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How to Start Google

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Start Google

#251

Post by ldjkfkdsjnv »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #219

Totally insane. 99% or more of the people who enable Google to do what Google does are employees of Google. Same with every other company. The odds of being the founder of a successful company are probably worse than being a professional sportsball player (if only because they turn over more frequently). Does anything good come from encouraging kids to think that they will manage to sail through life as a successful…

The odds are actually pretty reasonable if you go to a school like MIT or Harvard. I know its hard for outsiders to grasp, but this is the reality. PG even explicitly calls it out.

Re: How to Start Google

#252

Post by pickledish »

volkk wrote: post #236
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #219

Totally insane. 99% or more of the people who enable Google to do what Google does are employees of Google. Same with every other company. The odds of being the founder of a successful company are probably worse than being a professional sportsball player (if only because they turn over more frequently). Does anything good come from encouraging kids to think that they will manage to sail through life as a successful…

> Does anything good come from encouraging kids to think that they will manage to sail through life as a successful business founder rather than an employee? I would imagine dreaming big is pretty good for children. A big reason for why I'm optimistic in life is because I have hope for achieving something. I truly can't imagine a life where my father/mother would only hammer in the fact that I am just an average joe…

> I truly can't imagine a life where my father/mother would only hammer in the fact that I am just an average joe and should stick to climbing the corporate ladder. Such an uninspiring take, this one. Depressing.

That is depressing! But also not what the parent comment said -- you seem to have accidentally taken a much more severe meaning from that comment (than I did, at least).

The top-level comment is just talking about being pragmatic. It's hard to walk the line between having idealistic visions and knowing that most of them won't pan out, and probably harder still to teach walking that line to your kids. I think that's what the comment was talking about -- not advocating for falling entirely on the latter side of that line -- which, as you say, would be super depressing!

Re: How to Start Google

#253

Post by photochemsyn »

DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #51
photochemsyn wrote: post #27

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 stude…

The PageRank patent expired 5 years ago, and frankly a lot of other search engines were copying the method a long time before that. Search results have been deteriorating since "SEO" became a thing.

If PageRank had been available to all US companies who wanted to build a search engine around it at the time of publication, then we might have a half-dozen major search engine-based companies right now, which would be a competitive situation that would drive innovation (and solution of the SEO problem), which is how free market capitalism theory works IIRC.

Since universities are publicly funded by taxpayers, their inventions should be thrown to the capitalist wolves who will compete to provide the best implementation of the idea to the consumers. If the corporations want to instead finance their own research centers, then they'd own all the patents outright - but it's cheaper to steal from the public.

Re: How to Start Google

#254

Post by htsb »

* [X] Viable ideas

* [X] Skills to build those ideas

* [ ] Runway to develop those ideas

* [ ] Someone to help find money to provide runway

Re: How to Start Google

#255

Post by zrm »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #219

Totally insane. 99% or more of the people who enable Google to do what Google does are employees of Google. Same with every other company. The odds of being the founder of a successful company are probably worse than being a professional sportsball player (if only because they turn over more frequently). Does anything good come from encouraging kids to think that they will manage to sail through life as a successful…

Startups are high-risk high-reward. That doesn't necessarily mean they're a bad idea. Expected value can be positive even when probability is low. Moreover, a lot of young people can afford to take a chance on something. If you spend a few years living with your parents and attempting to create something, and you fail, you still have several decades of your life to go punch a clock at Big Corp.

And even if you fail to become Google, you might still make a living. Some people would gladly make a modest income doing something they love, with the possibility of making more, rather than working for someone else making three times as much but doing something they hate.

As for what good comes of it, just think about it. Where do new companies come from? Should we have no more of them? What would happen then?

Re: How to Start Google

#256

Post by amelius »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #219

Totally insane. 99% or more of the people who enable Google to do what Google does are employees of Google. Same with every other company. The odds of being the founder of a successful company are probably worse than being a professional sportsball player (if only because they turn over more frequently). Does anything good come from encouraging kids to think that they will manage to sail through life as a successful…

> Does anything good come from encouraging kids to think that they will manage to sail through life as a successful business founder rather than an employee?

Yes, VCs flourish by it.

Re: How to Start Google

#257

Post by paulpauper »

gumby wrote: post #188

> 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.

It's n=1 and huge survivorship bias. There is not that much useful or applicable in this essay. Yeah starting a company is one way to get rich, but the odds are not that good and start-up costs are higher than ever. Nothing is getting cheaper, whether it's advertising, labor, or developing the product.

The $ offered by YC wouldn't even cover a typical salary for a single coder or an adverting budget, although being chosen by YC does help to some degree in the latter though. Same for Thiel Fellowship: Not much $ either. You need a lot more than being offered by these incubators, which is a pittance. Back in the '90s it was easier to get decent funding, plus costs were way lower even adjusted for inflation. Now it's huge competition for bread crumbs, plus huge expenses.

On Reddit investing and 'FIRE' subs, way more young and middle-aged people getting rich (as in 7-8 figures) with lucrative white collar jobs or being early in a start-up, plus investing in stock market and real estate, than creating actual companies.

You can do well in computer science classes without ever really learning to program. In fact you can graduate with a degree in computer science from a top university and still not be any good at programming. That's why tech companies all make you take a coding test before they'll hire you, regardless of where you went to university or how well you did there. They know grades and exam results prove nothing.

Yeah, theoretical computer science is not the same as coding. The guys who did theoretical AI work seem to do okay though.

Re: How to Start Google

#258

Post by evilai »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #226
keiferski wrote: post #182

“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.

Folks underestimate how incredibly skilled Notch was and is. Unfortunately ludum dare has taken down its historical compo pages, but I remember that he had several games built from scratch in 24 hours which were mind boggling impressive. One had a full 3d rendering engine implemented in Dartlang written in 48 hours. Another was a minecraft top down rpg clone. Dude is the Bobby Fischer of tech

Yes, I completely agree, I always fondly remember his game "drowning in problems"[1] because of the notable creativity behind it. Despite barely having an interface, it managed to entertain me until the end.

[1]http://game.notch.net/drowning/

Re: How to Start Google

#259

Post by mhb »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #219

Totally insane. 99% or more of the people who enable Google to do what Google does are employees of Google. Same with every other company. The odds of being the founder of a successful company are probably worse than being a professional sportsball player (if only because they turn over more frequently). Does anything good come from encouraging kids to think that they will manage to sail through life as a successful…

It doesn't matter, though. If you follow that advice, you'll probably be more successful as an employee.

Re: How to Start Google

#260

Post by richardw »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #219

Totally insane. 99% or more of the people who enable Google to do what Google does are employees of Google. Same with every other company. The odds of being the founder of a successful company are probably worse than being a professional sportsball player (if only because they turn over more frequently). Does anything good come from encouraging kids to think that they will manage to sail through life as a successful…

If 10000 more kids shoot for the moon they’ll build a lot of skills that the equivalent lifers won’t. He’s saying things like:

- Get good at tech - Build projects that you want - Get good grades and into the best university you can

I really hope my kid does that. I tried incredibly hard at projects I loved. That built me untold skills. Who cares if they start Google, or fail and get a job or get aquihired, they’ll be fine. They’ll know what their boss wants. They won’t just sit and bitch about parking. And at the back of their minds they might remember that this isn’t the only way to live so maybe they’ll be braver than they would otherwise.

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