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Watch a VC use my name to sell a con

jwz.org

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

#101

Post by tpatke »

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

There is a big difference between PG and Arrington: PG states that you should be working for yourself. YC is set up to allow entrepreneurs to make money if they work hard and a big part of that is allowing a company to grow before being required to take VC money - allowing for a better valuation.

Sleeping under your desk with .05% equity? Probably a bad investment.

Sleeping under your desk for 45% equity? Well, roll the dice. At least you will get paid if it works.

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

#102

Post by fpgeek »

jf wrote: post #4
lwat wrote: post #3

Anyone got a readable link please

Not sure why you're having trouble reading the page, but here is the text of his blog post: "Normally I just ignore navel-gazing tech-industry articles like this, but people keep sending it to me, so I guess this guy is famous or something. Michael Arrington posted this article, "Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining" which quotes extensively from my 1994 diary. He's trying to make the p…

There's always the possibility that lwat is at work and jwz is blocked...

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

#103

Post by larrys »

quanticle wrote: post #92
kamaal wrote: post #77

Oh, C'mon. So I'm not supposed to work hard and get rich because as a side effect that some one else also is? My dad is a cab driver. He really works his life off. Under absolutely dismal financial conditions he and may mom have given their whole lives to bring us out of poverty. They got me and my sister decent education. They did what every poor family in India does. They worked hard, saved money, invested it and g…

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…

"But let's not pretend that there was zero luck involved"

What in his comment gives you the impression that he is claiming that luck did not play a role?

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

#104

Post by larrys »

guelo wrote: post #39
aspensmonster wrote: post #19

> What _is_ true is that for a VC's business model to work, it's necessary for _you_ to give up _your_ life in order for _him_ to become richer. Isn't this more or less the case for any profits-go-to-owners business model? Or rather, any business model where employees are viewed as calculated costs and not owners worthy of a commiserate portion of the profit? I've often wondered how a different ownership model would…

> Isn't this more or less the case for any profits-go-to-owners business model? Almost every industry out there manages to make good profits without their employees having to give up their lives.

"Almost every industry out there manages to make good profits without their employees having to give up their lives."

Medicine and law being two exceptions.

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

#105

Post by kamaal »

choffstein wrote: post #96
kamaal wrote: post #77

Oh, C'mon. So I'm not supposed to work hard and get rich because as a side effect that some one else also is? My dad is a cab driver. He really works his life off. Under absolutely dismal financial conditions he and may mom have given their whole lives to bring us out of poverty. They got me and my sister decent education. They did what every poor family in India does. They worked hard, saved money, invested it and g…

I'll tread softly here, because obviously this is a sensitive issue to you, as it is family. To me, working "smarter" has always been about recognizing where the "leverage" is in your business and taking advantage of it. At the end of the day, there are some businesses that simply don't have an obvious or easy "leverage" point. Lawyers and dentists and doctors can only bill so many hours in the day. They are fundamen…

A cab driver has a leverage too. There are hours in a day(24 hour day) where he can bill his customers double and sometimes even three times. The reason a cab driver doesn't earn much is because he can't really scale his business linearly.

I get your point. And I definitely agree, we enjoy a position where we can use our 'time' non linearly to make money. I guess this is what you call leverage.

But how much 'time'? listen, unless I'm working on a new algorithm or something. These days I'm nothing more than a Henry Ford era factory guy. Eclipse does the auto complete for me. There are libraries and API's that have solved most of my problems. There are forums that have answers to questions I don't know. There are design patters that handle architecture use cases.

I don't write code. These days I assemble logical parameterizable templates from my brain, which translate to syntax on Eclipse, which again gets auto completed. We really are in drap and drop era.

Considering all this, winning is boiling down to productivity not intelligence.

I am helpless, the only way I can win as day to day programmer is to do more work in available time.

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

#106

Post by tjmc »

kamaal wrote: post #77

Oh, C'mon. So I'm not supposed to work hard and get rich because as a side effect that some one else also is? My dad is a cab driver. He really works his life off. Under absolutely dismal financial conditions he and may mom have given their whole lives to bring us out of poverty. They got me and my sister decent education. They did what every poor family in India does. They worked hard, saved money, invested it and g…

Warren Buffett has said “In business, I look for economic castles protected by unbreachable ‘moats’.” Where the castle is a metaphor for the business and the moat its competitive advantage against competitors. The wider the moat the better.

My definition of “smart work” is work that simultaneously earns income and widens the moat between you and your competitors by extending your skillset in areas of demand.

With every respect for your father’s impressive work-ethic, if you worked as hard as he did to become, say, an expert geophysicist specialising in deep-sea oil extraction, where do you think your income would be at the same point of your life with the same amount of work effort applied? That’s the difference between “hard” and “smart” work.

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

#107

Post by kd1221 »

kamaal wrote: post #77

Oh, C'mon. So I'm not supposed to work hard and get rich because as a side effect that some one else also is? My dad is a cab driver. He really works his life off. Under absolutely dismal financial conditions he and may mom have given their whole lives to bring us out of poverty. They got me and my sister decent education. They did what every poor family in India does. They worked hard, saved money, invested it and g…

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 peers, hope, relief from boredom, etc.

Understanding a system is essential to working smart, but even more essential is having the balls to exploit and manipulate the system - to add value to them system and to remove waste and inefficiency from the system. Functioning systems are often highly inert; they resist change. That's why I say you need balls to change it.

Your father sits in a cab all day driving people from point to point. He functions in a transportation system. But what did he do to exploit it? Maybe he didn't have the balls to exploit a system he understood. However, you can bet he hopes that, one day, you will.

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

#108

Post by 1010100101 »

nostromo wrote: post #91
1010100101 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#109

Post by kamaal »

kd1221 wrote: post #107
kamaal wrote: post #77

Oh, C'mon. So I'm not supposed to work hard and get rich because as a side effect that some one else also is? My dad is a cab driver. He really works his life off. Under absolutely dismal financial conditions he and may mom have given their whole lives to bring us out of poverty. They got me and my sister decent education. They did what every poor family in India does. They worked hard, saved money, invested it and g…

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 some reward. Eventually considering the research and decisions they need to take over time to stay alive. VC's need to work hard too.

When they make 100x more than you in an IPO, they are basically getting compensated only as much you because they lost money somewhere else.

They may get 100x more from your start up but remember they are loosing elsewhere. So in principle you both earn the same.

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