Inspirational talk for 14 year old to engage into extremely risky ventures for the sake of becoming the richest person in the world.
How irresponsible.
How to Start Google
191–200 of 681 posts
Re: How to Start Google
#192> "But you will avoid many of the annoying things that come with a job, including a boss telling you what to do." Isn't this a bit misleading and can only be true for companies that don't take VC money or never go public (ex: Basecamp/37 Signals)? For VC funded or public companies, ultimately you'd have to be responsible to answer to your shareholders.
That's true, and since Paul Graham's in the role of VC shareholder or something closely related, he would prefer you didn't realize that.
Re: How to Start Google
#193> If you look at the lists of the richest people that occasionally get published in the press, nearly all of them did it by starting their own companies. Actaally if you look at those lists, the largest number made it by choosing their parents correctly.
Certainly a few, but a quick scan of lists makes it look more like 25% inherited in the top 20 or so
Re: How to Start Google
#194The blindness to privilege that’s tied up in the part about why you ‘need’ to go to a good (by which he means highly selective) school… > if you want to start a startup you should try to get into the best university you can, because that's where the best cofounders are... > The empirical evidence is clear on this. If you look at where the largest numbers of successful startups come from, it's pretty much the same as…
You're right that PG ignores the privilege and selection bias at play in all stages on the funnel to Google-scale success. I'm okay with that though, because calling out all the statistical realities does not lead to actionable advice for young people; it tends to devolve into hand-wringing and complaining about what "we" as a society should do, but very few are actually empowered or incentivized to address. And, at the end of the day, if you're looking for a single place to find good co-founders, it's hard to argue there is any better place than Stanford or MIT. I think Paul's advice on balance is decent, even for folks starting from less privilege.
That said, I think the biggest risk for ambitious young people reading this is black and white thinking about getting into the right school. Successful founders are relentlessly resourceful, so while it's a decent plan to target a top school, I believe that how you handle rejection and refocus your ambitions says more about your long-term entrepreneurial prospects than being accepted would have. Focus on what you can control, play to your strengths, and on balance you'll get better outcomes.
Re: How to Start Google
#195“Learn to code and surround yourself with smart people” is good advice, but it’s kind of funny that Google was used as the example of peak success for a group of 15 year olds. I’m fairly willing to bet that most of them think of Google as boring and old, and not exciting or innovative. How to start TikTok or Minecraft would have probably been a more inspiring example.
The story of Minecraft was an awesome inspiration for my peers and me, much more relatable than Google or any SV startup. Markus Persson did not come from a family of academics or engineers; he was just a poor blue-collar kid who liked videogames and coding (unfortunately his political views have stained his image).
Re: How to Start Google
#196In the YC Youtube videos it's amusing that they (Jason and the other guy) almost always reference Google and Facebook despite the fact that neither of those companies were YC companies and none of the YC companies out of 4000+ funded (not even Stripe) come close to the scale or valuation of either Google or Facebook.
Re: How to Start Google
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also "the standard way to get rich"... It's much easier to get rich by getting hired at a FAANG than starting your own company. You only get rich by starting your own company if you win the startup lottery. Otherwise you're better off getting a high paid job.
That depends entirely on your definition of rich. PG's definition of rich is probably 100x what yours is.
My point is that the probability of getting that rich is really low. You need to combine hard work with incredible luck. A very few percentage will get 100x richer than a FAANG engineer.
A typical founder, 10 years in, is less rich than he could have been if he had taken a high paid tech job.
But anyway, PG is saying the same thing he's been saying for years. He wants people to launch startups, and he wants them to shoot for the moon with VC money. He has no interest in bootstrapped companies. Because he's a VC, so he's talking in his own interest first and foremost.
Re: How to Start Google
#198Inspirational talk for 14 year old to engage into extremely risky ventures for the sake of becoming the richest person in the world. How irresponsible.
The actual advice given is “learn to program and then pursue projects that interest you”, which is great advice for a 14 year old.
Re: How to Start Google
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always wondered why people would ask to analyse the chances of a coinflip during logical interviews, according to you, after 2 flips you have both result happening? Its not like that, if you have 1 in 100 chances of making it, each time you re try you have a 1 in 100 chances
right, parent probably isn't aware of complement rule. Sibling comment properly calculated 63.4% probability of at least one success in 100 trials where each has 1% of success.
Parent here :) Yeah i am, but i think the thing few consider (although some did provide the remark here) was that while the chances are good (given infinite time), the reality is no one has that.
So yeah, give someone 500 years, hopefully they keep going at it and the odds play out...but in the lets call it 50 productive years I feel I probably have been given, plus a few distractions along the way, there are maybe 5-10 serious bets one can place? Feels like that needs to be considered in conjunction with the mathematical probability "just keep trying" misleads us to believe.
10 coin flips can happen in less time than it took to type this reply. Those odds are a little more predictable because of the time span involved.
Re: How to Start Google
#200I'm wondering if there is a research about which percentile of these two groups became rich: People who started a company vs People who worked for Tech companies.
Not research, but here's this popular Dan Luu essay https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/