It would be interesting to see YC to move to funding with less regard to business plan. I know they already do this but what if you totally threw out the market research and gut feeling about the usefulness of the product and gave people 500k based on their interest and ability only.
Earnestness
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Re: Earnestness
#22My perception is that one drawback of earnestness is that it often comes off as just being boring. The most earnest people I know are not popular. The most popular people I know are more like twinkle-in-the-eye-kind-of-BS-but-not-pathological-liars. I don't mean to say "grr, why aren't nerds more popular!". I mean more that this specific kind of earnestness seems to preclude the playing of certain conversational game…
Can you expand on the boringness? That conflicts with what I think because I believe that engaging hobbies are that vitality which manifests as “playful” and “fun”. Are you willing to try something new, and if you do, are you willing to learn to do it well enough to enjoy it.
Engaging with a hobby tends to involve making it part of me - the hobbies I haven’t committed to actually liking and just performed have always been the ones that get lost in the shuffle of things. Even more so, being so committed to a hobby pushes me to do more heavy lifting when it comes to doing it socially.
(Edit) After a bit more thought I decided an example would be good:
I love Jorge Luis Borges, so when my book club finally decided to read him I took the time to rate many of the stories, trying to collect an essence of his magical, gaucho, and mystical stories to help focus our discussion. That is what I mean —- to love something so much that effort becomes effortless because you’re bursting at the seems hoping to share. In this way we didn’t just read “Library of Babel”, but some of the little mysteries that show a different touch of his craft.
Re: Earnestness
#23It would be interesting to see YC to move to funding with less regard to business plan. I know they already do this but what if you totally threw out the market research and gut feeling about the usefulness of the product and gave people 500k based on their interest and ability only.
I'm pretty sure that's how it works already. They are looking mostly for teams of people, not a perfect plan. It's just that, building a business plan successfully is a decent project for assessing the effectiveness of a team.
Re: Earnestness
#24What a great article. “Earnest” describes some of my favorite people not just in business but in life.
Re: Earnestness
#25> It's a bigger social error to seem naive in most European countries than it is in America, and this may be one of subtler reasons startups are less commmon there. Founder culture is completely at odds with sophisticated cynicism. I have a high opinion of pg, but mocking an entire continent for non-earnestness because it doesn't make as much money as the US (because they have more startups because, supposedly, the A…
I hear what you're saying and there might be some truth to it. I didn't read that "sophisticated cynicism" as very mocking. You could even say he's calling them cooler than us, in a very earnest kind of a way.
Re: Earnestness
#26Though I agree with much of this article off earnestness can also be terrible in some circumistances. When people earnestly pursue something abhorrent or deluded.
Re: Earnestness
#27> Interestingly, just as the word "nerd" implies earnestness even when used as a metaphor, the word "politics" implies the opposite. It's not only in actual politics that earnestness seems to be a handicap, but also in office politics and academic politics.
I don't think this is always the case. I've found that no matter the size of the business, they are made up of people, and people have bullshit detectors. When you are able to speak truth and find meaning in an earnest way, people will follow you, peers will respect you, and executives will listen.
Re: Earnestness
#28> It's a bigger social error to seem naive in most European countries than it is in America, and this may be one of subtler reasons startups are less commmon there. Founder culture is completely at odds with sophisticated cynicism. I have a high opinion of pg, but mocking an entire continent for non-earnestness because it doesn't make as much money as the US (because they have more startups because, supposedly, the A…
Yes, you’re seeing two very different value systems run up against each other. Paul Graham obviously has a bias toward thinking the “founder culture” value system is better...but this stance ignores the fact that the European, more traditional culture leads to greater balance —stricter/better regulations around tech and privacy, ownership, and in most places labor.
In America you can make pretty much anything happen but at the cost of living in a society which is lax in terms of regulation, the consequences of which we’re seeing quite palpably this year (workplace discrimination, horrible environmental damage, etc.). While I won’t knock anyone for admitting they don’t know something, not every ignorant person looks for answers once those answers directly go against their agenda. This is what snobbishness, to a certain extent, helps regulate.
Re: Earnestness
#29The importance of being Earnest. [1]
[1] Oscar Wilde, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Importance_of_Being_Earnes...
Re: Earnestness
#30My perception is that one drawback of earnestness is that it often comes off as just being boring. The most earnest people I know are not popular. The most popular people I know are more like twinkle-in-the-eye-kind-of-BS-but-not-pathological-liars. I don't mean to say "grr, why aren't nerds more popular!". I mean more that this specific kind of earnestness seems to preclude the playing of certain conversational game…
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