Not to dredge up the past, but this refreshingly contrasts with Zuckerberg's encouragement at Startup School 2007: 'If you want to found a successful company, you should only hire young people with technical expertise'. http://www.texasstartupblog.com/2007/03/27/facebook-class-ac...
Hire Family People
121–130 of 157 posts
Re: Hire Family People
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> [...] most of the people who apply don't have kids. how do you know if you don't ask?
Not for nothing, but for a hiring manager, asking this question is a firing offense. So is age, marital status, religion, or even any question about place of residence apart from "are you capable of being on-site during core hours". From a lot of unfortunate experience: tech people suck at following these rules.
It's more unfortunate that a few bad apples in the past have made these laws necessary in the first place. Asking someone about their life is hardly a crime, but our governments seem to have no problem making it so. Score another point against a good employer / employee relationship.
Re: Hire Family People
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe he has decided to take the opposite position to pg on every point about how to start a business and see how well he can argue it. Which is a healthy thing for Hacker News, I think, getting other perspectives.
Actually there wasn't anything in DHH's talk that I really disagreed with, except the use of the word "startup" for the kind of company he was describing. There's already a word for companies like Italian restaurants: businesses. A startup is a very specific kind of business: one that starts small but could grow very large. Only a fraction of the 30 million businesses in the US are startups. I think what made people…
I think that this is an important point. The term "startup" has been narrowed to the point where it doesn't include what are disparagingly referred to as "lifestyle companies".
And I think that's really unfortunate because controlling the language controls the thinking.
Let's face it: people (at least in tech circles) think it is very cool to be in a startup. And it is in the VCs interests to further that sense -- of being caught up in something big and exciting.
It lends a rockstar sensibility to a startup that is NOT conferred to a lifestyle company.
Even reading at Paul's posting on this tends to reinforce that subtle dig -- look at the examples: "landscaping company or a shoe store or a restaurant". None of those sound exciting to me.
Perhaps my issue is that the measure of "grow very large" is ambiguous. Does it mean large profits? Sorry, Facebook. Large revenues? Sorry Youtube. Spending lots of money? Yay Webvan! Perhaps it means employing lots of people -- which the left-winger in me approves of mightily!
I've always felt that the goal should be to touch as many lives a possible. That's my personal metric on which I base "large". This is consistent with Paul's examples -- you can touch a limited number of people with a landscaping company or a shoe store or a restaurant.
But on the web you can touch a LOT of lives with a small set of money. I would hazard that David's touched far more lives at 37Signals through their consumer products and through Rails than all by one or two of the startups on YC or part of YC.
That's large.
In my world, that counts as a startup.
Re: Hire Family People
#124Thank you so much, 37signals guys. I've always found pg's essays to be motivational and inspring, but there are two things that always turn me off; 1.) I don't live in San Fransisco, and probably never will, and 2.) I have a family. I often feel dismissed by PG and his disciples. DHH's stuff gives me hope that there's still a chance for "fogeys" (cripes, I'm only 33!) like me. I have a feeling that, if I ever applied…
YCombinator startups are startups - it seems that most of them are built to be sold - with a quick (ish) payoff for the founders and investors who sacrificed a lot. 37s viewpoint is more about a sustainable "small" business. Both are valid. PS I am 33 w. kids as well, and know what it is like. In some ways, you can have a lot more time to think/hack, as you tend to spend more time at home (and quiet time is spent at…
"37s viewpoint is more about a sustainable "small" business. Both are valid."
But IMHO 37s viewpoint has little to do with startups. Sure, we could all go and build a modest business that can grow to a small/medium size, and sustain us. But I'm guessing that would count as a failure for a lot of us.
Re: Hire Family People
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a feeling that, if I ever applied to YCombinator, my application would end up in the wastebasket the moment they caught a whiff of the fact that I have a wife and kids. We don't ask on the application form if people have kids, nor as far as I can recall have we asked anyone in an interview. The reason most of the people we fund don't have kids is simply that most of the people who apply don't have kids.
My co-founder has kids and is older than the OP, and we never felt like that had any impact on our acceptance to YC.
That's good to know! From some of the comments around here, I was starting to feel a little like the guy who showed up at the party uninvited. I probably take things too personally. :)
Re: Hire Family People
#126Thank you so much, 37signals guys. I've always found pg's essays to be motivational and inspring, but there are two things that always turn me off; 1.) I don't live in San Fransisco, and probably never will, and 2.) I have a family. I often feel dismissed by PG and his disciples. DHH's stuff gives me hope that there's still a chance for "fogeys" (cripes, I'm only 33!) like me. I have a feeling that, if I ever applied…
I don't mind the message -- no, you don't have to live in SF (your loss! :-) and no, you don't have to be single. It's the delivery I have a problem with. More and more, it seems like DHH and his sidekick are deliberately looking for fights. Like they have something they need to prove. Therapy?
Don't forget "No, you don't have to sell to google for millions"
Re: Hire Family People
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
A startup exists to make extraordinary profits by arbitraging a temporary economic disequilibrium by doing more than anyone thought possible with less than anyone thought possible; the industry is irrelevant.
I don't think that had anything whatsoever to do with my point. Is Threadless a startup?
I was just trying to provide a heuristic to answer your question. I don't think it's black and white though. As for Threadless, I do think it's a startup because they invented a new process to fill a temporary market disequilibrium. But if another company came along and did the same thing then I'm not so sure.
Re: Hire Family People
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that's a pretty narrow definition of a startup. Also, there are plenty of businesses that start out small and then grow very large over time. Actually, most large businesses took a long time to get there. Say like foot locker or Zappos for a "shoe store" (both big business) and say McDonald's or Olive Garden for a restaurant. By the same measure, we're building 37signals to grow as well. Grow revenues, grow c…
pg has been specifically keeping the definition of "startup" narrow, to describe only the businesses that go through the two-guys-plus-vc-plus-sleepless-nights-equals-fast-megabucks pattern that we saw in 2000. I think that's the model he's most interested in, that he sees as the most dynamic and rewarding. Shiny. That said, the things you describe closely match what I've wanted to pursue. For me, and many others, it…
Am I the only one that thinks 'startup' simply means a new business without profits? This just seems like a silly semantic debate. 37signals was a startup once, it just happened to choose a different outcome.
Every startup should be free to choose their outcome, and if most choose to try and quickly flip, then more power to them. If they choose to try and build a profitable independent business, great! There is no need to turn the 'liquidity event' vs 'sustainable business' camps into warring factions, like some weird language flame war.
It was refreshing at SUS to see a contrasting opinion, but neither side is trying to argue that their way is the only way. Both ways obviously work, and I think anyone would be happy with either of them over not succeeding at all.
Re: Hire Family People
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I try just to use standard definition. A startup as most people use the word means a comparatively small, comparatively young company that is designed to grow very big. Most but not all such companies create technology, because technology scales so well. Basically, the difference between a small business and a startup is like the difference between a shrub and a redwood seedling. The metaphor isn't perfect, because o…
> A startup as most people use the word means a comparatively small, comparatively young company that is designed to grow very big. How many YC companies fit this definition? I thought the goal was to make the founders rich, which so far hasn't included growing into a big company. Amer. Heritage: A business or an undertaking that has recently begun operation: grew from a tiny start-up to a multimillion-dollar corpora…
I thought the goal was to make the founders rich, which so far hasn't
included growing into a big company.
Re: Hire Family People
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not for nothing, but for a hiring manager, asking this question is a firing offense. So is age, marital status, religion, or even any question about place of residence apart from "are you capable of being on-site during core hours". From a lot of unfortunate experience: tech people suck at following these rules.
It's more unfortunate that a few bad apples in the past have made these laws necessary in the first place. Asking someone about their life is hardly a crime, but our governments seem to have no problem making it so. Score another point against a good employer / employee relationship.
How could it possibly be relevant to your hiring decision how old someone is, or what neighborhood they live in?