i think it'd be a good one to interview donald trump before his presidency. about his entrepreneurship past, his future actions on startup visas/programs, supporting startups, etc.
Ask HN: Restarting the YC Podcast – who would be most interesting to listen to?
121–130 of 191 posts
Re: Ask HN: Restarting the YC Podcast – who would be most interesting to listen to?
#122Can tell you what I don't want to hear, which is easier for me. Not another tech podcast with hosts who sound bored. Not another tech podcast that can't be arsed to put in the work to get good sound quality. Not another tech podcast where each episode interviews yet another person about 'what they're working on' with no larger story. And please if you have ads, dear god don't fall down the hole of writing or reading…
The "no, really, this is a personal endorsement, I use the product all the time" podcast ads really put me off too, but I'm not sure there's a better alternative. One of the great things about podcasts, for me, is the immersion. I think the "personal" ads are there more to sustain immersion rather than to fool the audience about the nature of the ad.
Re: Ask HN: Restarting the YC Podcast – who would be most interesting to listen to?
#123It seems like many people would like some sort of user-submitted Q&A format. In my experience, the Q&A segments of podcast episodes tend to be maybe 1/4 as interesting as the rest of the episode. People being interviewed are more likely to say broadly interesting things when given open space to ideate with the occasional gentle nudge from the interviewer. It's true that some user-submitted questions will be great, but natural conversation with interesting and intelligent people is by far my favorite kind of podcast to listen to.
A couple examples of excellent podcasts of this variety are the Ezra Klein Show [1] and Sam Harris's Waking Up [2].
[1] http://www.vox.com/ezra-klein-show-podcast [2] https://www.samharris.org/podcast
Re: Ask HN: Restarting the YC Podcast – who would be most interesting to listen to?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
A company I worked for hired some expert dude who came in and shaped the company into something that could be purchased. That was very interesting. That process that takes raw talent and startup chaos and turns it into something that will get acquired. It'd be great to hear about that process from both sides. There must be some sort of mentor approach, of giving advice that will work for that company.
What was the background of the expert? I am curious what skills and experience he had that led him to this line of work.
I'm not sure. It was a long time ago and I wasn't really involved in the process, I am a coder.
I think he had tried to sell his business and failed, but the company that wanted to buy his told him where he was going wrong. Then once his business was restructured and sold he got a job buying and chopping up businesses, restructuring them and selling them on.
He told us that we had a weird hierarchy and gave us some ballpark figures for new hires. So we needed 5 plebs to one middle manager, 4 or 5 middle managers to one senior manager and then a good board of directors. So we hired middle managers. Split the workforce between them. Hired some people to fill the board of directors, some were there in name only (people with PHDs) (cheap) and some with a lot of experience who actually advised and were more expensive to run. I seem to remember they were on the board of directors of a few local companies, so although they were expensive hires they did generate a lot of extra work. Like, good contracts with good margins.
At the end of it they had a company that ticked the right boxes for an acquisition, n coders, n/5 middle managers, etc etc, shove all that in a fancy powerpoint... what happened next was a mystery to me. But they did get purchased and made the owner multi-millionaires. The rest of us? Not so much. We had the choice to move 200 miles to our new offices or quit. :(
Re: Ask HN: Restarting the YC Podcast – who would be most interesting to listen to?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would be very interested in Thiel's take on: * Trump presidency, what the tech/startup should expect from the new Gov. * His views on privacy and ethics (I know, Palantir and everything, but that's why it makes so interesting to hear from him) * His take on the top-10 technologies of the future
Just FYI: Using code formatting to quote long lines of text makes it really hard to read, particularly on mobile.
Will keep that in mind.
Re: Ask HN: Restarting the YC Podcast – who would be most interesting to listen to?
#126There's a lot more out there than just technology. I'd love to hear from the creators of Meow Wolf, for instance.
Re: Ask HN: Restarting the YC Podcast – who would be most interesting to listen to?
#127Failed startups! Everyone gets barraged with success stories. It could be anonymous anecdotes: we did X and failed.
Re: Ask HN: Restarting the YC Podcast – who would be most interesting to listen to?
#128I'd suggest a "Car Talk" or "Ask This Old House" style call-in, submit-a-question format. Short, diverse segments that are listener guided (though sometimes the shows will have other prepped segments). These often border on the how-to side of things - but are deeply educational (and very successful) formats.
Cool. Seems like a lot of people want an office hours-style episode type.
There are so many start up podcasts that focus on the origin of the founders/company and how awesome they are and they all blur into one. Rocketship, Tim Ferris etc. Please don't do a podcast like that.
You guys have the clout to do something a bit more special and unique than just cool interviews with successful founders. And you probably don't have time to do all of the narrative shaping that Gimlet and other media companies do to find all the "quirky" stories that fill time. That's why something based around office hours makes so much sense. Y Combinator's office hours on youtube are amazing. You've even expanded office hours to non YC companies because you see how valuable they are to the start up community. This is another way of realizing that value.
Re: Ask HN: Restarting the YC Podcast – who would be most interesting to listen to?
#129I'm interested in hearing more from serial technical founders. They're usually quite busy and don't blog or do interviews as often as the CEOs. For instance, I just started using LogDNA and was really impressed by the product, looked up the team and discovered it's Lee Liu's third(?) company. Alex Maccaw has had an influence on my career from his JS work and Stripe product, then Sourcing.io and now Clearbit. Max Kroh…
Totally agreed. Will do!
Re: Ask HN: Restarting the YC Podcast – who would be most interesting to listen to?
#130Some ideas: Antonio García Martínez, author of Chaos Monkeys . Bobby Goodlatte on Facebook's news feed algorithm and the election. Peter Thiel on Trump and what's next, etc. Justin Edmond on early Pinterest and diversity in Silicon Valley. Dann Petty on Epicurrence and design culture in Silicon Valley. Kim-Mai Culter on Initialized Capital and housing in the Bay Area.
Cool. Thanks for the specific suggestions!