Several comments here make me want to reply with Steve Jobs email to Gawker reporter: “By the way, what have you done that’s so great? Do you create anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?”
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Earnestness
181–190 of 478 posts
Re: Earnestness
#182> Reporters literally can't believe it when founders making piles of money say that they started their companies to make the world better. The situation seems made for mockery. How can these founders be so naive as not to realize how implausible they sound? I can't speak for someone like Kara Swisher, but attempting to channel her, I don't think she would think it is beyond belief that some hacker teenager who droppe…
Your argument jumps around. By the time Steve Jobs returned to Apple he had near total control: yet a central point of your argument was that idealistic founders have trouble when they sign away rights.
And Job, though he did many wonderful things, had sociopathic tendencies from even before he founded Apple.
As for Facebook, Zuckerberg has maintained a very large amount of control. How does this square with your thesis that the trouble comes from VC’s?
Re: Earnestness
#183> The most earnest part of Europe is Scandinavia, and not surprisingly this is also the region with the highest number of successful startups per capita. I find it hard to take sweeping statements like this seriously. What makes Scandinavian countries any more or less earnest than, say, Germany or France? This seems no better than to say, “The French make great lovers,” or “The British are terrible cooks.” Absent any…
I am European (Eng/Ger) and totally agree with his assessment.
And yeah, most of the time, brits are relatively bad cooks.
Re: Earnestness
#184Every essay is about how and why Paul Graham had a hard time in high school
Re: Earnestness
#185If you're interested in X for its own sake, you are very unlikely to want to turn that into a business. Unless you're also interested in business and money for their own sakes - both of which should trigger very justified cynicism, because there are far more effective ways to make the world a better place than by getting extremely rich after an IPO.
If you're interested in X for its own sake, you're quite likely to want to do it for a living. This is true even of things like music and art. Not saying you _will_ be able to do it for a living, but it is normal that if you're interested in X for its own sake, you would at least investigate whether you could make that your full time job.
Now, in regards to things like an IPO specifically, I think it would depend on whether or not you need a lot of other people to help you get X done. If you need to hire a lot of other people, then you might need an investment in order to do that if you cannot rely on getting that many volunteers. And in that case, to get the investment, there probably has to be the prospect of an IPO.
My observed experience is that trying to get grants for something, is not materially easier or less political than trying to get investments to fund it.
Re: Earnestness
#186These essays are getting ridiculous. We get it, you have tons of experience funding companies so it helps you to do a competent job filtering the candidates.But after that it is pretty much a crap-shoot, and all this theorizing are just post-hoc rationalizations to satisfy your ego.
What's the difference between post-hoc rationalization and learning from experience though? I don't see him making any claims of pre-ordained success or that luck isn't a factor, he's just pointing out a quality he's seen to be valuable in the context of startups and how it can be a contra-indicator to the type of BS artist that proliferate around any kind of profitable industry. Sure we can always question motivatio…
It is to realize whether learning is possible at all. What can you learn from a successful game of rolling dice, from a successful game of flipping a coin? Was it the way you moved your wrist or did you you just luck out?
Re: Earnestness
#187These essays are getting ridiculous. We get it, you have tons of experience funding companies so it helps you to do a competent job filtering the candidates.But after that it is pretty much a crap-shoot, and all this theorizing are just post-hoc rationalizations to satisfy your ego.
What's the difference between post-hoc rationalization and learning from experience though? I don't see him making any claims of pre-ordained success or that luck isn't a factor, he's just pointing out a quality he's seen to be valuable in the context of startups and how it can be a contra-indicator to the type of BS artist that proliferate around any kind of profitable industry. Sure we can always question motivatio…
I think the original comment was directed at the seemingly pretentious nature of the essay. How do you quantify earnestness? Being sincere? I get the “we like demo over slides”, “2 founder over 1 founder” kinda thing, but talking about virtue and moral character seems like PG is struggling to find things to do after retirement. Philosophical musings are almost always due to too much time on hand and assumed profundity of one’s own thought process. Hence the post hoc rationalisation? Maybe?
Plus as it is said by someone in the other comment, success(especially in entrepreneurial ventures) is so much more like playing a game of roulette than it is like running a race. Luck! Lots of Luck! And chance does not fit well with assumed observations. It is a measurement bias that is being masked as concrete conclusions.
Re: Earnestness
#188I love PG, but some of his essays lately seem to make me sad, like he's out of touch. I know plenty of earnest (and, frankly, quite talented) people. What they lack is capital and guidance (and maybe some discipline and motivation, to be fair). But, they will read a PG essay and say, "Hey! That's me! Why can't PG invest in me?". To which case, they quickly realize, "Oh, cause I can't show that I can make any money fr…
I think the point of the essay is not that being earnest is enough to get funded, but rather than being earnest is NOT a disadvantage. There's a goodly chunk of the populace, even within tech, who might believe that it is, and I think the point of the essay is to demonstrate that it is not, and in fact it is even an advantage.
Re: Earnestness
#189These essays are getting ridiculous. We get it, you have tons of experience funding companies so it helps you to do a competent job filtering the candidates.But after that it is pretty much a crap-shoot, and all this theorizing are just post-hoc rationalizations to satisfy your ego.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Re: Earnestness
#190> Reporters literally can't believe it when founders making piles of money say that they started their companies to make the world better. The situation seems made for mockery. How can these founders be so naive as not to realize how implausible they sound? I can't speak for someone like Kara Swisher, but attempting to channel her, I don't think she would think it is beyond belief that some hacker teenager who droppe…
> What came from those who did this in the past? You're only listing the bad things that came from people who did this in the past. An intellectually honest approach would be to look at the net effect instead, which has been overwhelmingly positive.
> An intellectually honest approach would be to look at the net effect instead, which has been overwhelmingly positive.
Care to elaborate your analysis?