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Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

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Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#251

Post by davidivadavid »

smaddox wrote: post #227
azeirah wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do not need to be extremely lucky to "make the world a better place". If that is truly your goal, you can definitely do that without building a startup, without getting extremely lucky, without spending 80 hours a week working on ideas. I'm very much convinced that nearly everybody on this site who claims to want to make the world "a better place" just want to start their startup, earn their money and financial f…

I generally agree with your views. I think a large part of the problem is that we've all been (self) deluded into thinking technology can solve all our problems. The older I get, the clearer it becomes, though, that the root of all our problems is psychological. Outside of transhuman genetic engineering or human-replacing AI, I don't see how technology can fix our psychology.

You can't see how technology can "fix" psychology?

The most obvious way is direct through e.g. drugs. There's a very wide spectrum of potential futures here from nootropics to brave-new-worldesque soma.

The less obvious way is that technology alters your surroundings, which in turn influence your psychology.

Neither scenario seems particularly implausible to me.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#252

Post by mpbm »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #147
melling wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh, you've overlooked the fact that he built a hugely profitable business so now he can now throw money into "building the future". AI, VR, etc. Google was probably the 20th search engine. They make most of their money selling ads. Microsoft just rebuilt CP/M and bought many of their big apps. It's what you do after you build a great business that matters.

I don't have anything against building what people want or re-packaging what existed already in better ways. My issue was with the title. I don't doubt for a second that Zuckerberg is a great business mind but building the future requires a bit more than business acumen.

I think with business acumen you can hire all the "more" you need.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#253

Post by tim333 »

kkhire wrote: post #225
georgeglue1 wrote: post #24

I'm not sure what to think about Mark's non-answer to: "So can you tell us about some of the hardest parts in the history of the early history of Facebook?" (He basically says the hardest point was not selling for $1 billion, and that it was a non-issue months later.)

the whole thing was a very vanilla overview of what happened and what he plans to do. I hope this isn't what YC intends to with their podcast. He should have spoken about one of the many times they were on the brink of disaster or the company shutting down, not some time where he got offered a $B. I hope someone like Tim Ferriss can get a hold of Zuck for 2 hours, and chat to get an in-depth view of him. The dude is…

I'm not sure they ever were on the brink of shutting.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#254

Post by [deleted] »

kkhire wrote: post #225
georgeglue1 wrote: post #24

I'm not sure what to think about Mark's non-answer to: "So can you tell us about some of the hardest parts in the history of the early history of Facebook?" (He basically says the hardest point was not selling for $1 billion, and that it was a non-issue months later.)

the whole thing was a very vanilla overview of what happened and what he plans to do. I hope this isn't what YC intends to with their podcast. He should have spoken about one of the many times they were on the brink of disaster or the company shutting down, not some time where he got offered a $B. I hope someone like Tim Ferriss can get a hold of Zuck for 2 hours, and chat to get an in-depth view of him. The dude is…

[deleted]

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#255

Post by Smirnoff »

doomlaser wrote: post #179
jomamaxx wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friendster was a clumsy product. MySpace was limited in features, and a fugly interface. Neither had talented people. Zuck started at Harvard. That was his core user base. The Ivy League. Basically marquis 'customers' in social. Think of how massively that affected recruiting and attention? The network effect of Ivy League x 1000. It would have been trivial for him to get investment. But in the end - forget culture -…

Yes, Facebook had better strategy. They embraced new tech to streamline the pain factor of navigating the website, whereas MySpace tried to optimize for discrete page views to serve more ads. MySpace would serve an entire interstitial page load with nothing but ads to get to different parts of its interface, whereas Facebook would embrace ways to jump to your friends' profiles or read your messages quickly, often wit…

I believe Facebook didn't invent newsfeed. They acquired a company (Friend Feed) that did just that and was quickly becoming popular.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#256

Post by tim333 »

After turning down the YHOO offer:

> ...It was the fact that after that, huge amounts of the company quit because they didn't believe in what we were doing. If you look at the management team that we had...

>Interviewer: Did that whole management team leave?

>Mark: The whole management team was gone within about a year after that.

That's an eye opener. Guess most people are in it for short term cash. I bet a lot of them regret leaving now.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#257

Post by jacquesm »

noblethrasher wrote: post #178
gordon_freeman wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay so I don't agree with "don't actually commit to turning it into a company until it's working" part. Airbnb example comes to mind where all the founders exhausted all their credit cards to fund user acquisitions and when that did not work kept trying other innovative means to keep the company afloat. If they would have followed this advice, there would not have been an AirBnB. I agree with the part that says " en…

During an interview[1] (with one of the AirBnB founders no less), pg offered the general advice that startups should search for success using a hill climbing algorithm, and not worry about dangerous local maximums; only to be immediately confronted with the counter example of AirBnB (the cereal episode). That company just seems to be an outlier in multiple categories. [1] http://youtu.be/nrWavoJsEks at about 7:00

Which is amusing if you realize that VC depends on outliers in order to make it to the next cycle.

In other words: the only worthwhile companies for VCs are the ones that do not follow the set patterns and to which the rules do not apply.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#258

Post by dineshp2 »

Interesting interview, but I felt Sam could have asked more probing questions (for the lack of a better phrase) and I don't mean the controversies from the early days of Facebook.

What was the thinking behind acquiring WhatsApp for such a large amount of money and how will they monetize the platform? How is WhatsApp going to be an important part of the future?

Facebook's mission is to connect the world, but in the case of Free Basics, they violated net neutrality principles which is clearly not in the best interest of the users.

Mark Zuckerberg also mentions that he finds it frustrating that people talk about AI turning against humanity, which is one of the things that Elon Musk, Sam and OpenAI are trying to educate the population about. Maybe a discussion about that could have been included in the interview.

If any of the mods are reading this, maybe there could be some way that future interviews can include questions from HN? We could have a discussion about the questions that the HN community wants to ask, and the mods can pick out the questions that generate the most interest from the community?

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#259

Post by davidivadavid »

tedmiston wrote: post #214
downandout wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the biggest thing I've learned through hard experience is that great ideas by themselves have very little value. At this point it's irrelevant whether he copied the idea from his client(s), or from Friendster or MySpace. Out of pure luck, Zuck's version appealed to the masses enough to get them to register for the site and use the contact importer. After that, skill took over - Zuck knew that if a high enoug…

> Actually, startup ideas are not million dollar ideas, and here's an experiment you can try to prove it: just try to sell one. Nothing evolves faster than markets. The fact that there's no market for startup ideas suggests there's no demand. Which means, in the narrow sense of the word, that startup ideas are worthless. > —PG, Ideas for Startups (2005) http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html

I think that view is a little simplistic in more ways than one.

The first is that, erm, yes, there's a huge market for startup ideas. It's called the get-rich-quick-scheme industry. Sells billions of dollars worth of goods every year trying to teach people what business ideas will make them rich.

The second is that it depends what you mean by "idea." If you mean some generic one sentence pitch about some vague idea ("Uber for pets"), then, sure, it's probably not worth much.

If you have a very precise plan that includes details about go to market strategies and execution, and that is based on data only you are in possession of, it can be worth a lot of money. That's essentially what Peter Thiel talks about when he mentions good startups being based on "secrets" (the way I understood it, anyway).

That there's no liquid market for such ideas doesn't tell you much about their value.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#260

Post by davidivadavid »

nostromo wrote: post #39
melling wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh, you've overlooked the fact that he built a hugely profitable business so now he can now throw money into "building the future". AI, VR, etc. Google was probably the 20th search engine. They make most of their money selling ads. Microsoft just rebuilt CP/M and bought many of their big apps. It's what you do after you build a great business that matters.

Making gobs of money and making the future are orthogonal though. Exxon makes tons of money but is likely irrelevant to the future.

Providing cheap energy to whole economies probably plays a (major) role in building the future.
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