Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Book of Graham

leveragedsellout.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 125 posts

Re: The Book of Graham

#31

Post by allworknoplay »

lmg643 wrote: post #19

Considering this guy is running a finance/consulting parody website, I have to assume there's a measure of jealousy and regret that the website he is running does not have attractive enough characteristics to be let into Y Combinator, although he must swim in some of the same circles as these startups. The main question I take away from reading this is how the average payout to a young college grad compares on wall s…

To be clear (from the guy who submitted this), leveraged sellout was an incredibly popular blog that covered wall street from a junior insider's perspective for years. It was generally ironic, but as a friend of mine once asserted, irony is kind of like absolute value -- the more ironic you are about something the more seriously you take it, and it becomes difficult to distinguish the intensity of your irony from real belief at some point. A lot of people (like myself) are still subscribed to this blog, and a lot of people (unlike myself) are still subscribed to an unironic version of its world view.

Re: The Book of Graham

#32

Post by tomasien »

If anyone is feeling bad for not necessarily knowing what to think about this piece, don't. I think it takes a while to realize this isn't a blog and the narrator isn't NECESSARILY the hero, but rather it's a story and there's a LOT to think about out of it.

My take is, of course, that the narrator is the villain, but that's just me.

Re: The Book of Graham

#36

Post by rdl »

This was surprisingly entertaining. There's some truth to it, but it essentially misses three things:

1) The intangible benefits of being at a startup (as a founder or early employee) -- working on interesting problems, with smart people, in a well funded environment. You learn things, meet people, get to use amazing tools. (Startups definitely aren't the only way to do this -- academia or, for engineering, some parts of the military or government or big enterprises have some awesome toys, and some world-class experts, and interesting problems, too. But in Silicon Valley, the barrier to entry is really low, and the problems are generally the right size for individuals or small groups to solve (partially) and quickly.

2) The downside to failure is exceptionally low. It's all other people's money (at least in Silicon Valley); your real cost is opportunity, but generally the market values a failed startup founder or early employee at enough of a premium over a member of a later stage team that you can catch up quickly.

3) The EV of upside is both the odds of success (correctly identified as low) and the magnitude of that success. 1% odds in an even game suck; 1% odds where you're given your wager by someone else and you get to keep 50% of the upside and the upside is potentially 10000:1 is pretty awesome. Doubling down on success, moving away from failure, and you can do this 5-10 times pretty easily.

Re: The Book of Graham

#40

Post by ballard »

arbuge wrote: post #2

My 2 cents: He is correct that YCombinator is running little risk doing what it does at this point. That seems pretty obvious now - though it was not when they started. Accelerators were a novelty back then, and YC could have fallen flat on its face. YCombinator is a pretty low risk deal for entrepreneurs too, come to think of it. Perhaps the author misses this point. If your startup does fail and/or you get tired of…

Now there's some guy in every coffee shop claiming to have an accelerator without any idea how to succeed (specialize/differentiate). They're 95% wooly propositions with the occasional one that can sell nontrivial epsilon of value.

My favorite so far is this guy that hangs out at a cafe near Stanford that has alienated everyone in his potential "deal-flow" by anger outbursts on conference calls and generally acting like a dick.

Post reply on HN