....and got away with it?
Ask YC: Have you ever ignored Paul Graham?
1–10 of 41 posts
Re: Ask YC: Have you ever ignored Paul Graham?
#2This doesn't quite qualify as ignoring, but I think it matches the spirit of the question: I wouldn't be running Tarsnap now if Paul Graham hadn't listed "Single Founder" as the #1 mistake that kills startups. Having read that, I decided I was going to prove him wrong, damnit.
Re: Ask YC: Have you ever ignored Paul Graham?
#3Yes, I do. Because I do value enjoyable or thought-provoking articles, but do not really care who wrote them. So whenever there is name-dropping involved, I get wary and usually avoid clicking because I fear it is "empty celebrity worship".
Re: Ask YC: Have you ever ignored Paul Graham?
#4Yes, I do. Because I do value enjoyable or thought-provoking articles, but do not really care who wrote them. So whenever there is name-dropping involved, I get wary and usually avoid clicking because I fear it is "empty celebrity worship".
Hell yeah, can you spell "sycophantic". I can't, not unless I http://www.google.com/search?q=define:+sycophantic to make sure.
Re: Ask YC: Have you ever ignored Paul Graham?
#5This doesn't quite qualify as ignoring, but I think it matches the spirit of the question: I wouldn't be running Tarsnap now if Paul Graham hadn't listed "Single Founder" as the #1 mistake that kills startups. Having read that, I decided I was going to prove him wrong, damnit.
As a satisfied Tarsnap customer I'm glad you did!
Re: Ask YC: Have you ever ignored Paul Graham?
#6I consider each day that I don't apply to YC an instance of ignoring pg.
Re: Ask YC: Have you ever ignored Paul Graham?
#7Yes, I do. Because I do value enjoyable or thought-provoking articles, but do not really care who wrote them. So whenever there is name-dropping involved, I get wary and usually avoid clicking because I fear it is "empty celebrity worship".
Hell yeah, can you spell "sycophantic". I can't, not unless I http://www.google.com/search?q=define:+sycophantic to make sure.
I am Joe's complete and utter lack of surprise :)
Re: Ask YC: Have you ever ignored Paul Graham?
#8This doesn't quite qualify as ignoring, but I think it matches the spirit of the question: I wouldn't be running Tarsnap now if Paul Graham hadn't listed "Single Founder" as the #1 mistake that kills startups. Having read that, I decided I was going to prove him wrong, damnit.
Great to hear! Reading PG got me convinced I can't run a successful startup on my own. I was gonna try doing it anyway, but I would've been expecting to fail from the start.
Re: Ask YC: Have you ever ignored Paul Graham?
#9Ignoring Paul Graham is a bad idea because PG is extremely sharp, reasonable, and has a keen grasp of where his expertise lies. If he says something I disagree with, I'll happily engage in a discussion until we've laid out all our facts and ideas and found an optimal path. Provided a reasonable argument, PG will readily take your word. If you can't provide a reasonable argument to contradict PG, well, that's a good sign that you at least need to think about the problem some more.
I co-founded a games studio. Paul doesn't have experience in the games space. The "worst" outcome of a meeting with PG has been that he's given me an important new perspective, even if he isn't able to come up with specific prescriptive advice. His ideas and perspectives are hugely valuable. Not once has he stepped on our toes.
The key here is that startups receive tons of conflicting advice from all angles and discovering how to process this advice is crucial. Paul trusts that founders can decide for themselves whether his advice is, at face-value, good.
Re: Ask YC: Have you ever ignored Paul Graham?
#10Yes. I told him the following in person earlier tonight, at the last YCS10 dinner, and I think it's the consensus among the other founders I've talked to from our batch.
For the first month of Y Combinator, Paul Graham will tear you and your startup apart on a weekly basis (when you meet with him during office hours). If you're doing your job as a founder, though, you are the world expert in your particular field. So there should be times when you are right, and he's wrong, and you know that this is the case because of specific domain knowledge. There may even be times when you try to explain this to him and are unable to communicate it successfully.
However! There are also times when you think you have a problem specific to your startup that is actually a problem most startups have. In this case, PG is the domain expert, and you should probably listen to him.
The hard thing to do, obviously, is to distinguish the two cases. I have some thoughts on that, too, but they basically boil down to "you should appropriately mix cautious thought with bullheaded stubbornness", and you already knew that if you read anything anyone wrote about startups ever.
Edit: Didn't mean to speak for the rest of the founders. Feel free to disagree.