Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 346 posts

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

#251

Post by [deleted] »

onion2k wrote: post #133
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…

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.…

[deleted]

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

#252

Post by projektfu »

projektfu wrote: post #248
nomilk wrote: post #73

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

That’s a worse confession. I’m sure PG can read an income statement just fine and likely used his to sell ViaWeb. Looking at things like Uber, though, they’re coming up with ways of making these basic reports harder to read critically. It reminds me of the pre-SEC financials covered in “Security Analysis” by Benjamin Graham. Companies claimed all sorts of things, especially treating one-time events as operating reven…

To be fair, I once heard Richard Branson on the radio telling a story that he was pretty far along in building his empire when he had to be taught the difference between gross revenue and operating profit. I found it hard to believe but there’s other interesting facts out there, like David Boies is dyslexic and prefers not to read.

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

#253

Post by nomilk »

vasco wrote: post #176
nomilk wrote: post #73

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

That board oversight in silicon valley is largely a joke is no surprise, particularly because it is a joke everywhere else too. Still if this isn't just an inflammatory statement, which it probably is, it's showing how negligent you can be for very long if only you talk a good talk.

I agree he makes his point sharply, but I suspect he's probably asked weekly where he got his MBA, so mentioning that he can't even read a balance sheet is a fun way to show that boards aren't always a bunch of soulless accountants with MBAs; that in the case of YC, those aren't the critical skills; but instead being able to quickly assess an idea and the people around it is what matters.

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

#254

Post by eloff »

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…

It's tough to be properly nuanced and specific in a tweet. "I've never read a business plan , but I ask all the big questions that should be answered in a business plan." Just isn't pithy for a tweet.

Honestly Twitter is a terrible idea in most cases that just leads to people shouting at each other - because 140 characters isn't enough to communicate anything in a balanced way.

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

#255

Post by whack »

> The reason I don't care about business plans is that I can learn more from 5 minutes of interrogating the founders than from 10 pages of fluff they've written.

Presumably Paul isn't meeting with every single founder who is applying to YC. So he must be using a different filtering mechanism to winnow down the funnel. This is usually the role that business plans have often played.

As someone who hates writing business plans as well, it would be wonderful if YC released a "here's why you should meet with me" doc template that people can use widely as a replacement for business plans.

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

#256

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

onion2k wrote: post #230
phekunde wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of them are about what you're going to do in the near term future. Okay, let us look again at some of the questions posted by OP: 1. How do you know people need what you're making? 2. Who might become competitors? 3. How do or will you make money? How much could you make? These all look future tense to me.

They're not though. They're all questions about your market. They're asking you to demonstrate domain knowledge. If you put something forwards-looking like "Google are really big so they might become a competitor!" it wouldn't look great. It's technically true, but it's not interesting. It doesn't demonstrate that you know your market. If you put "Lithuanian Startup X has launched a product in this market 60 days ago…

Traditional business plans are fantasy with numbers.

"By Q4 2025 expected turnover is..."

No one should take that kind of prediction seriously. (Although VCs sometimes do, which is unfortunate.)

Plans exist to show you know what a market is and that you can research the details enough to know who else is in the space, what they've done, how they did it, and what they missed.

If no one else is in the space - still possible, but rare - you should at least be able to point to some comparable efforts, some of which should be your own.

The point is to show that you're capable of thinking strategically and not just nailing some code to the wall and hoping someone will pay to get some use out of it.

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

#257

Post by ImaCake »

eloff wrote: post #254
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…

It's tough to be properly nuanced and specific in a tweet. "I've never read a business plan , but I ask all the big questions that should be answered in a business plan." Just isn't pithy for a tweet. Honestly Twitter is a terrible idea in most cases that just leads to people shouting at each other - because 140 characters isn't enough to communicate anything in a balanced way.

Yeah politics on twitter is awful. For outsiders like me it is often hard to even understand what a popular political tweet is even about. Twitter is good for pictures of nature though. And somehow a great deal of decent scientific discourse goes on twitter without descending into the crap that political twitter does.

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

#258

Post by pbhjpbhj »

viraptor wrote: post #227
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…

PG knows how to write good content. This tweet was just-vague-enough that people can both claim he did and that he didn't and many other things and argue and explain the view, etc. He got engagement - maybe that's all it was about. Or maybe I'm wrong and it was a random tweet. But what I'm sure about is that if he wanted this to be an idea that's well communicated and important, it wouldn't be ambiguous like this.

So basically, it's flamebait? That'd be a pretty disappointing circumstance.

I don't know pg but the HN brand is certainly to rise above stating disinformation to start arguments and drive engagement.

I guess maybe that's what Twitter is for, but then maybe the mods should stop that sort of thing leaking to HN ...

Any chance you're mistaken?

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

#259

Post by LeonB »

timcederman wrote: post #244
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.

> there’s very very few times I’ve noticed I’m blocked Is that a normal thing, to be blocked more than once on Twitter?

It’s not normal for me, at any rate.

There are sometimes quite wide blocklists - I know I was at some point on a blocklist composed of anyone who had ever followed a particular person.

Post reply on HN