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Are you building a company, or your credentials?

geofflewis.org

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Re: Are you building a company, or your credentials?

#41

Post by mechanical_fish »

bostonvaulter2 wrote: post #33
ma2rten wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article makes exactly the right realization: Y Combinator is heading in the direction of scholasticism. Aren't you just reading into it what you want to read? I don't think that was the point of the article at all. Anyway, I think that school-like institutions for entrepreneurship with a formal process that you need to go though are destined to fail. They go against everything that entrepreneurship stands for. As…

At least it will be obvious when that happens since the startups will start failing.

Are you being funny on purpose? ;) If so, kudos on the deadpan delivery.

Quite a few YC startups have already failed to build solid, growing businesses. Most startups do, after all. The good news is that former YC founders generally find other work, sometimes immediately via a talent acquisition of their former YC company. In other words, they cash in on their credentials, some of which obviously come from having been through YC.

So this "problem" of people seeking credentials by applying to YC has evidently been around for years by now. Fortunately, it's a feature, not a bug. At least until the day that YC starts accepting bribes, or selling spots in YC classes to the highest bidder.

As for folks like the OP's friend, who appears to be applying to YC not because he even wants to try to build a company but because he wants to collect a shiny gold star on his resume: He's as welcome to apply as anyone else. The question is whether or not he will be accepted.

Re: Are you building a company, or your credentials?

#42

Post by jk4930 »

reinhardt wrote: post #24
jonnathanson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If checking boxes doesn't make you happy, don't do it." What I'm asking is whether checking boxes really makes anyone happy. I mean, truly happy. Don't get me wrong; I went through a lengthy box-checking phase that lasted about 20 years. Checking a given box made me happy only until the next box appeared on the horizon. The whole thing seemed like a cosmic treadmill. I think there's something admirable in the sheer…

"The whole thing seemed like a cosmic treadmill." I'd say it's like a video game. Keep trying to beat the current level and move to the next one. Why do people play video games? For the challenge and to pass time. Well, same here. What's the alternative? "Defining oneself on one's own terms" sounds nice but doesn't mean anything really. I'm not riding the treadmill myself but I'd take it any time over existential bor…

Defining oneself has the consequence to set your own goals instead of only following the goals of others (you might join other people's quests, but you're now free to not do so without falling into existential boredom). You switch from external to internal motivation. That means very much.

Re: Are you building a company, or your credentials?

#45

Post by eli_gottlieb »

exratione wrote: post #25

The article makes exactly the right realization: Y Combinator is heading in the direction of scholasticism. I wrote an article recently on this topic, which I quote below: http://www.exratione.com/2012/01/the-future-of-the-venture-c... The present direction of some incubators is towards the concept of schools, in the older sense of the word. To some eyes present experiments look like an early stage in the development…

>given long-standing academic hostilities towards the business of being in business

Don't you mean the long-standing hostility of business towards research academia? It goes both ways, bro, and I've seen a lot more hostility from "entrepreneurs" towards the prospect of looking at academic research material than I have from academics towards the prospect of making money.

Re: Are you building a company, or your credentials?

#46

Post by theorique »

jonnathanson wrote: post #17
vasco wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Or is life simply a contest to see who can build the most prestigious obituary?" Life is what you make of it. If checking boxes doesn't make you happy, don't do it.

"If checking boxes doesn't make you happy, don't do it." What I'm asking is whether checking boxes really makes anyone happy. I mean, truly happy. Don't get me wrong; I went through a lengthy box-checking phase that lasted about 20 years. Checking a given box made me happy only until the next box appeared on the horizon. The whole thing seemed like a cosmic treadmill. I think there's something admirable in the sheer…

One way to set goals is to avoid setting any goal that you think reaching will make you happier than you are right now.

Sound crazy? The idea is that "I'll be happy when"-type goals tend to be the kind that are most often misguided. They are often aimed at pleasing or impressing others or measuring up to external expectations - parents, society, peers, etc.

Conversely, the goals that you just choose because you choose them, tend to be much more rewarding in the end.

With total focus and attention, minimal ego involvement, and no expectation of reward or outcome, the process becomes the reward and happiness is the result.

Re: Are you building a company, or your credentials?

#47

Post by _dps »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #45
exratione wrote: post #25

The article makes exactly the right realization: Y Combinator is heading in the direction of scholasticism. I wrote an article recently on this topic, which I quote below: http://www.exratione.com/2012/01/the-future-of-the-venture-c... The present direction of some incubators is towards the concept of schools, in the older sense of the word. To some eyes present experiments look like an early stage in the development…

>given long-standing academic hostilities towards the business of being in business Don't you mean the long-standing hostility of business towards research academia? It goes both ways, bro, and I've seen a lot more hostility from "entrepreneurs" towards the prospect of looking at academic research material than I have from academics towards the prospect of making money.

Could you elaborate? In my experience the relationship is highly asymmetrical, in that the two communities are talking past each other (disclosure: former academic who is now doing a startup).

(Caricatured) Businesses think most of academics is useless in the sense of not creating profits or anything actionable. They don't have any opinion of its merit in a Platonic sense. They've just done an ROI calculation and said "ROI is zero or negative"

(Caricatured) Academics think that most of business is beneath them because it is not a dignified pursuit for powerful minds. Academics believe business is, in a Platonic sense, worse than academic pursuits.

Obviously, as I indicated, this is a caricature. But I think that business is not interested in academia, whereas academia is "too good for" business.

I'd be interested to hear your take on it though :)

Re: Are you building a company, or your credentials?

#48

Post by eli_gottlieb »

rjurney wrote: post #21

Lets look at this from the other perspective. That of big companies hiring product teams. Educating, finding, hiring, training, cultivating and retaining talent is extremely difficult. Companies recruit at colleges, where students have worked hard enough on their credentials to gain admittance and even harder getting good grades and joining clubs and participating in activities. They will identify a few good candidat…

Harvard is the new Harvard. The best start-up I know is out of Harvard.

Re: Are you building a company, or your credentials?

#49

Post by eli_gottlieb »

_dps wrote: post #47
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>given long-standing academic hostilities towards the business of being in business Don't you mean the long-standing hostility of business towards research academia? It goes both ways, bro, and I've seen a lot more hostility from "entrepreneurs" towards the prospect of looking at academic research material than I have from academics towards the prospect of making money.

Could you elaborate? In my experience the relationship is highly asymmetrical, in that the two communities are talking past each other (disclosure: former academic who is now doing a startup). (Caricatured) Businesses think most of academics is useless in the sense of not creating profits or anything actionable. They don't have any opinion of its merit in a Platonic sense. They've just done an ROI calculation and sai…

My take, complete with caricatures:

Businesses think academia generates nothing useful. Not ideas, not programs, just a bunch of papers. Businesses, unfortunately, mostly don't read or follow these papers and dissertations.

Academics mostly don't want to "waste time" implementing anything that is, from their point of view, 25-40 years behind the times.

For a nice example of the dichotomy at work, look at Golang. It's an act of pure, truest industry stupidity: they built a programming language by ignoring the entire academic field of programming languages. The result has been universally panned by PL experts.

For an example of the academics going to make money in the same field, look at Martin Ordersky, Scala, and TypeSafe.

Business often seems to think it knows technology, when in fact it knows the small subset of technology that is fashionable or just plain old enough to pass into the industrial mainstream. Academia just doesn't care to re-solve a "solved" problem, even if by "re-solve" we mean make usable for common people and capture heaps of cash. Admittedly, each of these biases arises from how each group gets paid: entrepreneurs by staying on the "business frontier", but academics by staying on the technological research frontier.

So oftentimes, academia will invent something in the first place, but a full generation later, entrepreneurs will finally get rich off it.

Re: Are you building a company, or your credentials?

#50

Post by localhost3000 »

fleitz wrote: post #16
alaskamiller wrote: post #8

Getting into and surviving top notch elite business schools requires a whole lot of credentials. 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…

The real life equivalent is selling MBAs study guides or coaching seminars for their YC application. Put together an e-book and then buy some ad words, the CPC for a Y combinator application is currently estimated at 10 cents per click. Sell the book for $97 with a 30 day money back guarantee if they don't get accepted.

you wouldn't believe what many of the students in top-10 MBA programs paid to "admissions consultants" to get in. we're talking several thousand dollars per application. you can't go through the process without bumping into 'experts' and 'consultants' who will make you sick to your stomach. MBA applicants are an uber-competitive, wealthy population eager to "invest in the future"...in other words, you're onto something. do it.
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