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How to Avoid Distractions and Start the Right Company

atrium.co

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Re: How to Avoid Distractions and Start the Right Company

#51

Post by dang »

urda wrote: post #43
dang wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That crosses into personal attack, and you can't post like that here. I work with Sam, so normally would intervene less in such a case—but you can't post like that here about anybody. Some rules need enforcing across the board and this is one of the main ones, so please don't do it again. Edit: it looks like we've warned you repeatedly about making personal attacks in the past. That is the sort of thing we ban accoun…

How exactly is this a personal attack? It's my observation plus publicly known information. No name calling or any harm mentioned toward him. I believe this content, and others, is empty, fluff, and of little actual value. We're allowed to disagree with Altman, even on HN.

"He doesn't add value at all" is obviously a personal putdown.

(It's also obviously wrong, since there's no way Sam would be running YC after 4 years if it were true. But we don't moderate people for being wrong, only for breaking the site guidelines. Please (re-)read them at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.)

Re: How to Avoid Distractions and Start the Right Company

#52

Post by wtvanhest »

smcquade wrote: post #49
wtvanhest wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are just part of the signaling echo chamber now. No gutsy calls. When I started reading HN in 2010, it was all information about early stage tech. PG was saying that founders can lead companies all the way and that founders should have the power. Now they do... YC is just an average investor now with more scale. The next gutsy call or intuition is simply not there with the current team. HN is a news site and I e…

What is the name of the private network?

IDK, all the CEOs of their companies have a separate platform.

Re: How to Avoid Distractions and Start the Right Company

#53

Post by captain_perl »

smcquade wrote: post #49
wtvanhest wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are just part of the signaling echo chamber now. No gutsy calls. When I started reading HN in 2010, it was all information about early stage tech. PG was saying that founders can lead companies all the way and that founders should have the power. Now they do... YC is just an average investor now with more scale. The next gutsy call or intuition is simply not there with the current team. HN is a news site and I e…

What is the name of the private network?

It's called BookFace, and is a private social network-style platform for YC alumni.

Re: How to Avoid Distractions and Start the Right Company

#54

Post by tim333 »

wtvanhest wrote: post #44
pen2l wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think it would have been any different if pg was in charge? I don't. I think it's rather that the 'low hanging fruit' are all gone. The whole mood has changed. It's become harder. Notice for example that YC places a lot of importance on growth when evaluating applicants, I think in early stages you could've had practically zero users of your product and they would have considered you -- now, not so much. Secon…

They are just part of the signaling echo chamber now. No gutsy calls. When I started reading HN in 2010, it was all information about early stage tech. PG was saying that founders can lead companies all the way and that founders should have the power. Now they do... YC is just an average investor now with more scale. The next gutsy call or intuition is simply not there with the current team. HN is a news site and I e…

In some ways they are more gutsy now. Under PG it was mostly people writing some software. Now they have supersonic jets and nuclear fusion. How that works out I don't know.

Also Flexport's good. Think they're under Altman?

Re: How to Avoid Distractions and Start the Right Company

#55

Post by wtvanhest »

tim333 wrote: post #54
wtvanhest wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are just part of the signaling echo chamber now. No gutsy calls. When I started reading HN in 2010, it was all information about early stage tech. PG was saying that founders can lead companies all the way and that founders should have the power. Now they do... YC is just an average investor now with more scale. The next gutsy call or intuition is simply not there with the current team. HN is a news site and I e…

In some ways they are more gutsy now. Under PG it was mostly people writing some software. Now they have supersonic jets and nuclear fusion. How that works out I don't know. Also Flexport's good. Think they're under Altman?

The businesses they fund have been interesting (in flexport's case great), but far from gutsy given that they are only putting $150ksh per business.

What I mean by gutsy is having a view that is at least slightly contrarian and then executing on that view. There is nothing contrarian about making power law investments. That is standard for any large seed/angel/A series investor. The ones that don't do that don't make any money.

Re: How to Avoid Distractions and Start the Right Company

#56

Post by ttul »

rthng wrote: post #3
ttul wrote: post #2

Altman’s on point here: don’t follow a trend, focus on solving problems. And choose something hard. When money is growing on trees, pick a major problem with a huge upside should you solve it. Startups are hard; at least make it have a chance of being really worthwhile. — Someone who picked a small problem.

If it's not too forward, what problem did you pick?

Well, once upon a time when I was young and stupid, I chose to make some very tiny improvement to spam filtering.

Re: How to Avoid Distractions and Start the Right Company

#57

Post by ElzeardBouffier »

ttul wrote: post #56
rthng wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's not too forward, what problem did you pick?

Well, once upon a time when I was young and stupid, I chose to make some very tiny improvement to spam filtering.

Application of Bayesian filters was not a tiny improvement.
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