The question I wanted them to ask is "How do you identify great founders?". Every question they asked led to "YC picks founders, not the business". If it's all about the people, I want to hear more about how he evaluates them.
Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
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Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#12It's so interesting how PG answered that GroupOn question. He dodged giving GroupOn his stamp of approval, but hedged by approving Andrew Mason. That's definitely an interesting approach, especially for someone like him. Edit: Also...that TechStars response...talk about awkward. Definitely good questions from both hosts though.
Upon hearing the GroupOn question, I was so waiting for pg to kick off his reply with, "I worry, I worry..."
Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#13'Improving lives' is ambiguous, it centralizes around solving problems that people have. However if you scale these problems from 1st world to 3rd world problems it seems to me that improving lives in this context is aimed more at 1st rather than 3rd world problems. Which makes sense from a business standpoint, but the title somewhat implies that is about making the world a 'better' place. I am not criticizing pg bec…
While making the world a better place may not be sufficient to build a successful business, I don't think it's fair to say only organizations focusing on the third world are improving quality of life. Companies usually don't make money unless they are helping someone, and that help often leads to an improved quality of life, first world or not.
Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#14I'd really like to hear about pg's gripes with TechStars.
Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#15It's so interesting how PG answered that GroupOn question. He dodged giving GroupOn his stamp of approval, but hedged by approving Andrew Mason. That's definitely an interesting approach, especially for someone like him. Edit: Also...that TechStars response...talk about awkward. Definitely good questions from both hosts though.
Actually, that's fairly consistent for pg. As he notes later in the interview, he believes that a startup's founders matter more than the idea as good founders will improve upon or drop a bad idea. I think that was exactly the heuristic pg used in this case. He may not think GroupOn is best company in its current form, but he believes that Andrew Mason's smart and driven and is thus capable of evolving GroupOn into a…
I think betting on the founder breaks down as a company grows to a certain point.
Steering a small startup is one thing. Steering a 10k person public company is entirely different.
I doubt Steve Jobs at age 26 could have saved Apple from impending doom in 1996. Even at age 41, with all his additional skill/experience, it was far from easy for him.
Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#16I'm reminded every time I watch Bloomberg I'm reminded just how high quality they are, and how intelligent their anchors are relative to any other large media corp. Additionally, Paul, thanks for being frank and great. It makes me so happy to see you as the face of not only YC, but increasingly of tech startups in general. When I get around to implementing a good idea, I've got you to look to not only for interesting…
I've been driving 1-2h/day recently, and Bloomberg on satellite radio is one of the better parts of that. (BBC is nice too, and sometimes CNBC, but CNBC's quality varies greatly).
Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#17I'd really like to hear about pg's gripes with TechStars.
Backstory as I understand it:
David Cohen asked PG's permission to start a YC franchise of some sort in Boulder. He said no. David Cohen cloned YC in virtually every respect (down to copying the application form).
Basically what Wimdu is doing to AirBnb.
Still, it has been 5 years and YC has certainly not suffered. I'm surprised PG isn't a bit more magnanimous towards them.
Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#18The question I wanted them to ask is "How do you identify great founders?". Every question they asked led to "YC picks founders, not the business". If it's all about the people, I want to hear more about how he evaluates them.
Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#19The question I wanted them to ask is "How do you identify great founders?". Every question they asked led to "YC picks founders, not the business". If it's all about the people, I want to hear more about how he evaluates them.
Fortunately, he wrote a whole essay on that very subject: http://paulgraham.com/founders.html . It's the fourth from the top on his "Essays" page: http://paulgraham.com/articles.html .
Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#20[deleted]