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How to Start Google

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Start Google

#411

Post by amelius »

amelius wrote: post #319
volkk wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If everybody became an entrepreneur then we wouldn't have scientists working on our biggest technological problems.

(for most research you need a lot of money and people, so out of reach of startups)

Re: How to Start Google

#412

Post by pixl97 »

JohnFen wrote: post #372
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what is fundamentally missing from most talk about "tech" startups by VC types these days. They're not actually interested in the nerdy stuff, just in the "disruption" stuff. L&S were , and they hired other people who were. They didn't start with a business idea, but with a technical one. They filled in the blanks on the business side after they survived the .com crash. I didn't get to Google until 2011, but…

I think there's a connection here to the old adage that "small companies make it possible, big companies make it inexpensive". The purpose of VC can be viewed as trying to take a company from nonexistent to big while skipping the small stage, but small is where the action really is.

Yep, unless some new thing is acquired in a buyout, or if an entire group is spun off with almost no oversight, large companies are horrifically bad at creating new things. It's nearly impossible for them to do it in the case where the new product would affect existing revenue streams.

Re: How to Start Google

#413

Post by cmrdporcupine »

paulpauper wrote: post #291
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what is fundamentally missing from most talk about "tech" startups by VC types these days. They're not actually interested in the nerdy stuff, just in the "disruption" stuff. L&S were , and they hired other people who were. They didn't start with a business idea, but with a technical one. They filled in the blanks on the business side after they survived the .com crash. I didn't get to Google until 2011, but…

They're not actually interested in the nerdy stuff, just in the "disruption" stuff. I disagree. The AI stuff seems pretty nerdy. Same for GitHub and other levels of abstraction. The disruption talk is just the branding by the media.

The foundational $$ that has gone into the research to make the LLM stuff happen... was inside the existing big corporations (Google, FB, MS, etc.) and only left there once it had been proven.

Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI) for example was employed inside Google doing that kind of work and only left when he ran up against the limits of what he felt he could get done there. But the fundamental R&D had already been done. When I was at Google I saw some of it from a distance before I ever heard of OpenAI.

The VCs have come along at the tail end of the R&D cycle on this stuff in hopes of cashing in. Same as they did with crypto and N number of trends before. They're trailing, not innovating.

They're primarily interested in successful business models capitalizing on existing technology, not the actual development of new technology. Unless one has distorted the meaning of "technology" significantly.

Re: How to Start Google

#414

Post by lupire »

advael wrote: post #36

I know people mention that this advice smacks of survivorship bias, and I think that's pretty obviously going to be a part of any advice given about economic outcomes whose odds of working out are perhaps a whole order of magnitude better than lottery tickets I think it's more important to note how talks like this use "children" as an excuse to present a very sanitized version of the history being discussed. I think…

Why do think this is an "American" thing?

The author is British, for one.

Re: How to Start Google

#415

Post by fragmede »

downWidOutaFite wrote: post #383
nsguy wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things always happen at intersections. There are lots of smart people with ideas. The magic happens at the intersection of ideas, time (what technology is available) and luck. Apple Newton was too early. Apple iPhone was just right. Doom 3D was just at the right time when commodity hardware could do what the amazing software needed it to do.

The point I was trying to make is what are the situation where an independent small startup can make it big. Your examples are instructive, engineers were able to make id Software big because you didn't need a lot of hardware to invent 3D shooters, but Jobs gets the credit for the iPhone because the engineers needed hundreds of millions of dollars in capital to pull it off. pg is giving advice based on him getting ri…

maybe. right now, if a startup has a new ML training technique or whatever, for a specific niche, cloud and VC capital will let them make a model that does way better for their niche than repackaging well funded models from OpenAI.

Re: How to Start Google

#416

Post by codethatwerks »

What is the parallel advice for a 40 year old? I guess the programming and tinkering stuff still applies. But university cannot be redone. Sure I can study but I wont have any connection to most young people. I’ll be the old guy. And this assumes I can afford the loss of income.

I assume a lot of start ups are started by older people too.

I think for older people an advantage is to solve older people problems. Like how sucky accessing all kinds of “adulting” things are from aged care to dealing with myriad systems with kids schools or any other problems that have inevitably been chucked at you. Some of these “startups” might actually be lobbying/political work for the good that doesn’t make money, some might be startups.

Also being older I don’t care about making a unicorn. I see that as an odd goal for a founder of any age but a great goal for an investor.

Re: How to Start Google

#417

Post by pixl97 »

downWidOutaFite wrote: post #383
nsguy wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things always happen at intersections. There are lots of smart people with ideas. The magic happens at the intersection of ideas, time (what technology is available) and luck. Apple Newton was too early. Apple iPhone was just right. Doom 3D was just at the right time when commodity hardware could do what the amazing software needed it to do.

The point I was trying to make is what are the situation where an independent small startup can make it big. Your examples are instructive, engineers were able to make id Software big because you didn't need a lot of hardware to invent 3D shooters, but Jobs gets the credit for the iPhone because the engineers needed hundreds of millions of dollars in capital to pull it off. pg is giving advice based on him getting ri…

>is what are the situation where an independent small startup can make it big.

Yes, there are also all kinds of completely unrelated to your idea things that can succeed or kill your business.

Happen to launch your idea the day before a global economic collapse, well, better be exceptionally lucky.

Happen to launch when interest rates drop though the floor and banks are handing out money to anyone. You're going to have a harder time failing.

Re: How to Start Google

#418

Post by paulryanrogers »

justsocrateasin wrote: post #400
abhayhegde wrote: post #396

While I absolutely agree with PG here on identifying a missing link and solving it with technology as your own project is a good way to own a startup, I also feel most of his examples are reminiscent of survivorship bias. For every one of these giant trillion dollar companies, there are also thousands of companies that couldn't make it. Also, just by the distribution of it all, not every company can be a Google. Not…

I think he answers the second point of "not every company can be a Google" though. He says this will get you to the point where your company could be a Google, but makes no promises that it will be one. I agree with the first point. I do think that the experience would nonetheless be valuable, though, to pilot a failed company.

Why even bring up 'Google' when the odds are (and always were) so long? It's like saying your bet could be the Powerball winner. I mean if his audience is only soon-to-be lottery winners, then it's kind of embarrassingly narrow and niche. And what advice is there to say except be rich enough to buy a lot of tickets?

Re: How to Start Google

#419

Post by codethatwerks »

abhayhegde wrote: post #396

While I absolutely agree with PG here on identifying a missing link and solving it with technology as your own project is a good way to own a startup, I also feel most of his examples are reminiscent of survivorship bias. For every one of these giant trillion dollar companies, there are also thousands of companies that couldn't make it. Also, just by the distribution of it all, not every company can be a Google. Not…

Yes he tells you how to increase your odds in the lottery from 1E-11 to 1E-6 perhaps. His advice assumes you won the birth lottery already. Really you can’t be motivated by being the next Google because it (approximately) won’t happen. Be excited by the other things on the way.

Re: How to Start Google

#420

Post by heyoni »

difflens wrote: post #402

It's interesting that this piece mentions "to get really rich" as one of the primary motivators. Especially to high school students. I wonder if that's good advice or if society is better served by motivating students to start companies that make the world better.

I feel like there was a moment where “love was all you needed” and people just followed their passions with real careers as a backup. Hollywood pressed that view (or echoed it) into the zeitgeist and I’m not sure what the turning point was, but people started getting filthy rich. Almost as if the dormant culture combined with the internet made it possible to amass an absurd amount of wealth. Since then, whenever that is, it feels like it’s socially acceptable again to do be driven by earning potential and nothing else.

I agree with you, wanting to become “filthy rich” is abhorrent given all of the known implications that comes with. At the very least people should have some shame and keep that to themselves.

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