Reddit is a classic example of this approach.
When Reddit first launched, it seemed like
there was nothing to it. To the graphically
unsophisticated its deliberately minimal design
seemed like no design at all. But Reddit solved
the real problem, which was to tell people what
was new and otherwise stay out of the way. As a
result it became massively successful.
I'm not quite sure Reddit is exactly "massively successful." They just posted the other day about how they aren't making any money. In a capitalist sense, it's not very successful if they aren't making any money.
So how do you define success? Is Arc successful if you open a web page and then 30 minutes later try to submit a form and get "unknown link" or something to that effect. It seems massively broken to me.
I'm not trying to pick on pg. I'm trying to present the alternative which is this: survivor bias. pg may have been in the right place at the right time with viaweb. As an incubator, pg probably made money on reddit, but conde nast has almost certainly lost money on reddit, so I'm on the fence about that.
Continuing on, I think it isn't unsurprising that putting $15k or so into 118 startups over the past 5 years would lead to one or two successes. pg has the benefit of being the magnet, or is it magnate? All the best ideas come to him, but there have only been a small handful of "massive successes" turned out. With his social network and contacts, quite frankly, I expect more big successes than I've seen.
How successful is pg, really? Do we know?
I suppose, really, my point is this: If there was a science to this, then it should be repeatable. Since it doesn't appear that pg has repeated his viaweb success in over 10 years, I wonder where is the science? Is pg just someone we choose to listen to because it feels good? He makes hackers feel good and important and understood? He can empathize with us, so we lend him our ear?
But are we wasting our time?
I love hn, I love listening to pg on stage talk about startups. It's like chicken soup for the startup soul. But maybe I'm being misled. Maybe it's just feel good, irrational stuff that isn't practical or beneficial -- and perhaps even harmful.
How do we know we won't be listening to him and then 10 years from now, we find out he's lost all his viaweb money. He hasn't been able to keep the startup chuck wagon turning out profitable businesses or something like that and we wasted all this time trying to replicate his success because... well... he writes a lot and it feels good to read it...