Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives

Never seen PG talk before, figured he'd be another west-coast asshole, but he seems super down to earth!! Think I might apply to YC now..

I'm reminded every time I watch Bloomberg I'm reminded just how high quality they are, and how intelligent their anchors are relative to any other large media corp.

Additionally, Paul, thanks for being frank and great. It makes me so happy to see you as the face of not only YC, but increasingly of tech startups in general. When I get around to implementing a good idea, I've got you to look to not only for interesting me in programming through Lisp, startups through YC, but also for increasingly the visibility and viability of tech startups.

Definitely worth watching all 14 minutes.

EDIT: Also, still a little bitter over "the real money's in hotel search"… dzoblin's & my Summer '11 (I think) YC application was that. Though admittedly not far along, and the idea was still in development. still ;)

It's so interesting how PG answered that GroupOn question.

He dodged giving GroupOn his stamp of approval, but hedged by approving Andrew Mason. That's definitely an interesting approach, especially for someone like him.

Edit: Also...that TechStars response...talk about awkward. Definitely good questions from both hosts though.

'Improving lives' is ambiguous, it centralizes around solving problems that people have. However if you scale these problems from 1st world to 3rd world problems it seems to me that improving lives in this context is aimed more at 1st rather than 3rd world problems. Which makes sense from a business standpoint, but the title somewhat implies that is about making the world a 'better' place.

I am not criticizing pg because I strongly believe that it is a winning strategy when talking about startups, just take improving lives with a grain of salt. I'd love to actually improve lives, but unless you can take the Bill Gates route (earn billions, do charity work), it's not easy to do so from behind a computer, writing code. Are there any startups taking the route of actually improving quality of life?

Actually, that's fairly consistent for pg. As he notes later in the interview, he believes that a startup's founders matter more than the idea as good founders will improve upon or drop a bad idea.

I think that was exactly the heuristic pg used in this case. He may not think GroupOn is best company in its current form, but he believes that Andrew Mason's smart and driven and is thus capable of evolving GroupOn into a solid and profitable business.