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What I’ve learned from users

paulgraham.com

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Re: What I’ve learned from users

#41

Post by jkaptur »

jefftk wrote: post #24

> At first I was puzzled. How could things be fine at 60 startups and broken at 80? It was only a third more. Then I realized what had happened. We were using an O(n2) algorithm. So of course it blew up. This is neat, but isn't actually right. Each partner has to know each startup, which is, yes, O(n2) relationships. But there's no one who needs to do work proportional to the number of partner-startup relationships:…

Yeah, the tech-nerd chestnut to bring out here is Dunbar's number.

Not that that's necessarily the mechanism, but it's the thing to mention.

Re: What I’ve learned from users

#42

Post by brk »

yashap wrote: post #35

This was a surprisingly bad essay (and I generally enjoy PG’s essays). It claims to be about “what PG has learned from YC users (startup founders)”, but basically just says “founders are wrong, YC is amazing,” then descends into a YC elevator pitch. There’s really nothing concrete about what he’s learned from users, other than “they have similar problems” (with zero information about what those problems are) and “the…

I don't entirely disagree, but I think the takeaway is that the right path is not always intuitive, experience matters, and that it is hard for founders to trust advisors at times.

This one probably could have been 50% shorter, which would make it 200% more effective in communicating the message. PG needs an editor :)

Re: What I’ve learned from users

#43

Post by chalst »

jefftk wrote: post #24

> At first I was puzzled. How could things be fine at 60 startups and broken at 80? It was only a third more. Then I realized what had happened. We were using an O(n2) algorithm. So of course it blew up. This is neat, but isn't actually right. Each partner has to know each startup, which is, yes, O(n2) relationships. But there's no one who needs to do work proportional to the number of partner-startup relationships:…

This is basically right, but to hairsplit, it's an O(mn) algorithm, which is significantly different from an O(n) algorithm in that you can't help manage the number of startups by adding partners.

Re: What I’ve learned from users

#44

Post by kytazo »

This is something I've been speculating about long and something that I dread a lot. To be honest I have a pretty bad feeling about big CDNs like cloudflare. I think they will play a critical role in upcoming outages from alleged cyberattacks or even worse further down the road denial of service based on social status akin to social credit systems in the east.

Re: What I’ve learned from users

#45

Post by lisper »

This essay is getting a surprising amount of hate, and I must confess that my first impression on reading it was that it sounded an awful lot like a Robert Kiyosaki book [1]. But then I followed the two links in the essay [2] [3] and that put it into perspective: the thing that Paul learned from his users is that they are looking for The Answer, the formula, the procedure for how to succeed, and there is no such formula. It's like Goedel's incompleteness theorem, except that it's not a theorem. People come to YC and buy Robert Kiyosaki's books hoping to find an Answer that simply doesn't exist.

The difference between Paul and Robert is that Paul is up-front about this while Robert is cagey and deceptive and makes his money by stringing people along thinking that The Answer can be found by buying one more of his books. But I think a lot of the hate here is driven by disappointment that Paul is honest, and that his answer is that there is no Answer. It can be frustrating to hear that (which is also something that Paul explicitly points out).

---

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Dad-Poor-Teach-Middle/dp/1612680...

[2] http://paulgraham.com/lesson.html

[3] http://paulgraham.com/before.html

Re: What I’ve learned from users

#46

Post by PaulHoule »

yashap wrote: post #35

This was a surprisingly bad essay (and I generally enjoy PG’s essays). It claims to be about “what PG has learned from YC users (startup founders)”, but basically just says “founders are wrong, YC is amazing,” then descends into a YC elevator pitch. There’s really nothing concrete about what he’s learned from users, other than “they have similar problems” (with zero information about what those problems are) and “the…

My take was the opposite. Here he is talking about something he knows something about which isn't always the case.

Re: What I’ve learned from users

#47

Post by insightcheck »

FerociousTimes wrote: post #40
NhanH wrote: post #18

I adore pg’s essay. But this time something is tripping my spider sense, so I had to take a closer look (at my spider sense, and a bit on the essay too). This is the first time an essay feels like a sale pitch. Specifically, a sale pitch for YC. I’ve read pg’s essay about YC for about 15 years, and this is the first one I have that feeling. This one is a bit too abstract. I’m getting the idea that YC can help founder…

> But I’m eagerly waiting for one concrete example, and none are to be found. Were you looking for testimonials embedded in the essay to meet your expectations? Of course, this wouldn't be acceptable as it would turn the piece unmistakably into a sales pitch for his product cementing your suspicions about the nature or motives behind authoring this post, a viewpoint which by the way I don't necessarily share. This ty…

Testimonials, despite carrying the baggage of being a marketing term, are a legitimate form of evidence, especially if the people giving testimony are named in full. It affects their reputation if either they or the company they are testifying for are disreputable.

It’s true that independent reporting will be more likely to provide a balanced and objective assessment, but at the same time, opinionated articles like the submitted essay are more valuable with the provision of stronger evidence.

Re: What I’ve learned from users

#49

Post by travisjungroth »

jkaptur wrote: post #41
jefftk wrote: post #24

> At first I was puzzled. How could things be fine at 60 startups and broken at 80? It was only a third more. Then I realized what had happened. We were using an O(n2) algorithm. So of course it blew up. This is neat, but isn't actually right. Each partner has to know each startup, which is, yes, O(n2) relationships. But there's no one who needs to do work proportional to the number of partner-startup relationships:…

Yeah, the tech-nerd chestnut to bring out here is Dunbar's number. Not that that's necessarily the mechanism, but it's the thing to mention.

Appealing to Dunbar's number for org sizes is a strong signal for me I should de-weight whatever the person is saying. They're just parroting pop-science with reasoning that doesn't hold up to a second of critical thinking.

If humans evolved to hold about 150 relationships in our minds, to say that an org has a tipping point of 150 people assumes the members of the organization know 0 people outside of the organization. Maybe this is approximately true for Amish communities. It is not close to true for startups doubling in size every year. The available "relationship slots" for your company is probably more like 10-25.

If you want to say "things get weird at about 150+", sure, maybe that's true. But no need to bring up theories that extrapolate primate cranial capacity.

Re: What I’ve learned from users

#50

Post by breck »

Amazing essay.

The only weak spot I could find was "It took me a long time to figure out why founders don't listen."

I think sometimes their advice is packaged in a data backed, falsifiable way. For example, JL's: "I don't know of a single case of a startup that felt they spent too much time talking to users".

But sometimes it's just "Because I said so".

In the latter case it would be better if they showed their CSV backing their advice, or took the time to reformulate into a testable, falsifiable piece of wisdom.

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