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Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

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Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#121

Post by tsunamifury »

kamaal wrote: post #98
quanticle wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about working hard or getting rich. It's about working until you've put your health in danger. It's about coding until you're hallucinating. It might be necessary. But it's not laudable. Likewise, with your dad, what's laudable is the result . What's not laudable is the process. I'm sure that your dad would have jumped at the opportunity to make the same amount of money for fewer hours worked every day. In l…

My dad has hypertension. He has a weak digestion(Because of stress). His legs are weak. He wears glasses(Because he battled the glare from vehicles all this life). He also has bad moods all the time(Because of the frustration battling traffic all day). Yet he doesn't give up. That's what it really boils down to. Diseases are a part of life. You have to learn to live beyond and with them. He was lucky that every time…

Because our dad was paid for every hour of work he put in. He invested his time by the hour and his risk was minimal. For a startup coder he or she is investing by the month or year, and to walk away from that with not much to show for it can be awful.

These coders arent paid extra for all nighters, they aren't compensated for losing relationships, they aren't covered when they burnout, all for a realistically very slim chance of striking it rich.

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#122

Post by tryitnow »

1010100101 wrote: post #75
dschobel wrote: post #55

I love that this is the top story on HN. I only wish that PG got as much flack for his startup economics hype piece[1] and proposition to compress a lifetime's worth of work effort into four years. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

Agreed. Another one who should get some flack is Thiel. He may just be the worst, suggesting kids should forgo a university education and going so far as to actually debate the "issue" whether an education is "worth it". For some of these VC to make money, they have no need to see university degrees. But they have their own interests in mind. And, lo and behold, most of them have university degrees.

Sorry, I don't understand the link to 20 under 20. My understanding is that it is purely philanthropic. And I'm not sure I've ever heard of Thiel advocating what Arrington is advocating.

And honestly, is a university education not being worth it such an evil idea? Many of the best and brightest are autodidacts. From Ben Franklin to Thomas Edison to Bill Gates. Is it so horrible for Thiel to subsidize self-teachers?

In fact, my guess is that some people actually learn better on their own or outside of a university environment. Thiel is providing an innovative alternative to elite universities. He's very experimental in his philanthropy, so let's just see where this goes before giving him "flack."

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#123

Post by kd1221 »

kamaal wrote: post #109
kd1221 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working smart is getting someone or something else to do your work for you. That's one definition, and in the case of VCs, it's how they work. VCs don't invest in a company. They invest in a functioning system. They invest in individuals whom they trust to build and maintain a functioning system. The nature of the system is largely irrelevant to them, as long as it produces what they desire: money, prestige among pee…

You are talking of a totally tangential point. The point of the debate is about people who don't cheat(that's the short form of exploiting the loop hole in the system). VC's aren't exploiting the system. They bet their money on stuff which they can loose. How many of such bets turn out to be successful. You work hard on your one start up. Remember they are betting on many start up's at one time. That risk deserves so…

Exploit doesn't always have a negative connotation, and neither does manipulate. Cheating is irrelevant to the discussion. If you think exploitation is only about cheating, then you will be a software developer your whole life, as your father was a cab driver for his.

VCs are exploiting a system. In fact, that is their sole purpose. If they win more than they lose, they continue to be VCs, otherwise they slip into irrelevance and are put out to pasture as a senior executive at some stagnant, but stable company.

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#125

Post by tomhoward »

DeAngeloLampkin wrote: post #85
9oliYQjP wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not seen eye to eye with PG on everything he has written. But this particular essay is one of my favourites of his. PG laid out an upper bound, which he later clarifies: "If $3 million a year seems high, remember that we're talking about the limit case: the case where you not only have zero leisure time but indeed work so hard that you endanger your health." And his upper limit for hours worked was 2x that of a…

Overall, I loved the "Wealth" essay. I do wonder though if Paul ever considers that the same thing he says about Bill Gates' success could also be said about his own. "Bill Gates is a smart, determined, and hardworking man, but you need more than that to make as much money as he has. You also need to be very lucky." Or perhaps PG thinks his personal success is based purely off his own brilliance with no helpful outsi…

Or perhaps PG thinks his personal success is based purely off his own brilliance with no helpful outside factors needed

He doesn't think that. Though he claims to have made good decisions and benefited from competitor blunders, he frequently refers to incidents that nearly sank the company, and acknowledges the good fortune that saved them and helped them to their very happy exit.

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#126

Post by prawn »

nir wrote: post #93
prawn wrote: post #11

I'm glad he finished with a note for the people who actually get something out of hard work on their personal project because I doubt I'm alone in getting a lot of personal satisfaction in performing like that. It's not all the time that I pull an all-nighter or a couple of weeks of hard slog, but I often feel better for them. And I'd rather be doing that for myself on a side project or in the start-up lottery or wit…

That half-arsed stuff in the middle is called living, and it's the only way you can do this sustainably. Startups are like going to Hollywood. Your goal might be to become as successful as Clooney, but that's not likely to work out. Still, if you're talented & dedicated, you can make a living in this industry and enjoy it. I've been working for startups for the past 12 years. I won't be a millionaire even if my curre…

I'm talking about half-arsed work or time-wasting, not what I enjoy of my life - sorry if that wasn't clear. Living in a rut is little better, in my experience.

This year I have worked on more side projects than I can handle, I've worked through the night and had brutal weeks at my own business, I've done a lot of socialising and I've spent almost three months of the year overseas on holiday.

I hope to work harder and holiday more in 2012. That's not eating into what I value in life, I hope it will eat into those mindless hours on Xbox, checking Hacker News for the fourth time in 20 minutes, seeing if anything's been added to the fridge since my last check an hour ago, thinking about how I really should get the garden in order but not actually doing it, sitting through a TV show I don't really care for, etc.

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#127

Post by _delirium »

drumdance wrote: post #120
zck wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One has to be a lot luckier to make fifty billion dollars than ten million dollars.

Yes, but I doubt it's, say, 50 times luckier. I'll wager it's a lot easier to go from 10 million to a billion than from zero to 10 million.

It's hard to come up with a good conditional probability, but just looking at the population ratios, the odds are close to the same: somewhere around 1 in 300 American households have net worth >$10m, and somewhere around 1 in 300 of those (close to 1 in 100,000 households) have net worth >$1b.

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#128

Post by PakG1 »

1010100101 wrote: post #108
nostromo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you guys are being unduly cynical. Thiel recently debated this on NPR ( http://intelligencesquaredus.org/index.php/past-debates/too-... ) and I found him very convincing. He repeatedly talked about the concern of young people leaving college with 200k+ in debt -- which I think is very fair.

I'm sure some people might find Arrington very convincing as well (especially when he's recycling old jwz material). That may be why jwz has chosen to speak out.

Whether or not someone is convincing is moot if they're correct. That's what should be considered, not whether or not they're convincing. And every self-thinking analytical individual should be free to draw their own conclusions, after gathering as much data as possible.

Re: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

#130

Post by mjijackson »

felipemnoa wrote: post #8

>>Follow the fucking money. When a VC tells you what's good for you, check your wallet, then count your fingers. This is just gold.

Been thinking a lot about this statement, but still not sure exactly what he means by it. I could interpret it a few different ways, and I'm probably over-thinking it. How do you interpret this?
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