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Billionaires Build

paulgraham.com

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Re: Billionaires Build

#161

Post by slg »

dustingetz wrote: post #124
Emphere wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very good, something I have been thinking about as well. Inequality is bad because of the massive power differentials. How do you propose we "solve" that while still being able to reap the benefits of scale? Any pointers or books to read about this topic? Admittedly I haven't looked too hard.

Idea for the solution is to get everyone together to opt-in to a value system that demonizes excess accumulation. That sounds crazy/impossible today, but on lets say, a 2000 year timespan could we get there? 2000 years ago, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" was a seminal idea, eventually resulting in the world today where killing is demonized and this is existence proof of a solution. We can then abstract to the general class of…

> 2000 years ago, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" was a seminal idea, eventually resulting in the world today where killing is demonized and this is existence proof of a solution.

Uh, what? Do you think murder was first outlawed 2000 years ago? I mean "Thou shalt not kill" is one of the Ten Commandments which is part of the Old Testament which predates Christ by at least several hundred years if not over a thousand. Even the Code of Hammurabi references charges of murder and it is closer to 4000 years ago. The idea that murder is bad is probably as old as civilization itself if not older.

Re: Billionaires Build

#162

Post by yetanothermonk »

dang wrote: post #151
yetanothermonk wrote: post #75

It’s so strange the YC comments and some Twitter comments are so focused on the billionaire part. The real part is to deeply understand your users, no? And the focus on YC interviews is reminiscent of media is the massage—-the hubbub places YC as a thing to pass but if you understand your users deeply, you won’t even need YC. In a way all the YC interview prep stuff is written for the wrong people (for YC, and this i…

I felt the same way but pg has since changed the title from "What You Can Learn from How to Ace a YC Interview" to "Billionaires Build" so he obviously wants to emphasize that aspect.

Thanks for the heads up. The old title was also clickbaity but this new title is even more so. I wonder if even HN comment reactions are more towards the title vs the content.

Re: Billionaires Build

#163

Post by rhizome »

birdsbirdsbirds wrote: post #117
Benjammer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm even less old, my career started in 2009. My personal experience was that people back then were both more nerdy and more ambitious, not a tradeoff. And now people are "ambitious" but it's a personal ambition to play the game and earn more money than their peers. The people I worked with in 2009 were ambitious in the sense of building products and teams and companies to succeed in the marketplace, or creating new…

Where can one find the ambitious people of 2009 to build products and teams and companies? Asking for a friend.

Find the people who criticize current developments in terms of the original promises of (the relevant) technology. People with a sense of history and the big pictures that no longer exist or which are being actively destroyed as inconvenient to business plans.

Re: Billionaires Build

#164

Post by ardy42 »

johndevor wrote: post #137
dustingetz wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idea for the solution is to get everyone together to opt-in to a value system that demonizes excess accumulation. That sounds crazy/impossible today, but on lets say, a 2000 year timespan could we get there? 2000 years ago, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" was a seminal idea, eventually resulting in the world today where killing is demonized and this is existence proof of a solution. We can then abstract to the general class of…

Define "excess" I'm glad people like Elon Musk and Bill Gates have billions of dollars - they're solving some of the world's hardest challenges right now with their wealth.

>> Idea for the solution is to get everyone together to opt-in to a value system that demonizes excess accumulation.

> I'm glad people like Elon Musk and Bill Gates have billions of dollars - they're solving some of the world's hardest challenges right now with their wealth.

There's a difference between having billions of dollars and controlling billions of dollars. Having usually implies controlling, but it's not necessary for that.

A hypothetical value system that "demonizes excess accumulation" will can still allow talented people to use massive resources to solve challenging problems. For an actual real-world example: the US didn't have to wait for a SF fan to become a billionaire before it built rockets to travel to the moon. Similarly, billionaires often don't solve any problems with their wealth. Musk spends millions to build rockets and win government contracts, but other purported billionaires spend millions on money-losing golf courses and vanity airlines instead.

Re: Billionaires Build

#165

Post by mbgerring »

Ctrl-F “employees”

0 results

It’s crazy that so many of these companies with billionaire founders have thousands of employees who are not billionaires, nor have a meaningful stake in the decisions the company makes. Wonder what that’s about.

Re: Billionaires Build

#166

Post by loeg »

tylerhou wrote: post #148
dkyc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say this is a straw man. Every billionaire being exploitative/criminal is a real political position among the American Left, see e.g. this tweet [0] by Robert Reich. He was secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, so not some extremist weirdo. [0] https://twitter.com/rbreich/status/1193526297647108097

When leftists say "exploit," it's because they regard paying workers less than the marginal value they produce with labor exploitative. (Cf. boss makes a dollar, I make a dime.) They claim that it's unfair that that product of labor goes to the company's owners — hence, to fix this, leftists want to "seize" or "democratize" the means of production. (Sitenote: this a core tenet of capitalism: value going to owners.) O…

This is a disingenuous strawman of "leftism." Not all lefties are communists.

Re: Billionaires Build

#167

Post by GoRudy »

yetanothermonk wrote: post #75

It’s so strange the YC comments and some Twitter comments are so focused on the billionaire part. The real part is to deeply understand your users, no? And the focus on YC interviews is reminiscent of media is the massage—-the hubbub places YC as a thing to pass but if you understand your users deeply, you won’t even need YC. In a way all the YC interview prep stuff is written for the wrong people (for YC, and this i…

Yea comments here are completely missing the point. It's far more likely to be successful and build a company / get into YC when you have an insight into specific users and build something they love. That's it.

People who have become billionaires from the companies YC has helped launch have that in common.

Re: Billionaires Build

#168

Post by yellowapple »

jariel wrote: post #146
nglx wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think peak web was around 2005, when Google was still working, Amazon was non-bloated, personal pages still were easier to find, and medium/wordpress nonsense was scarce. Then the fundamental greed driven changes happened, and here we are with an AOL situation again. So the difference between 2005 (or 2009) and 2019 is greater, and it is for the worse. A lot of programmers are backstabbing and greedy creatures now…

Yes, 'peak organic html' was about 2005. But this I'm afraid is a little bit of mythology from those who were there at the time, and have/had a certain view of what the 'web ought to be'. In the 'big big picture' - the web blew up between 1995-2005 in the modern world, and then blew up on a much bigger scale with mobile afterwards. US is only 5% of world population. Europe not quite 10%. Our view of 'what the web oug…

> I actually don't think Amazon retail (i.e. sans AWS) is an important artifact in the big picture.

If only considering the WWW impacts, then sure. In the physical world, however, it's definitely an important artifact, considering how much it's upended things for brick-and-mortar (at all scales) and the whole supply chain / fulfillment / logistics realm.

(And note that "important" should not be taken to mean "beneficial" here; it's already important to the history of these sectors in the same sense that giant asteroids are important to the history of Earth-based life - that is, outright destructive of the current landscape, but might very well result in new opportunities in its wake)

Re: Billionaires Build

#169

Post by ardy42 »

> But aptitude for exploiting people is not what Y Combinator looks for at all. In fact, it's the opposite of what they look for. I'll tell you what they do look for, by explaining how to convince Y Combinator to fund you, and you can see for yourself.

I mean, of course. Y Combinator is looking first and foremost for people who will make them billions in the aggregate. Most of those people who pass the interview will personally fail to join the billionaire club.

Also, its not like "building" and "exploiting" are mutually exclusive.

Re: Billionaires Build

#170

Post by m_ke »

Valley billionaires used to build, now they mostly extract value by using their financial leverage to starve out the competition, operating at a loss and screwing the workers in the process. Their money is not made on profit margins, instead it is based on ballooning valuations, propped up by turning other peoples money into artificial growth.

Raising billion dollar funds and living off of the carry while you pump and dump the next monopoly is a much better life than "building".

Even the "builders" like Google and Apple are moving away from building and are starting to embrace rent seeking.

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