171–180 of 346 posts
To take his analogy further, if someone has run 10 marathons one might have a fair idea of the probable time for the next one.
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.
I hope its not too much covered cynicism for him.. This is exactly the kind of stuff that degrades social media and particularly twitter. Just tweet something “smart”, “insigthful” and “prophetic”. Ohh, much wow (doge meme). Like someone here on this HN thread wrote, now the peasants are debating what the prophet said!
Ehh… will go have breakfast.
https://twitter.com/iamsanteri/status/1492779569102966788?s=...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
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…
Pro-tip for social media: be controversial.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
incognito mode
Not the op, I don't have any bans, and I'm not normally signed in to Twitter. But a side note on UX here... When I land on this tweet the site takes long enough to annoy me before it loads the content (ie. everything below the "Log In / Sign Up" banner is delayed). When I scroll down past the first few tweets the whole page disappears and is replaced with a nag screen implying I can't see more without signing up and/…
Very similar to Sam's confession on Econtalk [1]: > I probably shouldn't admit this--I'm on the Board of a public company: I can't read a balance sheet or income statement or anything like that. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAYXUgNHHc4&t=1656s
I wonder why it was surprising for some to read this tweet. Startups will change their priorities daily. Business plans are against the idea of running a startup.
https://apply.ycombinator.com/ is basically a business plan, isn't? Is it distinct enough to not be framed as such?
afaik there is no legislation defining a business plan. It might say business plan at the top, it might be a whitepaper, it might be a tweet.
Make money, lots of money
There we go, a business plan, its not a good business plan, nor a traditional one nor even a very comeplete one, but a plan nevertheless.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love the man's essays and he is clearly a genius, but he's getting carried away a bit on Twitter.
Clearly very smart, but I haven't heard or read anything from him that would classify as genius.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These questions cover product description, value prop, market analysis, financial projections and more, all of which are the core of a “business plan”. There is a key difference though - none of the YC questions are about the planning bit of a business plan. None of them are about what you're going to do in the near term future. It's all about what you've done so far and where you believe you could be when you exit.…
> Any plan will certainly be wrong, so there no point wasting time making one. There's a famous Eisenhower quote that goes something like, "Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." The point being that any single plan is likely not to pan out because of unknowns and surprises, but by going through the process of planning, you have "cached" knowledge about your domain like what the opportunities and threats…
Seems like a lot of people are missing the point of this one. PG/YC invest at the earliest stages. The information they need is pretty much: 1. What are you doing? 2. Do people like it? 3. How big is the market? 4. What are you/team like? Could you cover all of those in a formal business plan? Sure, but you can also do so in a short-form application that's 1/20 the length or in a 10-minute back-and-forth conversation…
YC Continuity, otoh, surely evaluates go-to-market / business plan?