For a researcher, this difference can lead to deep unhappiness. I moved from a research-heavy institution to a founder-heavy culture thinking the freedom and increased salary would lead to improved happiness, however this was very far from the case. After about 1 year, my CEO began to understand the difference and support me, however, the time and stress prior to that point was very difficult. It required Investor-level individuals with research careers to validate my perspective. Sam's post validates my struggle and I am happy to see it publicized by someone with clout. I hope more founders will begin to give researchers a bit more room and support.
Researchers and Founders
51–60 of 115 posts
Re: Researchers and Founders
#52This post would not survive blind review, though. The author's brand makes it look very insightful but if you look closely it's really cliche. Yeah, no shit, successful people work hard on important problems, they have small-scale laser focus and also large-scale vision. Seems like the wisdom tree has been plucked, these startup wisdom blogs are getting emptier and emptier (see also Paul Graham...).
I think it's common among many founders who became very successful for them to assume they have a special and deeper insight into how the universe works.
VCs, too. Interesting how researchers are a bit more humble or realistic about achievements.
Re: Researchers and Founders
#53This post would not survive blind review, though. The author's brand makes it look very insightful but if you look closely it's really cliche. Yeah, no shit, successful people work hard on important problems, they have small-scale laser focus and also large-scale vision. Seems like the wisdom tree has been plucked, these startup wisdom blogs are getting emptier and emptier (see also Paul Graham...).
I think it's common among many founders who became very successful for them to assume they have a special and deeper insight into how the universe works.
How would you check whether someone has special and deep insight into how the universe works? Making a lot of correct predictions seems like some of the best evidence available.
Re: Researchers and Founders
#54I am curious about the differences he observed between these two groups.
Re: Researchers and Founders
#55This post would not survive blind review, though. The author's brand makes it look very insightful but if you look closely it's really cliche. Yeah, no shit, successful people work hard on important problems, they have small-scale laser focus and also large-scale vision. Seems like the wisdom tree has been plucked, these startup wisdom blogs are getting emptier and emptier (see also Paul Graham...).
This is an interesting point. Why does it feel like these blogs are getting shallower? For PG, more of his older blog posts were more interesting than his newer ones, with more concreteness in advice and experiences. The latest ones seem more observational of trends instead, which can be more vague in nature.
Re: Researchers and Founders
#56This post would not survive blind review, though. The author's brand makes it look very insightful but if you look closely it's really cliche. Yeah, no shit, successful people work hard on important problems, they have small-scale laser focus and also large-scale vision. Seems like the wisdom tree has been plucked, these startup wisdom blogs are getting emptier and emptier (see also Paul Graham...).
That's pretty harsh, maybe because the expectations are unfairly high for Sam. It's just someone writing on their blog some thoughts they had, so maybe we should treat it like that.
But for some constructive criticism, there are some actual topics I'd be interested in hearing discussion about, on researchers vs founders. I've been a bit of both, and I'd say the more practical similarities are:
- "unlimited" freedom to work on what you think is important, usually in something you think is different, but with a existential constraint. For founders, it's the business model -- your pitch deck needs a convincing business model to survive regardless of the product (which is what a lot of founders really care about). Whereas in research, you need a long-term vision that is attracting to funding to survive, which can be a deep expertise in something societally-relevant, or evidence of success in doing something novel
- the game: there's sort of a game to play for both. With startups, there's the optimization of MAUs and acting like a startup and growing fast; there's the established ways of getting funding from angel investment to series of investments, attorneys and payments, and then different ways to exit. For research, there's the game of publishing, annual cycles of recruiting great students and advising, reputation and finding your niche, and the academic system in general.
- management: on both cases you're managing a small team, usually under 50 people, so small enough that you know everyone and can be a bit involved in what they're doing, but big enough that you need a bit of hierarchy.
There's also some major differences:
- Equity vs reputation. Early startup employees work for less pay (moreso in the past) for the chance their equity will be highly valuable. Early stage researchers (PhD students or Postdocs) work for less pay for the chance to discover/invent something amazing to become a tenured professor or leading scientist.
- Formal mentorship credit: researchers get credit for being mentors for people that leave and do well later. PhD students are partly known for who their advisor is. When a student does well at an institution and goes to another one, the first institution is acknowledged indefinitely. Papers credit the authors as well as the institution before a single line of text. In startups, when someone amazing leaves it's a major negative thing. When someone says "GreatProgrammer was previously at Foo startup with HappyCTO" there isn't that same admiration for Foo startup or HappyCTO as if you say "GreatResearcher did their PhD at Foo University in Professor Happy's lab."
Re: Researchers and Founders
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's common among many founders who became very successful for them to assume they have a special and deeper insight into how the universe works.
How would you check whether someone has special and deep insight into how the universe works? Making a lot of correct predictions seems like some of the best evidence available.
Many people have accurate predictions, it's not so unusual. But not everyone has the ambition or circumstance to do anything about it (or even the desire). Being a successful founder is not always about anything other than an orthogonal motivation separate from intuition.
And how do you factor all the predictions that were incorrect? The success to failure ratio of a well-known founder is not necessarily any different than many "average" people, it's just been scaled up out of their own interests, and thus more visible.
Some people relish their position in the world as more than it is, that's all I'm saying, when in reality it is usually from factors beyond simple wisdom.
Re: Researchers and Founders
#58>Although there are always individual exceptions, on average it’s surprising to me how different the best people in these groups are (including in some qualities that I had assumed were present in great people everywhere, like very high levels of self-belief). This is an interesting quote. From my experience and personal perspectives, many of the best researchers and scientists doubt themselves, a lot, and are typica…
Perhaps the idea is self-belief is more “I think I can get it done” versus “I think I’m right.” A lot of good researchers will fail every which way very quickly until finally getting somewhere that once looked impossible.
In research, this process is usually a personal one (perhaps with a lot of discussion). But in industry, a CEO is giving orders and dragging a lot of people along with what feels wrong, and the CEO isn’t in a position to show deep self-doubt if it exists.
Not sure here about the message, but am sure the wording as Sam has chosen is very poor.
Re: Researchers and Founders
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's common among many founders who became very successful for them to assume they have a special and deeper insight into how the universe works.
How would you check whether someone has special and deep insight into how the universe works? Making a lot of correct predictions seems like some of the best evidence available.
Being the CEO of Ycombinator, the business consulting firm, would give him very special insights into the industry, as many new companies would come straight to Ycombinator, looking for advice. Altman was in a good position to study the whole industry.
Re: Researchers and Founders
#60This post would not survive blind review, though. The author's brand makes it look very insightful but if you look closely it's really cliche. Yeah, no shit, successful people work hard on important problems, they have small-scale laser focus and also large-scale vision. Seems like the wisdom tree has been plucked, these startup wisdom blogs are getting emptier and emptier (see also Paul Graham...).
> this post would not survive blind review
If I wrote a post like this, people would very reasonably wonder what sort of experience I had informing these generalizations. Sam's background is very relevant for figuring out whether his thoughts are worth paying attention to here.