Are you building a company, or your credentials?

I tend to agree. When I founded a chapter of a fraternity at my college, I had a really interesting discussion with the alum who helped us and almost all of the state start our chapters about leadership. Something he said during the initiation of our first pledge class (Alpha class) that will always stick with me: even though the Alphas are all great potential leaders, there is such a fundamental difference between them, the first group of followers who joined a group because they desired to be leaders, and us (my founders group), who went out with an idea and created something.

Mr. Lewis's point might have been different, but I think they stream from the same thing. While there may be people out there who have the capacity to create given an idea and others who have many ideas but don't end up creating, the rare combination of the two is what makes an entrepreneur, a true leader. Everyone else is a follower on some level. I might be totally off base and my point is tangential, but these are 3pm musings.

I'd love to get feedback on them, and I'm interested to see PG's response to the article.

"Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four." - Paul Graham http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

When Paul Graham wrote that he was talking in the context of wealth but I think it just as easily applies to skill, knowledge, experience, network, etc.

I think there is a valid argument for frowning upon credential building but I'd be more curious to hear what HN thinks about this idea of building yourself? You could say its just as selfish as credential building but at the same time is it really bad if an accelerator ends up being primarily a talent generator for future generations of startups?

The guys and gals that spent their lives accrediting themselves with clubs, sports, extracurriculars now want to join in on the entrepreneur revolution David Fincher crafted for them.

To do so they're applying their way of "success" to this new field. Because that's all they know. And as long as there's money, there'll be support for these guys. The fervent frothing is a sign of the bubble.

You think brogrammers are bad? Welcome the sharks. We've arrived at the jump zone. What's the real life equivalent of flooding Hacker News with Perl articles for 24 hours?