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YC Annual Letter 2017

blog.samaltman.com

111–120 of 165 posts

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#111
post #2

"Our mission is to enable the most innovation of any company in the world in order to make the future great for everyone." I know many people will read that and roll their eyes back and believe it is just a marketing gimmick for the gullible and like most investors YC just cares about the money. The thing is that they do deeply care about founders and making things better in the world, as naive as that may sound to o…

It's funny you say this—the first thing I did, even before reading the article, was search for "Thiel." It's going to be hard for me to take this sort of thing seriously, this telegraphing of benevolence which is so central to YC's branding, until they address the fact that one of their "partners" is such an obviously destructive force within society. They don't even have to do anything but say goodbye, and they won'…

That is just your opinion and echo chamber. I give a lot of respect for them for not doing so.

Of course, it's because of money, since Thiel is powerful -- any other guy would have kicked out immediately, but nevertheless considering SV is a liberal echo chamber I give them some respect.

Now only if they has protested against Obama wiretapping the whole world as well...

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#112
post #99

Aside from a throwaway line about a possible "macroeconomic meltdown", there seems to be little attention paid to big signs of an overall negative trend in tech jobs: * "Bay Area: Tech job growth has rapidly decelerated" (from here: http://www.siliconvalley.com/2017/02/10/tech-job-growth-slow... ) * "Tech Jobs Took a Big Hit Last Year" (from here: http://fortune.com/2017/02/16/tech-jobs-layoffs-microsoft-in... ) The…

At the start of 2016 there was some consensus that things were cooling off. Markets were down, there were fewer seed stage investments and an all but dead tech IPO market for the first half of the year. Investors started to advise companies to lower their burn rates [https://bothsidesofthetable.com/so-what-is-the-right-level-o...]. Arguably the market conditions were driven by the 2015 - 2016 Chinese market turbulence [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%9316_Chinese_stock_...], but who really knows. Growth has picked back up this year and I’d expect job growth to bounce back.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#113
I appreciate the letter. The following caught my eye, because I was sure we had all learned that the ends do not justify the means. Surely the Zenefits debacle was a lesson in ethics and not one about avoiding getting caught doing the wrong thing.

> we have to work harder to find people doing a startup for the right reason: to bring an idea they’re obsessed with to life, and willing to do something unreasonable to see it happen

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#115
post #2

"Our mission is to enable the most innovation of any company in the world in order to make the future great for everyone." I know many people will read that and roll their eyes back and believe it is just a marketing gimmick for the gullible and like most investors YC just cares about the money. The thing is that they do deeply care about founders and making things better in the world, as naive as that may sound to o…

It's funny you say this—the first thing I did, even before reading the article, was search for "Thiel." It's going to be hard for me to take this sort of thing seriously, this telegraphing of benevolence which is so central to YC's branding, until they address the fact that one of their "partners" is such an obviously destructive force within society. They don't even have to do anything but say goodbye, and they won'…

I up-voted you.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#116

Companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft have powerful advantages that are still not fully understood by most founders and investors....This trend is unlikely to reverse without antitrust action, and I suggest people carefully consider its implications for startups. I think the "startup community" needs to have a serious conversation about this [2]. If we agree that machine learning is going to b…

Twenty years or so ago, only Microsoft would have been on that list. It was being hit with lawsuits and Apple was on the other side because it wasn't on the list. The landscape changed and DEC and SUN are gone and Yahoo (hence the 'or so') and IBM don't have the relevance that they once did. What happened is that the landscape shifted out from under many of the incumbents...from hardware to software. The one survivor…

What's AFGAM?

Edit: Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#117

Nice writeup sama, but the history is a bit revisionist: > We are only about 30 years into the age of software, about 20 years into the age of the internet, and about 2 years into the age of artificial intelligence. Software has been around--and actively making bank!--for over 40 years. The internet has been around longer in the form of academic institutions, email, and BBS than you mention. And AI has, of course, be…

Those time periods are what most tech people consider as when those technologies really took off. And therefore it makes sense to say that. If he was writing a history of computer science, I agree that it would have been inaccurate to say that.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#118
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twenty years or so ago, only Microsoft would have been on that list. It was being hit with lawsuits and Apple was on the other side because it wasn't on the list. The landscape changed and DEC and SUN are gone and Yahoo (hence the 'or so') and IBM don't have the relevance that they once did. What happened is that the landscape shifted out from under many of the incumbents...from hardware to software. The one survivor…

What's AFGAM? Edit: Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft

Apple Facebook Google Amazon Microsoft

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#119
post #117

Nice writeup sama, but the history is a bit revisionist: > We are only about 30 years into the age of software, about 20 years into the age of the internet, and about 2 years into the age of artificial intelligence. Software has been around--and actively making bank!--for over 40 years. The internet has been around longer in the form of academic institutions, email, and BBS than you mention. And AI has, of course, be…

Those time periods are what most tech people consider as when those technologies really took off. And therefore it makes sense to say that. If he was writing a history of computer science, I agree that it would have been inaccurate to say that.

"Most tech people" must mean people under the age of 25 without much knowledge of history.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#120
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any evidence of this ?

Sorry for not having mentioned this explicit (it is in my profile) but this is from first-hand experience from being a founder and having going through YC with Bitnami

love bitnami - you guys have helped me so much on AWS!
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