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How to Start Google

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Start Google

#481

Post by happytiger »

codethatwerks wrote: post #416

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 h…

Wow, the older I get the more ambitious I get about what to build. A lot of the companies I created in my 20s and 30s I wouldn’t waste my time on in my 40s. I’m so the exact opposite it’s kinda funny.

Go big or go home, it’s no fun to chew bones.

Re: How to Start Google

#482

Post by dbish »

batshit_beaver wrote: post #433
etothepii wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This advice is for 14/15 year olds. I think the advice would be different for 22-year-olds. It would be different still for 35-year-olds. 22-year-olds have a hard time selling to enterprises, 14-year-olds will find it impossible. Whereas if they build something cool that they and their friends love they will gain many of the skills that might be useful later on. PG has made the point many times that the superpower 22…

What's the super power of 35-year-olds? Arthritis?

More reps/iterations to learn from

Re: How to Start Google

#483

Post by llm_trw »

codethatwerks wrote: post #416

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 h…

>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.

Looking at the state of open source software today a google is simply impossible because the ecosystem has rotted from the inside.

Look at how much effort it took to write the cgi-bin scripts google started with vs whatever flavour of the week JS framework you have to use now.

Not sure what the solution is but we need fewer sheep in development and less permissive licenses so developers doing unglamorous work can capture more of the value. There's a reason why every shop which supports massive open source projects is running away from legacy licenses as fast as they can and that reason is Amazon.

If you don't care about developers from the user side of things it's just as bad. The GPL in the age of cloud services does as much to protect user freedom as the MIT license did in the 1990s.

Re: How to Start Google

#484

Post by xyzelement »

Solvency wrote: post #459
xyzelement wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to my 25 and 15 year old self, my 35 (now 40) self is a lot wiser in terms of dealing with people, applying humility and being crisp on the wide gulf between "what I find is worth doing at the moment" and "what's valuable." I think these are all hugely valuable and serve me well.

LLMs are increasingly good at your 40 year old soft social skills like humility, so don't bank on that being worth much very long.

I don't think of humility as a soft skill, it's an internal assumption about where the ultimate truth resides based on which you reason and engage with reality.

Re: How to Start Google

#485

Post by boringg »

Solvency wrote: post #457
emseetech wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less startup, more starting a business. The older I get the less I want to build a startup and more I want to start a business. Something that takes a little bit of capital, lots of hard work, gets some customers and provides goods or services, without venture capital firms and 100x returns and everything that comes with that, just a standard business. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1SLHEC98I

That's a romantic idea until you realize you're now dealing and subservient to the dredges of society, the worst kinds of customers, the worst kind of people. Far worse than a niche market specialized technology sales prospect. Get ready to have a new contempt for humanity. Get ready to be raked over the coals by Yelp.

Man you gotta get outside more often. Most of the world doesn't work in tech and has for thousands of years and surprise doesn't suffer from a new level of contempt for their fellow human.

Re: How to Start Google

#486

Post by gen220 »

I wonder if there are some other companies that would be better to hold up as paragons to high schoolers.

Apple, Patagonia (and its predecessors), WhatsApp (pre-FB), Trader Joe’s (pre acquisition), Yahoo! (pre-‘99) are some that come to mind for me. Any others?

Re: How to Start Google

#487

Post by throwoutway »

codethatwerks wrote: post #416

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 h…

Give yourself a break. When I studied in uni I was stuck at tables with 'old guys' and 'old ladies' and I had a lot of respect for them. They paid attention, wanted to learn, were there to learn. When I didn't understand something, I asked them before I asked the teacher and they generally were happy to help. I have fond memories

Re: How to Start Google

#488

Post by ramraj07 »

llm_trw wrote: post #483
codethatwerks wrote: post #416

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 h…

>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. Looking at the state of open source software today a google is simply impossible because the ecosystem has rotted from the inside. Look at how much effort it took to write the cgi-bin scripts google started with vs whatever flavour of the week JS framework you have to use now. No…

Creating something from scratch is so much easier today than it ever was, and I’ve been creating crap for decades now. All the fancy JavaScript crap is purely optional. You can still write something in CGI if you want. My last prototype I wrote with Vue and JQuery and as pure html and .js files. It was an absolute blast! And the users loved it! Have you tested streamlit? FastAPI? Everything is so easy now.

Re: How to Start Google

#489

Post by ramraj07 »

codelord wrote: post #445

How to start Google? You can't. That holds for 99.999999% of the people. The rest 0.000001% aren't wasting their time reading Paul Graham's essays.

This essay is for kids. Many successful founders have likely listened to inspiring talks like this when they were kids. In places like Stanford or the prestigious high schools they come from.

The people who read here can read it for clarity and the chance that they can show this article to a smart nephew to inspire them. Like I just did.

Re: How to Start Google

#490

Post by paulddraper »

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.

Getting rich and making the world better are not incompatible, or even unaligned in general.

You get rich by offering a good or service that society desires.

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