41–50 of 53 posts
"Robert Greene is the author of the international bestsellers The 48 Laws of Power, ...[list of books]. His highly anticipated fifth book, Mastery, examines the lives of great historical figures such as Charles Darwin, Mozart, Paul Graham, and Henry Ford and distills the traits and universal ingredients that made them masters. ...more filler..." Wow, Darwin, Mozart, Graham and Ford. PG's head must be spinning. ;-)
Skimming this, I noticed a few mistakes. I was 30, not 31. My degree is in CS, not computer engineering, which is a hybrid of CS and EE. We were already working on another company when we decided to work on ecommerce. We were making software to generate web sites for commercial art galleries (who didn't want web sites). So we didn't suddenly decide to write software to make stores. It was more a question of switching…
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We were making software to generate web sites for commercial art galleries (who didn't want web sites). Do you think this is where your affinity for people who might be pitching a bad idea but seem smart / have good work ethic comes from?
Yes, actually. I feel like one of our advantages is to understand how lame founders can seem initially and yet ultimately succeed, from having been there ourselves. Or more precisely, which dimensions it's ok to be lame on, and which it isn't.
Skimming this, I noticed a few mistakes. I was 30, not 31. My degree is in CS, not computer engineering, which is a hybrid of CS and EE. We were already working on another company when we decided to work on ecommerce. We were making software to generate web sites for commercial art galleries (who didn't want web sites). So we didn't suddenly decide to write software to make stores. It was more a question of switching…
$500 million valuation? YC could probably sell their stake in Dropbox alone for more than that.
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I've had a few reporters send me quotes and excerpts for fact checking. They then proceeded to ignore my corrections, since their fabrications better matched the target narrative. Once you're on the other side of the news, even a little bit, you begin to understand just how broken it really is.
I had the same experience on fact checking
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$500 million valuation? YC could probably sell their stake in Dropbox alone for more than that.
I wonder. YC's initial stake is usually Of course, this is just a guess-I have no idea how much Dropbox was diluted in their early funding rounds. Even so, Ycombinator's stake probably couldn't be worth more than $600MM if we assume Dropbox is worth $6bn.
Why the Y Combinator model don't work/exist in other countries? If this model spread to other countries it will be awesome, imagine the number of good ideas dying, when they just need a push.
Skimming this, I noticed a few mistakes. I was 30, not 31. My degree is in CS, not computer engineering, which is a hybrid of CS and EE. We were already working on another company when we decided to work on ecommerce. We were making software to generate web sites for commercial art galleries (who didn't want web sites). So we didn't suddenly decide to write software to make stores. It was more a question of switching…
Was the book written with your involvement or without?
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I am almost afraid to ask you this, but here it goes. On the last few weeks/months before starting Viaweb, did you consider yourself a failure for being almost 30, well-educated but out of the formal career track, "poor" and unmarried? If so, was that the fuel behind your many amazing achievements later on?
No, not really. I'd written the two Lisp books, and people liked those. Not a lot of people, but they were people whose opinions I cared about. Actually Viaweb felt like more of a compromise than the way I'd been living before, because it was something I was doing mostly for money.
Think your story, along with many others in the Valley (e.g. Jim Clark), goes to show that this is a long-term game, and it only gets better with age and experience.
Skimming this, I noticed a few mistakes. I was 30, not 31. My degree is in CS, not computer engineering, which is a hybrid of CS and EE. We were already working on another company when we decided to work on ecommerce. We were making software to generate web sites for commercial art galleries (who didn't want web sites). So we didn't suddenly decide to write software to make stores. It was more a question of switching…
$500 million valuation? YC could probably sell their stake in Dropbox alone for more than that.
Dropbox is worth maybe $5b. I think YC's stake comes out to 1-2% after the rounds. So, off by an order of magnitude or so. Just based on published info about the distribution of YC companies and their value, it's probably more like $200mm total fund value. Given that money-in was say 300 x $20k, and maybe triple that to account for salaries and other overhead, say $20mm, it's a 10x return so far.
Which is pretty baller for a VC fund.
On the other hand, I suspect PG etc. could have created a single startup of their own worth >$300m x 2 (to account for dilution) and probably exited it, in the same amount of time.