Live data from Hacker News

Billionaires Build

paulgraham.com

1–10 of 957 posts

Re: Billionaires Build

#3

With tens of thousands of people applying to YC every batch, this will probably go down as one of PG’s most popular essays

And although only a small portion of applicants are invited to an interview, the application is quite similar to the interview

Re: Billionaires Build

#4
The table layout of the HTML makes this unsuited for reader mode in Firefox. Luckily Pocket _is_ able to convert this into something readable.

I get the retro-appeal this has, but user-friendly it is not.

Re: Billionaires Build

#6
off-topic: I have been actively participating in HN since 2010, and recently I started seeing prominent tech people on twitter backlash against pg. Not sure if It was there before, or if I'm barely noticing this. i.e. many of them show screenshots of getting banned by pg on twitter.

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1329094570056032264

Re: Billionaires Build

#7
One mistake pg makes here is assuming that to be an exploitative billionaire you have to be good at exploiting people or have personal manipulative qualities.

You don’t. Owning a large company in a capitalist system is inherently exploitative. Simply owning a large company and taking surplus value from a large number of people is exploitation.

Re: Billionaires Build

#8
post #6

off-topic: I have been actively participating in HN since 2010, and recently I started seeing prominent tech people on twitter backlash against pg. Not sure if It was there before, or if I'm barely noticing this. i.e. many of them show screenshots of getting banned by pg on twitter. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1329094570056032264

Fashions come and go.

Anyone screenshotting being blocked by anyone is definitely trading in fashion.

Re: Billionaires Build

#9
post #6

off-topic: I have been actively participating in HN since 2010, and recently I started seeing prominent tech people on twitter backlash against pg. Not sure if It was there before, or if I'm barely noticing this. i.e. many of them show screenshots of getting banned by pg on twitter. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1329094570056032264

pg has fallen out of touch. The world is very different for the young ones. I’m not old but my tech career started back around 2007. It was very different.

Back then tech was exciting and new. We were changing the world.

Now we have changed the world. Mobile is king, web is emperor. We’ve won.

Tech is to 2020 what finance was to 1980. And VCs are seen as the big baddies.

People don’t join this industry for the love of nerdy tech anymore. They come because it’s where ambitious people go.

Re: Billionaires Build

#10
PG was cheering lambda school's free 4 weeks developer intern trial a while ago. If he doesn't think that is exploitative, maybe huge difference in morality.

Airbnb spamming forums early on, sketchy marketing techniques, avoiding commercial regulations that hotel has to go through for good reasons and displacing genuine local rent seekers is not exploitative then maybe the bar is high enough for YC.

Should the founder have to think about whether the idea could potentially be exploitative or he just needs to think about what is good for the users aka not exploiting the tourists?

Post reply on HN