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How to Start Google

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Start Google

#21

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

While I agree with a lot of the criticisms that have been posted here (first and foremost that it is exceedingly bad advice to take advice on being successful from someone who is like six sigmas to the right of the curve on how their efforts were rewarded - it's like reading from Taylor Swift or Simone Biles or Usain Bolt about "to succeed you just need hard work and to believe!". As it's taken many, many years of therapy for me to internalize, if you get the majority of your self-worth through what you do, you're gonna have a bad time...) I think it's also a good idea to keep in mind the general HN guideline of "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says."

In that sense, I do strongly agree with the overall conclusion, "That's it, just two things, build stuff and do well in school." Building stuff for your own edification, and soaking up as much knowledge and relationships while you're in school, is really sound advice that works regardless of your end goal.

Re: How to Start Google

#23

Post by Scubabear68 »

This essay glosses over the fact that most startups die a horrible death and earn little to no money for the founders.

Somewhere in this essay it needs to say “99% of you who try this will fail”.

Re: How to Start Google

#24

Post by AnimalMuppet »

shafyy wrote: post #4

> It's more exciting to work on your own project than someone else's. And you can also get a lot richer. In fact, this is the standard way to get really rich. 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. People like Paul Graham telling 14-year-olds that basically getting rich is the most important thing is one o…

> People like Paul Graham telling 14-year-olds that basically getting rich is the most important thing is one of the reasons we got into this late-stage capitalism nightmare in the first place.

I don't think that's a fair summary of the article. Yes, he says you can get rich. But he also says, and says first, that it's less annoying and more fun (and also more actual work).

Then for the rest of the article, he doesn't harp on "you can get rich". He talks about getting good at some technology, and doing projects because they're interesting, and finding other people to do things with.

Re: How to Start Google

#25

Post by [deleted] »

shafyy wrote: post #4

> It's more exciting to work on your own project than someone else's. And you can also get a lot richer. In fact, this is the standard way to get really rich. 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. People like Paul Graham telling 14-year-olds that basically getting rich is the most important thing is one o…

[deleted]

Re: How to Start Google

#26

Post by JR1427 »

ToValueFunfetti wrote: post #17
shafyy wrote: post #4

> It's more exciting to work on your own project than someone else's. And you can also get a lot richer. In fact, this is the standard way to get really rich. 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. People like Paul Graham telling 14-year-olds that basically getting rich is the most important thing is one o…

He said "more exciting" at the beginning of your quote. And if the 14-year-olds somehow don't already want to be rich, how is Paul Graham telling them how to do it going to teach them that it is the most important thing?

If people often give advice about how to do a certain thing, pretty soon you are going to think that the thing is important.

Re: How to Start Google

#27

Post by photochemsyn »

This article only mentions Stanford once, so here's some additional information:

https://new.nsf.gov/news/origins-google

> "The National Science Foundation led the multi-agency Digital Library Initiative (DLI) that, in 1994, made its first six awards. One of those awards supported a Stanford University project led by professors Hector Garcia-Molina and Terry Winograd... Around the same time, one of the graduate students funded under the NSF-supported DLI project at Stanford took an interest in the Web as a "collection." The student was Larry Page.... Page was soon joined by Sergey Brin, another Stanford graduate student working on the DLI project. (Brin was supported by an NSF Graduate Student Fellowship.)"

Under a rational and fair approach to patents, anything created with taxpayer funds would be available to all American businesses under a non-exclusive licensing program. However, in the 1980s, Bayh-Dole was pushed through which allowed exclusive licensing of those inventions to private parties. This is nothing but theft from the taxpayer, the entity who funds the NSF, which funded this research effort, which generated PageRank.

As a result, Google didn't face market competition for some time, and was able to create a monopolistic situation, and as with all monopolies, this resulted in the degradation of their product, which is why, as everyone seems to agree, Google search results are much worse today than they used to be.

[edit: contemplate the outcome if Brin & Page had instead invented PageRank as Apple or Microsoft employees - would they have been able to run off with the IP and found a company?]

Re: How to Start Google

#28

Post by nfin »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #15

>It's more exciting to work on your own project than someone else's. And you can also get a lot richer. In fact, this is the standard way to get really rich. > You might have thought I was joking when I said I was going to tell you how to start Google. You might be thinking "How could we start Google?" But that's effectively what the people who did start Google were thinking before they started it. We shouldn't be te…

- I agree that we shouldn‘t tell young people to aim for companies like Google / aim to get really really rich

- I agree that we should tell young children to aim for sustainable companies

- I at least partially disagree with warning against the unsustainable ruthless capitalism in case your sustainable ideas do get really big. Some companies would get really really big, and I would prefer to see those reaching there to be those who had a (comparatively) caring mind (the others would not listen anyway)

- but I would agree to explain young children that what and where they buy does impact climatic problems. And that supporting small-medium sized companies (or creating one) is the most beneficial for our future

Re: How to Start Google

#29

Post by tomhoward »

suyash wrote: post #18

Ok, so I am having a hard time buying the idea that just make a fun project if you want to create a something like 'Google'. Startup 101 teaches us that you need to solve a painful problem that lot of people have, that is the best way to create 'Google', so isn't the advise contradictory?

His advice is:

- Work on a personal project that is motivating to you (obviously you won't work on it if it's not motivating to you)

- It's a good sign if the project you're motivated to work on solves a problem that you and your friends care a lot about, because there's a good chance many more people will also want that problem solved and will buy/use your product.

Sure, plenty of big companies were started via different paths, but not many were founded by kids barely out of high school.

Re: How to Start Google

#30

Post by taneq »

I love the opening because the mission statement of my company has always been "make sure taneq doesn't ever have to go back to a real job". Don't get me wrong, at most points a 'real job' would have been easier but easier wasn't the mission.
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