense that effort will be rewarded.
Reward requires effort, but effort does not guarantee reward.
It's a fact of life that we really should teach our kids instead of the nonsense that effort will be rewarded.
What is YMMV?
your mileage may vary, meaning that point from the essay doesn't apply uniformly
Young Mutant Mercenary Viper
Yeenage Mutant Minja Vurtles.
Or at least that's how I always read it in my head.
Or at least that's how I always read it in my head.
You might check the urban dictionary for such questions.
Perhaps they shouldn't use esoteric abbreviations.
YAADH.
Your Mileage May Vary.
How to start Google? You can't. That holds for 99.999999% of the people. The rest 0.000001% aren't wasting their time reading Paul Graham's essays.
You're overestimating the importance of talent and underestimating the importance of luck.
Not saying Larry Page and Sergey page aren't talented - clearly they were/are very talented people. But they were also extraordinarily lucky. To take another example, if Gary Kildall had been a slightly more ruthless businessman and IBM had had a little more foresight, Bill Gates would not be a billionaire.
Not saying Larry Page and Sergey page aren't talented - clearly they were/are very talented people. But they were also extraordinarily lucky. To take another example, if Gary Kildall had been a slightly more ruthless businessman and IBM had had a little more foresight, Bill Gates would not be a billionaire.
Agreed, BG actually come across as fellow less smarter than several people I know, he does not have profound insights, and keeps repeating trite stuff.
This essay is for kids. Many successful founders have likely listened to inspiring talks like this when they were kids. In places like Stanford or the prestigious high schools they come from.
The people who read here can read it for clarity and the chance that they can show this article to a smart nephew to inspire them. Like I just did.
The people who read here can read it for clarity and the chance that they can show this article to a smart nephew to inspire them. Like I just did.
[deleted]
Entirely and obviously self serving in that not only is this probably the only 'business' world that Paul has been exposed to (he started a tech company) but Paul also benefits (as do VC's and angel investors) from the entire eco system of young people taking chances with a small chance of success. The investor (and YC) wins with lots of people trying regardless of how many fail.
And note that the chances of founders and companies that have passed and been anointed with money is below (how much? I don't know) companies that haven't even made it to that round (to be potentially winnowed out). And have spent time and perhaps family money.
Will point out that I benefit from all of this (let's call it 'pick axe' for short) but I would or could never with a straight face and conscience write or give the same advice to kids in high school. Shoot for the moon? Risky. Sure if you have family money to fall back on possibly take the chance.
Especially and in particular 'how to start google' (meaning something with huge potential).
Oh yeah back in olden times I started a company right out of college and did pretty well and sold it (with ZERO investor money).
Lastly the joke that existed back and forever was someone saying 'find a good lawyer' as if doing so is a matter of knowing you had to do it not the specifics of how to do it.
And note that the chances of founders and companies that have passed and been anointed with money is below (how much? I don't know) companies that haven't even made it to that round (to be potentially winnowed out). And have spent time and perhaps family money.
Will point out that I benefit from all of this (let's call it 'pick axe' for short) but I would or could never with a straight face and conscience write or give the same advice to kids in high school. Shoot for the moon? Risky. Sure if you have family money to fall back on possibly take the chance.
Especially and in particular 'how to start google' (meaning something with huge potential).
Oh yeah back in olden times I started a company right out of college and did pretty well and sold it (with ZERO investor money).
Lastly the joke that existed back and forever was someone saying 'find a good lawyer' as if doing so is a matter of knowing you had to do it not the specifics of how to do it.
Ok, so I am having a hard time buying the idea that just make a fun project if you want to create a something like 'Google'. Startup 101 teaches us that you need to solve a painful problem that lot of people have, that is the best way to create 'Google', so isn't the advise contradictory?
This advice is for 14/15 year olds. I think the advice would be different for 22-year-olds. It would be different still for 35-year-olds.
22-year-olds have a hard time selling to enterprises, 14-year-olds will find it impossible. Whereas if they build something cool that they and their friends love they will gain many of the skills that might be useful later on.
PG has made the point many times that the superpower 22-year-olds have is that they can live on ramen and work 16 hours a day. The superpower that 14-year-olds have is that (in many cases) they don't even need to find the $1,000 a month to survive.
22-year-olds have a hard time selling to enterprises, 14-year-olds will find it impossible. Whereas if they build something cool that they and their friends love they will gain many of the skills that might be useful later on.
PG has made the point many times that the superpower 22-year-olds have is that they can live on ramen and work 16 hours a day. The superpower that 14-year-olds have is that (in many cases) they don't even need to find the $1,000 a month to survive.
What's the super power of 35-year-olds? Arthritis?
Compared to my 25 and 15 year old self, my 35 (now 40) self is a lot wiser in terms of dealing with people, applying humility and being crisp on the wide gulf between "what I find is worth doing at the moment" and "what's valuable." I think these are all hugely valuable and serve me well.
LLMs are increasingly good at your 40 year old soft social skills like humility, so don't bank on that being worth much very long.
I was as young, arrogant and naïve as you once.
Viewing things like wisdom, patience, discipline, and humility as both "soft" and "skills" is one of the single most problematic aspects of the tech industry.
I don't think of humility as a soft skill, it's an internal assumption about where the ultimate truth resides based on which you reason and engage with reality.
Man even once AI takes all our jobs or whatever there's still gonna be 8 billion people wandering around. We're still gonna need to talk to each other.
Reduced arrogance.
More reps/iterations to learn from
Experience. Contacts. Money.
>they can live on ramen and work 16 hours a day.
And the fact that most people don't see a problem with a statement like this a _big_ problem.
And the fact that most people don't see a problem with a statement like this a _big_ problem.
His advice is:
- Work on a personal project that is motivating to you (obviously you won't work on it if it's not motivating to you)
- It's a good sign if the project you're motivated to work on solves a problem that you and your friends care a lot about, because there's a good chance many more people will also want that problem solved and will buy/use your product.
Sure, plenty of big companies were started via different paths, but not many were founded by kids barely out of high school.
- Work on a personal project that is motivating to you (obviously you won't work on it if it's not motivating to you)
- It's a good sign if the project you're motivated to work on solves a problem that you and your friends care a lot about, because there's a good chance many more people will also want that problem solved and will buy/use your product.
Sure, plenty of big companies were started via different paths, but not many were founded by kids barely out of high school.
> Sure, plenty of big companies were started via different paths, but not many were founded by kids barely out of high school.
And neither was Google. Sergey Brin and Larry Page both hold masters degrees in Computer Science from Stanford.
And neither was Google. Sergey Brin and Larry Page both hold masters degrees in Computer Science from Stanford.
He's giving advice to school kids on what to do during their remaining school years or early college years.
As long as Paul Graham doesn't tell the truth that most if not all school kids won't ever make the next Google, then I'm okay with influencers (like Paul Graham, for instance) lying about the possibility of enormous opportunities being available to people.
I think high schoolers are smart enough to know that he's not literally saying "do this and you'll start the next Google".
[deleted]
Yes. I was reinforcing your point. Not even the example he uses is directly applicable to the audience. Just out of highschool and 6 years in one of the most rigorous CS programs are very different.
Also, Larry was 23 when PageRank was first published - that's not much older than "barely out of high school", even if we have to be so literal about everything :)
"not much". at that age it's material!
who I was at 18 and who I was at 23 is way different than the difference between 35 and 40
I didn't see the 2nd point but yes overall this clarifies.
I am not seeing any mention of a certain US security state 'investor'that gave them a bunch of money and PR, either in the article or in comments. I suppose it's uncouth within polite company to speak of such things.
We now have a single organization shaping the information access patterns of the people all over the world ostensibly paid by ads. Right.
We now have a single organization shaping the information access patterns of the people all over the world ostensibly paid by ads. Right.
I don't think there is a contradiction. The argument is that building fun projects helps you gain expertise to the point where you can more easily recognize painful problems to solve.
I think the message is more about not getting caught up in external sources of what to build. Basically, don't follow the hype, follow your nose.
He never uses “fun”
He says you have to be interested in it, it should excite you, and it should be your own project.
That’s absolutely not at odds with solving a problem. In fact, there’s a good chance that people are interested in solving a problem, likely one that is painful to you.
He says you have to be interested in it, it should excite you, and it should be your own project.
That’s absolutely not at odds with solving a problem. In fact, there’s a good chance that people are interested in solving a problem, likely one that is painful to you.
Trying to solve people’s painful problems is an exercise in futility unless you’re already very good at solving problems. And you don’t get good at solving problems by sitting and twiddling your thumbs until a sufficiently worthy problem drops into your lap.
Paul Graham is second to no-one in understanding the startup ecosystem, but there's some points here that only tell one side of the story.
Before I get to the complaints though - am I the only one with the feeling there would be a huge market niche for a search engine that gave as useful results as Google did in its earlier days? It sometimes feels like half the results for non-tech-related searches these days lead to low-quality AI-generated SEO-optimised fake content.
> If you're not sure what technology to get good at, get good at programming.
We tried this with unemployed former coal miners in Appalachia. It turns out, the real secret sauce here is "be the kind of person who can get good at programming". I'm with Freddie deBoer here, as he says in his book The Cult of Smart: we need to accept that not everyone has the same intellectual abilities. Once we do that, we can start thinking about how we make a world that works for the half of the population below the median on this dimension.
> ... facebook ...
The other story I heard about Zuckerberg is that he got his first 1000 users by scraping everyone's profile picture off the university "facebooks", then making a page where you could rate the women as "hot" or "not". I feel like missing this part out gives a rather one-sided picture of the story - especially if there were any young women in the class that PG originally gave this talk to. That's a shame because PG makes a very different point in "Why it's safe for founders to be nice" [1].
> (US uni admissions are done badly)
I agree with footnote 3 that determination and resourcefulness are important, but you also need to be able to program and reason mathematically if you want to start the next google. There are a lot of incredibly determined and resourceful students on liberal-arts or law degrees who might go far in the world, but they're not the person you want as a _technical_ co-founder.
[1] https://paulgraham.com/safe.html
Before I get to the complaints though - am I the only one with the feeling there would be a huge market niche for a search engine that gave as useful results as Google did in its earlier days? It sometimes feels like half the results for non-tech-related searches these days lead to low-quality AI-generated SEO-optimised fake content.
> If you're not sure what technology to get good at, get good at programming.
We tried this with unemployed former coal miners in Appalachia. It turns out, the real secret sauce here is "be the kind of person who can get good at programming". I'm with Freddie deBoer here, as he says in his book The Cult of Smart: we need to accept that not everyone has the same intellectual abilities. Once we do that, we can start thinking about how we make a world that works for the half of the population below the median on this dimension.
> ... facebook ...
The other story I heard about Zuckerberg is that he got his first 1000 users by scraping everyone's profile picture off the university "facebooks", then making a page where you could rate the women as "hot" or "not". I feel like missing this part out gives a rather one-sided picture of the story - especially if there were any young women in the class that PG originally gave this talk to. That's a shame because PG makes a very different point in "Why it's safe for founders to be nice" [1].
> (US uni admissions are done badly)
I agree with footnote 3 that determination and resourcefulness are important, but you also need to be able to program and reason mathematically if you want to start the next google. There are a lot of incredibly determined and resourceful students on liberal-arts or law degrees who might go far in the world, but they're not the person you want as a _technical_ co-founder.
[1] https://paulgraham.com/safe.html
I'm wondering if there is a research about which percentile of these two groups became rich:
People who started a company vs People who worked for Tech companies.
Unless you're very early (and/or very lucky), you can't get "rich" (i.e., can choose never to work again and can invest in many other things) as an employee (though of course a highly-paid employee can become very well off and comfortable).
Yes you need to be lucky to get super-rich as a founder too, but you have a lot more control, i.e., you make the primary decisions that determine whether the company will make good products that people will use/buy.
Yes you need to be lucky to get super-rich as a founder too, but you have a lot more control, i.e., you make the primary decisions that determine whether the company will make good products that people will use/buy.
How rich do you insist on being? The bar to "can choose never to work again" is surprisingly low, it just requires a high savings rate which is quite achievable in this line of work.
“Never work again” money is crazy-high for younger folks (like, not already close to qualifying for Medicare) in the US, on account of the costs and financial risks of our healthcare system.
Most of the FIRE bloggers who bother to account for this—like MMM—have a (perhaps implicit) fallback plan of returning to work somewhere with decent health insurance if they or a family member becomes very sick, but that’s quite a gamble.
(Never mind that a bunch of those sorts have jobs and couldn’t remain comfortably “retired” without them—god I really hate that part of the blogosphere, “look it’s so easy you dumb idiot” but then you start reading between the lines and realize how much of it’s just a bit)
Most of the FIRE bloggers who bother to account for this—like MMM—have a (perhaps implicit) fallback plan of returning to work somewhere with decent health insurance if they or a family member becomes very sick, but that’s quite a gamble.
(Never mind that a bunch of those sorts have jobs and couldn’t remain comfortably “retired” without them—god I really hate that part of the blogosphere, “look it’s so easy you dumb idiot” but then you start reading between the lines and realize how much of it’s just a bit)
> “Never work again” money is crazy-high for younger folks (like, not already close to qualifying for Medicare) in the US, on account of the costs and financial risks of our healthcare system.
Exchange plans are fine enough, and like, they're not that cheap, but they're also not that expensive either. Depending on how much you make from investments on your never have to work again horde, you may be able to qualify for rate subsidies, and then it's even less expensive. In my county, if I were 64 years old, assigned male at birth, I'm looking at about $17,000/year for a Blue Cross Bronze plan (less costly options available), with $9,200 out of pocket max. Budgeting $26,000/year for healthcare means less than $1 M should cover you for life (assume 3% perpetual withdrawal rate). Rates are lower for younger people, but budgeting based on current costs for the oldest people should help the numbers work. Double the budget if you have a spouse; do some math if you have kids you need to cover until they become independent. Definitely make sure you work until you have earned Medicare eligibility, cause it'll be handy when you reach that age.
Is $1-2 M crazy-high? Kind of, but depending on what your annual withdrawal rate target was, maybe you can just say if you've got enough to pull $100,000/year, you're good on healthcare too. Hopefully most years you won't hit the out of pocket max.
Exchange plans are fine enough, and like, they're not that cheap, but they're also not that expensive either. Depending on how much you make from investments on your never have to work again horde, you may be able to qualify for rate subsidies, and then it's even less expensive. In my county, if I were 64 years old, assigned male at birth, I'm looking at about $17,000/year for a Blue Cross Bronze plan (less costly options available), with $9,200 out of pocket max. Budgeting $26,000/year for healthcare means less than $1 M should cover you for life (assume 3% perpetual withdrawal rate). Rates are lower for younger people, but budgeting based on current costs for the oldest people should help the numbers work. Double the budget if you have a spouse; do some math if you have kids you need to cover until they become independent. Definitely make sure you work until you have earned Medicare eligibility, cause it'll be handy when you reach that age.
Is $1-2 M crazy-high? Kind of, but depending on what your annual withdrawal rate target was, maybe you can just say if you've got enough to pull $100,000/year, you're good on healthcare too. Hopefully most years you won't hit the out of pocket max.
> maybe you can just say if you've got enough to pull $100,000/year, you're good on healthcare too.
You’ll be exposed to tens of thousands in risk per year on top of (low) tens of thousands in premiums per year for a family Exchange plan. You’ll be burning nearly half of that (and spending all your free time trying to keep hospitals and insurers taking even more) if one of you gets cancer—or, if it’s you who gets cancer, you better hope someone else can handle that.
You also can’t withdraw at as high a “safe rate” as people planning for an ordinary retirement at ~65 do, because your fund needs to last a lot longer despite inflation and such. $2m isn’t “retire at 35” (… or 45) money. It might be “take a big gamble and maybe get lucky… for a while” money. Or semi-retire money.
[edit] at constant 2% inflation (ha!) you need a very safe source of consistent (not average!) 6% returns to retire with 80,000/yr income on $2m, without eating into principal. Anything goes wrong (“whoops, ‘safe’ wasn’t as safe as I thought!” or “whoops, we had a year of 7% inflation and my investments didn’t benefit from that!”) and you can find yourself burning principal while your account value is already down. It won’t take a lot of that before $80k is no longer your safe-withdrawal amount. A couple such years and you may be back to work. 30+ years is a long time…
[edit edit] also damn under $10k max out of pocket on a family plan at the bronze level for $17k? I gotta get out of my shithole state. That’s better than our Gold plans (also our plans tend not to cover like 2/3 of area providers, which may include 100% of area specialists for certain situations)
You’ll be exposed to tens of thousands in risk per year on top of (low) tens of thousands in premiums per year for a family Exchange plan. You’ll be burning nearly half of that (and spending all your free time trying to keep hospitals and insurers taking even more) if one of you gets cancer—or, if it’s you who gets cancer, you better hope someone else can handle that.
You also can’t withdraw at as high a “safe rate” as people planning for an ordinary retirement at ~65 do, because your fund needs to last a lot longer despite inflation and such. $2m isn’t “retire at 35” (… or 45) money. It might be “take a big gamble and maybe get lucky… for a while” money. Or semi-retire money.
[edit] at constant 2% inflation (ha!) you need a very safe source of consistent (not average!) 6% returns to retire with 80,000/yr income on $2m, without eating into principal. Anything goes wrong (“whoops, ‘safe’ wasn’t as safe as I thought!” or “whoops, we had a year of 7% inflation and my investments didn’t benefit from that!”) and you can find yourself burning principal while your account value is already down. It won’t take a lot of that before $80k is no longer your safe-withdrawal amount. A couple such years and you may be back to work. 30+ years is a long time…
[edit edit] also damn under $10k max out of pocket on a family plan at the bronze level for $17k? I gotta get out of my shithole state. That’s better than our Gold plans (also our plans tend not to cover like 2/3 of area providers, which may include 100% of area specialists for certain situations)
> You also can’t withdraw at as high a “safe rate” as people planning for an ordinary retirement at ~65 do
Solvable, including consideration of valuations via CAPE PE 10. Based on past data, the safe withdrawal rate (SWR) happens to be around 3.25-3.5% of assets to extend to a 60-year time horizon [1]
> at constant 2% inflation (ha!) you need a very safe source of consistent (not average!) 6% returns to retire with 80,000/yr income on $2m, without eating into principal.
For most of this research, "failure" constitutes running out of money. Preserving the initial portfolio value in inflation-adjusted terms can also be solved for. It takes the SWR closer to 2.8-3% for 60-year horizon with high equity valuation corrections.
> You’ll be exposed to tens of thousands in risk per year on top of (low) tens of thousands in premiums per year for a family Exchange plan.
Better to cap expenses and be ready to pay for it than live in fear. Save, invest, and move on with life.
> $2m isn’t “retire at 35” (… or 45) money. It might be “take a big gamble and maybe get lucky… for a while” money. Or semi-retire money.
Depends on how much money you need to spend every year to be happy. Sounds like you need a lot of it. For many, $2m would be fine, even with a very long time horizon. And if any problems crop up, there would be a 15-20 year warning during which a small income boost could top things up.
----
Things don't always have to be so gloomy.
[1] https://earlyretirementnow.com/2017/09/13/the-ultimate-guide...
Solvable, including consideration of valuations via CAPE PE 10. Based on past data, the safe withdrawal rate (SWR) happens to be around 3.25-3.5% of assets to extend to a 60-year time horizon [1]
> at constant 2% inflation (ha!) you need a very safe source of consistent (not average!) 6% returns to retire with 80,000/yr income on $2m, without eating into principal.
For most of this research, "failure" constitutes running out of money. Preserving the initial portfolio value in inflation-adjusted terms can also be solved for. It takes the SWR closer to 2.8-3% for 60-year horizon with high equity valuation corrections.
> You’ll be exposed to tens of thousands in risk per year on top of (low) tens of thousands in premiums per year for a family Exchange plan.
Better to cap expenses and be ready to pay for it than live in fear. Save, invest, and move on with life.
> $2m isn’t “retire at 35” (… or 45) money. It might be “take a big gamble and maybe get lucky… for a while” money. Or semi-retire money.
Depends on how much money you need to spend every year to be happy. Sounds like you need a lot of it. For many, $2m would be fine, even with a very long time horizon. And if any problems crop up, there would be a 15-20 year warning during which a small income boost could top things up.
----
Things don't always have to be so gloomy.
[1] https://earlyretirementnow.com/2017/09/13/the-ultimate-guide...
My budget includes the premiums and the individual out of pocket max. If that's not good enough, what number am I supposed to be looking at? My with a spouse budget is just 2x the individual budget, family out of pockets are usually around 2x individual in my neck of the woods, so that doesn't make a big difference; if there's kids, then it would, but the modelling there gets tricky because you've got to figure out what age you're kicking them off the plan (assuming they don't have a debilitating condition that leaves them dependent on you for their whole life... that falls outside my plan).
> You also can’t withdraw at as high a “safe rate” as people planning for an ordinary retirement at ~65 do, because your fund needs to last a lot longer despite inflation and such. $2m isn’t “retire at 35” (… or 45) money. It might be “take a big gamble and maybe get lucky… for a while” money. Or semi-retire money.
The $2 M is the budged accumulation only to pay for premiums and out of pocket until you hit Medicare; and that's assuming a spouse. Budgeting that based on perpetual withdrawl rate gives yet another buffer, because it only has to last until Medicare eligibility age. Yeah, there's unknowns, but whatever. I'm not saying $2 M is enough to accumulate for early retirement. It could be, but a lot of people want to spend more money than that. $2 M doesn't generate that much income, so you'll likely qualify for health plan subsidies, which would help a bit too.
Edit: I used zipcode 98110, birthday for illustration 01/01/1960. Going into the less expensive side of my state, zipcode 99336; there's no blue cross out there, but the most expensive bronze plan for that birthdate is $14,000 / year with the same $9200 out of pocket max. And yeah, limited networks suck ... I'm not going to shop for hypotheticals there --- I'm pretty sure if there's no reasonable in network doctors, you can fight your insurance to get covered at a reasonable doctor, regardless of the insurance and state, and if you're early retired, you'll have time for it.
> You also can’t withdraw at as high a “safe rate” as people planning for an ordinary retirement at ~65 do, because your fund needs to last a lot longer despite inflation and such. $2m isn’t “retire at 35” (… or 45) money. It might be “take a big gamble and maybe get lucky… for a while” money. Or semi-retire money.
The $2 M is the budged accumulation only to pay for premiums and out of pocket until you hit Medicare; and that's assuming a spouse. Budgeting that based on perpetual withdrawl rate gives yet another buffer, because it only has to last until Medicare eligibility age. Yeah, there's unknowns, but whatever. I'm not saying $2 M is enough to accumulate for early retirement. It could be, but a lot of people want to spend more money than that. $2 M doesn't generate that much income, so you'll likely qualify for health plan subsidies, which would help a bit too.
Edit: I used zipcode 98110, birthday for illustration 01/01/1960. Going into the less expensive side of my state, zipcode 99336; there's no blue cross out there, but the most expensive bronze plan for that birthdate is $14,000 / year with the same $9200 out of pocket max. And yeah, limited networks suck ... I'm not going to shop for hypotheticals there --- I'm pretty sure if there's no reasonable in network doctors, you can fight your insurance to get covered at a reasonable doctor, regardless of the insurance and state, and if you're early retired, you'll have time for it.
Some people think that if you can't spend a million dollars a year on healthcare for 50 years, you are poor. In a sense they are right, because nothing is more valuable than life, but if you lower your expectations beyond the tippy top 0.1%, and take up a nice hobby like skydiving or motorcycling, you can get by with a lot less.
In the context of this article we're talking about the difference between the kind of rich you become from founding a hugely successful ("unicorn?") tech company, vs working hard for a salary for years and saving hard. It's more a qualitative thing than a specific number of dollars saved from a salary.
I'm well aware that the definition of rich can be very different in other contexts. I'm talking about the context of this article.
I'm well aware that the definition of rich can be very different in other contexts. I'm talking about the context of this article.
Threshold for wealthy enough to "never work again" is actually very high if you have a mortgage and a couple kids you want to put through school, and are thinking about living past 75. Even here in Canada where healthcare is not really a cost, retirement and nursing homes constitute a huge expense that could go on for years in your last phase.
I'm sitting on the accumulated wealth of 25 rather up-and-downish years in this industry, 10 years at Google, an almost paid-off mortgage, and a decent lump sum I got from when Google bought my employer, I turn 50 this year, and there's no way I can retire. Not without selling my home and moving somewhere a lot cheaper (hard to find here).
Maybe I've made some bad financial choices (not that many), but mostly it's that compensation packages in our industry are set just high enough to keep people on the upper side of comfortable middle class.
If you don't own capital -- haven't invested in rental properties or starting your own business --getting out of the job market isn't really a thing before 65 for most people even in our very well compensated industry.
If I were single or it were just me and my wife, sure.
I've been through tldroptions, and looked at enough options agreement given out by startups in the last few years, to know that as an IC engineer... even if you are lucky enough to be part of the very few startups that have a liquidity event... you're likely gonna get $300k, $400k USD tops.
Unless you're 25 and can shove that in the bank without touching it at all... that's not the life changing event some people think it is. Once the gov't takes their share, it's enough for a house downpayment or a very nice car, and you're certainly not going mortgage free with it.
I'm sitting on the accumulated wealth of 25 rather up-and-downish years in this industry, 10 years at Google, an almost paid-off mortgage, and a decent lump sum I got from when Google bought my employer, I turn 50 this year, and there's no way I can retire. Not without selling my home and moving somewhere a lot cheaper (hard to find here).
Maybe I've made some bad financial choices (not that many), but mostly it's that compensation packages in our industry are set just high enough to keep people on the upper side of comfortable middle class.
If you don't own capital -- haven't invested in rental properties or starting your own business --getting out of the job market isn't really a thing before 65 for most people even in our very well compensated industry.
If I were single or it were just me and my wife, sure.
I've been through tldroptions, and looked at enough options agreement given out by startups in the last few years, to know that as an IC engineer... even if you are lucky enough to be part of the very few startups that have a liquidity event... you're likely gonna get $300k, $400k USD tops.
Unless you're 25 and can shove that in the bank without touching it at all... that's not the life changing event some people think it is. Once the gov't takes their share, it's enough for a house downpayment or a very nice car, and you're certainly not going mortgage free with it.
Hmmm. I don't know exactly what your personal financial circumstances are...but from what I understand salaries and benefits to be at Google, you're getting paid plenty, and it should be possible to save at least some of that. Do it for ten years, put it in a nice boring low-cost index fund, and watch the investment returns roll in, and you're looking at a pretty big nest egg by normal people standards.
Part of the complication is the insane housing price inflation that has happened in Canada, combined with the relatively lower compensation rates of SWEs here. Also I don't work at Google anymore.
Still, I'm in a 500x better position than most.
Still, I'm in a 500x better position than most.
expected time to retirement is MUCH, MUCH higher at FAANG if you can save 50%+ of take-home pay after taxes.
Even very early these days won't get you much. Just a bit of a lump sum you could apply to your 401k/RRSP or whatever and inch you ahead by 5-10 years on retirement. If you got it early enough in your life (20s, 30s) that it can gain interest. VCs and founders are writing stock option agreements these days with very low ownership stakes for even very early employees.
Back in the early y2ks, and late 90s, yes, you could get rich and be up and out if you were lucky and played your cards right. Those days are done.
Back in the early y2ks, and late 90s, yes, you could get rich and be up and out if you were lucky and played your cards right. Those days are done.
That whole extended ZIRP thing wasn’t great for interest on savings.
I live in Seattle. There are plenty of early Microsoft hires around here who are "fuck you money" rich.
What is "rich"?
There are tens of not hundreds of thousands of people who could retire comfortably after working at Google, Facebook, Apple, MSFT for a decade during their growth years. How many startup founders can do that?
Sure, becoming a billionaire is a different story but who cares?
There are tens of not hundreds of thousands of people who could retire comfortably after working at Google, Facebook, Apple, MSFT for a decade during their growth years. How many startup founders can do that?
Sure, becoming a billionaire is a different story but who cares?
While agreed the chances are still low, if you joined Tesla or Nvidia in the last 10 years and especially before 2020, you very well and likely are rich if you're still working at either and kept all your stock.
Hell if you joined Facebook last year and got in when the stock was around 100, your initial equity grant just 5x.
Hell if you joined Facebook last year and got in when the stock was around 100, your initial equity grant just 5x.
You could have been investing in Nvidia the whole time.
Decision inertia means that employees often don't sell vested stock, and end up being lucky. Similarly, external investors aren't willing to put 30-50% of their networth into one bet and therefore miss out on the kind of luck that can set them up for life.
There is nothing that a lowly engineer at Tesla or Nvidia knows, that can't be found out by an external investor. They are operating in the same information landscape, but different outcomes when they give into decision inertia.
It's not about joining Tesla or Nvidia early. It's about betting on them.
Decision inertia means that employees often don't sell vested stock, and end up being lucky. Similarly, external investors aren't willing to put 30-50% of their networth into one bet and therefore miss out on the kind of luck that can set them up for life.
There is nothing that a lowly engineer at Tesla or Nvidia knows, that can't be found out by an external investor. They are operating in the same information landscape, but different outcomes when they give into decision inertia.
It's not about joining Tesla or Nvidia early. It's about betting on them.
> It's not about joining Tesla or Nvidia early. It's about betting on them.
It's also possible to bet on Tesla/Nvidia and lose. Badly.
It's also possible to bet on Tesla/Nvidia and lose. Badly.
Exactly. every Nvidia/Tesla employee who became a millionaire recently CHOSE to hold onto their stocks after the vesting period.
That was a bet.
If they hadn't made the bet and sold stocks as soon as they vested, then the returns wouldn't have been as incredible.
That was a bet.
If they hadn't made the bet and sold stocks as soon as they vested, then the returns wouldn't have been as incredible.
[deleted]
I edited the parenthesised part of the first sentence from "and very lucky" to "and/or very lucky" to make allowances for your objection. And sure, you can always point out exceptions.
The real point is that it's misguided to try and compare percentages of tech company employees with percentages of founders; they're very different things.
Of course, out of all the founders of all the companies, a relatively tiny percentage will be vastly rich. And out of all the employees of all the tech companies, most will be quite wealthy and comfortable, and a small percentage will be vastly rich.
But that doesn't tell you anything about what is the most reliable path for any given individual to get vastly rich; it entirely depends on whether you're the kind of person you are how well you can learn how to build successful products and companies.
The real point is that it's misguided to try and compare percentages of tech company employees with percentages of founders; they're very different things.
Of course, out of all the founders of all the companies, a relatively tiny percentage will be vastly rich. And out of all the employees of all the tech companies, most will be quite wealthy and comfortable, and a small percentage will be vastly rich.
But that doesn't tell you anything about what is the most reliable path for any given individual to get vastly rich; it entirely depends on whether you're the kind of person you are how well you can learn how to build successful products and companies.
Tesla has a VERY bad reputation on that front, as does SpaceX.
[deleted]
Not research, but here's this popular Dan Luu essay https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/
My guess is that it is much easier to get rich from working at a tech company and rising through the ranks. Being a FANG middle manager for a couple of years and managing your money well should put you in a very comfortable position. However, if you want to be private island rich, you need to do your own startup.
Certainly in my own circle, people who were fortunate enough to work at FAANG during the right window of time became comfortably rich. Many of my own investors just worked as engineers at Microsoft for the right decade and are worth tens of millions. They worked really hard and sacrificed a lot, but they got paid every step of the way.
Predicting which big tech company will do well enough in future to give you that big stock reward over time is a big gamble, but certainly a smaller gamble than doing a startup.
I know plenty of people who have joined half a dozen startups, none of which yielded any gain. And many entrepreneurs who worked super hard many times and have nothing to show for it but scar tissue.
Whatever you do, the best advice is to ensure you are enjoying the journey. Don’t waste your life just to be rich. That path nearly always yields a Pyrrhic victory.
Predicting which big tech company will do well enough in future to give you that big stock reward over time is a big gamble, but certainly a smaller gamble than doing a startup.
I know plenty of people who have joined half a dozen startups, none of which yielded any gain. And many entrepreneurs who worked super hard many times and have nothing to show for it but scar tissue.
Whatever you do, the best advice is to ensure you are enjoying the journey. Don’t waste your life just to be rich. That path nearly always yields a Pyrrhic victory.
it really depends on what you mean by rich: the surest path to end up with $2-5M over ~10 years is job at ~FAANG, do it well to get promoted, and manage your savings/investments well. that path is very unlikely to get you to $10-100M in the same 10 years, and starting a startup seems to be one of the best ways to do that.
You forget the higher up you go in these companies, the politics get nasty. Not many people have the appetite for that.
You don't need to be a higher up; you just need to be a good cog.
Senior engineer (E5) is enough to get you $2-5M over 10 years. That's terminal cog level.
According to levels.fyi, E5 at Google gets you $385k TC annually. If you save a third of that (which is not easy) for 10 years you get to approximately $1.3 million. Maybe your investments get you above $2 million, but it would really depend on what decade that was. If you had the Great Recession in the middle of that, not so great.
If you think it is easy to save more than a third of your income, remember you’ll have a federal marginal tax rate of 35% or higher, will probably have to work onsite in a HCOL state, and unless you’re lucky enough to live in WA, a high state income tax. Yes you can shield some of your income via 401ks and Roths, but for the former you’re going to get taxed on withdrawal, and for the latter you get penalized if you touch it before you’re 59.5.
Now if you’re dual cogs with no kids, maybe. If you do have kids, you’re not retiring until long after ten years.
If you think it is easy to save more than a third of your income, remember you’ll have a federal marginal tax rate of 35% or higher, will probably have to work onsite in a HCOL state, and unless you’re lucky enough to live in WA, a high state income tax. Yes you can shield some of your income via 401ks and Roths, but for the former you’re going to get taxed on withdrawal, and for the latter you get penalized if you touch it before you’re 59.5.
Now if you’re dual cogs with no kids, maybe. If you do have kids, you’re not retiring until long after ten years.
> If you save a third of that (which is not easy)
This is very easy, actually. You just happen to like fancy things and houses, probably.
> Now if you’re dual cogs with no kids, maybe. If you do have kids, you’re not retiring until long after ten years.
I find it depressing that so many people use kids as an excuse to avoid facing their own problems with money and spending. Look deeper and you can find happiness with a lot less.
This is very easy, actually. You just happen to like fancy things and houses, probably.
> Now if you’re dual cogs with no kids, maybe. If you do have kids, you’re not retiring until long after ten years.
I find it depressing that so many people use kids as an excuse to avoid facing their own problems with money and spending. Look deeper and you can find happiness with a lot less.
Actually I just looked at my last year at a FAANG in California.
I earned about $370 K (including 401K match). $135 K went to taxes (Federal, Social Security, Medicare, State).
If I save absolutely everything left ($235 K) for 10 years that gets me to 2.35 million.
The parent post mentioned saving $2-5 million. To get to $ 2 M I have to live off $35 K a year (I realize I'm ignoring investment activities).
EDIT: additionally to minimize taxation you’re probably doing some of that savings in a 401k. Let’s say $25k * 10 year (I was). But that actually creates a deferred tax obligation. Let’s say the tax rate you pay that at is 20% (very optimistic but by the time you pay it you’ll likely be used to living below the poverty line). That takes you down to $30k a year. Actually even worse the employer match is taxable when you withdraw it, so another deferred tax obligation means that to get to $2M (accounting for future tax obligations) in 10 years you need to live on $25K a year.
That seems challenging in Northern California. Also why would I want to do that? - living at that spending level is likely to affect my long-term health and happiness, so the motivation is not clear to me.
If I save absolutely everything left ($235 K) for 10 years that gets me to 2.35 million.
The parent post mentioned saving $2-5 million. To get to $ 2 M I have to live off $35 K a year (I realize I'm ignoring investment activities).
EDIT: additionally to minimize taxation you’re probably doing some of that savings in a 401k. Let’s say $25k * 10 year (I was). But that actually creates a deferred tax obligation. Let’s say the tax rate you pay that at is 20% (very optimistic but by the time you pay it you’ll likely be used to living below the poverty line). That takes you down to $30k a year. Actually even worse the employer match is taxable when you withdraw it, so another deferred tax obligation means that to get to $2M (accounting for future tax obligations) in 10 years you need to live on $25K a year.
That seems challenging in Northern California. Also why would I want to do that? - living at that spending level is likely to affect my long-term health and happiness, so the motivation is not clear to me.
At $45,000/yr of expenses (do-able in SF), it'll take 7 years to have passive income from a stock+bond portfolio cover those expenses.
https://ibb.co/qyFz1C3
Of course, a bad market makes it longer, but the converse is also true: it's more likely a good market makes it shorter! (historically markets go up more than down, of course)
Add a spouse that also saves and invests, and you can have MORE than $45,000/yr of expenses covered within 7 years of earning at that rate. You can also back off to part time or have one spouse continue working after having kids, and all you need to do is cover SOME (not even all!) of your expenses.
> I want to do that? - living at that spending level is likely to affect my long-term health and happiness
The freedom of not dealing with "the cult of impact" [1] and other such silly things is amazing. Having a huge pile of money allows solid peace of mind in a way most people can't even conceive.
And finding out how much happiness you can get independently of spending money is truly eye-opening. Most people are too scared to even TRY finding fulfillment away from what society tells us is "fun".
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1bh80wl/go...
https://ibb.co/qyFz1C3
Of course, a bad market makes it longer, but the converse is also true: it's more likely a good market makes it shorter! (historically markets go up more than down, of course)
Add a spouse that also saves and invests, and you can have MORE than $45,000/yr of expenses covered within 7 years of earning at that rate. You can also back off to part time or have one spouse continue working after having kids, and all you need to do is cover SOME (not even all!) of your expenses.
> I want to do that? - living at that spending level is likely to affect my long-term health and happiness
The freedom of not dealing with "the cult of impact" [1] and other such silly things is amazing. Having a huge pile of money allows solid peace of mind in a way most people can't even conceive.
And finding out how much happiness you can get independently of spending money is truly eye-opening. Most people are too scared to even TRY finding fulfillment away from what society tells us is "fun".
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1bh80wl/go...
> But that actually creates a deferred tax obligation. Let’s say the tax rate you pay that at is 20% (very optimistic
There are also ways to get at this money with almost no taxes paid later IF you are not working--look for "Roth IRA conversion ladder".
Also look into "Mega Backdoor Roth" for more tax sheltering.
> That seems challenging in Northern California
You don't have to retire to California. Just pay minimal costs while you're there. Many places in US are beautiful, have great infrastructure and health care, and don't cost as much.
And investment growth is a LOT; don't ignore it. And after just a few years of not working, unless you have a bad start you can probably live off of much more than the initial safe withdrawal rate.
There are also ways to get at this money with almost no taxes paid later IF you are not working--look for "Roth IRA conversion ladder".
Also look into "Mega Backdoor Roth" for more tax sheltering.
> That seems challenging in Northern California
You don't have to retire to California. Just pay minimal costs while you're there. Many places in US are beautiful, have great infrastructure and health care, and don't cost as much.
And investment growth is a LOT; don't ignore it. And after just a few years of not working, unless you have a bad start you can probably live off of much more than the initial safe withdrawal rate.
This is just a thinly veiled ad hominem.
This advice is horrible for 14 year olds - it’s the equivalent of saying hey kids go become a movie star, rock star, sports champion or rapper
I think most of it is good advice focusing on creativity, independence, crafting and tinkering – which traditional schooling is bad at. What’s toxic is the extreme rush of it all. You don't need to be successful business owner at 22. In fact, sounds like a good way to distort your perspective on life, and business. Incubators seem to like young people because they are gullible and investors can offer them less and get more control. If it was so important to be young in business, then how come they should listen to advice from those old farts? That’s the part that bugs me, it seems exploitative.
Another reason to play it slower is you can work and save for financial security beforehand, and you can build your network without going to MIT or Stanford. You’ll meet plenty of people working from all kinds of backgrounds. You’ll get to practice financial decision making. You’ll be a more well-rounded person who can empathize with different walks of life, (isn’t understanding people gospel in VC land?).
Another reason to play it slower is you can work and save for financial security beforehand, and you can build your network without going to MIT or Stanford. You’ll meet plenty of people working from all kinds of backgrounds. You’ll get to practice financial decision making. You’ll be a more well-rounded person who can empathize with different walks of life, (isn’t understanding people gospel in VC land?).
The advice boils down to “work on projects that interest you” and “do well and school” and maybe “if you don’t know what you’re interested in, try programming”.
Even if they don’t make a startup, at least following the advice would make them more employable.
Even if they don’t make a startup, at least following the advice would make them more employable.
really? at the end of the day it just says "study well and have your own projects" which is a great advice in any way?
I was really excited to open this thinking it would be a thought experiment on how to restart all of Google's services if they ever went down all at the same time. Was mildly disappointed to find that this was about starting the next Google.
What I want to know is how to become an individual that is able to obtain the kind of things that provide leverage. I already have the machines, I just don't have the platform to move around exciting events and I simply stay in my room. I don't even have a bank account afaik. My paypal account insists on using chinese language (it's cursed). I'm waiting for github to implement a currency I can use. Then again, maybe there's nothing I would do differently.
I would recommend to look at local hacker spaces and just befriend people there. Chat around, listen to others, show interest. That’s a good starting point
I am curious how this ethos of the 3 things you need and playfulness/not-intended-to-be-a-startup startups project is in enacted per batch. Like YC's now numerous sales operations/software companies in the past batches: 19-22 years are making email-based-crms for their friends? (I guess a batch and other batches are "friends" so goalposts shift and magically appear). The growth in sales saas companies out of YC seems less of fun project and more of this is a business opportunity for the enterprise. Probably for other spaces as well. Is there dissonance between the tenets of this essay and actually YC companies of late? Does someone have better analysis, would be much appreciated?
""" What you need in a startup idea, and all you need, is something your friends actually want. """
""" What you need in a startup idea, and all you need, is something your friends actually want. """
Here is a launch front-page today: Okapi (YC W24) -- A new, flexible CRM with good UX
Nothing about friends, nothing about fun projects. Mainly just looking at Salesforce, knowing its the DB for business-side of the house, and that the UI/X of SFDC is not good, so here is a better UX (much appreciated).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39755927
Nothing about friends, nothing about fun projects. Mainly just looking at Salesforce, knowing its the DB for business-side of the house, and that the UI/X of SFDC is not good, so here is a better UX (much appreciated).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39755927
I know people mention that this advice smacks of survivorship bias, and I think that's pretty obviously going to be a part of any advice given about economic outcomes whose odds of working out are perhaps a whole order of magnitude better than lottery tickets
I think it's more important to note how talks like this use "children" as an excuse to present a very sanitized version of the history being discussed. I think a massively underappreciated mechanism by which American culture distorts history is by its very lax and sometimes supportive norms about fudging the truth and sometimes even outright lying to children
I think it's more important to note how talks like this use "children" as an excuse to present a very sanitized version of the history being discussed. I think a massively underappreciated mechanism by which American culture distorts history is by its very lax and sometimes supportive norms about fudging the truth and sometimes even outright lying to children
The biggest thing missing from this talk -- something that would have been easy to include, even for a younger audience -- is that the majority of startups fail, and even many startups that do well enough end up making their founders less money than if they went to work for another company.
It feels irresponsible to tell kids how they can build the next Google, without also telling them how likely it is they won't succeed at it.
Granted, most people in their early 20s have very little to lose, so a failed startup may not be much of a problem, outside of the stress and emotional effects.
It feels irresponsible to tell kids how they can build the next Google, without also telling them how likely it is they won't succeed at it.
Granted, most people in their early 20s have very little to lose, so a failed startup may not be much of a problem, outside of the stress and emotional effects.
I mean, like most advice from my generation and prior ones, the notion that people in their 20s can't fuck up too badly because they have little to lose applies considerably less well to all but the fairly affluent people in their 20s today. For many, taking risks means being gated out of the financial system by bad credit, being behind in an unforgiving job market, and possibly even destitution if they don't have a safety net of some kind
To be clear, this was always true to some degree, but inequality is higher, industries have more power and thus workers have less, and safety nets that don't come from your parents being well-off are weaker (and fewer people's parents are well-off) than when I was a kid, and this has actually been true for a few subsequent generations of kids
To be clear, this was always true to some degree, but inequality is higher, industries have more power and thus workers have less, and safety nets that don't come from your parents being well-off are weaker (and fewer people's parents are well-off) than when I was a kid, and this has actually been true for a few subsequent generations of kids
The best advice to give children is that they should be born to rich, influential and well-connected parents. That will give them a huge advantage in all walks of life including if they want to start a startup. Larry and Sergei had the benefit of rich, influential and well-connected parents, as did Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Paul Graham himself.
I think the place where this is most apparent in the speech is the bit about selective universities. It's interesting the way people like Graham talk about how universities work, because they're actually kind of the primary place where a particular sleight of hand happens. Every very wealthy person I've ever met believes wealth and intelligence to be tightly coupled. Some will even talk about these things as though they're completely equivalent.
Universities kind of double down on this equivalence in some ways, as they are the de facto credentialing system for the job market, although there's some evidence that this is for the first time in quite a while becoming less true in some sectors, it's still a huge part of the reality of how social mobility is gated.
So when Graham frames the role of "selective" universities in the success of various famous startups, he's totally right that they're excellent places to network. But his conception of their selectivity is pretty strange. It's pretty well-understood by now that a lot of mechanisms can get people into great schools via the wealth and influence of their parents rather than "smarts and determination". I once read someone who pointed out that bringing in a few "scholarship" kids who are less well off makes it seem like anyone could get in with the right grades and test scores, and the incentive is to have just enough of these to ambiguate who is there for what reasons. To launder the "wealthy, well-connected" with some "smart, determined" cred. It's telling therefore that he leaves out one of the most important parts of the networking value of universities: They're a great place to meet funders, and the top tier universities also have significant resources to facilitate student projects that may turn into companies, compared to other institutions
Universities kind of double down on this equivalence in some ways, as they are the de facto credentialing system for the job market, although there's some evidence that this is for the first time in quite a while becoming less true in some sectors, it's still a huge part of the reality of how social mobility is gated.
So when Graham frames the role of "selective" universities in the success of various famous startups, he's totally right that they're excellent places to network. But his conception of their selectivity is pretty strange. It's pretty well-understood by now that a lot of mechanisms can get people into great schools via the wealth and influence of their parents rather than "smarts and determination". I once read someone who pointed out that bringing in a few "scholarship" kids who are less well off makes it seem like anyone could get in with the right grades and test scores, and the incentive is to have just enough of these to ambiguate who is there for what reasons. To launder the "wealthy, well-connected" with some "smart, determined" cred. It's telling therefore that he leaves out one of the most important parts of the networking value of universities: They're a great place to meet funders, and the top tier universities also have significant resources to facilitate student projects that may turn into companies, compared to other institutions
Why do think this is an "American" thing?
The author is British, for one.
The author is British, for one.
My bad, it's just that literally every single example he gave was a US company, so I got mixed up
That said, the US and Britain are both quite world-class at both endorsing lying to children and revisionist history are definitely among
That said, the US and Britain are both quite world-class at both endorsing lying to children and revisionist history are definitely among
Paul Graham sounds like a boomer telling their kids to go apply in person or go door to door for jobs. Especially talking about Software startups, which will increasingly have a lower and lower barrier to entry (aka lower profitability)
Theres simply no way to get away with what Google, Facebook or Uber did today. You will not sneak your software into enterprise customers, you will not be able to skirt regulations.
Hell the big money pot of getting acquired may be dead too, e.g. Figma.
For most startups, you will fail. For the top 1% of companies you can hope to at best make a comfortable living at a multi-million dollar valuation. Only the .0001% will become a Google.
Theres simply no way to get away with what Google, Facebook or Uber did today. You will not sneak your software into enterprise customers, you will not be able to skirt regulations.
Hell the big money pot of getting acquired may be dead too, e.g. Figma.
For most startups, you will fail. For the top 1% of companies you can hope to at best make a comfortable living at a multi-million dollar valuation. Only the .0001% will become a Google.
While you are right, the trick is to find the new unturned stone. Google, Facebook and Uber developed playbooks for their respective environments. One cannot replay their playbook and expect it to work
Paul is fundamentally wrong with one thiing here: Larry knew google was going to be huge from the beginning. His brother Carl was already a multimillionare in tech and taught him everything required to set up a future successful company.
Larry made it clear to me that he always planned Google to be a large cash-generating cow to invest in long-term AGI and there were only a few times at the beginning when he truly feared that wouldn't happen.
Do you have any sources for this? If he knew it was going to be this huge, why were they looking for an acquisition for north of a million dollars? On AGI: are you referencing this clip? [1] To me, it seems like an ordinary vision when you stretch your imagination. He didn't have any realistic idea how Google might achieve AGI, just something that could happen in the future. And this was in 2000. Google, I imagine, was pretty successful by then.
Larry Page's original ambition was to digitize books and knowledge in the world [2].
> Page had always wanted to digitize books. Way back in 1996, the student project that eventually became Google—a “crawler” that would ingest documents and rank them for relevance against a user’s query—was actually conceived as part of an effort “to develop the enabling technologies for a single, integrated and universal digital library.”
[1]: https://twitter.com/jam3scampbell/status/1608270969763729415
[2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-t...
Larry Page's original ambition was to digitize books and knowledge in the world [2].
> Page had always wanted to digitize books. Way back in 1996, the student project that eventually became Google—a “crawler” that would ingest documents and rank them for relevance against a user’s query—was actually conceived as part of an effort “to develop the enabling technologies for a single, integrated and universal digital library.”
[1]: https://twitter.com/jam3scampbell/status/1608270969763729415
[2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-t...
Also worked at Google in the 00s, and have spoken personally with several people who worked on Google when it was still a Stanford grad project.
To hear Larry tell it, his original idea for Google was to download the whole web and throw away everything but the links, and he was inspired by academic notions of citation indexes. It wasn’t specifically (or really at all, until Google books came out) about books - that sounds like a cover story to get grad student funding for his actual idea, because you can’t really go to a university and say “I want to download the whole web and throw away everything but the links” without telling them why or connecting it to some plausibly useful idea.
The acquisition offer is often cited, but I don’t think Larry and Sergey were ever really serious about taking it. They didn’t, after all. But if you’re living on a grad student stipend (which was like $20k in the 90s), a million bucks is a lot of money.
And they absolutely knew it would be big, they just didn’t know how it would be big. It was quite popular within the Stanford lab as well…it’s interesting, looking through the early CVS commits for Google, how much work was done by people who ended up not actually becoming employees of Google or having a major part in its story. I think the real genius of Google was treating the web as an object that could be studied and manipulated, and not as some amorphous thing you were part of. That was exciting even if people didn’t know how it would be.
To hear Larry tell it, his original idea for Google was to download the whole web and throw away everything but the links, and he was inspired by academic notions of citation indexes. It wasn’t specifically (or really at all, until Google books came out) about books - that sounds like a cover story to get grad student funding for his actual idea, because you can’t really go to a university and say “I want to download the whole web and throw away everything but the links” without telling them why or connecting it to some plausibly useful idea.
The acquisition offer is often cited, but I don’t think Larry and Sergey were ever really serious about taking it. They didn’t, after all. But if you’re living on a grad student stipend (which was like $20k in the 90s), a million bucks is a lot of money.
And they absolutely knew it would be big, they just didn’t know how it would be big. It was quite popular within the Stanford lab as well…it’s interesting, looking through the early CVS commits for Google, how much work was done by people who ended up not actually becoming employees of Google or having a major part in its story. I think the real genius of Google was treating the web as an object that could be studied and manipulated, and not as some amorphous thing you were part of. That was exciting even if people didn’t know how it would be.
my source is larry himself- I used to work there and volunteered at SciFoo, which he attended and I chatted with him about it. The digital library is basically building a corpus for training AGI.
His dad was a computer scientist and larry read a lot of AGI sci fi as a kid, so it's not really that hard to extrapolate 1980s technology to 2040s outcomes.
His dad was a computer scientist and larry read a lot of AGI sci fi as a kid, so it's not really that hard to extrapolate 1980s technology to 2040s outcomes.
His dad wasn't "just" a computer scientist, he was a professor for computer science and artificial intelligence at Michigan State. Sergey Brin's father was equally a professor in mathematics at the University of Maryland.
> It's obvious in retrospect that this was a great idea for a startup. It wasn't obvious at the time.
It may not have been obvious, but the decision was damn well near as engineered with data as it could be. They also were _insanely_ well connected through their and their parents academic career. Both Sergey and Larry had obtained their PhD prior to starting the company. I can also remember reading that they obtained significant amounts of funding through connections Larry's dad had into the industry.
You can ignore the rest of my comment, what follows is just my take.
Their success story is imo one of the most blatant examples on how privilege really does give you a boost in life. I am not arguing that anyone could have done it, but I do wonder how the world would look like if we were all kids of academics with a successful career, with a relatively safe, secure and stable childhood home and a family background that really incentivizes learning and academic success over succumbing to the pressure of, you know, having an income at some point.
> It's obvious in retrospect that this was a great idea for a startup. It wasn't obvious at the time.
It may not have been obvious, but the decision was damn well near as engineered with data as it could be. They also were _insanely_ well connected through their and their parents academic career. Both Sergey and Larry had obtained their PhD prior to starting the company. I can also remember reading that they obtained significant amounts of funding through connections Larry's dad had into the industry.
You can ignore the rest of my comment, what follows is just my take.
Their success story is imo one of the most blatant examples on how privilege really does give you a boost in life. I am not arguing that anyone could have done it, but I do wonder how the world would look like if we were all kids of academics with a successful career, with a relatively safe, secure and stable childhood home and a family background that really incentivizes learning and academic success over succumbing to the pressure of, you know, having an income at some point.
I don't think larry or sergey got their phd - larry got a masters and I think sergey left before he got any degree.
Don't forget that Larry's older brother Carl went through the whole VC process with egroups and gained extreme experience with how to maximize his position in negotiation.
But yes, I agree completely that kids of academics raised in an environment that incentivzes learning is a reliable way to transform the future.
Don't forget that Larry's older brother Carl went through the whole VC process with egroups and gained extreme experience with how to maximize his position in negotiation.
But yes, I agree completely that kids of academics raised in an environment that incentivzes learning is a reliable way to transform the future.
The timing is a little muddled here - Scott Hassan (who, interestingly enough, wrote most of the original code for Google) founded eGroups with Carl Page in 1997, after working on BackRub/Google. The two should be viewed as parallel projects - Google actually started first, but eGroups raised money first. It’s true that Larry got valuable experience through having his brother raise capital first, but much of that also came from having supportive angels like (Sun founder) Andy Bechtolsteim, (Stanford professor and Granite Systems founder) David Cheriton, (Junglee and Netscape exec) Ram Shriram, and (Amazon founder) Jeff Bezos.
So to correct my original statement: Both have a masters degree and both were pursuing PhD's before they focused on Google. But I consider them more than halfway there, afaik both have published papers separate from the paper that eventually lead to Google. This is taken from their own testimonials from their paper [0]
The rest of my statement is true.
[0] http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf
The rest of my statement is true.
[0] http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf
This is what all these blogs don't really mention and I have seen this over and over and over again. You need a fundamental place in society: really high up to attempt to do any of this.
Well you can still be Larry Page's dad (or his grandad) and attempt to give your children a launching place to become Google. Most success have to be built multi generationally.
> Their success story is imo one of the most blatant examples on how privilege really does give you a boost in life. I am not arguing that anyone could have done it, but I do wonder how the world would look like if we were all kids of academics with a successful career, with a relatively safe, secure and stable childhood home and a family background that really incentivizes learning and academic success over succumbing to the pressure of, you know, having an income at some point.
I recently read something that played out a thought experiment about "imagine the world could only hold 10,000 people". It may have been a comment somewhere on HN honestly. The idea was that if the world could only hold 10,000 people, there never would have been enough division of basic duties for any one individual to dive so deep that they could invent semi-conductors (insert any modern tech really). I mean we likely wouldn't even have mastered locomotion by now if that was the case.
Lets assume we're "all kids of academics with a successful career, with a relatively safe, secure and stable childhood home and a family background that really incentivizes learning and academic success over succumbing to the pressure of, you know, having an income at some point." Most of us will still just be working on the basic societal problems of producing food and taking out the trash.
I recently read something that played out a thought experiment about "imagine the world could only hold 10,000 people". It may have been a comment somewhere on HN honestly. The idea was that if the world could only hold 10,000 people, there never would have been enough division of basic duties for any one individual to dive so deep that they could invent semi-conductors (insert any modern tech really). I mean we likely wouldn't even have mastered locomotion by now if that was the case.
Lets assume we're "all kids of academics with a successful career, with a relatively safe, secure and stable childhood home and a family background that really incentivizes learning and academic success over succumbing to the pressure of, you know, having an income at some point." Most of us will still just be working on the basic societal problems of producing food and taking out the trash.
It was on HN, this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39746742
> I recently read something that played out a thought experiment
With all due respect, the world isn't a thought experiment and the dynamics of a system with 10.000 people is not comparable to that of 7 billion.
My argument was pointing at the fact that it may be pointless to compare your own plans to success against someone elses success story, when they had completely different starting variables in life and people who refuse to at least consider this are either trapped in the Silicon Valley hustle culture or are, sorry, completely ignorant, bordering on idiotic.
With that same logic ala "Not everyone can be X" I can justify almost all of human suffering in the world. I refuse to believe that you follow an ideology like this if you're on this site, because if you did, you were already rich by means of some criminal enterprise exploiting humans far beyond what tech startups are capable of.
This isn't some appeal to idk, introducing communism and making everyone equal but this argument is as dumb as making a healthy runner compete in the paralympics.
With all due respect, the world isn't a thought experiment and the dynamics of a system with 10.000 people is not comparable to that of 7 billion.
My argument was pointing at the fact that it may be pointless to compare your own plans to success against someone elses success story, when they had completely different starting variables in life and people who refuse to at least consider this are either trapped in the Silicon Valley hustle culture or are, sorry, completely ignorant, bordering on idiotic.
With that same logic ala "Not everyone can be X" I can justify almost all of human suffering in the world. I refuse to believe that you follow an ideology like this if you're on this site, because if you did, you were already rich by means of some criminal enterprise exploiting humans far beyond what tech startups are capable of.
This isn't some appeal to idk, introducing communism and making everyone equal but this argument is as dumb as making a healthy runner compete in the paralympics.
It's only in hindsight that training with a huge corpus of text is going to give AGI.
(Still not obvious if you ask me.)
(Still not obvious if you ask me.)
I'm the same age as Larry and started working in machine learning in the early 90s, and to me, it seemed pretty obvious at the time that AGI would ultimately need a large corpus of text (and video) to be useful. What's kind of funny is the models I worked with at the time- hidden markov models of (biological) text anticipated the validity of this approach, although by design, they don't work with long contexts.
In the “Measure What Matters” book the author talks about investing in Google in early 1999, and the founders were indeed projecting billions of dollars in revenue, using ads.
[deleted]
Digitizing all the books in he world was an is an essential component of modern AI, a full two decades later.
I don't know what point you are trying to make.
Googles mission was always to know everything for everyone.
I don't know what point you are trying to make.
Googles mission was always to know everything for everyone.
> Paul is fundamentally wrong with one thiing here: Larry knew google was going to be huge from the beginning.
Nobody can know such a thing -- especially turning around a billion-dollar business, a thing with a near-zero prior probability. It's more reasonable to say that Larry had the drive, the aptitude, and the resources to maximize his odds (which would still be low.)
Nobody can know such a thing -- especially turning around a billion-dollar business, a thing with a near-zero prior probability. It's more reasonable to say that Larry had the drive, the aptitude, and the resources to maximize his odds (which would still be low.)
If you're one of the smartest people in the world, working in one of the most impactful areas... the posterior probability is more like 90% than near-zero.
Depends- for example, duirng the time that Google started up, I was in grad school with a great deal of support for starting biotech companies, but when I looked... even the geniuses were struggling because at the time, biotech companies could take a decade or more to be profitable or fail. It was clear, as we were exiting the late 90s dot com crash that the economy and money for tech was going to come back, and companies that took advantage of rapidly increasing specs on cheap machines (versus buying expensive Suns, DECs, or SGIs) were going to be able to scale to immense amounts of traffic, and deliver ads for profit.
I don't think at that time biotech could be considered very impactful. After all, search engines were literally impacting billions of peoples' lives within a few years, but a new drug would take a decade to get to market, and impact "only" millions of people.
Do you remember the dot com boom of the late 90s, though?
You know I remember hearing this way back in the early 2000s but forgot about it, Carl is pretty low key, no Wikipedia / etc
I chatted with him several times. One thing I've noticed is that Larry and Carl both have some behaviors that are consistent with ... inflexible thinking ... that I recognize in myself and have worked to correct.
Anyway ,we chatted about his latest company, which I can't find now. The idea was this: industrial facilities often return really noisy signals on the electrical supply lines, and the electrical company has to do a lot of work to clean it up (hey, I'm not an EE). Like, motors, etc, all severely distort the waveform. So his company made and I guess sold a product that you'd put at your electrical service panel that "cleaned up" the signal before it went back to the power company. In response, the company would give you cheaper power prices.
I was reminded of this when Larry Page met with Donald Trump early in the Trump administration and brought up one of his favorite plans- to rebuild the US electrical grid around DC distribution. He's truly made for another world.
Anyway ,we chatted about his latest company, which I can't find now. The idea was this: industrial facilities often return really noisy signals on the electrical supply lines, and the electrical company has to do a lot of work to clean it up (hey, I'm not an EE). Like, motors, etc, all severely distort the waveform. So his company made and I guess sold a product that you'd put at your electrical service panel that "cleaned up" the signal before it went back to the power company. In response, the company would give you cheaper power prices.
I was reminded of this when Larry Page met with Donald Trump early in the Trump administration and brought up one of his favorite plans- to rebuild the US electrical grid around DC distribution. He's truly made for another world.
That’s a super thoughtful response, thanks. Also my armchair understanding is that HVDC electric is superior and our electrical grid needs the rework anyways haha
This is entirely fair in its goal and perspective.
It's not about starting Koch Industries or Disney.
It's not about some ideal world where connections and funding don't matter.
It's about a kind of productive problem solving that creates value for other people by solving problems they just accept as friction in their lives.
It's insightful in focusing on how projects you love can end up helping others.
But it's a little misleading in that people are listening not because they are doing what they love, but because they want to be successful - ideally to take what they love and turn it into success - according to this plan.
Let's say each year 10,000 people would love to become professional football players, 500 make it to the NFL, and 5 become household names - success stories.
There's no real accounting for the time wasted by the 9,500 doing the extra required not out of enjoyment of the game but to become successful (leaving aside any actual costs like TBI). It's at least an exported cost. But it might have other downstream effects, making someone less confident in their judgement, less likely to engage in making a better world of whatever sort.
One of the Buddhist precepts is not to sell the wine of delusion (in some translations). But it's also soul-killing to tell someone how likely they are to fail; who says that at a wedding? What benefit is that?
Paul Graham made a success of helping others be successful. That's a really good model to consider: to do and teach and help. So I would take this as good teaching for teens.
It's not about starting Koch Industries or Disney.
It's not about some ideal world where connections and funding don't matter.
It's about a kind of productive problem solving that creates value for other people by solving problems they just accept as friction in their lives.
It's insightful in focusing on how projects you love can end up helping others.
But it's a little misleading in that people are listening not because they are doing what they love, but because they want to be successful - ideally to take what they love and turn it into success - according to this plan.
Let's say each year 10,000 people would love to become professional football players, 500 make it to the NFL, and 5 become household names - success stories.
There's no real accounting for the time wasted by the 9,500 doing the extra required not out of enjoyment of the game but to become successful (leaving aside any actual costs like TBI). It's at least an exported cost. But it might have other downstream effects, making someone less confident in their judgement, less likely to engage in making a better world of whatever sort.
One of the Buddhist precepts is not to sell the wine of delusion (in some translations). But it's also soul-killing to tell someone how likely they are to fail; who says that at a wedding? What benefit is that?
Paul Graham made a success of helping others be successful. That's a really good model to consider: to do and teach and help. So I would take this as good teaching for teens.
Fully agreed.
I was the first graduating class from one of the first public high schools in the country with an IT magnet program.
I remember the program coordinator telling us and our parents in a big presentation that we could be making $70-80k out of high school. He was really selling it.
I was not making anywhere near that out of high school. =P
But I wasn't doing bad either. In fact, I'd had two jobs with tech companies before I even graduated. I had a job lined up in the engineering department of an OEM prior to receiving my high school diploma. That same administrator was always encouraging us, cheering us on with our various projects, helping where he could.
I never thought for a moment I'd been mislead that my salary wasn't that high or that I didn't make it "rich". Any kid who'd sat through a school fundraiser presentation in middle school knows that those awesome prizes of a computer or game console or whatnot is just meant to hype you up. But you might be able to land a CD player. (My age is showing here. =P )
I expect any 14-15yo he's talking to will get the gist. The kids are not stupid. They get the pitch. And I think they intrinsically know the odds too. Those 9,500 football players are not all going to see it as a loss, even if they didn't achieve their ultimate goal. People turn losses into wins and salvage the good from a failed attempt all of the time.
My son is 3, and already has fun mashing computer parts together and wanting to see how things work. I'm excited to see if he wants to do this as well. Will I tell him "Dude, that guy said I'd be making $90k and that was B.S." Nah. I'll give him simple version of Paul's advice. Even if he doesn't go into entrepreneurship, it'll set him up well if he follows it.
I was the first graduating class from one of the first public high schools in the country with an IT magnet program.
I remember the program coordinator telling us and our parents in a big presentation that we could be making $70-80k out of high school. He was really selling it.
I was not making anywhere near that out of high school. =P
But I wasn't doing bad either. In fact, I'd had two jobs with tech companies before I even graduated. I had a job lined up in the engineering department of an OEM prior to receiving my high school diploma. That same administrator was always encouraging us, cheering us on with our various projects, helping where he could.
I never thought for a moment I'd been mislead that my salary wasn't that high or that I didn't make it "rich". Any kid who'd sat through a school fundraiser presentation in middle school knows that those awesome prizes of a computer or game console or whatnot is just meant to hype you up. But you might be able to land a CD player. (My age is showing here. =P )
I expect any 14-15yo he's talking to will get the gist. The kids are not stupid. They get the pitch. And I think they intrinsically know the odds too. Those 9,500 football players are not all going to see it as a loss, even if they didn't achieve their ultimate goal. People turn losses into wins and salvage the good from a failed attempt all of the time.
My son is 3, and already has fun mashing computer parts together and wanting to see how things work. I'm excited to see if he wants to do this as well. Will I tell him "Dude, that guy said I'd be making $90k and that was B.S." Nah. I'll give him simple version of Paul's advice. Even if he doesn't go into entrepreneurship, it'll set him up well if he follows it.
> Don't try to guess whether gene editing or LLMs or rockets will turn out to be the most valuable technology to know about. No one can predict that. Just work on whatever interests you the most.
This optimizes for Paul's outcomes not for the individual outcomes.
This optimizes for Paul's outcomes not for the individual outcomes.
> This optimizes for Paul's outcomes not for the individual outcomes.
Actually, PG advice is solid. Trying to guess the next big thing is not a winning strategy. More so for teenagers who lack a lot of skills including good judgement. Even if their guess was guaranteed spot-on, and the universe was rooting for you, once the cat is out of the bag, what advantage would a 15 years old have? They don't have any war chest or connections to survive.
If the goal is to optimize the individual's outcome, outside working towards a stable 9-5 career, their best bet is indeed building projects they're passionate about and utilizing the skills they gain in their next endeavour.
One way to waste your life is being constantly distracted by which industry is more profitable or has more potential, doubting yourself and switching context.
Actually, PG advice is solid. Trying to guess the next big thing is not a winning strategy. More so for teenagers who lack a lot of skills including good judgement. Even if their guess was guaranteed spot-on, and the universe was rooting for you, once the cat is out of the bag, what advantage would a 15 years old have? They don't have any war chest or connections to survive.
If the goal is to optimize the individual's outcome, outside working towards a stable 9-5 career, their best bet is indeed building projects they're passionate about and utilizing the skills they gain in their next endeavour.
One way to waste your life is being constantly distracted by which industry is more profitable or has more potential, doubting yourself and switching context.
Depends on how you measure individual outcomes. Arguably, a life lived passionately is the best individual outcome, even if it doesn't result in you becoming rich. Maybe that's a privileged thing to say, and certainly if someone following their passions is staring down the barrel of poverty then they might want to rebalance in favor of their financial health, but in the absence of dire financial circumstances, passion is a good compass to follow. Certainly many people volunteer their time for causes they are passionate about, with no expectation of financial reward, and are happier for doing so.
What PG is noting is that sometimes (even if rarely), what an individual is passionate about can also be good for investors. But the passion comes first.
What PG is noting is that sometimes (even if rarely), what an individual is passionate about can also be good for investors. But the passion comes first.
I think he’s saying that at the time when you’re making the prediction you can’t know. If you're gonna learn som core technology that you can use 7 years later (where he suggests programming) then this makes sense.
I think there’s a strong element of luck here: even if you have general purpose skills in eg programming or CS, once a novel opportunity presents itself, you likely won’t have a head start, especially today. But what can you do about it? Telling kids who are 14-15 that they should bet on some more niched tech like LLMs or even transformers would likely be terrible advice.
I think there’s a strong element of luck here: even if you have general purpose skills in eg programming or CS, once a novel opportunity presents itself, you likely won’t have a head start, especially today. But what can you do about it? Telling kids who are 14-15 that they should bet on some more niched tech like LLMs or even transformers would likely be terrible advice.
I upvoted because I thought it was a clever observation (meaning one that did not obviously present itself to me), although I did need https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39763016 to explain what you meant.
Becoming among the best in the world at one or an intersection of things is an excellent individual outcome, and one way to do that is to work hard on what interests you.
You can certainly become the best in the world at some combination of things that don’t interest you, but that seems less fun.
You can certainly become the best in the world at some combination of things that don’t interest you, but that seems less fun.
> This optimizes for Paul's outcomes not for the individual outcomes.
I don't get your comment. Are you saying PG is trying to deter and throw off teenagers so they don't compete in the space he invested in?
I don't get your comment. Are you saying PG is trying to deter and throw off teenagers so they don't compete in the space he invested in?
No, they're saying 1000 bets on random foundational technology means PG is more likely to have a startup to invest in that's a winner, then necessarily giving good advice to the individual founder who doesn't have 1000 turns at the wheel.
This does make sense. I think it's also possible that most of the successes PG sees are people doing something interesting to them. So the argument would be more like: among success stories, true interest is more common than trend chasing.
Of course YC funds tons of ChatGPT wrappers so dunno.
Of course YC funds tons of ChatGPT wrappers so dunno.
The founder who tries to do something boring and profitable ends up doing things like making another CRM or some kind of SaaS pipeline from one thing to another. These tend to be things that get built anyway by the people with more funding. There's so many CRMs built on top of vtiger open source, and these may be better than vtiger for a while, but in the long run they fall behind.
Paradoxically, avoiding risks makes people more likely to take the riskier options.
Paradoxically, avoiding risks makes people more likely to take the riskier options.
And yet, what makes most people on average the most amount of money is working on boring problems, not sexy, new technology problems. That is what is mainly implied by the top level parent. For every Elon making rockets, many more are more likely to make a significant amount of money just building another CRM.
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No. Survivorship Bias.
I wonder: what better advice, that optimizes for individual outcomes, would you offer founders-to-be instead?
Be lucky?
I don't have any particular advice. I've been very lucky to join a few companies that were on the run up at the time but I never really knew at the time that they were going to be successful.
I just think blindly pursuing passion to the exclusion of profit will leave most people happy (or not) but impoverished and some people happy, lucky, and wealthy.
It was really just a tongue in cheek comment. I think Paul's advice is inspirational but it should be checked with a healthy dose of reality.
I don't have any particular advice. I've been very lucky to join a few companies that were on the run up at the time but I never really knew at the time that they were going to be successful.
I just think blindly pursuing passion to the exclusion of profit will leave most people happy (or not) but impoverished and some people happy, lucky, and wealthy.
It was really just a tongue in cheek comment. I think Paul's advice is inspirational but it should be checked with a healthy dose of reality.
Incidentally, Paul's advice is the best advice I heard for maximising your luck surface area. You know that saying: luck is where preparation meets opportunity.
I don't know anybody impoverished from trying to build something. Even if they failed, the lessons they learned and people they met in the process offered plenty of future opportunities.
On the other hand, I know plenty of people unhappy with their lot in life but who didn't try anything to improve it when they could. They like to complain a lot and impose their bitterness and skepticism on the young dreamers.
And our society needs many, many more dreamers. Because when they succeed, as seldom as it happens, we all end up better thanks to them.
I don't know anybody impoverished from trying to build something. Even if they failed, the lessons they learned and people they met in the process offered plenty of future opportunities.
On the other hand, I know plenty of people unhappy with their lot in life but who didn't try anything to improve it when they could. They like to complain a lot and impose their bitterness and skepticism on the young dreamers.
And our society needs many, many more dreamers. Because when they succeed, as seldom as it happens, we all end up better thanks to them.
it seems like PG doesn't worry about AI replacing programmers
He’s hiring them, so if there’s no programmers, but a program— well, okay
This essay glosses over the fact that most startups die a horrible death and earn little to no money for the founders.
Somewhere in this essay it needs to say “99% of you who try this will fail”.
Somewhere in this essay it needs to say “99% of you who try this will fail”.
I was sad to search for the word "luck" and come up empty. You can do everything right and still fail. You can do everything wrong and win. Sometimes you're just in the right place at the right time, and that external factor is completely out of your control and can be the difference you need.
I don't disagree that luck is a factor, but what can you do with that information other than console yourself when it doesn't work out?
Learn how to manage bets. Some people have the resources to fail many times and keep going. Others do not. Knowing that a huge portion of starting a business is luck, you can better weigh your options and hopefully select different opportunities depending on your situation.
And, in the unfortunately common case, recognize when you cannot take any bets and instead focus on getting yourself to a place where you can, rather than betting everything and losing everything.
And, in the unfortunately common case, recognize when you cannot take any bets and instead focus on getting yourself to a place where you can, rather than betting everything and losing everything.
Managing "bets" with capital that you can afford to lose is utterly different to managing "bets" with your time and labor.
You can decide not to do it in the first place.
A 15-year-old hearing this talk from Graham as-is might take from it, "wow, if I learn programming, work on things that interest me, do well in school, and go to a good university, I'm guaranteed to build a Google-scale successful startup!"
Telling that kid that there's also a component of luck involved, and that the vast majority of startups fail, would temper that enthusiasm in a much more honest way. If that means fewer kids decide to start companies, that's obviously a negative in Graham's book, but may not be a negative for those kids themselves.
A 15-year-old hearing this talk from Graham as-is might take from it, "wow, if I learn programming, work on things that interest me, do well in school, and go to a good university, I'm guaranteed to build a Google-scale successful startup!"
Telling that kid that there's also a component of luck involved, and that the vast majority of startups fail, would temper that enthusiasm in a much more honest way. If that means fewer kids decide to start companies, that's obviously a negative in Graham's book, but may not be a negative for those kids themselves.
I think it's a jump to assume the kid will believe there is a _guarantee_
If the kid is motivated from this essay to learn programming, work on things that interest them, do well in school, and go to a good university -- I think they're well setup for success in their life.
If the kid is motivated from this essay to learn programming, work on things that interest them, do well in school, and go to a good university -- I think they're well setup for success in their life.
But not if you put "starting the next Google" as the criteria for success.
Not over leverage yourself such that if you fail you would be unable to recover.
use the knowledge that your plans may not succeed despite your best efforts to set expectations so that you are not emotionally devastated if this happens, and so that you are prepared in other ways as well.
take the shot, but have a back-up plan, basically.
take the shot, but have a back-up plan, basically.
Just to follow up, we’re discussing advice to young teenagers here.
I think it’s reasonable to inspire more than hedge. They’ll presumably already hear lots about what the least risky things to do are from many, many sources — that’s the default.
I think it’s reasonable to inspire more than hedge. They’ll presumably already hear lots about what the least risky things to do are from many, many sources — that’s the default.
They are also much more prone to making risky decisions at that age, though, which is why that is the default.
you can do a lot!
- discount the useless advice you get from people who got lucky and are unaware of this fact
- target trying to be in the right place at the right time and have a plan B if you don't get lucky, rather than waking up at 0400 every day to eat raw eggs or whatever
- respect yourself and your employees more
- be more generous with what luck brings you
etc etc etc
a much better question is why do YC and co not talk about luck and connections more? why do they pretend it's all some imaginary meritocracy rather than hugely dependent on going to the right school / being born into the right social class, and then hugely advantaged by having YC's name recognition and tame lendors attached?
- discount the useless advice you get from people who got lucky and are unaware of this fact
- target trying to be in the right place at the right time and have a plan B if you don't get lucky, rather than waking up at 0400 every day to eat raw eggs or whatever
- respect yourself and your employees more
- be more generous with what luck brings you
etc etc etc
a much better question is why do YC and co not talk about luck and connections more? why do they pretend it's all some imaginary meritocracy rather than hugely dependent on going to the right school / being born into the right social class, and then hugely advantaged by having YC's name recognition and tame lendors attached?
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
― Seneca
Even if you build a system that has no reliance whatsoever on the existence of good fortune, it can still be felled by a run of bad fortune.
It's luck in the same way that poker is luck.
The problem with this is that attempting a startup takes 2-10 years, while a poker hand takes a few minutes. Poker would be a lot more luck based if you only played 20 hands and then stopped.
Do you not know poker at all?
Poker is actually a good analogy. It is luck in the short term but skill over the long term. You can't confidently predict that you will win any specific upcoming hand but, given a particular set of opponents, you can reasonably predict whether you will be up or down over a number of hands. I may beat Chris Moneymaker on a hand or two but he's going to take all my money over the long haul.
The insight here is to only play in games that you have the advantage (or are at least evenly matched) and be very, very careful not to put yourself in a position to go bust on any one hand.
The insight here is to only play in games that you have the advantage (or are at least evenly matched) and be very, very careful not to put yourself in a position to go bust on any one hand.
I completely agree with the sentiment, and as someone who’s mostly focused on a startup for pro poker players to study game theory more effectively (https://www.livepokertheory.com) , I find countless parallels between poker and entrepreneurship.
Also, people don’t realize that startups aren’t one single event. There’s a million events and each one has its own luck. For example, you make a piece of content marketing there’s luck in whether it performs well, but that luck can be managed and the risk spread across many events by doing lots of small pieces of content marketing.
I also wrote a blog post about how a popular psychology book oriented towards poker pros (The Mental Game of Poker) can be easily reframed for entrepreneurs:
https://writing.billprin.com/p/the-mental-game-of-entreprene...
With all that said, it’s highly ironic you picked Moneymaker as your example poker pro, since he’s famous in the poker world for being a very bad amateur player who got extremely lucky at the perfect time . It’s a bit like talking about the importance of hard work and deep technology skills for founders, and using Adam Neumann and WeWork as your example of that.
Also, people don’t realize that startups aren’t one single event. There’s a million events and each one has its own luck. For example, you make a piece of content marketing there’s luck in whether it performs well, but that luck can be managed and the risk spread across many events by doing lots of small pieces of content marketing.
I also wrote a blog post about how a popular psychology book oriented towards poker pros (The Mental Game of Poker) can be easily reframed for entrepreneurs:
https://writing.billprin.com/p/the-mental-game-of-entreprene...
With all that said, it’s highly ironic you picked Moneymaker as your example poker pro, since he’s famous in the poker world for being a very bad amateur player who got extremely lucky at the perfect time . It’s a bit like talking about the importance of hard work and deep technology skills for founders, and using Adam Neumann and WeWork as your example of that.
> it’s highly ironic you picked Moneymaker as your example poker pro, since he’s famous in the poker world for being a very bad amateur player who got extremely lucky at the perfect time
You may be overly generous in your estimation of MY poker skills! However bad Chris is, I am sure I am not anywhere close.
You may be overly generous in your estimation of MY poker skills! However bad Chris is, I am sure I am not anywhere close.
Yes, ive played professionally. To be charitable I’ll explain it to you. In poker you play a massive number of hands and if you are good you play a preplanned strategy and sometimes when following that strategy you lose but over the long run, assuming you are playing a winning strategy, you make money.
The luck is seen in the short term fluctuations but over the long run when executing your strategy there is no luck.
This requires proper bankroll management among other things.
Also starting a business is easier than poker, poker is zero sum (more often negative sum due to rake).
Business is positive sum. What this means is people will gladly hand you money if your product generates more value for them than holding that money does. In poker, every single hand is like a fist fight because there is always a loser in every hand.
The luck is seen in the short term fluctuations but over the long run when executing your strategy there is no luck.
This requires proper bankroll management among other things.
Also starting a business is easier than poker, poker is zero sum (more often negative sum due to rake).
Business is positive sum. What this means is people will gladly hand you money if your product generates more value for them than holding that money does. In poker, every single hand is like a fist fight because there is always a loser in every hand.
In this analogy, the VCs are playing poker. The hands (or the cards dealt to the VC player in that hand) are individual startups.
Yes you can win if you are a VC. Less clear what to do if you’re just a card.
Yes you can win if you are a VC. Less clear what to do if you’re just a card.
Founders can take multiple shots too. Everyone is playing poker to an extent. VCs are playing cash games and founders are playing tournaments.
Agree but he doesn't do this because he makes money because people try this. Like other vcs he doesn't really care if the vast majority fail as long as he makes bank on a few who dont' fail.
That's a prism it's really worth applying to all advice given by VCs: What's the outcome for me if I fail vs what's the outcome for them if I fail?
That's a prism it's really worth applying to all advice given by VCs: What's the outcome for me if I fail vs what's the outcome for them if I fail?
I agree most startups fail, but no they don't die a horrible death nor do the majority of them earn no money for their founders. Many founders could have made more money through traditional employment, but you'll find very few startup founders are actually poor or become poor due to a startup.
There is an opportunity cost to starting your own company, but it's not some kind of horrible experience that will drive you to bankruptcy unless you're part of the 1% who manages a spectacular exit.
There is an opportunity cost to starting your own company, but it's not some kind of horrible experience that will drive you to bankruptcy unless you're part of the 1% who manages a spectacular exit.
Maybe don't start a startup, because you do not have the connections or resources necessary to make it successful. Same with any other "speculative" venture: it's dominated by insiders who know how to minimize risk to a point it no longer becomes speculative.
Maybe start an actual, scaleable business that makes money. It's not sexy, but it's within the realm of possibility to get it off the ground yourself; and usually those within the gilded class are not interested in such things.
If you're a regular schmuck, maybe take a page from the countless immigrants in the U.S. that start various businesses (trade, real estate, etc.) that make them enough money to allow them to live like kings back in their home countries.
There's something to be said about the severe glaucoma of understanding class in the U.S. Very few (notably the middle class) are willing to internalize they're serfs, whose current comfort is more a product of luck than anything more. It's a precarious situation, and any notions of aspiring to "life satisfaction" or other leisure-class values is just foolish, in my opinion.
Maybe start an actual, scaleable business that makes money. It's not sexy, but it's within the realm of possibility to get it off the ground yourself; and usually those within the gilded class are not interested in such things.
If you're a regular schmuck, maybe take a page from the countless immigrants in the U.S. that start various businesses (trade, real estate, etc.) that make them enough money to allow them to live like kings back in their home countries.
There's something to be said about the severe glaucoma of understanding class in the U.S. Very few (notably the middle class) are willing to internalize they're serfs, whose current comfort is more a product of luck than anything more. It's a precarious situation, and any notions of aspiring to "life satisfaction" or other leisure-class values is just foolish, in my opinion.
if i had a 1 in 100 shot of becoming google I'd just do it 100 times. I'm pretty sure its more like 99.99999%
I think each earnest attempt would probably occupy about 3 years of your lifespan, so you probably can try at most 20 times. If these are independent, then it's still an 82% chance of failure. But successive attempts after repeated failures might also make it harder to attract confidence from investors, not to mention loss of your own self-confidence. And if you finally succeed in founding Google when you're 80, you might find that you don't have that much use for the money anymore, nor much interest in running Google.
Conversely, repeated failures can give you the experience needed to increase the odds that your next attempt could be successful.
Ask anyone who has ever failed at a startup before, how easy it is to get funding again. VC's would rather take a chance on someone they don't know vs. rip open old emotional bags with a failed founder.
As someone thats on startup #7 and is ~37 years old I can attest to this: I have had 5 flat out failures, 1 break even experience and 1 life changing experience (I don't own a private jet unfortunately). I'm fucking tired. I really hope theres something huge in the future, but the reality is I struggle to believe I have enough left in me to finish this one, let alone more.
Also, I'm just more interested in family and enjoying the mobility of the youth I have left, much more than chasing down unlimited resources.
Also, I'm just more interested in family and enjoying the mobility of the youth I have left, much more than chasing down unlimited resources.
It's closer to 63% (binomial distribution of 1% chance with 100 trials, P(X>=1) is 63.4%).
Fun fact, this converges quickly to 1-1/e ~ 0.632.
If you had a 1 in a million chance of winning something and you tried a million times, the chance of winning once is about 63.2%, not much different from when n=100.
If you had a 1 in a million chance of winning something and you tried a million times, the chance of winning once is about 63.2%, not much different from when n=100.
The thing is you don't start with a 1:100 shot of becoming Google. You, hopefully, level up each shot you get. Your first shot, you'll probably make something no one wants. The second time, you can't figure out how to get anyone to pay attention to you. The third time, you can't get enough people to hand over their cash for it. The fourth time...
Each time, you learn and get better, your odds go up. Now the real question is whether your odds are going from 1:1000 to 1:100 or from 1:100 to 10:100?
Each time, you learn and get better, your odds go up. Now the real question is whether your odds are going from 1:1000 to 1:100 or from 1:100 to 10:100?
You're mixing up percent that succeed (a statistic) with percent chance of success (a probability). IOW, the fact that 1% of businesses succeed does not mean that a particular business has a 1% chance of success. The reason is that business success is not a function of pure random chance (like a die roll). Sure there are random factors but there are also non-random factors (which, IMO, dominate). The problem is that there is no way to determine what your business's chance of success actually is.
I always wondered why people would ask to analyse the chances of a coinflip during logical interviews, according to you, after 2 flips you have both result happening? Its not like that, if you have 1 in 100 chances of making it, each time you re try you have a 1 in 100 chances
right, parent probably isn't aware of complement rule. Sibling comment properly calculated 63.4% probability of at least one success in 100 trials where each has 1% of success.
Parent here :) Yeah i am, but i think the thing few consider (although some did provide the remark here) was that while the chances are good (given infinite time), the reality is no one has that.
So yeah, give someone 500 years, hopefully they keep going at it and the odds play out...but in the lets call it 50 productive years I feel I probably have been given, plus a few distractions along the way, there are maybe 5-10 serious bets one can place? Feels like that needs to be considered in conjunction with the mathematical probability "just keep trying" misleads us to believe.
10 coin flips can happen in less time than it took to type this reply. Those odds are a little more predictable because of the time span involved.
So yeah, give someone 500 years, hopefully they keep going at it and the odds play out...but in the lets call it 50 productive years I feel I probably have been given, plus a few distractions along the way, there are maybe 5-10 serious bets one can place? Feels like that needs to be considered in conjunction with the mathematical probability "just keep trying" misleads us to believe.
10 coin flips can happen in less time than it took to type this reply. Those odds are a little more predictable because of the time span involved.
Apart from the math being off there, who do you know who has the time and resources to try and start 100 startups? Most people barely have the time and resources for 1.
Yeah so i didn't put it well, but that was literally my point. Feels very "developer brain" of us to say "thats technically possible, heres the math and you're thinking about it wrong" and not consider the human aspect.
I wonder, over the course of a career in startups, what is the probability that you'll either found or be an early employee at one that makes up (financially) for the rest? Not hugely rich, but better than "normal" career.
Given it's a repeated game, and you gain knowledge at each round, I'd say the odds are probably pretty good that the highly dynamic / fast learning environment of early companies yields returns over a lifetime.
Given it's a repeated game, and you gain knowledge at each round, I'd say the odds are probably pretty good that the highly dynamic / fast learning environment of early companies yields returns over a lifetime.
Well you can calculate that somewhat, right. If you're "top-1%" in skill, enough to get hired at Google (even if you did it for the badge), then did you or did you not start a business?
Google: 180,000 employees. Let's say including ex-employees 250,000
These started 1,200 companies, according to the only source I could find. These collectively apparently made their founders ~20 billion. Let's say (heh) that it's a power law, let's say the top 10 got 1 billion each.
So we're talking the odds for an "average" software engineer to get to 1 billion is about 0.1% * 10/180000 = 0.000005556%, or about 1 in 18 million.
Odds for a current or ex-Google engineer: 1 in 18,000.
Google: 180,000 employees. Let's say including ex-employees 250,000
These started 1,200 companies, according to the only source I could find. These collectively apparently made their founders ~20 billion. Let's say (heh) that it's a power law, let's say the top 10 got 1 billion each.
So we're talking the odds for an "average" software engineer to get to 1 billion is about 0.1% * 10/180000 = 0.000005556%, or about 1 in 18 million.
Odds for a current or ex-Google engineer: 1 in 18,000.
This calculates the odds an ex-googler makes a billion dollars. That's not really what I asked, but is a good Fermi question nonetheless!
The number of billionaires yc has produced in 4000 or so startups (with many future billionaires in the pipeline) suggests your numbers are off by, what, 100x? If we assume that a Google Engineer is as qualified as a yc founder, which isn’t quite true but still.
The challenge here is not simply being in the right startup but having the right combination of startup founders (& contributors) for that particular idea at that particular time. Now, it's not like there's only one great fit for each role, but it's far from rolling a d100 too.
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Am surprised PG gave this talk at a UK school without mentioning an important assumption that they will need to migrate to the US in his opening paragraph.
All the examples he mentioned Google, himself and the Irish Stripe founders had to do the same for their startups.
Sadly in the UK all the current unicorn "startups" are a bit iffy: XTX (high frequency hedgefund), betfair (betting company), tripledot studios (Zynga like company).
Unfortunately mega success in startups doing soemthing innovative is non-existent in Europe and UK in particular. Mistral stands out to how exceptional it is to the rule, and the closest other one I can think of is BioNtech.
Sadly the highest expected route to fortune in the UK remains quant trading in finance. Including starting your own hedge fund.
All the examples he mentioned Google, himself and the Irish Stripe founders had to do the same for their startups.
Sadly in the UK all the current unicorn "startups" are a bit iffy: XTX (high frequency hedgefund), betfair (betting company), tripledot studios (Zynga like company).
Unfortunately mega success in startups doing soemthing innovative is non-existent in Europe and UK in particular. Mistral stands out to how exceptional it is to the rule, and the closest other one I can think of is BioNtech.
Sadly the highest expected route to fortune in the UK remains quant trading in finance. Including starting your own hedge fund.
Yes, and of course you cannot just move to the USA especially if you're a young guy in the UK. I know, I faced the same issue. 2006, recruited by Google before I'd even graduated. I wanted to go to California but... they hit the H1B cap that year and I wasn't important enough to get one. So I ended up in Switzerland.
If Google in 2006 wasn't powerful enough to get someone as culturally unthreatening as a Brit into the USA, it cannot be easier to do so as a startup founder.
That said I did know someone later who was able to make it in and become a startup CTO there (a German guy). Hilariously he did it by making a viral YouTube video. And by "make" I mean he hired an agency to make it. This was sufficient to get him in on an artist visa, which was easier than getting in on an H1B.
If Google in 2006 wasn't powerful enough to get someone as culturally unthreatening as a Brit into the USA, it cannot be easier to do so as a startup founder.
That said I did know someone later who was able to make it in and become a startup CTO there (a German guy). Hilariously he did it by making a viral YouTube video. And by "make" I mean he hired an agency to make it. This was sufficient to get him in on an artist visa, which was easier than getting in on an H1B.
Not anymore, London is the biggest startup hub in Europe and top AI companies like Google Deep Mind and Stability AI were founded and HQ is based in London. These days all you need is talent and funding, once you have that you can do it from anywhere.
> Am surprised PG gave this talk at a UK school without mentioning an important assumption that they will need to migrate to the US in his opening paragraph.
Seems kinda reasonable for a motivational speech not to mention it (even assuming it's entirely true.)
Seems kinda reasonable for a motivational speech not to mention it (even assuming it's entirely true.)
No I think it was so obvious to him that he forgot to mention it, or he doesn't think it should be a problem for many young people to move to the US.
It would be dishonest if he intentionally left it out since for some (arguably a minority of young people) it is a deal breaker.
It would be dishonest if he intentionally left it out since for some (arguably a minority of young people) it is a deal breaker.
You say all this like it's a bad thing, but maybe it's ultimately better for a society if there isn't a financial lottery that enables a small number of people to become insanely wealthy and powerful.
I'd rather a government that enables a thousand mid-sized companies with moderately well-paid executives and employees than one that enables a single monopolistic mega-corporation with billionaires whose power rivals states and whose incentives are not aligned with most of the world.
I'd rather a government that enables a thousand mid-sized companies with moderately well-paid executives and employees than one that enables a single monopolistic mega-corporation with billionaires whose power rivals states and whose incentives are not aligned with most of the world.
Of course it is a monumentally bad thing for the UK economy it doesn't have any big tech companies! I actually don't understand your point at all.
To say nothing of the lost revenue from tech export do you think it is better for the UK that it depends on AWS cloud for running the majority of its public services, Apple for almost 70% of the phones used by it's citizens, Google for the other 30%?
Which midsize company is going to be able to compete with AWS on offering cloud computing services, Apple on developing smart phones or Nvidia on GPUs?
Actually the UK has the worst of both worlds: US big tech opens office here leading to well-paid executives and engineer, while all revenue (and none of the taxes) from selling the products these engineers develop goes to the US.
To say nothing of the lost revenue from tech export do you think it is better for the UK that it depends on AWS cloud for running the majority of its public services, Apple for almost 70% of the phones used by it's citizens, Google for the other 30%?
Which midsize company is going to be able to compete with AWS on offering cloud computing services, Apple on developing smart phones or Nvidia on GPUs?
Actually the UK has the worst of both worlds: US big tech opens office here leading to well-paid executives and engineer, while all revenue (and none of the taxes) from selling the products these engineers develop goes to the US.
Is there truly nothing you can imagine that might be more important than maximizing revenue?
This. It's the US system that is broken, not the European ones.
...including a boss telling you what to do.
You leave that to your customers and stock holders instead.
You leave that to your customers and stock holders instead.
While I absolutely agree with PG here on identifying a missing link and solving it with technology as your own project is a good way to own a startup, I also feel most of his examples are reminiscent of survivorship bias.
For every one of these giant trillion dollar companies, there are also thousands of companies that couldn't make it. Also, just by the distribution of it all, not every company can be a Google. Not trying to be pessimistic here; everyone should be able to try solving some problem as a project and have fun meanwhile. However, expecting a Google out of it could be a bit too demanding.
For every one of these giant trillion dollar companies, there are also thousands of companies that couldn't make it. Also, just by the distribution of it all, not every company can be a Google. Not trying to be pessimistic here; everyone should be able to try solving some problem as a project and have fun meanwhile. However, expecting a Google out of it could be a bit too demanding.
Yes, that’s inherent to the problem statement. Any guidance on “how to become a gold medalist Olympic athlete” would suffer from the same limitation.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t insightful things to say about building a Google or becoming a gold Olympic medalist.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t insightful things to say about building a Google or becoming a gold Olympic medalist.
Yes he tells you how to increase your odds in the lottery from 1E-11 to 1E-6 perhaps. His advice assumes you won the birth lottery already. Really you can’t be motivated by being the next Google because it (approximately) won’t happen. Be excited by the other things on the way.
I think he answers the second point of "not every company can be a Google" though. He says this will get you to the point where your company could be a Google, but makes no promises that it will be one.
I agree with the first point. I do think that the experience would nonetheless be valuable, though, to pilot a failed company.
I agree with the first point. I do think that the experience would nonetheless be valuable, though, to pilot a failed company.
Why even bring up 'Google' when the odds are (and always were) so long? It's like saying your bet could be the Powerball winner. I mean if his audience is only soon-to-be lottery winners, then it's kind of embarrassingly narrow and niche. And what advice is there to say except be rich enough to buy a lot of tickets?
Because it's drastically more exciting and interesting to a young audience, whose attention he's trying to acquire to get various points across. You won't get and keep their attention easily.
Inspiration matters. Attention matters.
Teenagers are not inspired by: you could start a little business that de facto operates as a medium paying job (but is far more stressful and risky to your future, your potential family, and your long-term finances), and it'll be miserably difficult, and you really shouldn't even try it because the likely rewards are so tiny that you should just go work for Microsoft instead for the fat (and easier) paycheck. Even if you try to sell that with a passion premise (the reward is in the love of the craft), the sell is so ugly you shouldn't even waste the young audience's time (they'll just come away depressed at best).
Why do people ever aspire to anything that's exceptionally difficult?
Inspiration matters. Attention matters.
Teenagers are not inspired by: you could start a little business that de facto operates as a medium paying job (but is far more stressful and risky to your future, your potential family, and your long-term finances), and it'll be miserably difficult, and you really shouldn't even try it because the likely rewards are so tiny that you should just go work for Microsoft instead for the fat (and easier) paycheck. Even if you try to sell that with a passion premise (the reward is in the love of the craft), the sell is so ugly you shouldn't even waste the young audience's time (they'll just come away depressed at best).
Why do people ever aspire to anything that's exceptionally difficult?
“Not every company can become a Google; but a Google can come from anywhere.”
- Peter O’Toole, probably.
- Peter O’Toole, probably.
"Not every company can become a Google, but a Google can come from any incredibly wealthy, well-connected, elite nepo baby."
> but a Google can come from any incredibly wealthy, well-connected, elite nepo baby
A math teacher and researcher's son, a middle class immigrant from third world Soviet Russia.
Or: the middle class son of a professor of computer science and an instructor of programming.
Such privilege. /s
"Elite nepo baby" applies to anyone that ever accomplishes anything these days huh.
A math teacher and researcher's son, a middle class immigrant from third world Soviet Russia.
Or: the middle class son of a professor of computer science and an instructor of programming.
Such privilege. /s
"Elite nepo baby" applies to anyone that ever accomplishes anything these days huh.
Quoting Jim Koen:
"His dad wasn't "just" a computer scientist, he was a professor for computer science and artificial intelligence at Michigan State. Sergey Brin's father was equally a professor in mathematics at the University of Maryland. > It's obvious in retrospect that this was a great idea for a startup. It wasn't obvious at the time. It may not have been obvious, but the decision was damn well near as engineered with data as it could be. They also were _insanely_ well connected through their and their parents academic career. Both Sergey and Larry had obtained their PhD prior to starting the company. I can also remember reading that they obtained significant amounts of funding through connections Larry's dad had into the industry. You can ignore the rest of my comment, what follows is just my take. Their success story is imo one of the most blatant examples on how privilege really does give you a boost in life. I am not arguing that anyone could have done it, but I do wonder how the world would look like if we were all kids of academics with a successful career, with a relatively safe, secure and stable childhood home and a family background that really incentivizes learning and academic success over succumbing to the pressure of, you know, having an income at some point."
"His dad wasn't "just" a computer scientist, he was a professor for computer science and artificial intelligence at Michigan State. Sergey Brin's father was equally a professor in mathematics at the University of Maryland. > It's obvious in retrospect that this was a great idea for a startup. It wasn't obvious at the time. It may not have been obvious, but the decision was damn well near as engineered with data as it could be. They also were _insanely_ well connected through their and their parents academic career. Both Sergey and Larry had obtained their PhD prior to starting the company. I can also remember reading that they obtained significant amounts of funding through connections Larry's dad had into the industry. You can ignore the rest of my comment, what follows is just my take. Their success story is imo one of the most blatant examples on how privilege really does give you a boost in life. I am not arguing that anyone could have done it, but I do wonder how the world would look like if we were all kids of academics with a successful career, with a relatively safe, secure and stable childhood home and a family background that really incentivizes learning and academic success over succumbing to the pressure of, you know, having an income at some point."
Yes, and doing a startup involves risk. If you fail, you’ll lose time and likely money. I’m now 10+ years behind on my retirement savings. I’ll likely need to work until 70-75.
He's not trying to create 500 new Googles.
He's trying to inspire the one kid that will actually create the next Google.
Alternatively, if only one person in the upcoming generation tries to create the next Google it will probably be a crap company. If 200 million kids try to create the next Google the one that succeeds in creating their own survivorship bias story will likely be a stellar co.
Competition necessitates excellence.
He's trying to inspire the one kid that will actually create the next Google.
Alternatively, if only one person in the upcoming generation tries to create the next Google it will probably be a crap company. If 200 million kids try to create the next Google the one that succeeds in creating their own survivorship bias story will likely be a stellar co.
Competition necessitates excellence.
>Competition necessitates excellence.
There is always room for competition.
There is always room for competition.
Agree. Although, de does mention that a barber shop counts.
I think when someone like him shows up, kids want to hear about the extreme end of financial success.
Hopefully those kids get to hear from other types of business people as well -- those who can talk about more of the middle of the road.
I think when someone like him shows up, kids want to hear about the extreme end of financial success.
Hopefully those kids get to hear from other types of business people as well -- those who can talk about more of the middle of the road.
From the perspective of society, this is how to start Google
Survivor Bias anyone?
Bill Gates, Zuck, Jobs, etc....
Students should quit school. -> (?) -> profit
Bill Gates, Zuck, Jobs, etc....
Students should quit school. -> (?) -> profit
Yes, one should choose rich parents to start with.
Steve Jobs biological parents were rich, but he didn't get their money.
They did choose good parents for him, though.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs
Wanting to read PG articles while working was one of the reasons I started up a project called WebToSpeech[0]. It's not a startup, it's more just a project I created so I could listen to articles while working. I thought about making it a startup, hence the dicky landing page, but didn't have time.
It's not open to sign ups or anything (blocked in Supabase), so this isn't really trying to be a marketing exercise, the idea about joy projects just resonated with me.
If you want to listen to the generated audio (really it just custom parses a web page and sends it off to azure), I've uploaded it to a public Cloudflare R2 bucket[1]. It's not perfect, I haven't fully configured the SSML to treat quotes correct, and I'm adding weird breaks in between normal text and anchors, but... it's a project :).
[0] https://www.webtospeech.app/
[1] https://publicmedia.webtospeech.app/b3dc8034-c2f4-4835-afe8-...
It's not open to sign ups or anything (blocked in Supabase), so this isn't really trying to be a marketing exercise, the idea about joy projects just resonated with me.
If you want to listen to the generated audio (really it just custom parses a web page and sends it off to azure), I've uploaded it to a public Cloudflare R2 bucket[1]. It's not perfect, I haven't fully configured the SSML to treat quotes correct, and I'm adding weird breaks in between normal text and anchors, but... it's a project :).
[0] https://www.webtospeech.app/
[1] https://publicmedia.webtospeech.app/b3dc8034-c2f4-4835-afe8-...
Funnily enough, the fact that PG's website is archaic actually pushed me to parse a lot of legacy tags that I'd never had to use in that way.
This article only mentions Stanford once, so here's some additional information:
https://new.nsf.gov/news/origins-google
> "The National Science Foundation led the multi-agency Digital Library Initiative (DLI) that, in 1994, made its first six awards. One of those awards supported a Stanford University project led by professors Hector Garcia-Molina and Terry Winograd... Around the same time, one of the graduate students funded under the NSF-supported DLI project at Stanford took an interest in the Web as a "collection." The student was Larry Page.... Page was soon joined by Sergey Brin, another Stanford graduate student working on the DLI project. (Brin was supported by an NSF Graduate Student Fellowship.)"
Under a rational and fair approach to patents, anything created with taxpayer funds would be available to all American businesses under a non-exclusive licensing program. However, in the 1980s, Bayh-Dole was pushed through which allowed exclusive licensing of those inventions to private parties. This is nothing but theft from the taxpayer, the entity who funds the NSF, which funded this research effort, which generated PageRank.
As a result, Google didn't face market competition for some time, and was able to create a monopolistic situation, and as with all monopolies, this resulted in the degradation of their product, which is why, as everyone seems to agree, Google search results are much worse today than they used to be.
[edit: contemplate the outcome if Brin & Page had instead invented PageRank as Apple or Microsoft employees - would they have been able to run off with the IP and found a company?]
https://new.nsf.gov/news/origins-google
> "The National Science Foundation led the multi-agency Digital Library Initiative (DLI) that, in 1994, made its first six awards. One of those awards supported a Stanford University project led by professors Hector Garcia-Molina and Terry Winograd... Around the same time, one of the graduate students funded under the NSF-supported DLI project at Stanford took an interest in the Web as a "collection." The student was Larry Page.... Page was soon joined by Sergey Brin, another Stanford graduate student working on the DLI project. (Brin was supported by an NSF Graduate Student Fellowship.)"
Under a rational and fair approach to patents, anything created with taxpayer funds would be available to all American businesses under a non-exclusive licensing program. However, in the 1980s, Bayh-Dole was pushed through which allowed exclusive licensing of those inventions to private parties. This is nothing but theft from the taxpayer, the entity who funds the NSF, which funded this research effort, which generated PageRank.
As a result, Google didn't face market competition for some time, and was able to create a monopolistic situation, and as with all monopolies, this resulted in the degradation of their product, which is why, as everyone seems to agree, Google search results are much worse today than they used to be.
[edit: contemplate the outcome if Brin & Page had instead invented PageRank as Apple or Microsoft employees - would they have been able to run off with the IP and found a company?]
The PageRank patent expired 5 years ago, and frankly a lot of other search engines were copying the method a long time before that. Search results have been deteriorating since "SEO" became a thing.
If PageRank had been available to all US companies who wanted to build a search engine around it at the time of publication, then we might have a half-dozen major search engine-based companies right now, which would be a competitive situation that would drive innovation (and solution of the SEO problem), which is how free market capitalism theory works IIRC.
Since universities are publicly funded by taxpayers, their inventions should be thrown to the capitalist wolves who will compete to provide the best implementation of the idea to the consumers. If the corporations want to instead finance their own research centers, then they'd own all the patents outright - but it's cheaper to steal from the public.
Since universities are publicly funded by taxpayers, their inventions should be thrown to the capitalist wolves who will compete to provide the best implementation of the idea to the consumers. If the corporations want to instead finance their own research centers, then they'd own all the patents outright - but it's cheaper to steal from the public.
This has probably been mentioned before on previous posts to Mr. Graham's site, but I find the 1998-ness of the underlying HMTL and simple (if fuzzy) front end (with image map!) that even my PowerBook Pismo can render and appreciate a total blast of fresh air. A mild shame it is running HTTPS so more vintage hardware can't access it, but I understand why.
Anyhoo, props to 1998 era web design. Sincerely.
Anyhoo, props to 1998 era web design. Sincerely.
The blindness to privilege that’s tied up in the part about why you ‘need’ to go to a good (by which he means highly selective) school…
> if you want to start a startup you should try to get into the best university you can, because that's where the best cofounders are...
> The empirical evidence is clear on this. If you look at where the largest numbers of successful startups come from, it's pretty much the same as the list of the most selective universities.
Is it at all possible that the people who are able to take a gamble on founding a startup rather than getting a job are also disproportionately drawn from the wealthy class that is also able to afford the privileges necessary to get their kids over the admissions humps needed to get into highly selective schools?
Because in spite of the suggestion that getting into these schools is a matter of ‘doing well in your classes’, Graham knows and acknowledges in his footnote that he knows full well that’s actually not what these schools are selecting for anyway:
> US admissions departments make applicants jump through a lot of arbitrary hoops that have little to do with their intellectual ability. But the more arbitrary a test, the more it becomes a test of mere determination and resourcefulness.
‘Mere determination and resourcefulness’? Or the background, finances and support and time necessary to make the grade in terms of non academic achievements, volunteer work, experience, extracurriculars, etc?
But even if you get in through academics plus determination and resourcefulness… will you also have the resources to take a risk on turning a project into a startup?
This is cargo cultism. Yes, successful founders are disproportionately drawn from high end selective schools, because they are disproportionately drawn from the community of people who come from a background of privilege, and are academically bright. Such people naturally tend to end up at Stanford or MIT or wherever.
But getting in to Stanford or MIT doesn’t magically make you into a member of that privileged class.
> if you want to start a startup you should try to get into the best university you can, because that's where the best cofounders are...
> The empirical evidence is clear on this. If you look at where the largest numbers of successful startups come from, it's pretty much the same as the list of the most selective universities.
Is it at all possible that the people who are able to take a gamble on founding a startup rather than getting a job are also disproportionately drawn from the wealthy class that is also able to afford the privileges necessary to get their kids over the admissions humps needed to get into highly selective schools?
Because in spite of the suggestion that getting into these schools is a matter of ‘doing well in your classes’, Graham knows and acknowledges in his footnote that he knows full well that’s actually not what these schools are selecting for anyway:
> US admissions departments make applicants jump through a lot of arbitrary hoops that have little to do with their intellectual ability. But the more arbitrary a test, the more it becomes a test of mere determination and resourcefulness.
‘Mere determination and resourcefulness’? Or the background, finances and support and time necessary to make the grade in terms of non academic achievements, volunteer work, experience, extracurriculars, etc?
But even if you get in through academics plus determination and resourcefulness… will you also have the resources to take a risk on turning a project into a startup?
This is cargo cultism. Yes, successful founders are disproportionately drawn from high end selective schools, because they are disproportionately drawn from the community of people who come from a background of privilege, and are academically bright. Such people naturally tend to end up at Stanford or MIT or wherever.
But getting in to Stanford or MIT doesn’t magically make you into a member of that privileged class.
In "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America" Barbara Ehrenreich poses that universities are (in my words) merely a fictional moat, "invented" by the new class that became rich through education and work, rather then before through ownership and capital.
"Education" nor "work" can be passed through generations. If I am a very gifted lawyer, this is not something I can pass on to my daughters or suns (but a castle or land can be). Yet you can employ your network and power to get your daughter or suns into "highly selective" universities. Where, once they are in, being smart (e.g being a gifted lawyer) matters less than "being in".
So, indeed, "cargo cultism" and privilege.
And, I would add, a problem and cause of why the startup world is so shortsighted, monoculture (non-diverse) and dogpiling on similar problems, yet ignoring others entirely. (disclaimer: I too, however, am the typical priviliged bearded white male that "does computers" since late eighties though)
"Education" nor "work" can be passed through generations. If I am a very gifted lawyer, this is not something I can pass on to my daughters or suns (but a castle or land can be). Yet you can employ your network and power to get your daughter or suns into "highly selective" universities. Where, once they are in, being smart (e.g being a gifted lawyer) matters less than "being in".
So, indeed, "cargo cultism" and privilege.
And, I would add, a problem and cause of why the startup world is so shortsighted, monoculture (non-diverse) and dogpiling on similar problems, yet ignoring others entirely. (disclaimer: I too, however, am the typical priviliged bearded white male that "does computers" since late eighties though)
I like your poetic metaphor of sons as bright stars ...
English isn't my native tongue. Sometimes stupid mistakes slip through. Apparently this one sounds like a metaphor. It was just a mistake, though.
Ofc, was just a light-hearted comment :-)
On rereading my notes: the book by Ehrenreich is "fear of falling".
Exactly, it's not that good technology gets funding, it's that technology that gets funding gets good.
People often get this the wrong way around. They believe you just need a good idea. No, you need social circles that can invest in your idea. Investment improves things over time.
Alan Kay talks about this. That the quality of the project is the quality of the funders.
You can have good ideas, but if you don't have access to funders, your good idea will not have the resources to become a great idea.
People often get this the wrong way around. They believe you just need a good idea. No, you need social circles that can invest in your idea. Investment improves things over time.
Alan Kay talks about this. That the quality of the project is the quality of the funders.
You can have good ideas, but if you don't have access to funders, your good idea will not have the resources to become a great idea.
> But getting in to Stanford or MIT doesn’t magically make you into a member of that privileged class.
The essay (intentionally, no doubt) doesn't pick a side in this fight.
It's very clear on why you should go to the best university: not because it will make you the best founder, but to meet the best co-founders.
> And if you want to start a startup you should try to get into the best university you can, because that's where the best cofounders are. It's also where the best employees are. When Larry and Sergey started Google, they began by just hiring all the smartest people they knew out of Stanford, and this was a real advantage for them.
It doesn't matter whether elite universities are meritocratic or terribly unfair: either way, they've been the source of very many successful companies over the last 30 years, and Paul Graham is betting on that continuing to be the case. (Unlike Peter Thiel, for example, who is telling kids to drop out).
The essay (intentionally, no doubt) doesn't pick a side in this fight.
It's very clear on why you should go to the best university: not because it will make you the best founder, but to meet the best co-founders.
> And if you want to start a startup you should try to get into the best university you can, because that's where the best cofounders are. It's also where the best employees are. When Larry and Sergey started Google, they began by just hiring all the smartest people they knew out of Stanford, and this was a real advantage for them.
It doesn't matter whether elite universities are meritocratic or terribly unfair: either way, they've been the source of very many successful companies over the last 30 years, and Paul Graham is betting on that continuing to be the case. (Unlike Peter Thiel, for example, who is telling kids to drop out).
Yes, I know PG isn’t picking a side in that ‘fight’. He’s pretending it doesn’t exist. He’s suggesting that anyone with the resourcefulness of a founder, who has access to that college network, could have an equal opportunity to find the magic combination of cofounders and ideas to make a Google.
My point is that his empirical evidence and continued willingness to bet on startups that emerge from that path does not justify his claim that that path is the open for everyone to take.
If you are among the stratum from whom startup founders and cofounders will most likely be drawn, then sure, 100%, these schools are a networking opportunity which will help you on that path. Great place to meet cofounders.
If you aren’t, going to these schools will not make you magically able to take the financial risks needed to become a founder; they might make you among the smartest people some founders know, and get you a gig working for one.
My point is that his empirical evidence and continued willingness to bet on startups that emerge from that path does not justify his claim that that path is the open for everyone to take.
If you are among the stratum from whom startup founders and cofounders will most likely be drawn, then sure, 100%, these schools are a networking opportunity which will help you on that path. Great place to meet cofounders.
If you aren’t, going to these schools will not make you magically able to take the financial risks needed to become a founder; they might make you among the smartest people some founders know, and get you a gig working for one.
Not unlike Peter Thiel.
Gates, Jobs, Dell, Page, Brin, Zuckerberg are all dropouts.
Gates, Jobs, Dell, Page, Brin, Zuckerberg are all dropouts.
The overwhelming influential factor of people who start successful businesses is that they have a tremendous amount of resources relative to the average person. I would guess that easily over half of all successful medium to large size businesses started with someone who had a big leg-up.
That's what he said. "Resourcefulness". Money is a resource as much as brainpower or grit or creativity.
'Resourcefulness' generally means the personal quality of being good at problem-solving, improvisation, or whatever in situations where you don't have resources. I've never heard it associated with someone who was well supplied with external resources.
Jumping through arbitrary hoops sounds an awful lot like "push hard, the door sticks".
Ya that is the main one. If you are born in midwest usa or god forbid, nigeria, please forget starting google.
You're right that PG ignores the privilege and selection bias at play in all stages on the funnel to Google-scale success. I'm okay with that though, because calling out all the statistical realities does not lead to actionable advice for young people; it tends to devolve into hand-wringing and complaining about what "we" as a society should do, but very few are actually empowered or incentivized to address. And, at the end of the day, if you're looking for a single place to find good co-founders, it's hard to argue there is any better place than Stanford or MIT. I think Paul's advice on balance is decent, even for folks starting from less privilege.
That said, I think the biggest risk for ambitious young people reading this is black and white thinking about getting into the right school. Successful founders are relentlessly resourceful, so while it's a decent plan to target a top school, I believe that how you handle rejection and refocus your ambitions says more about your long-term entrepreneurial prospects than being accepted would have. Focus on what you can control, play to your strengths, and on balance you'll get better outcomes.
That said, I think the biggest risk for ambitious young people reading this is black and white thinking about getting into the right school. Successful founders are relentlessly resourceful, so while it's a decent plan to target a top school, I believe that how you handle rejection and refocus your ambitions says more about your long-term entrepreneurial prospects than being accepted would have. Focus on what you can control, play to your strengths, and on balance you'll get better outcomes.
Yep
> ‘Mere determination and resourcefulness’
... is actually really a test of class position. Your motivation to pursue and pass those artificial goalposts is in most cases going to be directly co-related to the values and expectations that the people who surround you have. Mommy and daddy and their friends at the country club expect it.
CS education is good all over the place, not just Stanford or MIT. And CS education pulled out of books and through self-reading is also great. But knowing that said person went to Stanford is a signifier to the VCs that said person is acculturated into the class and culture of capitalist administration.
More mind boggling is seeing them admitting to the "cargo cultism" (which I'd just call "class bias") instead of the usual ideological cover of entrepreneurialism and the "American dream."
> ‘Mere determination and resourcefulness’
... is actually really a test of class position. Your motivation to pursue and pass those artificial goalposts is in most cases going to be directly co-related to the values and expectations that the people who surround you have. Mommy and daddy and their friends at the country club expect it.
CS education is good all over the place, not just Stanford or MIT. And CS education pulled out of books and through self-reading is also great. But knowing that said person went to Stanford is a signifier to the VCs that said person is acculturated into the class and culture of capitalist administration.
More mind boggling is seeing them admitting to the "cargo cultism" (which I'd just call "class bias") instead of the usual ideological cover of entrepreneurialism and the "American dream."
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It’s so deflating to see both YC & PG focus their content almost solely on the younger generations. As someone who came to tech later in their mid-30s, it’s not hard to feel like expired goods when the “thought leaders” of tech are unabashedly gunning for younger minds with little to no acknowledgement of those who may want to start ventures during later stages of life.
The more I try to plug myself in, the more it seems like starting a company at this age is borderline schizophrenic delusion.
The more I try to plug myself in, the more it seems like starting a company at this age is borderline schizophrenic delusion.
Average age of successful startup founders is 35-45. YC likes young founders because they’re impressionable and exploitable.
That makes them sound a bit more predatory than the reality of it but I get what you mean. When you're younger, by definition, you've got more shots on goal, you don't have other responsibilities (mortgage, kids, partners etc.) so you can take more riskier decisions, and you more have to rely on first principle thinking instead of experience (because you don't have any).
Saying that, I would like to see the advice for higher age ranges as I have a feeling more successful startups tend to be around there.
Saying that, I would like to see the advice for higher age ranges as I have a feeling more successful startups tend to be around there.
As someone of a higher age, I would suggest that we don’t really need any advice.
I read all his essays long ago, when I was young, and it sounded persuading to me. I think it even influenced me here and there. Now, somewhat a decade or two later, I take it with a grain of salt, and don’t get it as it is. Some things are just quite manipulative. I can read them as someone’s point of view, but not as someone I would even listen to, not to say follow the advice. I know much better for myself and what’s around me.
E.g. a man like me would never go to a VC, it’s a waste of my time and energy, and I can easily earn all the money I need to run my idea till the production. Why would I want anyone like him, to give me money and help grow my idea infinitely? People like him are interested in Unicorns, that’s how he multiplies his money, that’s how the system works. People like me are interested in steady, reliable businesses that actually deliver.
Personally, I’m very disappointed with most of the unicorns I used before. They’re non-existent to me. Hence, I wouldn’t listen to people who follow the Unicorns. I think that’s why we don’t have any advice for a higher age.
I read all his essays long ago, when I was young, and it sounded persuading to me. I think it even influenced me here and there. Now, somewhat a decade or two later, I take it with a grain of salt, and don’t get it as it is. Some things are just quite manipulative. I can read them as someone’s point of view, but not as someone I would even listen to, not to say follow the advice. I know much better for myself and what’s around me.
E.g. a man like me would never go to a VC, it’s a waste of my time and energy, and I can easily earn all the money I need to run my idea till the production. Why would I want anyone like him, to give me money and help grow my idea infinitely? People like him are interested in Unicorns, that’s how he multiplies his money, that’s how the system works. People like me are interested in steady, reliable businesses that actually deliver.
Personally, I’m very disappointed with most of the unicorns I used before. They’re non-existent to me. Hence, I wouldn’t listen to people who follow the Unicorns. I think that’s why we don’t have any advice for a higher age.
Can you elaborate on this — or any evidence?
I think it’s partially because of the nature of VCs (which is partially why I’d never use a vc but rather bootstrap and fail). If your parent organisation’s goal is a 100x return you don’t mind 9/10 startups burning up in an attempt.
YC in that sense is a full “all guns blazing” thing. It’s generally younger folks who don’t mind eating ramen and don’t have to take care of a large family, and hence are more likely to go into a startup full time. Combine these two and I think you see what I mean.
Btw this isn’t a new criticism of YC/VCs, it’s something that’s been around for a while.
YC in that sense is a full “all guns blazing” thing. It’s generally younger folks who don’t mind eating ramen and don’t have to take care of a large family, and hence are more likely to go into a startup full time. Combine these two and I think you see what I mean.
Btw this isn’t a new criticism of YC/VCs, it’s something that’s been around for a while.
I had the same sort of reaction, even though I felt like the article was not intending to invoke that.
Looking back, when I was the age in the article I was way too insecure and nervous to be able to take this advice. Looking at it now I think it is great and want to set my children up with that way of thinking.
I am 34 and found the message inspiring.
Looking back, when I was the age in the article I was way too insecure and nervous to be able to take this advice. Looking at it now I think it is great and want to set my children up with that way of thinking.
I am 34 and found the message inspiring.
Don't be deflated - it is not a negative statement on you. For most people, going the startup route is bad advice. Older people know that and take much more care to set up safety nets for themselves before going into the VC world. I don't want to go so far to say that YC & PC are exploiting the naivety of youth... but they certainly know which demographics will embrace the risk vs. which will not, and they speak accordingly.
> If you're not sure what technology to get good at, get good at programming. That has been the source of the median startup for the last 30 years, and this is probably not going to change in the next 10.
Did not expect this tbh. So many people here worried about the future of programming but PG believes we're safe! Alas, something positive!
Did not expect this tbh. So many people here worried about the future of programming but PG believes we're safe! Alas, something positive!
There's a lot to like about this speech, but if a 15 year old heard it and then asked me for more detail I'd have to point out a few things that were glossed over:
1. 15-25 year olds who do programming passion projects are often attracted to video games. Video game companies are not "startups" in the sense pg means here. You will not get rich by indulging a passion for the entertainment industry.
2. You do in fact need capital to do a startup, and there is a lot more to getting that than just having cofounders and something you're interested in.
3. "What you need in a startup idea, and all you need, is something your friends actually want." This isn't really true, is it. I thought there is another pg/ycombinator essay somewhere that warns people away from specific types of startup pitches, and one of them is something like "an app that tells you about events in your local community". Supposedly this is one of those things that everyone wants to use and everyone wants to work on, but which never turns into a successful startup.
There are actually a lot of things that your friends might want which are not startup material anywhere except Sand Hill Road, mostly because there are lots of things people want but won't pay for. A sad example of this is developer tools. If you take pg's advice literally and learn programming, hang out with other people who do that and then do projects with them, soon you will see lots of sticky doors that look like missing bits of infrastructure. Unfortunately startups that do dev tooling aren't a good way to get rich. Developers generally don't or can't buy things, so you have to sell to their CTOs and thus all the money accumulates in companies like Amazon or Microsoft. Example of what happens if you try, even with great PMF: Docker.
Most kids with ideas in the world don't have the contacts or work visas to raise money from US VC firms. They need a project that people will pay money for immediately. Unfortunately, one of the side effects of the size of the US VC ecosystem is that if someone comes up with a good idea that takes off and they try to grow like a normal company, and they aren't taking VC money, then they will be immediately outcompeted by someone who does, simply because whoever does have that access will engage in market dumping until there's nobody else left except other VC funded startups. One of the US funded companies will end up taking the entire market even if they are burning money with no hope of ever balancing the books, but that's OK because one of the VC's other investments can always be persuaded to give a clean exit.
Example: DailyMotion (European) vs YouTube (US). At the time YouTube was bought they didn't have a hope in hell of ever being a standalone business and didn't even care to try, but they were down the road from Google and were scaring Larry/Sergey/Eric with their success. Buying a company if you can just jump in your car to go visit them is easy, if you need to constantly do trans-Atlantic flights, not so easy. It doesn't make sense to bet on the "grow like crazy and wait for an exit" strategy elsewhere. WhatsApp is another example of an MTV based company that had no strategy beyond grow-and-exit. I actually made a WhatsApp-like app a few years before the smartphone revolution hit, and my friends thought it was awesome, but I had no illusions that it could ever be a business. And indeed none of these messenger apps ever have been. In the world of "startups" (vs small businesses), you don't necessarily need to care.
1. 15-25 year olds who do programming passion projects are often attracted to video games. Video game companies are not "startups" in the sense pg means here. You will not get rich by indulging a passion for the entertainment industry.
2. You do in fact need capital to do a startup, and there is a lot more to getting that than just having cofounders and something you're interested in.
3. "What you need in a startup idea, and all you need, is something your friends actually want." This isn't really true, is it. I thought there is another pg/ycombinator essay somewhere that warns people away from specific types of startup pitches, and one of them is something like "an app that tells you about events in your local community". Supposedly this is one of those things that everyone wants to use and everyone wants to work on, but which never turns into a successful startup.
There are actually a lot of things that your friends might want which are not startup material anywhere except Sand Hill Road, mostly because there are lots of things people want but won't pay for. A sad example of this is developer tools. If you take pg's advice literally and learn programming, hang out with other people who do that and then do projects with them, soon you will see lots of sticky doors that look like missing bits of infrastructure. Unfortunately startups that do dev tooling aren't a good way to get rich. Developers generally don't or can't buy things, so you have to sell to their CTOs and thus all the money accumulates in companies like Amazon or Microsoft. Example of what happens if you try, even with great PMF: Docker.
Most kids with ideas in the world don't have the contacts or work visas to raise money from US VC firms. They need a project that people will pay money for immediately. Unfortunately, one of the side effects of the size of the US VC ecosystem is that if someone comes up with a good idea that takes off and they try to grow like a normal company, and they aren't taking VC money, then they will be immediately outcompeted by someone who does, simply because whoever does have that access will engage in market dumping until there's nobody else left except other VC funded startups. One of the US funded companies will end up taking the entire market even if they are burning money with no hope of ever balancing the books, but that's OK because one of the VC's other investments can always be persuaded to give a clean exit.
Example: DailyMotion (European) vs YouTube (US). At the time YouTube was bought they didn't have a hope in hell of ever being a standalone business and didn't even care to try, but they were down the road from Google and were scaring Larry/Sergey/Eric with their success. Buying a company if you can just jump in your car to go visit them is easy, if you need to constantly do trans-Atlantic flights, not so easy. It doesn't make sense to bet on the "grow like crazy and wait for an exit" strategy elsewhere. WhatsApp is another example of an MTV based company that had no strategy beyond grow-and-exit. I actually made a WhatsApp-like app a few years before the smartphone revolution hit, and my friends thought it was awesome, but I had no illusions that it could ever be a business. And indeed none of these messenger apps ever have been. In the world of "startups" (vs small businesses), you don't necessarily need to care.
Thank you. This is a much more informed post than the article.
There is imo so much wrong with PG's post, but as an European the whole proximity to tech thing feels very real. I remember seeing a talk by Craig Frederhigi where he also made fun of the fact that at least 50% of his success came from just being present in Silicon Valley / Cupertino at the right time.
There is imo so much wrong with PG's post, but as an European the whole proximity to tech thing feels very real. I remember seeing a talk by Craig Frederhigi where he also made fun of the fact that at least 50% of his success came from just being present in Silicon Valley / Cupertino at the right time.
I wonder if there are some other companies that would be better to hold up as paragons to high schoolers.
Apple, Patagonia (and its predecessors), WhatsApp (pre-FB), Trader Joe’s (pre acquisition), Yahoo! (pre-‘99) are some that come to mind for me. Any others?
Apple, Patagonia (and its predecessors), WhatsApp (pre-FB), Trader Joe’s (pre acquisition), Yahoo! (pre-‘99) are some that come to mind for me. Any others?
Most startups end up failing. The ones that don’t fail succeed only a little and end up as lifestyle businesses. Nothing wrong with that, but it should be acknowledged.
If you want to play the “next Google” game, get ready to be disappointed by Lady Luck.
If you want to play the “next Google” game, get ready to be disappointed by Lady Luck.
PG forgot two very helpful requirements:
* Have a rich family to get you into an elite university and to give you the financial independence to start a startup
* Be lucky. Only ~1% of all startups succeed.
* Have a rich family to get you into an elite university and to give you the financial independence to start a startup
* Be lucky. Only ~1% of all startups succeed.
Another point of view:
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/why-google-made-the-...
(I don't know how truthful these articles are, but found them interesting to read.)
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/why-google-made-the-...
(I don't know how truthful these articles are, but found them interesting to read.)
Start a company to work on exciting projects and potentially get rich, by mastering technology, creating based on interests, and finding like-minded cofounders
I couldnt finish reading the essay because I was distracted by the generally smug tone of it.
99.99% of people who read this article are not going to start the next Google. Being a successful entrepreneur requires an incredible amount of luck, timing, skill, and risk taking.
If you choose that path, great, but that in no way devalues the skill building, network building, and predictable income of working for someone else.
99.99% of people who read this article are not going to start the next Google. Being a successful entrepreneur requires an incredible amount of luck, timing, skill, and risk taking.
If you choose that path, great, but that in no way devalues the skill building, network building, and predictable income of working for someone else.
The tone isn’t smug. pg simplified his language for a teenage audience. Simple arguments made simply can come across as smug because they lack caveats and polite hedging, but I don’t think the accusation of smugness sticks in this case.
I also disagree about the incredible qualities entrepreneurs need and hardships they have to endure. Many incredible businesses are just good product + good distribution. Many kids think starting a startup is practically impossible, and pg correctly points out that it isn’t.
I also disagree about the incredible qualities entrepreneurs need and hardships they have to endure. Many incredible businesses are just good product + good distribution. Many kids think starting a startup is practically impossible, and pg correctly points out that it isn’t.
When I was a teen, I had a strong aversion for being talked down to, and was resistant to attempts to patronize even if they were well-intended and even if they benefited me.
Paul's leaving a significant fraction of the intended audience on the table here IMO: teens who are resistant to being told what to do and how to do it. :)
Paul's leaving a significant fraction of the intended audience on the table here IMO: teens who are resistant to being told what to do and how to do it. :)
That sounds like a disability to me
Well keep in mind that that's explicitly the audience pg's targeting with the article:
> But you will avoid many of the annoying things
> that come with a job, including a boss telling
> you what to do.
It's a little easier if you are a PhD study at Stanford, or, in pg's case, friends with a famous genius at MIT.
Starting is trivial. Succeeding is in fact practically impossible.
Starting is trivial. Succeeding is in fact practically impossible.
Today it's a lot easier to match the level of success pg had with viaweb back in the 90s. No MIT genius required.
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I mean even basic math cannot uphold the thesis.
All the money and power in the world keeps consolidating upwards with the people closer to the apex of the pyramid deluding others that consistent climbing will help others reach there.
A tale as old as time, but due to exponential growth of tech playing out much faster.
All the money and power in the world keeps consolidating upwards with the people closer to the apex of the pyramid deluding others that consistent climbing will help others reach there.
A tale as old as time, but due to exponential growth of tech playing out much faster.
Perhaps you're not the intended audience.
There are certain people that deeply desire this and that understand their chances of success are low. Nevertheless, these people want to try and find encouragement in these types of essays.
You don't need to be upset that this isn't for you. There are all sorts of shapes of people in the world. We benefit by having curious people at all strata of society, exploring various sorts of ideas and problems. It keeps us from deadlock.
There are certain people that deeply desire this and that understand their chances of success are low. Nevertheless, these people want to try and find encouragement in these types of essays.
You don't need to be upset that this isn't for you. There are all sorts of shapes of people in the world. We benefit by having curious people at all strata of society, exploring various sorts of ideas and problems. It keeps us from deadlock.
> You don't need to be upset that this isn't for you.
The person you're responding to does not seem upset to me.
You add an interesting perspective that some people want to find encouragement in these types of essays. And the personal jab just isn't necessary.
The person you're responding to does not seem upset to me.
You add an interesting perspective that some people want to find encouragement in these types of essays. And the personal jab just isn't necessary.
> The person you're responding to does not seem upset to me.
I don't think we're reading this the same.
To quote OP,
>> I was distracted by the generally smug tone of it.
The definition of "smug":
> smug /sməɡ/ adjective. having or showing an excessive pride in oneself or one's achievements.
> contentedly confident of one's ability, superiority, or correctness; complacent.
This is why I responded. If you don't like the tone of the article, you don't need to suggest that the author has a superiority complex.
> And the personal jab just isn't necessary.
"smug" is a personal jab. I didn't make one.
I don't think we're reading this the same.
To quote OP,
>> I was distracted by the generally smug tone of it.
The definition of "smug":
> smug /sməɡ/ adjective. having or showing an excessive pride in oneself or one's achievements.
> contentedly confident of one's ability, superiority, or correctness; complacent.
This is why I responded. If you don't like the tone of the article, you don't need to suggest that the author has a superiority complex.
> And the personal jab just isn't necessary.
"smug" is a personal jab. I didn't make one.
> So Mark Zuckerberg shows up at Harvard in 2003, and the university still hasn't gotten the facebook online. [...] But Mark is a programmer. He looks at this situation and thinks "Well, this is stupid. I could write a program to fix this in one night. Just let people upload their own photos and then combine the data into a new site for the whole university." So he does. And almost literally overnight he has thousands of users.
Kinda, but this skips over the whole Facemash thing https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creat...
Kinda, but this skips over the whole Facemash thing https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creat...
You are too kind. It's a complete lie, or worse, utter BS fabricated to back up the OP argument. Zuckerberg stole photos (and the website name!) from the already existing online facebook.
Facebook was actually based on something he was hired by Winklevoss to create, and he decided to keep it for himself instead of delivering it. That's the "naughtiness" that YC seeks out in its Founder application process.
Note, by the way, in the recent "cancellation" of President Gay, the false claim that behavior like this would get a Harvard student expelled (although Zuck did end up "expelling" himself.)
Facebook was actually based on something he was hired by Winklevoss to create, and he decided to keep it for himself instead of delivering it. That's the "naughtiness" that YC seeks out in its Founder application process.
Note, by the way, in the recent "cancellation" of President Gay, the false claim that behavior like this would get a Harvard student expelled (although Zuck did end up "expelling" himself.)
This seems to be the main message. And it's followed with such a sweet lacing of irony in the associated footnote
> The empirical evidence is clear on this. If you look at where the largest numbers of successful startups come from, it's pretty much the same as the list of the most selective universities.
> The empirical evidence is clear on this. If you look at where the largest numbers of successful startups come from, it's pretty much the same as the list of the most selective universities.
While I agree with a lot of the criticisms that have been posted here (first and foremost that it is exceedingly bad advice to take advice on being successful from someone who is like six sigmas to the right of the curve on how their efforts were rewarded - it's like reading from Taylor Swift or Simone Biles or Usain Bolt about "to succeed you just need hard work and to believe!". As it's taken many, many years of therapy for me to internalize, if you get the majority of your self-worth through what you do, you're gonna have a bad time...) I think it's also a good idea to keep in mind the general HN guideline of "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says."
In that sense, I do strongly agree with the overall conclusion, "That's it, just two things, build stuff and do well in school." Building stuff for your own edification, and soaking up as much knowledge and relationships while you're in school, is really sound advice that works regardless of your end goal.
In that sense, I do strongly agree with the overall conclusion, "That's it, just two things, build stuff and do well in school." Building stuff for your own edification, and soaking up as much knowledge and relationships while you're in school, is really sound advice that works regardless of your end goal.
> soaking up as much knowledge and relationships while you're in school
A family friend was recently admitted to a magnet school - it's not like an Ivy League level institution, but it's fairly prestigious in the area, and not easy to get to. I need to make sure to remind him that while it's good that he's feeling academically challenged, he should also focus on building friendships with people who are statistically likely (much as he is, tbh) to be successful in life - they can help pull him up when he's down, and he can do the same for them.
I didn't get that much out of college, academically - but the relationships I built there got me my first two jobs, and I still treasure the friends I made there.
A family friend was recently admitted to a magnet school - it's not like an Ivy League level institution, but it's fairly prestigious in the area, and not easy to get to. I need to make sure to remind him that while it's good that he's feeling academically challenged, he should also focus on building friendships with people who are statistically likely (much as he is, tbh) to be successful in life - they can help pull him up when he's down, and he can do the same for them.
I didn't get that much out of college, academically - but the relationships I built there got me my first two jobs, and I still treasure the friends I made there.
Aristotle said friendships were the best example of happiness in life - not fame or success which rarely lead to happiness or even social benefit. Friendship is the best example because that's the only way to not only exercise your curiosity and virtues, but do so in knowing concert with people who understand and appreciate what you're doing, who are entirely different beings. I would hope that even high-achieving friendships can be built not on mutual utility but on common interest and expression.
Also "the standard way to get rich"... It's much easier to get rich by getting hired at a FAANG than starting your own company.
You only get rich by starting your own company if you win the startup lottery. Otherwise you're better off getting a high paid job.
You only get rich by starting your own company if you win the startup lottery. Otherwise you're better off getting a high paid job.
There are very different definitions of "rich."
Take the old comparison between Gates and Jordan. "If Jordan saves 100% of his income for the next 450 years, he'll still have less than Bill Gates has today."
You can become wealthy and comfortable working for a salary. But, the canonical way to get "FU money" is to win the lottery.
Take the old comparison between Gates and Jordan. "If Jordan saves 100% of his income for the next 450 years, he'll still have less than Bill Gates has today."
You can become wealthy and comfortable working for a salary. But, the canonical way to get "FU money" is to win the lottery.
It's all about managing yourself and expectations.
Can a janitor save enough money to rival Gates? No. Not even close.
But the same janitor could save enough money to have "FU money" later in life, and only continue working as a janitor if he chose to do so.
Can a janitor save enough money to rival Gates? No. Not even close.
But the same janitor could save enough money to have "FU money" later in life, and only continue working as a janitor if he chose to do so.
> But the same janitor could save enough money to have "FU money" later in life, and only continue working as a janitor if he chose to do so.
That is exceedingly doubtful
That is exceedingly doubtful
I agree, and the reason is housing. If housing in this country wasn't fucked up I think it would be possible. As of now, to do this as a janitor you would need to live with roommates or family. You would also need to avoid smoking, alcohol, gambling, and any other money sinks. Then you would need to invest all your savings for years.
Housing cost is the single defining factor in retirability now and if you're a janitor, you seriously need to consider where you are living, because moving from a VHCOL state to a lower one could be all you need.
Sure the pay is lower, but the housing costs are substantially lower.
Sure the pay is lower, but the housing costs are substantially lower.
I would love to do the math on this.
The average Janitor I salary in the United States is $34,623 as of February 26, 2024.
Average home price in the United States: $417,700.
Monthly payment for 30-year mortgage is $2,950.
Monthly gross pay is $34,623 / 12 = $2885.25...
Hm...it's literally not doable.
The average Janitor I salary in the United States is $34,623 as of February 26, 2024.
Average home price in the United States: $417,700.
Monthly payment for 30-year mortgage is $2,950.
Monthly gross pay is $34,623 / 12 = $2885.25...
Hm...it's literally not doable.
That depends entirely on your definition of rich.
PG's definition of rich is probably 100x what yours is.
PG's definition of rich is probably 100x what yours is.
My point is that the probability of getting that rich is really low. You need to combine hard work with incredible luck. A very few percentage will get 100x richer than a FAANG engineer.
A typical founder, 10 years in, is less rich than he could have been if he had taken a high paid tech job.
But anyway, PG is saying the same thing he's been saying for years. He wants people to launch startups, and he wants them to shoot for the moon with VC money. He has no interest in bootstrapped companies. Because he's a VC, so he's talking in his own interest first and foremost.
A typical founder, 10 years in, is less rich than he could have been if he had taken a high paid tech job.
But anyway, PG is saying the same thing he's been saying for years. He wants people to launch startups, and he wants them to shoot for the moon with VC money. He has no interest in bootstrapped companies. Because he's a VC, so he's talking in his own interest first and foremost.
I agree with you, but PG’s definition of rich in the article is people worth $10 billion dollars plus.
I don’t think he’s being malicious. I think he genuinely just doesnt see a $5-10m NW as rich.
I don’t think he’s being malicious. I think he genuinely just doesnt see a $5-10m NW as rich.
[deleted]
> I think it's also a good idea to keep in mind the general HN guideline of "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says."
"strongest" is highly subjective. I also don't think we should make things up and pretend the other person said them, which is much more commonly used to strawman, but steelmanning involves the same process.
"strongest" is highly subjective. I also don't think we should make things up and pretend the other person said them, which is much more commonly used to strawman, but steelmanning involves the same process.
you can steelman and still be explicit that you're steelmanning and how you're interpreting what you think they meant
> …get good at programming. That has been the source of the median startup for the last 30 years, and this is probably not going to change in the next 10.
Interesting comment; seems at odds with what a lot of others seem to think at the moment. But time will tell. I suspect he’s right.
Interesting comment; seems at odds with what a lot of others seem to think at the moment. But time will tell. I suspect he’s right.
I love the opening because the mission statement of my company has always been "make sure taneq doesn't ever have to go back to a real job". Don't get me wrong, at most points a 'real job' would have been easier but easier wasn't the mission.
> But the more arbitrary a test, the more it becomes a test of mere determination and resourcefulness.
So Leetcode is actually a good way to hire?
So Leetcode is actually a good way to hire?
Sadly, yes, at least for a certain type of job. Probably not the best, but considering the effort involved on the part of the employer (ie very little) combined with the result, it's pretty good. Anything better requires a ton more effort (work trials) and/or doesn't scale well (personal referrals).
If you consider that >10 years ago there were blog posts talking about how hard the "FizzBuzz" question was to implement when asked in-person as a way to demonstrate how you approach solving problems, there's definitely a reasonable assertion that these types of interviewing methods help weed out applicants unable to write basic compound statements. Might not be the best way as a single pass/fail criterion though.
Sure, if your company is as prestigious as Stanford or MIT.
Leetcode style interviews were always a reasonable option for a particular type of company. But they became a trend for companies that weren't a good fit.
This reads like it was written by an LLM trained on self-help books.
Is this the guy that a lot of HNers look up to?
Is this the guy that a lot of HNers look up to?
Yes, sadly. If you read between the lines and take his advice more as "understanding the psychology of VCs" rather than as actual advice, his essays are very useful. He has long passed the phases of a manager's life where he has to be right - he is surrounded by yes men who tell him that he is right no matter what.
Matt Levine, as usual, has a great take on the phases of life of a partner/founder of a hedge fund (which a VC fund basically is), and PG is deep in phase 3: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-11-07/bridge...
I will say that unlike GPT-4 he is an objectively good writer (ie has very good style) most of the time, so the essays tend to be somewhat entertaining to read.
Matt Levine, as usual, has a great take on the phases of life of a partner/founder of a hedge fund (which a VC fund basically is), and PG is deep in phase 3: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-11-07/bridge...
I will say that unlike GPT-4 he is an objectively good writer (ie has very good style) most of the time, so the essays tend to be somewhat entertaining to read.
This is great. What Bridgewater did for Dalio's popularity rating is the same thing Twitter did for Musk's Tweet reach (and what Trump's pollsters did for his ratings).
Yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way, but Musk and Trump are also examples of people who are deep into stage 3 of this process.
"It really matters to do well in your classes, even the ones that are just memorization or blathering about literature, because you need to do well in your classes to get into a good university. And if you want to start a startup you should try to get into the best university you can, because that's where the best cofounders are. It's also where the best employees are. When Larry and Sergey started Google, they began by just hiring all the smartest people they knew out of Stanford, and this was a real advantage for them."
Opinions may differ but to me this sounds really pathetic. "[B]lathering about literature." Maybe he is addressing a room full of social outcasts.
Yes, there is so much money that has flowed through Google, it's truly astounding, but nevertheless, beyond fortuitous circumstances, this has only persisted because of dissemination of online ads and anti-competitive conduct. Is there is any kid who is thinking, "My dream is to put ads on every screen and collect more data about peoples' lives that has ever before been collected. Settle all the lawsuits against us for violating peoples' privacy, pay off all the regulators, fire people by the thousands, let harassment run rampant amongst our managers, and destroy eveidence so the government cannot catch us breaking the law." All they see is the money and hype and, during ZIRP, lack of comparable alternatives in terms of opportunity and compensation.
Silicon Valley VC telling kids that learning how to program is more important than getting an education, advising them to go to university not for the education but to find "cofounders" and employees. Hard to rationalise how this would be healthy advice for anyone.
Opinions may differ but to me this sounds really pathetic. "[B]lathering about literature." Maybe he is addressing a room full of social outcasts.
Yes, there is so much money that has flowed through Google, it's truly astounding, but nevertheless, beyond fortuitous circumstances, this has only persisted because of dissemination of online ads and anti-competitive conduct. Is there is any kid who is thinking, "My dream is to put ads on every screen and collect more data about peoples' lives that has ever before been collected. Settle all the lawsuits against us for violating peoples' privacy, pay off all the regulators, fire people by the thousands, let harassment run rampant amongst our managers, and destroy eveidence so the government cannot catch us breaking the law." All they see is the money and hype and, during ZIRP, lack of comparable alternatives in terms of opportunity and compensation.
Silicon Valley VC telling kids that learning how to program is more important than getting an education, advising them to go to university not for the education but to find "cofounders" and employees. Hard to rationalise how this would be healthy advice for anyone.
The trick is to start your own company. So it's not a trick for avoiding work, because if you start your own company you'll work harder than you would if you had an ordinary job. But you will avoid many of the annoying things that come with a job, including a boss telling you what to do.
This is literally true, but it's disingenuous. Not every job has a boss telling you what to do. Many jobs hire people for their expertise and pay them to solve problems for them, and in these kinds of jobs the employee collaborates with her boss on deciding what kinds of problems you will work on. Of course, it will only be enjoyable if the company's problems are aligned with the employee's interests.
If you are a technical expert with the kind of ability and acumen needed to run a successful start up, I would argue that it is at least as easy to find a company whose problems are aligned with your interests as to find investors who will truly let you pursue your own interests with their money.
"Making it" as a startup founder should be seen in the same class of success as making it as a rock star or an actor. There are lots of aspirants and hardly any of them succeed. Even though some manage to become wildly wealthy, the prior expected payoff is negative.
This is literally true, but it's disingenuous. Not every job has a boss telling you what to do. Many jobs hire people for their expertise and pay them to solve problems for them, and in these kinds of jobs the employee collaborates with her boss on deciding what kinds of problems you will work on. Of course, it will only be enjoyable if the company's problems are aligned with the employee's interests.
If you are a technical expert with the kind of ability and acumen needed to run a successful start up, I would argue that it is at least as easy to find a company whose problems are aligned with your interests as to find investors who will truly let you pursue your own interests with their money.
"Making it" as a startup founder should be seen in the same class of success as making it as a rock star or an actor. There are lots of aspirants and hardly any of them succeed. Even though some manage to become wildly wealthy, the prior expected payoff is negative.
> the employee collaborates with her boss on deciding what kinds of problems you will work on. Of course, it will only be enjoyable if the company's problems are aligned with the employee's interests.
And that's a huge if. PG's view of regular jobs might be colored by his own experience (working for Yahoo after they bought Viaweb--of course it's going to jar when the thing you built is now owned by someone else that you now have to work for), but it's still the case that even the best case regular job (and of course most regular jobs aren't the best case) is going to give you significantly less autonomy than owning your own company--because you don't make the final business decisions for a company you don't own. If you're the type of person that's going to jar (and I suspect PG is that type of person), you're not going to like even the best case regular job.
> "Making it" as a startup founder should be seen in the same class of success as making it as a rock star or an actor. There are lots of aspirants and hardly any of them succeed. Even though some manage to become wildly wealthy, the prior expected payoff is negative.
This is probably true if you take VC funding, since VC outcomes are basically bimodal: either "huge win" or "tank". I'm not sure all startups actually need to take VC funding, however.
And that's a huge if. PG's view of regular jobs might be colored by his own experience (working for Yahoo after they bought Viaweb--of course it's going to jar when the thing you built is now owned by someone else that you now have to work for), but it's still the case that even the best case regular job (and of course most regular jobs aren't the best case) is going to give you significantly less autonomy than owning your own company--because you don't make the final business decisions for a company you don't own. If you're the type of person that's going to jar (and I suspect PG is that type of person), you're not going to like even the best case regular job.
> "Making it" as a startup founder should be seen in the same class of success as making it as a rock star or an actor. There are lots of aspirants and hardly any of them succeed. Even though some manage to become wildly wealthy, the prior expected payoff is negative.
This is probably true if you take VC funding, since VC outcomes are basically bimodal: either "huge win" or "tank". I'm not sure all startups actually need to take VC funding, however.
> If you're not sure what technology to get good at, get good at programming. That has been the source of the median startup for the last 30 years, and this is probably not going to change in the next 10.
The challenge with programming as a career now is that most of the solely technical problems have been solved. If you're looking for the YC playbook, start a SaaS that solves a specific problem that people will pay you for, those niches have been very carefully picked over for the last 15 years, and there are few that are very profitable remaining.
Most of the big remaining problems are ones of incentives - they are cases where a whole system is fractally fucked up, with lots of human actors all doing what is individually best for themselves but with a sum result that is a net negative for humanity. If you study the housing crisis, for example, you end up with municipalities that need ever-rising housing prices and ever-restricting supply to balance their budgets; residents who depend on their rising home prices to fund their retirement; developers who need to work within the local regulations that are explicitly designed to make their lives difficult; and young people who can't move out because a second mortgage that requires their parents' ever-increasing home equity was used to fund their college education. Finding a better way to build houses doesn't help here; you need to work around all the people who actively don't want you to find a better way to build houses.
There is room for software here, but often in subtle and what seems "evil" ways. Your problem is other people; software is useful to the extent that it lets you work around other people. Technical skills are table stakes for this, but understanding people and their incentives is critical for this work.
The challenge with programming as a career now is that most of the solely technical problems have been solved. If you're looking for the YC playbook, start a SaaS that solves a specific problem that people will pay you for, those niches have been very carefully picked over for the last 15 years, and there are few that are very profitable remaining.
Most of the big remaining problems are ones of incentives - they are cases where a whole system is fractally fucked up, with lots of human actors all doing what is individually best for themselves but with a sum result that is a net negative for humanity. If you study the housing crisis, for example, you end up with municipalities that need ever-rising housing prices and ever-restricting supply to balance their budgets; residents who depend on their rising home prices to fund their retirement; developers who need to work within the local regulations that are explicitly designed to make their lives difficult; and young people who can't move out because a second mortgage that requires their parents' ever-increasing home equity was used to fund their college education. Finding a better way to build houses doesn't help here; you need to work around all the people who actively don't want you to find a better way to build houses.
There is room for software here, but often in subtle and what seems "evil" ways. Your problem is other people; software is useful to the extent that it lets you work around other people. Technical skills are table stakes for this, but understanding people and their incentives is critical for this work.
This essay isn't a step-by-step guide to building 'Google', rather, a call for young people to consider entrepreneurship as a fulfilling alternative to traditional careers.
To maximise their chances of success, Paul suggests:
1. Become a builder: Gain expertise in technology or other fields you're passionate about. (Does not have to just be coding, either!)
2. Start personal projects: Build things you and your friends find useful. Paul suggests this is the fastest way to learn and potentially discover startup ideas.
3. Collaborate: Work on projects with like-minded people. This fosters skill development and could lead to finding potential cofounders.
I liked how Paul also emphasises the importance of good grades in order to access top universities, where you'll find other bright collaborators.
There are obviously many other paths, but if I wish I had this advice at 14 or 15.
To maximise their chances of success, Paul suggests:
1. Become a builder: Gain expertise in technology or other fields you're passionate about. (Does not have to just be coding, either!)
2. Start personal projects: Build things you and your friends find useful. Paul suggests this is the fastest way to learn and potentially discover startup ideas.
3. Collaborate: Work on projects with like-minded people. This fosters skill development and could lead to finding potential cofounders.
I liked how Paul also emphasises the importance of good grades in order to access top universities, where you'll find other bright collaborators.
There are obviously many other paths, but if I wish I had this advice at 14 or 15.
This is the best take I've read yet.
I don't disagree with Paul's choice to focus on entrepreneurship and getting rich here. If you're looking to excite people, tell an exciting story. Captivate imagination. No one gets pumped up (especially at that age) at the mediocre story.
What I find great about his advice is that it is by no means limited to entrepreneurship. Working on passion projects, doing well in school, and learning how to build relationships is valuable even if you're working for someone else.
There's a big space in tech jobs between the "grinding away at code/help desk" and "startup bro" that I feel doesn't get described enough. And that's one thing I'd tack on to Paul's advice, notwithstanding the need to sell the message above. That advice he espouses can also lead to being a really standout contributor at a tech firm, and probably with a higher rate of success than getting a startup to stick. One doesn't have to form a startup to contribute ideas, and there's good money to be made in that space.
I think your choice of wording above is important to call out: The advice "maximizes" the chance of success; but it doesn't guarantee it.
Overall, completely agreed. =)
I don't disagree with Paul's choice to focus on entrepreneurship and getting rich here. If you're looking to excite people, tell an exciting story. Captivate imagination. No one gets pumped up (especially at that age) at the mediocre story.
What I find great about his advice is that it is by no means limited to entrepreneurship. Working on passion projects, doing well in school, and learning how to build relationships is valuable even if you're working for someone else.
There's a big space in tech jobs between the "grinding away at code/help desk" and "startup bro" that I feel doesn't get described enough. And that's one thing I'd tack on to Paul's advice, notwithstanding the need to sell the message above. That advice he espouses can also lead to being a really standout contributor at a tech firm, and probably with a higher rate of success than getting a startup to stick. One doesn't have to form a startup to contribute ideas, and there's good money to be made in that space.
I think your choice of wording above is important to call out: The advice "maximizes" the chance of success; but it doesn't guarantee it.
Overall, completely agreed. =)
> "I think your choice of wording above is important to call out: The advice "maximizes" the chance of success; but it doesn't guarantee it."
This is a great observation!
I agree that Paul is framing an inspiring narrative, especially when targeting younger people. You're spot on, suggesting that this advice sets people up for success in general, whether they become entrepreneurs, standout employees, or something else entirely.
We need more narratives about those successful 'in-between' tech roles.
Paul's giving the ingredients for good outcomes, but the recipe is up to the individual.
This is a great observation!
I agree that Paul is framing an inspiring narrative, especially when targeting younger people. You're spot on, suggesting that this advice sets people up for success in general, whether they become entrepreneurs, standout employees, or something else entirely.
We need more narratives about those successful 'in-between' tech roles.
Paul's giving the ingredients for good outcomes, but the recipe is up to the individual.
I'm generally interested if people here think that to a 14-15 year old, do those companies sound tremendously cool and does the premise of their value stir exciting thoughts and motivations? My slightly younger kids don't really what Google, Apple or Facebook/Meta means. If I explained this essay to them, I'd at least say "the iPad", "YouTube", "the Oculus" to make it more relatable.
To my mind, to immediately relate to kids in the UK, I would need to say TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Oculus, iPhone, iPad, and such, and not the company name.
To my mind, to immediately relate to kids in the UK, I would need to say TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Oculus, iPhone, iPad, and such, and not the company name.
Even top ranked projects here won't r receive more than a dozen users 2 days later. That's the reality.
In the YC Youtube videos it's amusing that they (Jason and the other guy) almost always reference Google and Facebook despite the fact that neither of those companies were YC companies and none of the YC companies out of 4000+ funded (not even Stripe) come close to the scale or valuation of either Google or Facebook.
https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/valuation
https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/valuation
Google and Facebook had 2 decades. Even the most successful of YC companies had a little over a decade. Not a valid comparison. And $100+ billion for Coinbase, Stripe, Dropbox is still huge.
So why don’t they use those companies as examples instead?
While thats true they did fund Airbnb which is 100B. So while they haven't funded anyone that big yet, they have come 1/10 of the way.
Any chance for me at 45 and without stellar academic background? Or just hope for better chance next life?
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There are many entrepreneurs that got started late in life. They might not be running the most cutting edge technology companies, but there is more than one industry in the world.
If you reduce it to a very certain first principle that can be applied similarly today, at Google they made electronics do what other people weren't doing so well, ideally things that had never been done before.
Same thing as Packard & Hewlett when they got the ball rolling . . .
Worked for Edison too, he really got in on the ground floor when it comes to electrons.
Same thing as Packard & Hewlett when they got the ball rolling . . .
Worked for Edison too, he really got in on the ground floor when it comes to electrons.
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Finally his blog is using HTTPS :)
Summarised :
* as many(interested projects) -> tech -> product ideas
* Grades -> top college -> co-workers
* as many(interested projects) -> tech -> product ideas
* Grades -> top college -> co-workers
“Learn to code and surround yourself with smart people” is good advice, but it’s kind of funny that Google was used as the example of peak success for a group of 15 year olds. I’m fairly willing to bet that most of them think of Google as boring and old, and not exciting or innovative. How to start TikTok or Minecraft would have probably been a more inspiring example.
The story of Minecraft was an awesome inspiration for my peers and me, much more relatable than Google or any SV startup. Markus Persson did not come from a family of academics or engineers; he was just a poor blue-collar kid who liked videogames and coding (unfortunately his political views have stained his image).
I literally remember following his progress as he posted on Reddit. I imagine following Linus Torvald’s posts on Usenet must bring similar memories to the slightly more matured people around here.
With fully 2 datapoints, I conjecture that this odd Scandinavian combination of being highly advanced nations yet isolated from the action in and around Silicon Valley increases the probability of public social Communication, as we (Scandis) are used to not having peers physically around us. The chi^2 is good with this one.
With fully 2 datapoints, I conjecture that this odd Scandinavian combination of being highly advanced nations yet isolated from the action in and around Silicon Valley increases the probability of public social Communication, as we (Scandis) are used to not having peers physically around us. The chi^2 is good with this one.
Folks underestimate how incredibly skilled Notch was and is. Unfortunately ludum dare has taken down its historical compo pages, but I remember that he had several games built from scratch in 24 hours which were mind boggling impressive.
One had a full 3d rendering engine implemented in Dartlang written in 48 hours. Another was a minecraft top down rpg clone.
Dude is the Bobby Fischer of tech
One had a full 3d rendering engine implemented in Dartlang written in 48 hours. Another was a minecraft top down rpg clone.
Dude is the Bobby Fischer of tech
He also wrote Wurm Online with Rolf Jansson, all in Java OpenGL. Was a bit of a mess of a game but it still has an engaged community.
Yup.... if you look at Minecraft Classic or one of the similar early versions' code..... it's quite advanced. It's conceptually fairly simple but the game just has so many small nice things which are taken for granted but are not trivial to implement.
It's no surprise that almost all of the iconic things about Minecraft was created in the first few years by Notch.... everything else afterwards is just polishing it and adding fluff.
It's no surprise that almost all of the iconic things about Minecraft was created in the first few years by Notch.... everything else afterwards is just polishing it and adding fluff.
I studied it very closely to try to comprehend how someone could create something like that so quickly. The difference between Notch's LDJAM projects and other folks is that HE WROTE THE ENTIRE FUCKING ENGINE ALONG WITH THE GAME.
Sprite transforms, pixel art, movement, sound... just everything...
John Carmack eat your heart out.
Yes, I completely agree, I always fondly remember his game "drowning in problems"[1] because of the notable creativity behind it. Despite barely having an interface, it managed to entertain me until the end.
[1]http://game.notch.net/drowning/
[1]http://game.notch.net/drowning/
Notch was a great hacker, but not a good coder. His code is hacks upon hack all the way down.
* [X] Viable ideas
* [X] Skills to build those ideas
* [ ] Runway to develop those ideas
* [ ] Someone to help find money to provide runway
* [X] Skills to build those ideas
* [ ] Runway to develop those ideas
* [ ] Someone to help find money to provide runway
I am glad he did not mention "Ensure you are born in California".
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> "But you will avoid many of the annoying things that come with a job, including a boss telling you what to do."
Isn't this a bit misleading and can only be true for companies that don't take VC money or never go public (ex: Basecamp/37 Signals)? For VC funded or public companies, ultimately you'd have to be responsible to answer to your shareholders.
Isn't this a bit misleading and can only be true for companies that don't take VC money or never go public (ex: Basecamp/37 Signals)? For VC funded or public companies, ultimately you'd have to be responsible to answer to your shareholders.
Right, and from all my friends who did take VC money: it's an incredibly demanding period of your life, a large proportion of which isn't about delivering on your vision. You're gonna learn a lot about office space leases, accounting, fundraising, customer pitches, etc. You're gonna have impatient VCs on your board, with the power to fire you, breathing down your neck. You won't be relaxing much and won't be spending that much time with family and non-work friends.
It's a valuable experience with a lot of potential upside in the long haul - but let's not pretend that it's less taxing than a cozy 9-to-5 tech job where your boss might ask you to update your OKRs once in a while.
It's a valuable experience with a lot of potential upside in the long haul - but let's not pretend that it's less taxing than a cozy 9-to-5 tech job where your boss might ask you to update your OKRs once in a while.
Usually by the time VCs have the power to fire you, you have so many different investors that they cannot really do it without some massively difficult political manouvering, at least in software.
Someone better tell that to Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Sean Parker, and Jack Dorsey.
Tell me more about poor billionaires who suffered the cruel fate of losing their jobs.
Every one of those people was incredibly successful before and after getting fired.
Every one of those people was incredibly successful before and after getting fired.
> "But you will avoid many of the annoying things that come with a job, including a boss telling you what to do."
Yeah but that boss is paying you mid 6 figs or even 7, plus comp and other stuff, then maybe it's not so bad. Why else are these tech companies inundated with so many job applications if having a boss is supposed to be so bad. I think this guy is still stuck in a '90s or early 2000s 'Dilbert' mindset when salaries were way worse and bosses had more leverage and employees were closer to being like slaves. A lot has changed. .
Yeah but that boss is paying you mid 6 figs or even 7, plus comp and other stuff, then maybe it's not so bad. Why else are these tech companies inundated with so many job applications if having a boss is supposed to be so bad. I think this guy is still stuck in a '90s or early 2000s 'Dilbert' mindset when salaries were way worse and bosses had more leverage and employees were closer to being like slaves. A lot has changed. .
I agree with you overall but the impression I'm getting is that comp is taking a nose dive for premium jobs. Probably 10% of those pay what they used to, 3-4 years ago and the competition is 100x worse, and it was bad before.
Getting mid 6 to 7 figures as a employee is almost exactly as hard as founding a successful startup.
The vast majority of employees at the largest, most successful companies, do not earn that much.
The vast majority of employees at the largest, most successful companies, do not earn that much.
Yes, but the VCs trust you to a large extent and they can't delve into the nitty-gritty of daily operations. If they do they will develop a bad reputation.
Your boss's job is to oversee the minutiae of your day-to-day activities. Like in most workplaces, you can't choose to just chill for a few days, work only at night, or choose to avoid meetings for a few days, etc.
You will have a level autonomy and the ability to change directions/features, etc. that you cannot have working for others.
Your boss's job is to oversee the minutiae of your day-to-day activities. Like in most workplaces, you can't choose to just chill for a few days, work only at night, or choose to avoid meetings for a few days, etc.
You will have a level autonomy and the ability to change directions/features, etc. that you cannot have working for others.
A good manager is going to trust you to a large extent and not delve into the nitty-gritty of daily operations. With typical reporting loads in knowledge industries, they can’t - a manager with 10 reports realistically has 1-2 hours/week to spend on their projects once all the team overhead is taken care of.
My reports absolutely can chill for a couple days, work only at night, or skip meetings. My job is to get them promoted, which can’t happen until they land projects that demonstrate business impact.
My reports absolutely can chill for a couple days, work only at night, or skip meetings. My job is to get them promoted, which can’t happen until they land projects that demonstrate business impact.
But what a report can't do is change the direction of a company or org leadership that is making bad decisions that lead to impossible demands governed by politics as ultra short-termism. Having the freedom to fail any way I want, but not be empowered to succeed, is a uniquely "employee" problem.
Sure, but there are many ways that VCs can force companies into incentive structures that put them in a failing position. If you include stupid executives and poor long-term decisions in the corporate model, you also have to include stupid VCs or board members and poor long-term decisions in the startup model.
"If you look at the lists of the richest people that occasionally get published in the press, nearly all of them did it by starting their own companies."
"Of the 137 people in the global study who achieved billionaire status in the 12-month study period, 53 of them inherited $150.8 billion collectively, more than the $140.7 billion that was earned by the 84 new self-made billionaires in the same time period, the UBS study says.Nov 30, 2023"
"Of the 137 people in the global study who achieved billionaire status in the 12-month study period, 53 of them inherited $150.8 billion collectively, more than the $140.7 billion that was earned by the 84 new self-made billionaires in the same time period, the UBS study says.Nov 30, 2023"
Maybe merely having a billion dollars isn't what pg was thinking of when talking about "the richest people". If you look at the top 100, like he quotes in his article, only 27 inherited their fortune.
Maybe only 27 inherited large fortunes, but many more started at a much more privileged position than anyone in the rooms Paul is talking to. Maybe they're not from billionaire families, but almost all of them come from families the top 1-3% in terms of wealth.
Who was he talking to? I have no idea what kids pg was talking to, but if it was to peers of his own kids, chances are they are already firmly in the 1%. In any case, to go from top 1-3% to the top 0.0000001% is still incredibly rare and noteworthy. Just because it is easier to do that than go from the top 50th% to the top 0.0000001% doesn't mean it is actually easy.
And still not taking into consideration that the majority of those "self-made" billionaires anyway inherited many privileges from their parents that helped them to "self make".
It also doesn't hurt to inherit just a few millions and combine it with hard work and luck if the alternative is just hard work and luck.
"Of the 137 people in the global study who achieved billionaire status in the 12-month study period, 53 of them inherited $150.8 billion collectively, more than the $140.7 billion that was earned by the 84 new self-made billionaires in the same time period, the UBS study says.Nov 30, 2023"
The citation for this quote appears to be https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/11/30/new-bil... , but I don't believe that limits to those "that occasionally get published in the press".
The citation for this quote appears to be https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/11/30/new-bil... , but I don't believe that limits to those "that occasionally get published in the press".
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I didn't realise PG is a rugby fan.
lol why do so many people here have such a loser/average mindset, you can literally achieve anything, literally anything, just because you don’t want to work hard, you don’t gotta be so discouraging to other people, well I guess people who wanna achieve great things probably don’t care about the stupid lazy people, so it’s whatever
But the fact is you can literally do anything, you just gotta give it your all…
IMO most folks find it easier to point to the million reasons why something wont work/why someone is speaking from a point of affluence/how luck/finances/etc play a role in success than to just do the thing, learn from their mistakes, and grow. It's probably because doing the latter is hard and forces you to face ambiguity & hard personal growth on a daily basis.
I suffer from this at times. To be fair though, that's sort of my day job. Find holes and flaws in ideas and make them stronger. I don't do it with people anymore at least, I try hard to assume they have the best intent.
To say I can do literally anything means I can have a 5x body weight deadlift or run a 4 minute mile. There are limits.
because most people have something called life experience or come from a culture not brainwashed by the american dream. of course YOU can do anything, but whether you are successful with that or not is up to a million factors you cannot control, no matter how much of your all you give.
go to a casino, throw your life savings on one number. if you win, tell everyone how you gave it all and you manifested it by pure will. if you lose, nobody will ever hear from it.
in addition, pg is so heavily biased on this and should never be taken as gospel.
go to a casino, throw your life savings on one number. if you win, tell everyone how you gave it all and you manifested it by pure will. if you lose, nobody will ever hear from it.
in addition, pg is so heavily biased on this and should never be taken as gospel.
The belief that luck is the dominant factor in success is false and harmful to the extent that it keeps people from trying. I mean trying for real as opposed to giving up after a bunch of setbacks.
Yeah, those pesky setbacks like getting injured, working yourself to death and running out of money so you can't feed yourself.
If only people tried for real.
In my experience people most likely to write this are trust fund babies who neglect to mention they're getting essentially a stipend from their parents to take care of all their life necessities, so they can "try for real". Whatever that means.
If only people tried for real.
In my experience people most likely to write this are trust fund babies who neglect to mention they're getting essentially a stipend from their parents to take care of all their life necessities, so they can "try for real". Whatever that means.
What I have seen is that people who don't quit eventually become pretty successful. Some people have to quit because of health reasons or other unfortunate circumstances. But in the overwhelming majority of cases people just get demoralized.
20 years ago I would have agreed with you, but today I don't.
20 years ago I would have agreed with you, but today I don't.
> 20 years ago I would have agreed with you, but today I don't.
On that point, I'll agree with you. 20 years ago I would have said you're flat out wrong, but today, I'd say you have a valid point in that too many people give up after the first few failures (or never even try enough to get to a failure point)
On that point, I'll agree with you. 20 years ago I would have said you're flat out wrong, but today, I'd say you have a valid point in that too many people give up after the first few failures (or never even try enough to get to a failure point)
A lot of opportunities are locked behind a massive paywall and the system isn’t intended for your average Joe to get through that paywall. If it were, you’d have less people to serve you coffee or deliver your meals or advertise to in order to increase shareholder value which the ruling class do not want. Do not be dense.
Pretending like all 8 billion people have the same opportunity to be the next Jeff Bezos/Elon/Jobs is misleading.
My advice for the 99% is to the best you can and foster family and friend relationships, work less, and get out of the mindless consumerist game.
Pretending like all 8 billion people have the same opportunity to be the next Jeff Bezos/Elon/Jobs is misleading.
My advice for the 99% is to the best you can and foster family and friend relationships, work less, and get out of the mindless consumerist game.
I also don’t get why people care so much about what OTHER people do. Will some people fail? Yes of course. But it’s good for society to have a ton of people busting their ass and trying new things. And it’s good for society if bloggers encourage that.
If you personally want to be an employee, fine, but a cultural value for entrepreneurs is a good thing to have and should be supported.
If you personally want to be an employee, fine, but a cultural value for entrepreneurs is a good thing to have and should be supported.
I want to offer a slightly contrarian view.
Unless you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth, the best (safest, surest) way to start your entrepreneurial journey is to work for someone else. The goal is to learn everything about the rules of the trade and expand your network—these two things you don't get from school—while being paid to do that.
On the side, do what PG says to keep your entrepreneurial spirit and avoid "comfort zone" i.e pursuing your career (which is actually fine, but we're talking about starting a business right).
Probably you won't end up building Google. But hey, maybe with this approach, you can give a silver spoon to your offspring.
Unless you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth, the best (safest, surest) way to start your entrepreneurial journey is to work for someone else. The goal is to learn everything about the rules of the trade and expand your network—these two things you don't get from school—while being paid to do that.
On the side, do what PG says to keep your entrepreneurial spirit and avoid "comfort zone" i.e pursuing your career (which is actually fine, but we're talking about starting a business right).
Probably you won't end up building Google. But hey, maybe with this approach, you can give a silver spoon to your offspring.
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(tls) mirror: https://archive.is/zCEbG
I am sorry but this is a terrible write up. Because the gist of it all is 'do what you are good at and help people' but giving examples of billion dollar companies in 90% of the write up shows - but also look at these billionaires its so cool.
You could start a sewing business with few clients at most. Thats still a start up and will make you just as successful and happy and content and will help your local community and if you are good at it become bigger over time. This is how humanity has evolved. These big tech startups are a thing since the last 20 years maybe. But businesses have existed for centuries and they all start with small projects.
But this writeup focusses on these billionaires and tech startup culture so much that it misses to focus on the part - 'do your thing and it might not be programming'. Now being a founder of Y combinator might make you biased to look at only programming and tech companies but it's a shame because tech companies only show up as giants in share value. The tangible world of businesses is vastly bigger and includes millions of startups serving billions that such people will miss completely maybe because they don't have a website or a ticker in NASDAQ.
Such a sad hustle world we live in that we forget your local falafel vendor is also a startup who probably will expand to multiple falafel carts over time.
You could start a sewing business with few clients at most. Thats still a start up and will make you just as successful and happy and content and will help your local community and if you are good at it become bigger over time. This is how humanity has evolved. These big tech startups are a thing since the last 20 years maybe. But businesses have existed for centuries and they all start with small projects.
But this writeup focusses on these billionaires and tech startup culture so much that it misses to focus on the part - 'do your thing and it might not be programming'. Now being a founder of Y combinator might make you biased to look at only programming and tech companies but it's a shame because tech companies only show up as giants in share value. The tangible world of businesses is vastly bigger and includes millions of startups serving billions that such people will miss completely maybe because they don't have a website or a ticker in NASDAQ.
Such a sad hustle world we live in that we forget your local falafel vendor is also a startup who probably will expand to multiple falafel carts over time.
> It's more exciting to work on your own project than someone else's. And you can also get a lot richer. In fact, this is the standard way to get really rich. If you look at the lists of the richest people that occasionally get published in the press, nearly all of them did it by starting their own companies.
People like Paul Graham telling 14-year-olds that basically getting rich is the most important thing is one of the reasons we got into this late-stage capitalism nightmare in the first place. Fuck this.
Edit: Sorry, to update after my rant. So many things wrong with this advice. For most people, starting a company is not the best path to happiness. Sure, if you have a job, there's a "boss" that tells you what to do as Graham notes, but if you think for a second you can do whatever the fuck you want when you start your own company, you're dead wrong. Of course, Graham knows this.
People like Paul Graham telling 14-year-olds that basically getting rich is the most important thing is one of the reasons we got into this late-stage capitalism nightmare in the first place. Fuck this.
Edit: Sorry, to update after my rant. So many things wrong with this advice. For most people, starting a company is not the best path to happiness. Sure, if you have a job, there's a "boss" that tells you what to do as Graham notes, but if you think for a second you can do whatever the fuck you want when you start your own company, you're dead wrong. Of course, Graham knows this.
He said "more exciting" at the beginning of your quote. And if the 14-year-olds somehow don't already want to be rich, how is Paul Graham telling them how to do it going to teach them that it is the most important thing?
If people often give advice about how to do a certain thing, pretty soon you are going to think that the thing is important.
Many people seem to survive 7 hours of advice on how to write properly, solve math problems, and understand history and science for 175 days a year over 12 of their most impressionable years without thinking any of those things are important. That doesn't give me a lot of cause for alarm over a 15 minute Paul Graham talk
It's still good to call out bullshit when you see it.
It's even worse than that. Not only is he saying that, he's parroting the bullshit idea that "starting your own company" is the relevant skillset, rather than "absolutely ruthlessly exploiting every moral and legal grey area to hoard as much value for yourself as possible with extreme urgency."
But I mean this is the guy that foisted Sam Altman onto the world, so clearly he already knows that. Which makes an article like this understandable as the propaganda that it is.
You don't write an article like this to influence kids, you write it to rationalize the giant pile of money you find yourself sitting on.
But I mean this is the guy that foisted Sam Altman onto the world, so clearly he already knows that. Which makes an article like this understandable as the propaganda that it is.
You don't write an article like this to influence kids, you write it to rationalize the giant pile of money you find yourself sitting on.
He's telling kids that they don't have to get a job, and one of the key objections is obviously going to be "but how will I get money". The emphasis in the essay is not getting rich, it's that it's a much more interesting path. And it is.
And then they hit the reality that thier startup is going to fail, even if they get funding in a non zero interest rate environment and they would have been better off just “grinding leetCode and working for a FAANG” (tm r/cscareerquestions) or even just working as a CRUD/Enterprise Corp dev and still be able to make the median household income in the US a couple of years out of school
They might have been better off financially - statistically, they probably would've been. But even my failed startups were more rewarding experiences by far than working in large companies.
And it doesn't preclude you from going and getting paid too much at a big tech co afterwards if it doesn't work. This field has been so lucrative recently that you can generally afford to not be earning at peak potential for a bit, so why not roam free for at least a bit, and let your interest take you where it will, rather than doing something you describe as a grind, just to earn the privilege to go sit in meetings for most of the day and count the years till you can afford retirement?
And it doesn't preclude you from going and getting paid too much at a big tech co afterwards if it doesn't work. This field has been so lucrative recently that you can generally afford to not be earning at peak potential for a bit, so why not roam free for at least a bit, and let your interest take you where it will, rather than doing something you describe as a grind, just to earn the privilege to go sit in meetings for most of the day and count the years till you can afford retirement?
I bet you had parents or some other financial nest egg to fall back on to support your addiction to food and shelter.
Yes most people would rather not work to support those addictions I mentioned. But that’s what most people have to do.
Yes most people would rather not work to support those addictions I mentioned. But that’s what most people have to do.
Yes, I am blessed to have wonderful parents who would let me move back in. Fortunately, I only got to the "crashing on friends' couches and at my girlfriend/now wife's place" phase. Great way to tell if someone's worth marrying, by the way, partly moving in while appearing to have slim financial prospects.
Obviously it's not right for everyone, nothing is. But it's right for more people than the number who do it, and it's worth letting the others know it's an option. A similar talk by PG at my university is why I realized that this was a realistic option, and I'm incredibly grateful he gave it.
Obviously it's not right for everyone, nothing is. But it's right for more people than the number who do it, and it's worth letting the others know it's an option. A similar talk by PG at my university is why I realized that this was a realistic option, and I'm incredibly grateful he gave it.
So the secret of being able to fail at a startup is being able to sponge off of other people who do have jobs at the types of companies you want to avoid working for?
Well, I didn't fail in that case, the company started making money, and they were repaid handsomely. But yeah, having a familial, social, or financial safety net is pretty important. If you never want to have to depend on anyone, or can't for whatever reason, then sure, play it safe. Sounds like you'd judge yourself harshly for taking this sort of risk.
You just admitted that in no case whether you succeeded or failed were you in any danger of being homeless and hungry because you were being supported by people who were willing to “grind it out” in corporate America.
You were never not “safe”
You were never not “safe”
When Paul Graham is saying this is a talk he gives to 14 and 15 year olds, let's think of who those kids are exactly. There is zero chance he is giving this advice to a general audience at some arbitrary high school, much less students from even a modestly disadvantaged background. People at those places don't know or, even if they did know, wouldn't care who Paul Graham is. No, he's at the school his kids go to. The students are all in the same affluent circles as he is.
This is a pep talk for trust fund kids who can afford to mess around with start ups. It's probably lousy advice for most people outside the affluenza bubble.
This is a pep talk for trust fund kids who can afford to mess around with start ups. It's probably lousy advice for most people outside the affluenza bubble.
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> but if you think for a second you can do whatever the fuck you want when you start your own company
I know too many people born rich who think exactly this. And in their experience it works like that; they have no money stress anyway, take a little bit more risk and if it fails, well, they just fold and brag about ‘at least I tried’ and then try again or, you know, sit on the boat and get slobbered. Same thing. The rest of us don’t quite have this and especially bootstrapping your own company is hard, really hard; you will be doing a great deal of things that have nothing to do with what you want or set out to do and those probably turn out to be more important than what you started it for.
I know too many people born rich who think exactly this. And in their experience it works like that; they have no money stress anyway, take a little bit more risk and if it fails, well, they just fold and brag about ‘at least I tried’ and then try again or, you know, sit on the boat and get slobbered. Same thing. The rest of us don’t quite have this and especially bootstrapping your own company is hard, really hard; you will be doing a great deal of things that have nothing to do with what you want or set out to do and those probably turn out to be more important than what you started it for.
I think you're being overly harsh.
14 year old need good role models (preferably from their trusted social circles). These people should, ideally before the child turns 14, give him or her a strong moral framework to judge advice that they might come across.
On the topic of being rich (which can be a good goal if pursued along with a strong moral compass), it's much better to take advice from a Paul Graham rather from some grifter selling courses on "how to be a rich as me" on the net.
14 year old need good role models (preferably from their trusted social circles). These people should, ideally before the child turns 14, give him or her a strong moral framework to judge advice that they might come across.
On the topic of being rich (which can be a good goal if pursued along with a strong moral compass), it's much better to take advice from a Paul Graham rather from some grifter selling courses on "how to be a rich as me" on the net.
So in that case he might as well show lottery winners as good role models.
He could tell the truth instead about how most startups fail miserably and the founders see nothing.
Not to mention that the only way this works is if you have parents as a financial back stop.
He could tell the truth instead about how most startups fail miserably and the founders see nothing.
Not to mention that the only way this works is if you have parents as a financial back stop.
Yes. I think this is genuinely under emphasised. However, when one's risk tolerance is high, there's a lot to be gained from even a failed startup. There's not much to be gained from repeatedly buying and losing at the lottery.
Knowing that worse case you get to go back home to live with mom and dad or ask them for money is not having a “high risk tolerance”
It is in a way. I couldn't jump into the startup world because I had financial commitments that necessitated an income. Several of my friends who didn't have that burden started companies.
> People like Paul Graham telling 14-year-olds that basically getting rich is the most important thing is one of the reasons we got into this late-stage capitalism nightmare in the first place.
I don't think that's a fair summary of the article. Yes, he says you can get rich. But he also says, and says first, that it's less annoying and more fun (and also more actual work).
Then for the rest of the article, he doesn't harp on "you can get rich". He talks about getting good at some technology, and doing projects because they're interesting, and finding other people to do things with.
I don't think that's a fair summary of the article. Yes, he says you can get rich. But he also says, and says first, that it's less annoying and more fun (and also more actual work).
Then for the rest of the article, he doesn't harp on "you can get rich". He talks about getting good at some technology, and doing projects because they're interesting, and finding other people to do things with.
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Genuinely curious to understand your line of reasoning.
- Concretly what's the late-stage capitalism nightmare? How do you define it and what do you compare it against?
- What do you define what PG is concretely telling kids and how that's related to what you describe as capitalism nightmare.
Finally, would you care to share some examples of better scenarios that could inspire advice for 14-year olds?
- Concretly what's the late-stage capitalism nightmare? How do you define it and what do you compare it against?
- What do you define what PG is concretely telling kids and how that's related to what you describe as capitalism nightmare.
Finally, would you care to share some examples of better scenarios that could inspire advice for 14-year olds?
Late-stage capitalism nightmare examples:
* Inequality in societies is as large as ever, and inequality is one of the main predcitors how happy a society is
* Influence of people and corporations with money on politics and society is unprecedented (i.e. lobbyism)
* In the US, but also in many Western European "developed" countries, basic human rights like education, health, housing and food are fucked by capitalism
PG is putting a big emphasis on getting rich and building your own company. Better advice for 14-year-olds would be, just off the top of my head:
* Money is important, but it's not the most important thing
* You are not your job or your company. Find something interesting to work for, but don't define yourself over it
* Participating democray is important: Fight for a more equal society and help make your community better
* Don't focus your education on one hard skill like computer science. Learn about arts, literature, philosophy and all other things that interest you
* Inequality in societies is as large as ever, and inequality is one of the main predcitors how happy a society is
* Influence of people and corporations with money on politics and society is unprecedented (i.e. lobbyism)
* In the US, but also in many Western European "developed" countries, basic human rights like education, health, housing and food are fucked by capitalism
PG is putting a big emphasis on getting rich and building your own company. Better advice for 14-year-olds would be, just off the top of my head:
* Money is important, but it's not the most important thing
* You are not your job or your company. Find something interesting to work for, but don't define yourself over it
* Participating democray is important: Fight for a more equal society and help make your community better
* Don't focus your education on one hard skill like computer science. Learn about arts, literature, philosophy and all other things that interest you
Exactly.
>In fact, this is the standard way to get really rich.
No. The standard way of getting "rich" is to get into a good career that pays a lot. Before Silicon Valley, people got "rich" by working at Wall Street, law or Congress. Getting rich through business is a lottery.
I would have attributed this article from Graham to relative inexperience had he written this early on, say in the 2000s. But him writing this now is just bad-faith preaching intended to give VCs another lottery ticket with a very low success probability of forming a unicorn.
And for the record, 14 and 15 year olds, the best way to get rich is still Wall Street, Congress or law.
>In fact, this is the standard way to get really rich.
No. The standard way of getting "rich" is to get into a good career that pays a lot. Before Silicon Valley, people got "rich" by working at Wall Street, law or Congress. Getting rich through business is a lottery.
I would have attributed this article from Graham to relative inexperience had he written this early on, say in the 2000s. But him writing this now is just bad-faith preaching intended to give VCs another lottery ticket with a very low success probability of forming a unicorn.
And for the record, 14 and 15 year olds, the best way to get rich is still Wall Street, Congress or law.
> The standard way of getting "rich" is to get into a good career that
> pays a lot. Before Silicon Valley, people got "rich" by working at
> Wall Street, law or Congress
I'm afraid this isn't really true. Through most of the industrial revolution and after (i.e. after the early 1800's), professionals (lawyers, bankers, accountants, doctors, etc.) made a smaller multiple of unskilled labor wages than they do today. In America at least, the way to get "rich" has always been to start your own business.
This was true in the 1800's and it's true today. There have been repeated waves of change as new technologies spread: textile mills, cotton production, mining, railroads, telecom, electricity, appliances, automobiles, department stores, advertising, aviation, broadcasting, computing, etc, etc. Each wave of innovation saw the creation of thousands of new businesses. Sure most eventually fail, but hundreds did pretty well and a handful got insanely wealthy.
American culture and laws (usually) rewards this sort of risky behavior. One can debate whether it's, moral, just, or good for society. But generally speaking, not much has changed wrt this facet of our culture over the last 200 years.
> pays a lot. Before Silicon Valley, people got "rich" by working at
> Wall Street, law or Congress
I'm afraid this isn't really true. Through most of the industrial revolution and after (i.e. after the early 1800's), professionals (lawyers, bankers, accountants, doctors, etc.) made a smaller multiple of unskilled labor wages than they do today. In America at least, the way to get "rich" has always been to start your own business.
This was true in the 1800's and it's true today. There have been repeated waves of change as new technologies spread: textile mills, cotton production, mining, railroads, telecom, electricity, appliances, automobiles, department stores, advertising, aviation, broadcasting, computing, etc, etc. Each wave of innovation saw the creation of thousands of new businesses. Sure most eventually fail, but hundreds did pretty well and a handful got insanely wealthy.
American culture and laws (usually) rewards this sort of risky behavior. One can debate whether it's, moral, just, or good for society. But generally speaking, not much has changed wrt this facet of our culture over the last 200 years.
How many businesses succeed enough to make you millions? Most businesses are loss making entities, still more are just subsistence businesses. The ones which make you "rich" will still only make you worth a few millions, not what Paul Graham is referring to as "rich". You could get that same level of "rich" by working in Big Tech in a cushiony job, Wall Street, law or Congress (lobbyist or Congressman). Getting to what PG calls rich is just a lottery game in the big picture of things.
I've started one of the "small rich" businesses before, and made a few millions out of it when I was too young. Those millions enabled me to make certain bets that, though risky, would still have a huge upside. That huge upside allowed me to make very good money, the kind of "rich" that PG actually means, without the risk that comes with starting up a business that your VCs want to push to unicorn status. That's basically what most sensible rich folks in America have done, even the ones that you celebrate in your comment. And yet they'll all send their kids to Harvard and Stanford to attend MBAs and grad school because they don't want to put their kid's futures to the whims of a lottery.
"Making your first million is the hardest, so start with a second million." - Arnold Schwarzenegger
I've started one of the "small rich" businesses before, and made a few millions out of it when I was too young. Those millions enabled me to make certain bets that, though risky, would still have a huge upside. That huge upside allowed me to make very good money, the kind of "rich" that PG actually means, without the risk that comes with starting up a business that your VCs want to push to unicorn status. That's basically what most sensible rich folks in America have done, even the ones that you celebrate in your comment. And yet they'll all send their kids to Harvard and Stanford to attend MBAs and grad school because they don't want to put their kid's futures to the whims of a lottery.
"Making your first million is the hardest, so start with a second million." - Arnold Schwarzenegger
Most people are rich because they were born rich. Very few millionaires and billionaires were middle-class or poor and then started a company to get rich. And even those had an unfair advantage (e.g., born at the right time, at the right place, have the "right" genetic makeup, etc.).
There's another comment here that links to staticstics regarding this topic here somewhere
There's another comment here that links to staticstics regarding this topic here somewhere
I am baffled by the criticisms of this essay. I can't identify any statements here which are false. We're on hacker news, which is a site about programming and startups and capitalism. There theoretically couldn't be a better audience.
I suppose the strongest criticism would be that pg's advice outlines necessary conditions to start the next Google but are not sufficient. Yes, the stuff you "make" needs to feel like a fun project, but without the "...something people want" then your company will not make you rich. As with any advice, there there will always be exceptions ("do you really need a cofounder?") but as far as "here is some advice to achieve x", where x is "create a billion-dollar company" this isn't a bad start.
I suppose the strongest criticism would be that pg's advice outlines necessary conditions to start the next Google but are not sufficient. Yes, the stuff you "make" needs to feel like a fun project, but without the "...something people want" then your company will not make you rich. As with any advice, there there will always be exceptions ("do you really need a cofounder?") but as far as "here is some advice to achieve x", where x is "create a billion-dollar company" this isn't a bad start.
It's misleading and poor advice to children. You see this issue a lot in certain immigrant communities where the equivalent "talk" might be: "How to become a Doctor [and be rich and successful]". Becoming a doctor is orders of magnitudes more in an individual's control but even _then_ we observe the plethora of issues that occur.
I’m following this advice for about two decades, and I’m not even close to being rich. I’m rather poor at the day.
One of the reasons is my background, besides ‘building my stuff’ I was very busy fighting the obstacles most of the people in a developed country would never meet. Or most of the people having parents would never meet.
Life got me in the middle of building a very nice thing, giving me obstacles I couldn’t manage. Then, when I was climbing out of it, there was the pandemic, which messed many things in my life.
I just migrated to Ukraine back then, and you all know what happened next, the Russian full-scale invasion. That’s only the public events, I’m ignoring all the personal stuff here.
Saying that, for me, it was about five years, at least, I paused with my projects. Some of them are slightly irrelevant, some are not. There are ones I still believe are very good, even now when I’m older and more experienced. I got a huge load of non-professional experience over these years, and it helps me to understand the world so much better now. Will I ever find my resources for building my ideas? Nobody knows. If I’ll survive the war, I think I will.
During this half a decade I juggled stupid jobs (won’t mention why to save time, personal life events) because for a regular job I’m either too qualified or have a very different experience, non-applicable to local market. And I’m way too expensive when I work as an employee. I’m more the founder / employer type than the employee type, unemployable, as they used to brag in the Valley.
And my point is. I regret I never took my time to explore the professional life I despised all my life. This stupid CV/resume and LinkedIn idiocracy. When I had no resources, I could easily manage any enterprise job. I’m very good at stupid politics if needed, but I don’t enjoy it. And I’m very good with the software tools, so I can do your average enterprise employee workday for a couple of hours time. That proved my previous years as a freelancer, building my company, and interacting with the people I know from the corporate world.
In time of my need, I was just contemplating others earning way too much for their skills. When I didn’t even have a stupid resume, but was usually overqualified for a senior position, not to say a junior one. And no resources to learn the things I missed from this corporate thing.
Now it’s getting better due to my personal life changes, but I just lost some years of professional development. Plus loads of money I could earn on a stupid job (I won’t burn out type, as I don’t give a flying duck type).
While I’m not arguing about the point, especially as a piece of advice for teenagers, I would recommend learning other options, and get as much different life experience as you can, while you’re very young. That experience is much more valuable than all the money you can get. I got loads of money and all of that money is burned by now. I could earn more (loss less) if I would be better prepared for personal stuff in my life. As it took way too much energy and affected my work way too much.
Also, I don’t believe you build Facebook or Google when you are super young. I would say that is more of a luck thing. I believe you build something valuable when you understand what is around you and how the World works. You can build your super project at 50, why not?
And as the P.S. the Zuck story is a pure manipulation. We all know that wasn’t even his idea.
One of the reasons is my background, besides ‘building my stuff’ I was very busy fighting the obstacles most of the people in a developed country would never meet. Or most of the people having parents would never meet.
Life got me in the middle of building a very nice thing, giving me obstacles I couldn’t manage. Then, when I was climbing out of it, there was the pandemic, which messed many things in my life.
I just migrated to Ukraine back then, and you all know what happened next, the Russian full-scale invasion. That’s only the public events, I’m ignoring all the personal stuff here.
Saying that, for me, it was about five years, at least, I paused with my projects. Some of them are slightly irrelevant, some are not. There are ones I still believe are very good, even now when I’m older and more experienced. I got a huge load of non-professional experience over these years, and it helps me to understand the world so much better now. Will I ever find my resources for building my ideas? Nobody knows. If I’ll survive the war, I think I will.
During this half a decade I juggled stupid jobs (won’t mention why to save time, personal life events) because for a regular job I’m either too qualified or have a very different experience, non-applicable to local market. And I’m way too expensive when I work as an employee. I’m more the founder / employer type than the employee type, unemployable, as they used to brag in the Valley.
And my point is. I regret I never took my time to explore the professional life I despised all my life. This stupid CV/resume and LinkedIn idiocracy. When I had no resources, I could easily manage any enterprise job. I’m very good at stupid politics if needed, but I don’t enjoy it. And I’m very good with the software tools, so I can do your average enterprise employee workday for a couple of hours time. That proved my previous years as a freelancer, building my company, and interacting with the people I know from the corporate world.
In time of my need, I was just contemplating others earning way too much for their skills. When I didn’t even have a stupid resume, but was usually overqualified for a senior position, not to say a junior one. And no resources to learn the things I missed from this corporate thing.
Now it’s getting better due to my personal life changes, but I just lost some years of professional development. Plus loads of money I could earn on a stupid job (I won’t burn out type, as I don’t give a flying duck type).
While I’m not arguing about the point, especially as a piece of advice for teenagers, I would recommend learning other options, and get as much different life experience as you can, while you’re very young. That experience is much more valuable than all the money you can get. I got loads of money and all of that money is burned by now. I could earn more (loss less) if I would be better prepared for personal stuff in my life. As it took way too much energy and affected my work way too much.
Also, I don’t believe you build Facebook or Google when you are super young. I would say that is more of a luck thing. I believe you build something valuable when you understand what is around you and how the World works. You can build your super project at 50, why not?
And as the P.S. the Zuck story is a pure manipulation. We all know that wasn’t even his idea.
you could never start google today. when you go to the VCs and make the pitch they say "that business already exists, it's called google".
I have mixed feelings about this, mostly because the stakes on giving people persuasive advice with an enviable track record in hand might be at its highest in a room full of 14/15-year olds.
This is exactly the kind of thing that made me dramatically more ambitious and harder working when I started reading pg essays (pushing 20 years ago now), so I have a huge soft spot for the feeling/nostalgia that I got when I just let it wash over me. And it’s ultimately why I think it nets out constructive in spite of some real problems: if I heard this at 15 I would have started working really hard at 15 and not 22 or 23, and I would have started cultivating relationships with people who were going to be powerful at 15, instead of arguably antagonizing powerful people until, well maybe still today [1].
It’s got some serious problems though: the way most people get rich is by having wealthy parents, though at the apex it’s having wealthy parents who raised you to work hard and manage relationships with powerful people well [2], so given that by 15 most of that already has or hasn’t happened, I think we can generally regard pg saying that as a “useful fiction”: outcomes will improve at the mean for 15-year olds who believe him about this, or such is my prediction.
The advice about university is extremely dangerous in 2024 for anyone without a privileged upbringing because university is a far inferior place to learn things than YouTube videos aggregating all the best university lectures in history with the even more effective education style pioneered by Grant with 3blue1brown. And while trying to achieve at a level where you go to Stanford without a mountain of uniquely nasty debt [3] is strictly a good thing in high school / primary school, actually going to university via debt is an extremely dicey proposition if you miss and that distinction is tough to sell to that audience.
Better advice would be to start learning from the best educators in the world via a YouTube Premium subscription concurrent to high-school studies (and making them whiffle ball on a curve compared to peers that don’t), try to get a scholarship to an Ivy or Cal or something, but go to community college or directly into the workforce (Work for a Startup™) if you miss and don’t have graduate study on the agenda.
Mostly the feeling I get is that pg and his essays these days sit in the Venn between “well intentioned”, “aspirational/idealistic” and “not true”. It’s a fine line sometimes between “aspirational” and “false”, it gets finer yet in light of Sinclair’s Maxim [4]: what might be dismissed in a low-effort way as “out of touch” or even “self-serving” is trivially unfair to pg. He has his own family he could be spending time with instead of speaking to young people, he doesn’t need or seem to want any more money. He’s just past the point where he can de-leverage his intellectual and emotional investment in a world that doesn’t exist anymore: he’s the LTCM of serious intellectuals in technology. The book about that is called “When Genius Failed”, and John Meriwether is a brilliant man who lived by an admirably robust ethical code in a very rough neighborhood.
[1] The most significant glitch in pg’s firmware is that he says “smart and hardworking” when he really means “good at becoming powerful”, a direct quote [5] about his protégée illustrates this very clearly.
[2] Pick a list of very rich people and click on all the links, a fine starting point is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires.
[3] Yes there have been some modest reforms, no it’s not fixed: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67546893
[4] At the top, a man’s living can be about intellectual as well as financial capital: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21810-it-is-difficult-to-ge...
[5] I’ve known too many YC alumni too well for too long to even engage with any hatchet job on a piece that if anything understates the reality: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-ma..., please don’t prey on my worst instincts by tempting me to cite documented examples and credible primary sources.
This is exactly the kind of thing that made me dramatically more ambitious and harder working when I started reading pg essays (pushing 20 years ago now), so I have a huge soft spot for the feeling/nostalgia that I got when I just let it wash over me. And it’s ultimately why I think it nets out constructive in spite of some real problems: if I heard this at 15 I would have started working really hard at 15 and not 22 or 23, and I would have started cultivating relationships with people who were going to be powerful at 15, instead of arguably antagonizing powerful people until, well maybe still today [1].
It’s got some serious problems though: the way most people get rich is by having wealthy parents, though at the apex it’s having wealthy parents who raised you to work hard and manage relationships with powerful people well [2], so given that by 15 most of that already has or hasn’t happened, I think we can generally regard pg saying that as a “useful fiction”: outcomes will improve at the mean for 15-year olds who believe him about this, or such is my prediction.
The advice about university is extremely dangerous in 2024 for anyone without a privileged upbringing because university is a far inferior place to learn things than YouTube videos aggregating all the best university lectures in history with the even more effective education style pioneered by Grant with 3blue1brown. And while trying to achieve at a level where you go to Stanford without a mountain of uniquely nasty debt [3] is strictly a good thing in high school / primary school, actually going to university via debt is an extremely dicey proposition if you miss and that distinction is tough to sell to that audience.
Better advice would be to start learning from the best educators in the world via a YouTube Premium subscription concurrent to high-school studies (and making them whiffle ball on a curve compared to peers that don’t), try to get a scholarship to an Ivy or Cal or something, but go to community college or directly into the workforce (Work for a Startup™) if you miss and don’t have graduate study on the agenda.
Mostly the feeling I get is that pg and his essays these days sit in the Venn between “well intentioned”, “aspirational/idealistic” and “not true”. It’s a fine line sometimes between “aspirational” and “false”, it gets finer yet in light of Sinclair’s Maxim [4]: what might be dismissed in a low-effort way as “out of touch” or even “self-serving” is trivially unfair to pg. He has his own family he could be spending time with instead of speaking to young people, he doesn’t need or seem to want any more money. He’s just past the point where he can de-leverage his intellectual and emotional investment in a world that doesn’t exist anymore: he’s the LTCM of serious intellectuals in technology. The book about that is called “When Genius Failed”, and John Meriwether is a brilliant man who lived by an admirably robust ethical code in a very rough neighborhood.
[1] The most significant glitch in pg’s firmware is that he says “smart and hardworking” when he really means “good at becoming powerful”, a direct quote [5] about his protégée illustrates this very clearly.
[2] Pick a list of very rich people and click on all the links, a fine starting point is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires.
[3] Yes there have been some modest reforms, no it’s not fixed: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67546893
[4] At the top, a man’s living can be about intellectual as well as financial capital: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21810-it-is-difficult-to-ge...
[5] I’ve known too many YC alumni too well for too long to even engage with any hatchet job on a piece that if anything understates the reality: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-ma..., please don’t prey on my worst instincts by tempting me to cite documented examples and credible primary sources.
Watching videos on YouTube is in no way comparable to going to a quality university, being around likeminded ambitious young people, and interacting with professors and researchers directly.
That's not the comparison I was making. I said consuming a meticulously curated list of the best university lectures on any topic delivered by an extremely rare breed (unparalleled research professors who are also competent as educators) is a better way to consume university lectures and requires a phone and $15.99/month.
I furthermore said that Grant of 3Blue1Brown fame and others inspired by him (Richard Behial, Sean Carrol, and many others, this matters enough that I'll do the rigorous citation routine if people personified in this instance by you don't regard this as common knowledge) have used the lever of technology to increase the upper-bound on the efficacy of education in a way that dwarfs the technological lever that LLMs represent for being wrong at scale persuasively enough to convince anyone but an expert in a bad mood.
I explicitly acknowledged the dominant term in the kinds of outcomes pg is talking about, which is having and effectively managing relationships with people who either already are or soon will be with high probability powerful.
In 2013 I was shortlisted as a candidate for some of the top jobs at the hottest company in the business and on a polynomially steeper career ascent trajectory than someone who now sits on OpenAI's board: that person diligently managed relationships and had a keen sense for whose star was rising and falling, I produced 10^4 more marginal revenue (very conservatively) but gave the establishment (including too many of my colleagues who chose the other path on geek/climber) the finger and didn't manage so much as my personal life, let alone the establishment. Which is why that person is on OpenAI's board and I'm scratching out a living as a consultant, and even that is only possible because I'm finally learning twenty years too late to be at least thoughtful, reasonably polite most of the time, and well-cited when being skeptical of an establishment.
The most effective way to interact with cutting-edge researchers short of actually getting a PhD at Oxford or something is to work for or consult for public-private partnerships between top academic labs and private-sector spinoffs. Even as a marginalized consultant I've worked directly with people at top research universities who get whispered about as Nobel candidates, these companies are often under-resourced in the beginning and if you're willing and able to represent a bargain, you can work adjacent to some truly stratospheric levels of elite research.
You're not wrong that going to an excellent school that you or your parents can actually afford is among the best advantages one can have early in life, you're exactly right about that.
You're incorrect in demonstrable ways on the rest of the stuff you've bundled into one statement. This is the problem with bundling together tangentially related ideas into one atomic unit.
I've kicked this thing back and forth a few times because even on revision I'm finding it difficult to say "What you Can't Say" [1] with both of: concrete and documented examples and low scope for seeming rude or snarky. I don't intend snark, but pg wrote those essays for a reason: being right is offensive sometimes. So I apologize if I give any offense to you or anyone else, but all this is true and a lot hangs in the balance right now for the industry and civilization as a whole. And I regret that you personally wind up being the person who said the thing that many/most think that needs demolishing, there's absolutely nothing personal in it.
[1] https://paulgraham.com/say.html
I furthermore said that Grant of 3Blue1Brown fame and others inspired by him (Richard Behial, Sean Carrol, and many others, this matters enough that I'll do the rigorous citation routine if people personified in this instance by you don't regard this as common knowledge) have used the lever of technology to increase the upper-bound on the efficacy of education in a way that dwarfs the technological lever that LLMs represent for being wrong at scale persuasively enough to convince anyone but an expert in a bad mood.
I explicitly acknowledged the dominant term in the kinds of outcomes pg is talking about, which is having and effectively managing relationships with people who either already are or soon will be with high probability powerful.
In 2013 I was shortlisted as a candidate for some of the top jobs at the hottest company in the business and on a polynomially steeper career ascent trajectory than someone who now sits on OpenAI's board: that person diligently managed relationships and had a keen sense for whose star was rising and falling, I produced 10^4 more marginal revenue (very conservatively) but gave the establishment (including too many of my colleagues who chose the other path on geek/climber) the finger and didn't manage so much as my personal life, let alone the establishment. Which is why that person is on OpenAI's board and I'm scratching out a living as a consultant, and even that is only possible because I'm finally learning twenty years too late to be at least thoughtful, reasonably polite most of the time, and well-cited when being skeptical of an establishment.
The most effective way to interact with cutting-edge researchers short of actually getting a PhD at Oxford or something is to work for or consult for public-private partnerships between top academic labs and private-sector spinoffs. Even as a marginalized consultant I've worked directly with people at top research universities who get whispered about as Nobel candidates, these companies are often under-resourced in the beginning and if you're willing and able to represent a bargain, you can work adjacent to some truly stratospheric levels of elite research.
You're not wrong that going to an excellent school that you or your parents can actually afford is among the best advantages one can have early in life, you're exactly right about that.
You're incorrect in demonstrable ways on the rest of the stuff you've bundled into one statement. This is the problem with bundling together tangentially related ideas into one atomic unit.
I've kicked this thing back and forth a few times because even on revision I'm finding it difficult to say "What you Can't Say" [1] with both of: concrete and documented examples and low scope for seeming rude or snarky. I don't intend snark, but pg wrote those essays for a reason: being right is offensive sometimes. So I apologize if I give any offense to you or anyone else, but all this is true and a lot hangs in the balance right now for the industry and civilization as a whole. And I regret that you personally wind up being the person who said the thing that many/most think that needs demolishing, there's absolutely nothing personal in it.
[1] https://paulgraham.com/say.html
The advice about university is extremely dangerous in 2024 for anyone without a privileged upbringing because university is a far inferior place to learn things than YouTube videos aggregating all the best university lectures in history with the even more effective education style pioneered by Grant with 3blue1brown.
I was replying to this. I don’t find this “offensive”, I find it misleading and untrue. Maybe some tiny percentage of people will prefer sitting at home watching YouTube videos to the experience of attending a top college. For everyone else, the university is a better choice, not least because you’ll build a better network.
Not everyone wants to sit at home alone and watch videos. I’m not sure why that is difficult to understand.
I was replying to this. I don’t find this “offensive”, I find it misleading and untrue. Maybe some tiny percentage of people will prefer sitting at home watching YouTube videos to the experience of attending a top college. For everyone else, the university is a better choice, not least because you’ll build a better network.
Not everyone wants to sit at home alone and watch videos. I’m not sure why that is difficult to understand.
This remains a bundling of two levers that we at one time tangentially related, but have sharply diverged: learning difficult topics in a deep and time-efficient way, and building a potent network.
It's all but universally acknowledged that technology represents the highest-leverage tool in the arsenal of getting things done in a leveraged way and this includes learning difficult topics in a time-efficient way.
The best universities (in the modern sense of the word) face and pretty much always faced a stark tradeoff between a faculty that were exceptional regarding novel research, and faculty that were chosen on the basis of educational outcomes, there's even a term for it: "teaching professor". Excellent researchers at the cutting edge of their field are only competent educators by coincidence, they're at a minimum different competencies, and arguably pull in opposite or at least different directions. Many of the best academic researchers in the world teach in some country where they learned the language they teach in late in life: every undergraduate in STEM has professors they struggle to even understand via verbal communication (people that smart can generally master written communication in another language far more easily than verbal communication).
There are better lectures (even restricting the field to e.g. MIT OCW) online and social interaction in a lecture is, with a few exceptions, disruptive and frowned upon. And even if someone wants to listen to a university lecture in person, universities generally have a formal or informal mechanism for non-students to attend them without any acceptance criteria or a staggering bill at the end.
The networking that happens at a top school is difficult to the point of being nearly impossible to achieve any other way.
I'm only interested in having this conversation if you're willing to address those points individually rather than as an atomic unit: they are not an atomic unit.
It's all but universally acknowledged that technology represents the highest-leverage tool in the arsenal of getting things done in a leveraged way and this includes learning difficult topics in a time-efficient way.
The best universities (in the modern sense of the word) face and pretty much always faced a stark tradeoff between a faculty that were exceptional regarding novel research, and faculty that were chosen on the basis of educational outcomes, there's even a term for it: "teaching professor". Excellent researchers at the cutting edge of their field are only competent educators by coincidence, they're at a minimum different competencies, and arguably pull in opposite or at least different directions. Many of the best academic researchers in the world teach in some country where they learned the language they teach in late in life: every undergraduate in STEM has professors they struggle to even understand via verbal communication (people that smart can generally master written communication in another language far more easily than verbal communication).
There are better lectures (even restricting the field to e.g. MIT OCW) online and social interaction in a lecture is, with a few exceptions, disruptive and frowned upon. And even if someone wants to listen to a university lecture in person, universities generally have a formal or informal mechanism for non-students to attend them without any acceptance criteria or a staggering bill at the end.
The networking that happens at a top school is difficult to the point of being nearly impossible to achieve any other way.
I'm only interested in having this conversation if you're willing to address those points individually rather than as an atomic unit: they are not an atomic unit.
It's all but universally acknowledged that technology represents the highest-leverage tool in the arsenal of getting things done in a leveraged way and this includes learning difficult topics in a time-efficient way.
This isn't an argument. Not everyone wants to stare at a computer for 15 hours a day. Maybe you do. Some people prefer in-person interaction and discussion, others don't.
Yes, in 1-to-1 comparisons, a YouTube video about a topic may be better than a university lecture in which you are mute and can't interact with the professor. But university isn't just mutely watching less qualified professors give lectures. Lectures are but a small part of the entire university experience, which also includes: learning how to work with others, discussion groups, office hours with the professor, managing your time to complete tasks, building social skills, dating, on and on. It's a complete package. The key element is that you are immersed in this environment and interact with the community of people around you. A university is not merely a place that stores information. When you attend a quality university, all of these things are a part of the learning experience. They are not separate.
To use myself as an example: I have a degree in philosophy from one of the higher-ranking programs in the world. The Internet and YouTube are full of lectures and podcasts and free books about philosophy. And yet – none of them comes even close to the experience of sitting in a room for 3 hours intensely discussing metaphysics, or logic, or Kant, or another complex philosophical topic with a small group of other students and professors. That doesn't happen on the Internet and no amount of innovative video formats is going to change it. When you directly interact with another human being face-to-face and discuss/critique ideas, (in my experience) you learn much better than just watching videos. There is a huge difference between someone that has merely read a lot of books on a topic, and someone that has been through a rigorous discussion and critique with qualified interlocutors.
Finally, on the networking element: if you look at most of the actual top performers in the tech industry, they all have one thing in common: they know each other. Learning how to interact with people – and not merely acquiring information – is a key element of actually being successful. And that's still learning. It's not some nebulous hand-wavy thing that you can brush away. Building the next Google, which is what the original essay was about, necessarily requires you to build and navigate complex human social structures. It's not something you can just watch in a video. Merely having information in your head isn't actually that useful if your goal is build a company.
This isn't an argument. Not everyone wants to stare at a computer for 15 hours a day. Maybe you do. Some people prefer in-person interaction and discussion, others don't.
Yes, in 1-to-1 comparisons, a YouTube video about a topic may be better than a university lecture in which you are mute and can't interact with the professor. But university isn't just mutely watching less qualified professors give lectures. Lectures are but a small part of the entire university experience, which also includes: learning how to work with others, discussion groups, office hours with the professor, managing your time to complete tasks, building social skills, dating, on and on. It's a complete package. The key element is that you are immersed in this environment and interact with the community of people around you. A university is not merely a place that stores information. When you attend a quality university, all of these things are a part of the learning experience. They are not separate.
To use myself as an example: I have a degree in philosophy from one of the higher-ranking programs in the world. The Internet and YouTube are full of lectures and podcasts and free books about philosophy. And yet – none of them comes even close to the experience of sitting in a room for 3 hours intensely discussing metaphysics, or logic, or Kant, or another complex philosophical topic with a small group of other students and professors. That doesn't happen on the Internet and no amount of innovative video formats is going to change it. When you directly interact with another human being face-to-face and discuss/critique ideas, (in my experience) you learn much better than just watching videos. There is a huge difference between someone that has merely read a lot of books on a topic, and someone that has been through a rigorous discussion and critique with qualified interlocutors.
Finally, on the networking element: if you look at most of the actual top performers in the tech industry, they all have one thing in common: they know each other. Learning how to interact with people – and not merely acquiring information – is a key element of actually being successful. And that's still learning. It's not some nebulous hand-wavy thing that you can brush away. Building the next Google, which is what the original essay was about, necessarily requires you to build and navigate complex human social structures. It's not something you can just watch in a video. Merely having information in your head isn't actually that useful if your goal is build a company.
We've arrived at a point in the conversation where your assertions are (for the most part) correct in at least a narrow way. But there were several epistemological sleights of hand involved in getting from point A to point B that you as an eminent philosopher can trivially identify at least as easily as I can, at least in hindsight.
First, you've elided the unambiguous context of the OP's essay and my response to it: I said it's dangerous for people who miss getting into and through an elite university education without burdensome and difficult-to-discharge debt to go for broke anyways: the typical outcome there is the typical outcome of modern university education in general, which is a pile of debt for a mediocre education with a lift on employment outcomes asymptotically approaching zero and trivially not justifying the cost of the debt and the debt service, and a network of principally personal social utility. When the cheese at the end of the maze is "getting rich", that's a bad play.
Another important piece of context you've used as a wedge (because I didn't dissect his essay via cherry-picked quotes, assuming that everyone who cared had read it and internalized the broader context) is that pg is clearly addressing people who he hopes will become high-achieving technologists, at a point in life where the decision is around a STEM undergraduate education with large class sizes and and a decaying level of interaction with faculty or other eminent thinkers affiliated with the university.
This is nothing like a philosophy degree from an eminent university that involves freewheeling face-to-face interaction with some of the sharpest and most disruptive thinkers in a field, and furthermore in a field with very subjective measures on short time horizons about who has or has not made lasting contributions. We argue to this day about the philosophical and epistemological impact of work done millennia ago: right off the top of my head people debate whether or not Augustine was a key figure in the development of a modern sense of personal identity, and the debate about who was worth listening in these areas was very old then [1]. There is no evidence that's ever been presented to me that we can identify worthwhile contributions to philosophy on a time scale measured in years or even decades: people who devote their lives to such pursuits are optimizing for posterity, a very worthy thing to optimize for in my opinion but rarely one a person ever knows the outcome on in their lifetime.
Furthermore, the exact immersive scenario you're describing requires nothing like the nepotism, barriers to entry, or cost structure of a modern elite university: we've erected barriers around class dynamics, wealth dynamics, and admissions that had far better solutions with the cost structure of a coffee shop in recent history [2]. We've eradicated that institution intentionally or unintentionally in favor of something defense-procurement markup expensive, with admissions criteria constantly plagued by scandal and lawsuit [3] after scandal [4], which welcomes false positives on admissions when attached to wealth and power [5], and sees false negatives on groundbreaking contribution unambiguous in contribution [6] when not attached to wealth and power, at least until forced to by mathematical rigor.
And in your conclusion you've linked learning, broadly construed, with learning how to operate in circles where people face no consequences, continue to act unilaterally on behalf of the commons, and fuck up constantly [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] to put any question about their innate capability at anything other than learning how to work the socio-economic, professional, and academic class systems and maintain those distinctions by stepping on people who were both right and doing the right thing [11] via thuggery [12].
Almost all destructive forces with actual power [13] [14] [15] trace clear intellectual, academic, and philosophical origins to the work of academics or other noted intellectuals on the wrong side of history [16] [17] [18] [19].
So the question for you here isn't whether or not the world currently works they way you're describing, for the elite few it does. The question is what team you're playing for from a post of extremely influential privilege. Things aren't going well for the non-elites, and I don't think pg was trying to send 1-3% of his audience into a decaying elite subsidized by leading the other 97% to the slaughter in the form of useless degrees with mountains of debt. He's backed the wrong horse on a few things, but he's a fundamentally good guy.
[1] https://academic.oup.com/book/4734/chapter-abstract/14697047... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_(gathering) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v... [4] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/claudine-g... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences [5] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.10798.pdf [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management [8] https://www.npr.org/2008/10/24/96070766/greenspan-admits-fre... [10] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/22/tech/larry-summers-openai... [11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooksley_Born [12] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/warning/ [13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism [14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism [15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture [16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx [17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman [18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand [19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault
First, you've elided the unambiguous context of the OP's essay and my response to it: I said it's dangerous for people who miss getting into and through an elite university education without burdensome and difficult-to-discharge debt to go for broke anyways: the typical outcome there is the typical outcome of modern university education in general, which is a pile of debt for a mediocre education with a lift on employment outcomes asymptotically approaching zero and trivially not justifying the cost of the debt and the debt service, and a network of principally personal social utility. When the cheese at the end of the maze is "getting rich", that's a bad play.
Another important piece of context you've used as a wedge (because I didn't dissect his essay via cherry-picked quotes, assuming that everyone who cared had read it and internalized the broader context) is that pg is clearly addressing people who he hopes will become high-achieving technologists, at a point in life where the decision is around a STEM undergraduate education with large class sizes and and a decaying level of interaction with faculty or other eminent thinkers affiliated with the university.
This is nothing like a philosophy degree from an eminent university that involves freewheeling face-to-face interaction with some of the sharpest and most disruptive thinkers in a field, and furthermore in a field with very subjective measures on short time horizons about who has or has not made lasting contributions. We argue to this day about the philosophical and epistemological impact of work done millennia ago: right off the top of my head people debate whether or not Augustine was a key figure in the development of a modern sense of personal identity, and the debate about who was worth listening in these areas was very old then [1]. There is no evidence that's ever been presented to me that we can identify worthwhile contributions to philosophy on a time scale measured in years or even decades: people who devote their lives to such pursuits are optimizing for posterity, a very worthy thing to optimize for in my opinion but rarely one a person ever knows the outcome on in their lifetime.
Furthermore, the exact immersive scenario you're describing requires nothing like the nepotism, barriers to entry, or cost structure of a modern elite university: we've erected barriers around class dynamics, wealth dynamics, and admissions that had far better solutions with the cost structure of a coffee shop in recent history [2]. We've eradicated that institution intentionally or unintentionally in favor of something defense-procurement markup expensive, with admissions criteria constantly plagued by scandal and lawsuit [3] after scandal [4], which welcomes false positives on admissions when attached to wealth and power [5], and sees false negatives on groundbreaking contribution unambiguous in contribution [6] when not attached to wealth and power, at least until forced to by mathematical rigor.
And in your conclusion you've linked learning, broadly construed, with learning how to operate in circles where people face no consequences, continue to act unilaterally on behalf of the commons, and fuck up constantly [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] to put any question about their innate capability at anything other than learning how to work the socio-economic, professional, and academic class systems and maintain those distinctions by stepping on people who were both right and doing the right thing [11] via thuggery [12].
Almost all destructive forces with actual power [13] [14] [15] trace clear intellectual, academic, and philosophical origins to the work of academics or other noted intellectuals on the wrong side of history [16] [17] [18] [19].
So the question for you here isn't whether or not the world currently works they way you're describing, for the elite few it does. The question is what team you're playing for from a post of extremely influential privilege. Things aren't going well for the non-elites, and I don't think pg was trying to send 1-3% of his audience into a decaying elite subsidized by leading the other 97% to the slaughter in the form of useless degrees with mountains of debt. He's backed the wrong horse on a few things, but he's a fundamentally good guy.
[1] https://academic.oup.com/book/4734/chapter-abstract/14697047... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_(gathering) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v... [4] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/claudine-g... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences [5] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.10798.pdf [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management [8] https://www.npr.org/2008/10/24/96070766/greenspan-admits-fre... [10] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/22/tech/larry-summers-openai... [11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooksley_Born [12] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/warning/ [13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism [14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism [15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture [16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx [17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman [18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand [19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault
It’s a nice write-up, thank you. But I didn’t get the YouTube Premium thing in this context. Does it allow watching something that is hidden from non-premium plebs? I thought it’s a no-advertising thing, the premium, isn’t it?
YouTube Premium is on paper just no ads, offline viewing, and their music catalog (so a steal if you’re already paying for e.g. Spotify and find the Google Music catalog adequate).
Anecdotally it seems to be a different ranker with much more “interest” as opposed to “engagement” joint loss, but I could just be in a lucky bandit group.
Anecdotally it seems to be a different ranker with much more “interest” as opposed to “engagement” joint loss, but I could just be in a lucky bandit group.
The cost of failure is way too high in this country for people to take a risk and venture out on their own. This is a privilege that has been reserved for the wealthy.
Larry. Sergey. Mark Z. Steve.
All of these people were born into families where both parents either had advanced degrees or were well off due to their success in the field. Failure for these people does not mean much. Maybe just a hit to their egos. But otherwise they keep living life, just not as the billionaires of today.
Larry. Sergey. Mark Z. Steve.
All of these people were born into families where both parents either had advanced degrees or were well off due to their success in the field. Failure for these people does not mean much. Maybe just a hit to their egos. But otherwise they keep living life, just not as the billionaires of today.
> If you look at the lists of the richest people that occasionally get published in the press, nearly all of them did it by starting their own companies.
Actaally if you look at those lists, the largest number made it by choosing their parents correctly.
Actaally if you look at those lists, the largest number made it by choosing their parents correctly.
> If you look at the lists of the richest people that occasionally get published in the press, nearly all of them did it by starting their own companies.
And actually it's a stupid point to begin with; making a point by choosing the absolute top percentage as if there is nothing other than 'really' rich (forget whether that is even a good thing I'd argue it's not a plus to have that much money and notoriety). There is of course 'lots of money' or 'comfortable'.
Irony also that Paul is probably not on that list but even if he was it's not because he 'built a google' but rather he decided to be an investor and incubator spreading bets over many potential winners.
Also ironic that Paul had decided rather than making more money he'd rather spend time with his family.
And actually it's a stupid point to begin with; making a point by choosing the absolute top percentage as if there is nothing other than 'really' rich (forget whether that is even a good thing I'd argue it's not a plus to have that much money and notoriety). There is of course 'lots of money' or 'comfortable'.
Irony also that Paul is probably not on that list but even if he was it's not because he 'built a google' but rather he decided to be an investor and incubator spreading bets over many potential winners.
Also ironic that Paul had decided rather than making more money he'd rather spend time with his family.
I am sure he has at least a billion. That is really rich
Of course you're correct, but forget about that - two thirds of the team that started Viaweb and then Y-Combinator crashed, according to then contemporary reports, 10% of the machines on the Internet for the fun of vandalism or a prank or whatever. The one who was charged did no jail time - Graham wasn't even charged.
He then goes on to exploit young techies to put himself in a very prime position in the relations of production. Nowadays he tweets minimally veiled racist tweets about the supposed biological superiority of his brain compared to the rest of us, especially other races. Talk about privilege.
He then goes on to exploit young techies to put himself in a very prime position in the relations of production. Nowadays he tweets minimally veiled racist tweets about the supposed biological superiority of his brain compared to the rest of us, especially other races. Talk about privilege.
> Nowadays he tweets minimally veiled racist tweets about the supposed biological superiority of his brain compared to the rest of us, especially other races.
I’m curious, what are you referring to?
I’m curious, what are you referring to?
It's n=1 and huge survivorship bias. There is not that much useful or applicable in this essay. Yeah starting a company is one way to get rich, but the odds are not that good and start-up costs are higher than ever. Nothing is getting cheaper, whether it's advertising, labor, or developing the product.
The $ offered by YC wouldn't even cover a typical salary for a single coder or an adverting budget, although being chosen by YC does help to some degree in the latter though. Same for Thiel Fellowship: Not much $ either. You need a lot more than being offered by these incubators, which is a pittance. Back in the '90s it was easier to get decent funding, plus costs were way lower even adjusted for inflation. Now it's huge competition for bread crumbs, plus huge expenses.
On Reddit investing and 'FIRE' subs, way more young and middle-aged people getting rich (as in 7-8 figures) with lucrative white collar jobs or being early in a start-up, plus investing in stock market and real estate, than creating actual companies.
You can do well in computer science classes without ever really learning to program. In fact you can graduate with a degree in computer science from a top university and still not be any good at programming. That's why tech companies all make you take a coding test before they'll hire you, regardless of where you went to university or how well you did there. They know grades and exam results prove nothing.
Yeah, theoretical computer science is not the same as coding. The guys who did theoretical AI work seem to do okay though.
The $ offered by YC wouldn't even cover a typical salary for a single coder or an adverting budget, although being chosen by YC does help to some degree in the latter though. Same for Thiel Fellowship: Not much $ either. You need a lot more than being offered by these incubators, which is a pittance. Back in the '90s it was easier to get decent funding, plus costs were way lower even adjusted for inflation. Now it's huge competition for bread crumbs, plus huge expenses.
On Reddit investing and 'FIRE' subs, way more young and middle-aged people getting rich (as in 7-8 figures) with lucrative white collar jobs or being early in a start-up, plus investing in stock market and real estate, than creating actual companies.
You can do well in computer science classes without ever really learning to program. In fact you can graduate with a degree in computer science from a top university and still not be any good at programming. That's why tech companies all make you take a coding test before they'll hire you, regardless of where you went to university or how well you did there. They know grades and exam results prove nothing.
Yeah, theoretical computer science is not the same as coding. The guys who did theoretical AI work seem to do okay though.
Parents who started companies. Lookin' at you Walton kids!
Certainly a few, but a quick scan of lists makes it look more like 25% inherited in the top 20 or so
I think it depends where you set the limit between “self made” and “inherited”. I don’t think it’s black or white
Would Gates have made it if Mum wasn’t on the board of IBM? Would Bezos have made it without 200k from mum&dad ?
Would Gates have made it if Mum wasn’t on the board of IBM? Would Bezos have made it without 200k from mum&dad ?
> Would Bezos have made it without 200k from mum&dad ?
Bezos was already the youngest Senior Vice President at DE Shaw before he started Amazon, so he wouldn't have any problem finding other investors. His mom had Bezos as a teenager, and his adoptive dad was a young Cuban refugee. His grandfather was rich though.
Bezos was already the youngest Senior Vice President at DE Shaw before he started Amazon, so he wouldn't have any problem finding other investors. His mom had Bezos as a teenager, and his adoptive dad was a young Cuban refugee. His grandfather was rich though.
I would consider someone who has made >1000x what they were given as self made without any doubt. Yes $200k or being in IBM's board or being US citizen or being able to afford Stanford is not a small thing for many, but saying that those were the biggest determining factor in making them richest is just being cynic on their progress.
> I think it depends where you set the limit between “self made” and “inherited”. I don’t think it’s black or white
That’s a fair point to make in the abstract, but it’s absolutely, breath-takingly extraordinary to turn moderately well-off parents into a top-twenty global wealth position. I went to high school and university with many people considerably more privileged than either of those, and the challenge is generally in not mismanaging the assets too poorly so there’s enough to pass on to the next generation.
That’s a fair point to make in the abstract, but it’s absolutely, breath-takingly extraordinary to turn moderately well-off parents into a top-twenty global wealth position. I went to high school and university with many people considerably more privileged than either of those, and the challenge is generally in not mismanaging the assets too poorly so there’s enough to pass on to the next generation.
The real problem with those lists is that they only include people whose wealth is known and can be reasonably valued based on public sources. It's often not easy to trace the net worth of old-money families. It also means you won't find people from countries with very low transparency or dictators on the list. For example, you won't find Putin or any of the Saudi royals on the Forbes list even though they are among the wealthiest people in the world. Perhaps even competing for #1 depending on what estimate of their wealth you find to be the most reliable.
It's impossible to draw any firm conclusions from those lists because they aren't representative samples of wealthy people. They're a sample of wealthy people with public assets, and of course that's going to skew heavily towards people who founded large publically traded companies who live in countries with high degrees of financial transparency.
It's impossible to draw any firm conclusions from those lists because they aren't representative samples of wealthy people. They're a sample of wealthy people with public assets, and of course that's going to skew heavily towards people who founded large publically traded companies who live in countries with high degrees of financial transparency.
Which makes one feel even shittier when you realize that even with that skewing, the list STILL contains a lot of inherited-wealth or comfortable-highly-educated-wealth people.
> […] you need to do well in your classes to get into a good university.
Isn’t this also mostly inherited: do most get into the good universities because of their grades or their connections? Can most get good grades without an “inherited” support system?
Isn’t this also mostly inherited: do most get into the good universities because of their grades or their connections? Can most get good grades without an “inherited” support system?
Inherited wealth did see an increase in 2023 in the UBS Wealth Report.
https://www.ubs.com/global/en/media/display-page-ndp/en-2023...
https://fortune.com/europe/2023/11/30/billionaire-heirs-over...
https://www.ubs.com/global/en/media/display-page-ndp/en-2023...
https://fortune.com/europe/2023/11/30/billionaire-heirs-over...
Except for Waltons or the occasional Saudi, there is much more tech wealth compared to inherited wealth.
I guess luck plays a big role in one's success. That said, pg's points still hold, as he is telling us how to maximize our chance of success despite of what we are born with.
If the goal is to maximize your chances it would not be to start a company. It would be get a degree from decent school + white collar work for 10-20 years (whilst paying off student loans) + diligently investing in index funds and home ownership. That is how guys are getting rich on Reddit 'FIRE' subs at 30-40-years old, not start-ups.
That can get you rich - not wealthy
https://www.forbes.com/consent/ketch/?toURL=https://www.forb...
If I look here, top 20 are 17 founders and 3 heirs (2 Waltons - Walmart, and one Bettencourt - L’Oreal)
If I look here, top 20 are 17 founders and 3 heirs (2 Waltons - Walmart, and one Bettencourt - L’Oreal)
So Musk whose father owned diamond mines is not an heir.
Arnault whose father owned Ferret-Savinel is not an heir.
Gates father was a prominent lawyer, his mother was an heiress who was on a board with the chairman of IBM.
Even looking at those who are not classified as heirs - Zuckerberg's high school currently costs over $50,000 a year. Buffett's father was a congressman and his family owned grocery stores. Not billionaires, but people with more wealth and connections then even our minority of upper middle class people.
Arnault whose father owned Ferret-Savinel is not an heir.
Gates father was a prominent lawyer, his mother was an heiress who was on a board with the chairman of IBM.
Even looking at those who are not classified as heirs - Zuckerberg's high school currently costs over $50,000 a year. Buffett's father was a congressman and his family owned grocery stores. Not billionaires, but people with more wealth and connections then even our minority of upper middle class people.
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"choosing their parents correctly" - yes.. having great parents doing their best is probably one of the main indicators of success. (mileage definitely varies) A child can learn a lot from their parents.. things like prudence, patience, work ethic.. a lot of folks think its about "inheritance". imho
Totally insane.
99% or more of the people who enable Google to do what Google does are employees of Google. Same with every other company. The odds of being the founder of a successful company are probably worse than being a professional sportsball player (if only because they turn over more frequently).
Does anything good come from encouraging kids to think that they will manage to sail through life as a successful business founder rather than an employee?
Does anything good come from encouraging people to ignore the actual situation that the overwhelming majority of the population finds itself in, and instead focusing on some essentially impossible pipe dream?
Obviously, every successful company does have founders. But so does every unsuccessful company. And what actually powers every successful company are its employees, not its founders.
The absolute worst of SV thinking, personified.
99% or more of the people who enable Google to do what Google does are employees of Google. Same with every other company. The odds of being the founder of a successful company are probably worse than being a professional sportsball player (if only because they turn over more frequently).
Does anything good come from encouraging kids to think that they will manage to sail through life as a successful business founder rather than an employee?
Does anything good come from encouraging people to ignore the actual situation that the overwhelming majority of the population finds itself in, and instead focusing on some essentially impossible pipe dream?
Obviously, every successful company does have founders. But so does every unsuccessful company. And what actually powers every successful company are its employees, not its founders.
The absolute worst of SV thinking, personified.
> Does anything good come from encouraging kids to think that they will manage to sail through life as a successful business founder rather than an employee?
I would imagine dreaming big is pretty good for children.
A big reason for why I'm optimistic in life is because I have hope for achieving something. I truly can't imagine a life where my father/mother would only hammer in the fact that I am just an average joe and should stick to climbing the corporate ladder. Such an uninspiring take, this one. Depressing.
I would imagine dreaming big is pretty good for children.
A big reason for why I'm optimistic in life is because I have hope for achieving something. I truly can't imagine a life where my father/mother would only hammer in the fact that I am just an average joe and should stick to climbing the corporate ladder. Such an uninspiring take, this one. Depressing.
> I truly can't imagine a life where my father/mother would only hammer in the fact that I am just an average joe and should stick to climbing the corporate ladder. Such an uninspiring take, this one. Depressing.
That is depressing! But also not what the parent comment said -- you seem to have accidentally taken a much more severe meaning from that comment (than I did, at least).
The top-level comment is just talking about being pragmatic. It's hard to walk the line between having idealistic visions and knowing that most of them won't pan out, and probably harder still to teach walking that line to your kids. I think that's what the comment was talking about -- not advocating for falling entirely on the latter side of that line -- which, as you say, would be super depressing!
That is depressing! But also not what the parent comment said -- you seem to have accidentally taken a much more severe meaning from that comment (than I did, at least).
The top-level comment is just talking about being pragmatic. It's hard to walk the line between having idealistic visions and knowing that most of them won't pan out, and probably harder still to teach walking that line to your kids. I think that's what the comment was talking about -- not advocating for falling entirely on the latter side of that line -- which, as you say, would be super depressing!
The fundamental disagreement I have with the post is the idea that you're foolish for doing something because it probably won't pan out.
So what? Why be so terrified of failure? I think it's better if kids learn to be brave, and pick themselves up in life after they stumble. Living life in utter fear of failing at anything seems like a terrible way for your children to start off life. Besides for which few things are better learning experiences than trying to start your own company.
And who knows. They might even succeed beyond their wildest dreams, as some do.
So what? Why be so terrified of failure? I think it's better if kids learn to be brave, and pick themselves up in life after they stumble. Living life in utter fear of failing at anything seems like a terrible way for your children to start off life. Besides for which few things are better learning experiences than trying to start your own company.
And who knows. They might even succeed beyond their wildest dreams, as some do.
My call was not that you're foolish for doing something because it won't pan out.
It was that it is foolish to tell/teach/encourage people to expect that things like "start Google" have any reasonable likelihood of succeeding.
And it is even worse when that encourages people to fail to organize, vote, protest, push for better work and better working conditions for everybody who are not founders of unicorns.
It was that it is foolish to tell/teach/encourage people to expect that things like "start Google" have any reasonable likelihood of succeeding.
And it is even worse when that encourages people to fail to organize, vote, protest, push for better work and better working conditions for everybody who are not founders of unicorns.
> And it is even worse when that encourages people to fail to organize, vote, protest, push for better work and better working conditions for everybody who are not founders of unicorns.
You've lost me here. How does working at a startup make it any more difficult to do this than working at a bank or hospital? For that matter, would you discourage someone from pursuing basic research at a university or a doctorate degree because that doesn't directly advance a political agenda?
You've lost me here. How does working at a startup make it any more difficult to do this than working at a bank or hospital? For that matter, would you discourage someone from pursuing basic research at a university or a doctorate degree because that doesn't directly advance a political agenda?
> I would imagine dreaming big is pretty good for children.
I would rather have my children dream of becoming astronauts than becoming the next Steve Jobs.
I would rather have my children dream of becoming astronauts than becoming the next Steve Jobs.
i'd argue that's entirely up to the child to dream how they see fit, and up to the parent to support them, build them up and keep a pulse on what the thing is they're focusing on
Most kids want to be social media influencers.
But I do not think most kids today, once adults, will be very happy with their parents if they just blindly support them in that dream, neglecting other realistic career possibilities in blind faith that their kid will be a star.
I'm not saying you should tell your kid 'no! you can't be, I won't let you.' - but like, maybe nudge them in the right direction, have them meet influencers and hear how hard the job actually can be, hear how lucky/unfair who becomes popular and successful can be - then if they are comfortable with and understand those risks, support them in any way possible after that.
But I do not think most kids today, once adults, will be very happy with their parents if they just blindly support them in that dream, neglecting other realistic career possibilities in blind faith that their kid will be a star.
I'm not saying you should tell your kid 'no! you can't be, I won't let you.' - but like, maybe nudge them in the right direction, have them meet influencers and hear how hard the job actually can be, hear how lucky/unfair who becomes popular and successful can be - then if they are comfortable with and understand those risks, support them in any way possible after that.
To be fair, becoming a social media influencer isn’t all that conceptually different from becoming a movie star, a professional athlete, a famous musician, or other type of celebrity entertainer. Maybe even marginally more attainable.
Funny enough is successful people like pg themselves become essentially social media influencers after they’ve achieved things. Fame and following are the next pursuit after wealth.
Funny enough is successful people like pg themselves become essentially social media influencers after they’ve achieved things. Fame and following are the next pursuit after wealth.
i was hoping it's obvious that as a parent you should still keep guardrails around them but i also specifically mentioned
> and keep a pulse on what the thing is they're focusing on
> and keep a pulse on what the thing is they're focusing on
I find the level-headed realism
and appreciation of those of us who work in OP's post refreshing, and the solipsism and wishful thinking of your post depressing.
what a weird comment. my entire drive to want to be a business owner is fueled by the desire to be free from inept senior leadership, bad managers and bloated hierarchy mixed with building something people love that stems from my own head. not sure how that translates to solopsism. also, optimism and desire to think big (even if i fail) is depressing to you? you should probably seek therapy, dude
People deserve dignity and meaning from their labor no matter what sort of work they do. This should not be reserved for those who manage to start unicorns (let alone Googles).
It might interest you to know what I was employee #2 at amzn.
It might interest you to know what I was employee #2 at amzn.
Eh, maybe it is good to learn that you're not destined to anything grand early on. It gives you resilience, and builds character. Teaches you to value the small things in life.
It can be a lot more depressing to learn you are a loser well into your adulthood, after a long time of thinking very highly of yourself.
It can be a lot more depressing to learn you are a loser well into your adulthood, after a long time of thinking very highly of yourself.
If you’re a prominent VC that’s exactly what you want to happen though, it will let you spread your bets even more.
But like you said, this is peak SV. Luckily there is a whole world outside of SV where the rest of us operate :)
But like you said, this is peak SV. Luckily there is a whole world outside of SV where the rest of us operate :)
I can’t disagree more.
I’ve founded failed startups. I don’t regret a single one of them. I’ve worked at failed startups and big companies and I learned more and had more fun at the startups than I ever did at a big company.
The point is, if you try to found a company, you don’t have to make a billion dollars to consider it a success. In terms of personal growth it’s easily the equal of any big company job.
I’ve founded failed startups. I don’t regret a single one of them. I’ve worked at failed startups and big companies and I learned more and had more fun at the startups than I ever did at a big company.
The point is, if you try to found a company, you don’t have to make a billion dollars to consider it a success. In terms of personal growth it’s easily the equal of any big company job.
One thing I'd add to this, as a Business Management graduate… college won't teach anywhere near as much about business as starting a business will.
You'll get FAR MORE practical and useful knowledge doing it yourself, and being exposed to other businesses.
Most of what you'd get from college can be had reading a handful of well-written books on the subject.
You'll get FAR MORE practical and useful knowledge doing it yourself, and being exposed to other businesses.
Most of what you'd get from college can be had reading a handful of well-written books on the subject.
Starting a successful company is not an essentially impossible pipe dream. There are literally millions of businesses in the US that are generating millions in revenue.
Sure, they aren't all mega behemoth tech companies, but what of it? Setting your ambitions high when you're young is still worth it. It can be a major difference maker in motivating you to learn the skills necessary to build a successful business, and it turns out that those same skills are helpful for landing good jobs, too.
Most of the people I know who are doing well now dreamed relatively big when they were young. And many of the people I know who stress about making ends meet never had anyone telling them to aim high when they were young.
If you believe you can, you might try, and you might make it. If you believe you can't, it's madness to true, so you won't try, and you won't make it. These are basic building blocks of motivation and success.
Your pessimistic message could be applied to anything. Why try to build the next Google? It's impossible! Why try to build a smaller business? The odds are against you! Why try to get a high-paying job? Most people work average jobs! Why go for an average job? You're competing with the vast majority of the country! Why get a less-than-average job? It's so stressful and barely worth it.
Sure, they aren't all mega behemoth tech companies, but what of it? Setting your ambitions high when you're young is still worth it. It can be a major difference maker in motivating you to learn the skills necessary to build a successful business, and it turns out that those same skills are helpful for landing good jobs, too.
Most of the people I know who are doing well now dreamed relatively big when they were young. And many of the people I know who stress about making ends meet never had anyone telling them to aim high when they were young.
If you believe you can, you might try, and you might make it. If you believe you can't, it's madness to true, so you won't try, and you won't make it. These are basic building blocks of motivation and success.
Your pessimistic message could be applied to anything. Why try to build the next Google? It's impossible! Why try to build a smaller business? The odds are against you! Why try to get a high-paying job? Most people work average jobs! Why go for an average job? You're competing with the vast majority of the country! Why get a less-than-average job? It's so stressful and barely worth it.
> If you believe you can, you might try, and you might make it.
The statistics are pretty clear that you almost certainly will not.
So by all means give it a shot if you can do so without screwing your chance at whatever you'll do if/when it fails.
People deserve dignity and meaning no matter what work they do. This should not be reserved to the folks who manage to start unicorns (let alone Googles).
The statistics are pretty clear that you almost certainly will not.
So by all means give it a shot if you can do so without screwing your chance at whatever you'll do if/when it fails.
People deserve dignity and meaning no matter what work they do. This should not be reserved to the folks who manage to start unicorns (let alone Googles).
"Aim for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."
This is an area where I think this quote applies.
Don't reach Google status and build the next $1T company? Okay, maybe you'll make a unicorn. Don't make a unicorn? Maybe you'll start a $100M company. Or a $10M company. Or a $1M company. Or hell, a $100k company is a hell of an achievement.
And if you fail to do that? Well congratulations, you're eminently employable. Because on your way to "failure," you likely taught yourself a lot about code/tech, work either, managing people, raising money, marketing, and business, to say nothing of the professional contacts you made along the way.
I haven't met founders who feel that by starting and failing companies they have "screwed their chance" at something, at least not in a professional capacity.
One caveat (and it's a big one) is people going all in* on startups in their 20s, neglecting their health and relationships.
This is an area where I think this quote applies.
Don't reach Google status and build the next $1T company? Okay, maybe you'll make a unicorn. Don't make a unicorn? Maybe you'll start a $100M company. Or a $10M company. Or a $1M company. Or hell, a $100k company is a hell of an achievement.
And if you fail to do that? Well congratulations, you're eminently employable. Because on your way to "failure," you likely taught yourself a lot about code/tech, work either, managing people, raising money, marketing, and business, to say nothing of the professional contacts you made along the way.
I haven't met founders who feel that by starting and failing companies they have "screwed their chance" at something, at least not in a professional capacity.
One caveat (and it's a big one) is people going all in* on startups in their 20s, neglecting their health and relationships.
If 10000 more kids shoot for the moon they’ll build a lot of skills that the equivalent lifers won’t. He’s saying things like:
- Get good at tech - Build projects that you want - Get good grades and into the best university you can
I really hope my kid does that. I tried incredibly hard at projects I loved. That built me untold skills. Who cares if they start Google, or fail and get a job or get aquihired, they’ll be fine. They’ll know what their boss wants. They won’t just sit and bitch about parking. And at the back of their minds they might remember that this isn’t the only way to live so maybe they’ll be braver than they would otherwise.
- Get good at tech - Build projects that you want - Get good grades and into the best university you can
I really hope my kid does that. I tried incredibly hard at projects I loved. That built me untold skills. Who cares if they start Google, or fail and get a job or get aquihired, they’ll be fine. They’ll know what their boss wants. They won’t just sit and bitch about parking. And at the back of their minds they might remember that this isn’t the only way to live so maybe they’ll be braver than they would otherwise.
Fine. I share similar goals and dreams with my kids (who are all grown adults now). But what's the point of dangling "start Google" as some sort of imaginary incentive for this, when the real incentives and benefits almost certainly come from elsewhere.
> Does anything good come from encouraging people to ignore the actual situation that the overwhelming majority of the population finds itself in, and instead focusing on some essentially impossible pipe dream?
If one is trying to recruit future Sergeys Larrys, then it’s prudent to write to a very narrow audience.
This article addresses that audience perfectly well, imho.
> The absolute worst of SV thinking, personified.
… or maybe the best.
This is not “general life advice from pg”. It’s highly targeted and narrow.
That’s ok. That needs to be ok. It’s one of those things that makes SV unique and uniquely strong, imho.
Edited to add the following:
The advice goes from broad (you don’t have to get a job, you can start your own company) to very specific (how to start a hypergrowth startup), with lots of other (good, imho) advice in between.
This will resonate with some folks in the (ostensibly high school) audience, many of whom may be unfamiliar with startups, the startup world, and maybe even the tech world in general. It will fall on deaf ears for most of the rest, because that’s not the life or lifestyle they are looking for.
If one is trying to recruit future Sergeys Larrys, then it’s prudent to write to a very narrow audience.
This article addresses that audience perfectly well, imho.
> The absolute worst of SV thinking, personified.
… or maybe the best.
This is not “general life advice from pg”. It’s highly targeted and narrow.
That’s ok. That needs to be ok. It’s one of those things that makes SV unique and uniquely strong, imho.
Edited to add the following:
The advice goes from broad (you don’t have to get a job, you can start your own company) to very specific (how to start a hypergrowth startup), with lots of other (good, imho) advice in between.
This will resonate with some folks in the (ostensibly high school) audience, many of whom may be unfamiliar with startups, the startup world, and maybe even the tech world in general. It will fall on deaf ears for most of the rest, because that’s not the life or lifestyle they are looking for.
To observers it looks like they missed but observers don't really want to put themselves in the shoes of him who is about to take the shot. In that moment the observer can only win by onlooking, either be reassured that failure is near certain and all risk folly or the observer can be surprised and glad to see the consuming world birth another product.
From a psychological standpoint not aiming high would have been a bigger miss to the person taking the shot. They clearly chose risk no matter how they sulk afterwards.
The ratio of posts about "work-purpose porn" for employee bees and pipe dream madness for misfits is never going to satisfy everyone on HN.
From a psychological standpoint not aiming high would have been a bigger miss to the person taking the shot. They clearly chose risk no matter how they sulk afterwards.
The ratio of posts about "work-purpose porn" for employee bees and pipe dream madness for misfits is never going to satisfy everyone on HN.
I think your argument is flawed. By the time a company is successful, it has around 100-1000 employees. If those employees are all sampled from the same statistical population, any individual randomness in employee quality will wash out when averaged over 100+ people. So how come a successful company A has better employees than a failed company B?
Maybe a big part of the founders' skill is to actually hire the right management which in turn is capable of hiring the right employees. In which case, the credit goes to the founders after all.
Or maybe the quality of employees does not vary that much (after controlling for the the obvious factors like location / funding / business area). In which case, the company's success is explained by something else. Again, founders' skill? Or maybe something else?
I tend to think that it's a combination of founders' skill and being lucky to start the right business at the right time. I'd understand if others put greater weight on the founders or greater weight on luck.
Maybe a big part of the founders' skill is to actually hire the right management which in turn is capable of hiring the right employees. In which case, the credit goes to the founders after all.
Or maybe the quality of employees does not vary that much (after controlling for the the obvious factors like location / funding / business area). In which case, the company's success is explained by something else. Again, founders' skill? Or maybe something else?
I tend to think that it's a combination of founders' skill and being lucky to start the right business at the right time. I'd understand if others put greater weight on the founders or greater weight on luck.
Startups are high-risk high-reward. That doesn't necessarily mean they're a bad idea. Expected value can be positive even when probability is low. Moreover, a lot of young people can afford to take a chance on something. If you spend a few years living with your parents and attempting to create something, and you fail, you still have several decades of your life to go punch a clock at Big Corp.
And even if you fail to become Google, you might still make a living. Some people would gladly make a modest income doing something they love, with the possibility of making more, rather than working for someone else making three times as much but doing something they hate.
As for what good comes of it, just think about it. Where do new companies come from? Should we have no more of them? What would happen then?
And even if you fail to become Google, you might still make a living. Some people would gladly make a modest income doing something they love, with the possibility of making more, rather than working for someone else making three times as much but doing something they hate.
As for what good comes of it, just think about it. Where do new companies come from? Should we have no more of them? What would happen then?
I think one should argue that starting a business is high risk, mediocre reward. Most businesses just kinda trudge along, not leaving with the fairy tale returns of FAANG. Those are unicorns for a reason. Most of the businesses I've worked for, some of the founders are still working there and while they are pretty well off, they either havent sold yet (no big payday) or they made a meager sale netting them a very good pay, but probably averaged less than an engineer in SV on a 10 year horizon.
It's expecting the high reward which is high risk. Creating a small business that can trudge along and pay you a modest salary is fairly common.
PG's post was called "How to start Google"
And starting Google is the high-risk high-reward thing.
> Startups are high-risk high-reward
In SV, if you’re a founder then it’s medium-risk, high-reward. You’ll be propped up by investor funding, have acquihire>exec as escape route, and in the slim chance of actual success you’ll range from rich to mega-rich.
For non-founders (employees) it’s high-risk medium-reward. An acquihire will make you a rank-and-file employee, and if the startup is a true success you might still only bag a moderate sum, thanks to your tiny sub-percent of equity. Only huge IPOs bring wealth to non-founders.
In SV, if you’re a founder then it’s medium-risk, high-reward. You’ll be propped up by investor funding, have acquihire>exec as escape route, and in the slim chance of actual success you’ll range from rich to mega-rich.
For non-founders (employees) it’s high-risk medium-reward. An acquihire will make you a rank-and-file employee, and if the startup is a true success you might still only bag a moderate sum, thanks to your tiny sub-percent of equity. Only huge IPOs bring wealth to non-founders.
The idea behind VC is to lessen the individual financial risk. VC can work but it takes a lot more money than typically offered.
> Does anything good come from encouraging kids to think that they will manage to sail through life as a successful business founder rather than an employee?
I think it probably has a lot to do with the US being the number 1 economy in the world so yes, it does appear to have society-wide benefits. Does it have personal benefits? I think this is probably more controversial. I suspect some people push themselves too hard and would have been happier otherwise, whereas others do indeed benefit from this advice. I suspect that the users of HN probably fall in the latter category.
I think it probably has a lot to do with the US being the number 1 economy in the world so yes, it does appear to have society-wide benefits. Does it have personal benefits? I think this is probably more controversial. I suspect some people push themselves too hard and would have been happier otherwise, whereas others do indeed benefit from this advice. I suspect that the users of HN probably fall in the latter category.
I think this distills the crux of the equivocation inherent to this kind of reasoning
Being "the number 1 economy in the world" (Actually kind of debatable by some metrics, but that's beside the point) is a measure of the power of the few that hold it, not the general living conditions of the populace. "Society-wide benefits" being the same as having the richest aggregate economy is to say the least pretty dubious
Being "the number 1 economy in the world" (Actually kind of debatable by some metrics, but that's beside the point) is a measure of the power of the few that hold it, not the general living conditions of the populace. "Society-wide benefits" being the same as having the richest aggregate economy is to say the least pretty dubious
That is such a good point. It distracts us from thinking about what our industry really needs right now which is unionization and regulation. The risk of off shore outsourcing and AI and imminent. These kind of posts provide false promises of riches.
I also want to point out it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that most founders come from well off backgrounds. Their parents can essentially foot the bills while they're getting things off the ground combined w/ the natural access to capital growing up in wealthy circles provides.
I also want to point out it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that most founders come from well off backgrounds. Their parents can essentially foot the bills while they're getting things off the ground combined w/ the natural access to capital growing up in wealthy circles provides.
The odds are actually pretty reasonable if you go to a school like MIT or Harvard. I know its hard for outsiders to grasp, but this is the reality. PG even explicitly calls it out.
I just posted on X that every high school in Michigan should spend a day discussing startups, even if it truly reaches one kid in fifty the payoff would be immense.
Currently Michigan's idea of business development is to write big checks to folks who promise thousands of jobs.
Yet when the automobile industry got started in Michigan no one wrote them any government checks yet it became our largest industry. We can do much better and more startups is the answer.
Currently Michigan's idea of business development is to write big checks to folks who promise thousands of jobs.
Yet when the automobile industry got started in Michigan no one wrote them any government checks yet it became our largest industry. We can do much better and more startups is the answer.
The essay isn't called "How to optimize your likelihood of retiring comfortably"
> You can't know whether it will turn into a company worth billions or one that goes out of business. So when I say I'm going to tell you how to start Google, I mean I'm going to tell you how to get to the point where you can start a company that has as much chance of being Google as Google had of being Google.
> You can't know whether it will turn into a company worth billions or one that goes out of business. So when I say I'm going to tell you how to start Google, I mean I'm going to tell you how to get to the point where you can start a company that has as much chance of being Google as Google had of being Google.
... and that chance is essentially extremely close to zero.
People seem to think that Google is some sort of existence proof that there's a non-zero chance (and perhaps even quite a good one) of starting a company with this level of success.
And they are correct.
However, this is not the same probability at all as the chance that your company will turn out like that.
People seem to think that Google is some sort of existence proof that there's a non-zero chance (and perhaps even quite a good one) of starting a company with this level of success.
And they are correct.
However, this is not the same probability at all as the chance that your company will turn out like that.
99% or more of the people who enable Google to do what Google does are employees of Google. Same with every other company. The odds of being the founder of a successful company are probably worse than being a professional sportsball player (if only because they turn over more frequently).
Depends on the size of company. A small company maybe is more probable than being a top athlete.
Depends on the size of company. A small company maybe is more probable than being a top athlete.
It doesn't matter, though. If you follow that advice, you'll probably be more successful as an employee.
This is a very strange comment to make on the Y combinator link sharing site. A site started as a space for a community of founders and aspiring founders to share their inspiration, ideas and stories. And you're responding to an article written by the founder of that community.
This community’s relationship and attitudes towards its founders have varied and shifted wildly since its founding. The content shared on this site have also changed over time.
> Does anything good come from encouraging kids to think that they will manage to sail through life as a successful business founder rather than an employee?
Yes, VCs flourish by it.
Yes, VCs flourish by it.
when i was the kids' age, a teacher told us "aim at the stars, you might at least reach the moon" and i always found it motivating
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I dislike this sort of advice for teenagers. You may as well tell them to be rock stars or professional sports people.
Tell the kids to study, don't sell them an unobtainable dream
Tell the kids to study, don't sell them an unobtainable dream
The core advice is to produce instead of consume.
And the second one is to study.
However, packaging it under a "being a mere employee is lame" mantra... Is lame!
But I'm curious. Why do you think that doing something which is maybe not study related is a bad idea?
("Maybe not" because ie. john Mayer is both a rockstar and a Berkelee grad)
However, packaging it under a "being a mere employee is lame" mantra... Is lame!
But I'm curious. Why do you think that doing something which is maybe not study related is a bad idea?
("Maybe not" because ie. john Mayer is both a rockstar and a Berkelee grad)
> Why do you think that doing something which is maybe not study related is a bad idea?
Because 99.999% of those kids won't go on to start the next Google and make more money for PG's investments.
When I was at school there were a few kids who were genuinely moderately good at football/soccer. With only minor encouragement from PE staff and family they essentially had the attitude of "I don't need to study, I am going to be a professional footballer." (who by the way make huge huge huge sums of money if you are at the very top)
And how many of those went on to to be top-flight professional footballers do you think? Yep - zero. What are they doing now considering they crashed out of out of school with no qualifications, no professional sports career, and barely able to even do basic literacy and arithmetic etc? Low skilled and relatively dead-end jobs like gardeners, working on building sites, security guards etc.
They threw away their chance to study and gain skills because irresponsible and self-interested adults told them they should abandon school and concentrate on this dream of fame and fortune with essentially zero chance of it coming true. You're fucking with people's lives by doing this - don't tell people you don't need to try hard and study and learn, you just need to become a billionaire business owner!
Because 99.999% of those kids won't go on to start the next Google and make more money for PG's investments.
When I was at school there were a few kids who were genuinely moderately good at football/soccer. With only minor encouragement from PE staff and family they essentially had the attitude of "I don't need to study, I am going to be a professional footballer." (who by the way make huge huge huge sums of money if you are at the very top)
And how many of those went on to to be top-flight professional footballers do you think? Yep - zero. What are they doing now considering they crashed out of out of school with no qualifications, no professional sports career, and barely able to even do basic literacy and arithmetic etc? Low skilled and relatively dead-end jobs like gardeners, working on building sites, security guards etc.
They threw away their chance to study and gain skills because irresponsible and self-interested adults told them they should abandon school and concentrate on this dream of fame and fortune with essentially zero chance of it coming true. You're fucking with people's lives by doing this - don't tell people you don't need to try hard and study and learn, you just need to become a billionaire business owner!
The amount of survivorship bias ignored in the article is appalling. Why?
It's like all the successful rappers who go on about how "I wanted to be a rapper when I was a teenager, and my guidance counsellor told me it's not realistic, and that I should settle down with a safe, normal job. Now look where I am!"
Your guidance counsellor told hundreds of kids the same thing, and it was good advice for basically all of them. For every guy who made it rich with some crazy risky stock trade, there's hundreds of guys who lost everything. For every business that was about to go under but managed to pull through, there's hundreds that were in the same position and failed. The attitude of following in the footsteps of the lucky few just seems like it's teaching kids to double down on failure.
Everyone can spot the issue when someone is wasting their money in a casino, thinking they're one more pull on the slot machine away from becoming rich. But for some reason it's encouraged when it's reframed as "following your dreams."
Your guidance counsellor told hundreds of kids the same thing, and it was good advice for basically all of them. For every guy who made it rich with some crazy risky stock trade, there's hundreds of guys who lost everything. For every business that was about to go under but managed to pull through, there's hundreds that were in the same position and failed. The attitude of following in the footsteps of the lucky few just seems like it's teaching kids to double down on failure.
Everyone can spot the issue when someone is wasting their money in a casino, thinking they're one more pull on the slot machine away from becoming rich. But for some reason it's encouraged when it's reframed as "following your dreams."
Shooting for the google Star and falling short into a mid programming career is a lot better than missing the NBA with not much more than busted knees to show for it.
We're all already dead in geologic time. Why not shoot for the stars?
There's a big difference between a casino and actively throwing yourself at problem gradients, learning, adapting.
There's a big difference between a casino and actively throwing yourself at problem gradients, learning, adapting.
By the same nihilistic reasoning, why not aim for the path of least resistance?
(I would not even be surprised if some of the survivors did precisely that -- copy behavior of their successful parents, or try to prove their worth in terms of money, lacking other means to receive confirmation.)
(I would not even be surprised if some of the survivors did precisely that -- copy behavior of their successful parents, or try to prove their worth in terms of money, lacking other means to receive confirmation.)
Because PG is a survivor, and he's biased.
To be fair, he does tell them to study. But only because you have to get into a good college to find other people to found startups with.
That is just generic advice. Who would advice against studying. I think this essay is intended to be more inspirational than practical, which is fine.
Good enough reason I think. Actually it might provide some further motivation for them to do so if they were considering not doing it previously.
> But you will avoid many of the annoying things that come with a job, including a boss telling you what to do.
I hear things like this a lot and I'm sick of it. There's nothing wrong with working for someone, in fact it's the best way to improve your skills as a beginner since you're going to be mentored by people much more experienced than you. I still call my first boss to this day.
I hear things like this a lot and I'm sick of it. There's nothing wrong with working for someone, in fact it's the best way to improve your skills as a beginner since you're going to be mentored by people much more experienced than you. I still call my first boss to this day.
People like PG are at the apex of this weird fawning worship of entrepreneurs and getting rich that particularly affects the tech world. This culture places great intrinsic real value on not having a boss.
But of course this is all made up. Nothing has any real value in this sense. We just each get 100 years on Earth and we each get to decide how to spend that time. Those are the facts.
The entrepreneur worship culture is simply about making people who make those choices feel better about those choices. And as another commenter has observed, most of us are no more likely to make it as an entrepreneur than we are likely to play for the Lakers.
So, yeah, "a boss telling you what to do" is fine if it works for you and gets you what you want out of life. Some of us just don't give a shit and don't want to spend a lot of time thinking about things like market fit and business transactions and valuation blah blah blah.
But of course this is all made up. Nothing has any real value in this sense. We just each get 100 years on Earth and we each get to decide how to spend that time. Those are the facts.
The entrepreneur worship culture is simply about making people who make those choices feel better about those choices. And as another commenter has observed, most of us are no more likely to make it as an entrepreneur than we are likely to play for the Lakers.
So, yeah, "a boss telling you what to do" is fine if it works for you and gets you what you want out of life. Some of us just don't give a shit and don't want to spend a lot of time thinking about things like market fit and business transactions and valuation blah blah blah.
In fact most knowledge work that's above average really feels like you are working 'with' someone. Self leading teams etc.
> this is the standard way to get really rich
The standard way for a young 15yo to get rich, is to be passed on wealth by their parents. But starting a company can probably work, occasionally enough that we can use it as a smoke screen.
The standard way for a young 15yo to get rich, is to be passed on wealth by their parents. But starting a company can probably work, occasionally enough that we can use it as a smoke screen.
>It's more exciting to work on your own project than someone else's. And you can also get a lot richer. In fact, this is the standard way to get really rich.
> You might have thought I was joking when I said I was going to tell you how to start Google. You might be thinking "How could we start Google?" But that's effectively what the people who did start Google were thinking before they started it.
We shouldn't be telling young people to start companies like Google or to aim for being really rich in the first place. We should be teaching children how to be more sustainable. Companies like Google are a net harm to society and the really rich like Sergey Brin and Larry Page are parasites, promoting the unsustainable ruthless capitalism that has caused the immense climactic problems of the world today.
> You might have thought I was joking when I said I was going to tell you how to start Google. You might be thinking "How could we start Google?" But that's effectively what the people who did start Google were thinking before they started it.
We shouldn't be telling young people to start companies like Google or to aim for being really rich in the first place. We should be teaching children how to be more sustainable. Companies like Google are a net harm to society and the really rich like Sergey Brin and Larry Page are parasites, promoting the unsustainable ruthless capitalism that has caused the immense climactic problems of the world today.
- I agree that we shouldn‘t tell young people to aim for companies like Google / aim to get really really rich
- I agree that we should tell young children to aim for sustainable companies
- I at least partially disagree with warning against the unsustainable ruthless capitalism in case your sustainable ideas do get really big. Some companies would get really really big, and I would prefer to see those reaching there to be those who had a (comparatively) caring mind (the others would not listen anyway)
- but I would agree to explain young children that what and where they buy does impact climatic problems. And that supporting small-medium sized companies (or creating one) is the most beneficial for our future
- I agree that we should tell young children to aim for sustainable companies
- I at least partially disagree with warning against the unsustainable ruthless capitalism in case your sustainable ideas do get really big. Some companies would get really really big, and I would prefer to see those reaching there to be those who had a (comparatively) caring mind (the others would not listen anyway)
- but I would agree to explain young children that what and where they buy does impact climatic problems. And that supporting small-medium sized companies (or creating one) is the most beneficial for our future
Inspirational talk for 14 year old to engage into extremely risky ventures for the sake of becoming the richest person in the world.
How irresponsible.
How irresponsible.
The actual advice given is “learn to program and then pursue projects that interest you”, which is great advice for a 14 year old.
Yeah right that’s definitely what 14 year olds will take away from this.
> You need three things. You need to be good at some kind of technology, you need an idea for what you're going to build, and you need cofounders to start the company with.
So no word about funding from the CIA and NSA. If you want to build something that changes the world in such a profound way as Google did, you can not possibly expect the powerful not having a word with you. I am inclined to believe that these days you will need influential "friends" with aligned interests at some point.
So no word about funding from the CIA and NSA. If you want to build something that changes the world in such a profound way as Google did, you can not possibly expect the powerful not having a word with you. I am inclined to believe that these days you will need influential "friends" with aligned interests at some point.
I assume a lot of start ups are started by older people too.
I think for older people an advantage is to solve older people problems. Like how sucky accessing all kinds of “adulting” things are from aged care to dealing with myriad systems with kids schools or any other problems that have inevitably been chucked at you. Some of these “startups” might actually be lobbying/political work for the good that doesn’t make money, some might be startups.
Also being older I don’t care about making a unicorn. I see that as an odd goal for a founder of any age but a great goal for an investor.