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I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

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Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#141

Post by onion2k »

legutierr wrote: post #107
Negitivefrags wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I founded a company without a business plan. Raised money without a business plan. Ran the business profitably for a long time and then sold the majority of it without a business plan. I don’t see the value in a formal business plan at all and so I would almost agree with your made up quote there. I mean obviously you need to have a plan for your business. But writing it down in some formal way seems like a waste of…

Ok, you don’t need a business plan. But no balance sheet? You can’t file your taxes without a balance sheet. How can you run anything larger than a mom-and-pop business without ever seeing a balance sheet?

pg saying he doesn't need to see your balance sheet isn't the same as saying no one needs to see your balance sheet.

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#142

Post by mhh__ »

ant6n wrote: post #74
LeonB wrote: post #25

Can’t read what he says as I was blocked years ago. I had expressed the mildest degree of cynicism one can possibly express in response to a straight up lie.

A lot of people are very sensitive to cynicism. It's easy to burn Bridges this way. I think it's kind of sad.

Ricky Gervais is reasonably well known for blocking people who criticize his work / attitude (by which I mean people who think he's a bad writer rather than blaspheming). He says he wants to be cancelled, but if he ever was he'd be making a teary apology within seconds.

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#143

Post by LeonB »

vertis wrote: post #130
LeonB wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not something I’m going to dig into, sorry. People have every right to block others, without giving any explanation and I support that side of it completely. It stood out from my pov because there’s very very few times I’ve noticed I’m blocked and I don’t generally mean to cause any offence. The most I would’ve been intending to cause was a little introspection.

You could probably just ask in some way (email maybe) to become unblocked. It's really easy to feel like you're under attack constantly with that many followers so I'm not surprised any of them go heavy on the blocking.

I wasn’t following him and don’t mind about that. I think people have every right to block people without that person reaching out on other ways — I’ve seen people demanding explanations etc and in those cases as in this case, you know why.

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#145

Post by monksdream »

nicodjimenez wrote: post #76
Neverending wrote: post #71

He later goes on to claim he's "never read a pitch deck". https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1492696791434731529?s=20&t=... What an eye roll.

I love the man's essays and he is clearly a genius, but he's getting carried away a bit on Twitter.

His essays are usually a big pile of “focus on the important things and add value or whatever”-type platitudes. It’s funny that each one has been proofread and revised based on comments from the Who-is-Who in SV, a typical Emperor and His New Clothes situation.

To be fair though, 99% of wisdom books from successful people are like this.

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#146

Post by quickthrower2 »

invalidname wrote: post #22

He invests in seed rounds where those often go down the drain. The things that matter at this stage are: Founders and general market size. So sure, ignoring the noise of those two makes sense.

So… then the tweet is clickbait.

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#147

Post by davidivadavid »

tomhoward wrote: post #135
davidivadavid wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, everyone knows that. Seriously. Nobody's missing the "important point" because everybody who's been on Hacker News for five minutes has heard Paul Graham make that point. Indeed, people have made jokes about startup business plans for decades. Literally everyone knows that those things don't matter for super early stage startups. The tweet, however, and very much like many of Paul Graham's latest essays and twe…

"Literally everyone knows that those things don't matter for super early stage startups." If literally everyone knows that then I don't need to be commenting, as my replies in this subthread are to someone insisting that balance sheets matter even before a company has a working product. Clearly they don't. It seems the people "reacting" are imagining some deeper intention or elaborate plot or some complicated charact…

Yes, the "character weakness" is a penchant for midwit /r/iamverysmart takes that are well below people's usual expectations. Surely we can agree the reaction is overblown, but as someone said, this is definitely eyeroll material.

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#148

Post by Foobar8568 »

tomhallett wrote: post #37
invalidname wrote: post #22

He invests in seed rounds where those often go down the drain. The things that matter at this stage are: Founders and general market size. So sure, ignoring the noise of those two makes sense.

People really struggle to recognize context. I assume most people who are getting so upset about pg’s tweet are reading it as “business plans are stupid. Balance sheets are stupid. No company should ever make one because no one should ever read it. Anyone who reads one is stupid.” It should be implied that his advice is only relevant the type of investing which pg does. pg tweeted later on that his solution is someth…

This, not only people don't understand context, but they don't care, for them, context is noise (!).

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#149

Post by jcrben »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #117
guynamedloren wrote: post #106

I’m surprised the YC application hasn’t been more of a focus in this discussion. The following questions are pulled from the application (perhaps an older version): What is your company going to make? Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you're making? What's new about what you're making? What substitutes do people resort to because it does…

If all business plans were as thorough and as revealing as YC’s application forces you to be, then YC would have called it one. But there’s a separate name for a business plan. Most are useless. I suspect pg is referring to the plans founders make to impress investors, rather than to figure out which problems to solve.

This is all just semantic nonsense. YC has no more profound understanding of the noun "business plan" than anyone else in the business world. Don't overthink it

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#150

Post by mhh__ »

techfoolery wrote: post #102
marto1 wrote: post #54

Quoted post unavailable.

How in the world is a tweet about funding methodology even close to outrageous content that tip toes into banishment? You're losing the plot, friend. It's simply a tweet to say he gets more value from talking directly with the founders about what he wants to know. Seems pretty reasonable to me, but I could see how a certain audience would say ** context and ignore to categorize it as "controversial edgy tweets". Easy…

In this case it isn't on the ban axis, but it's pretty obvious that Twitter likes edgy statements that are often in the "Ironic lie to make a point" (positive view) or "ironic lie shrouded in fog to let my avoid repercussions" (negative)

The whole point is that he didn't say it as you worded it, it's always about making a dramatic statement.

When you get into the "riling people up" part - like saying "Thanks I'll definitely listen to him now" in response to criticism of someones bona fides - it's very satisfying, but bad for the soul IMO. It subtly distorts how you view empathy because you're always arguing with a hyperreal snapshot of the other person (and them to you)

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