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Billionaires Build

paulgraham.com

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Re: Billionaires Build

#51

Post by Swizec »

jariel wrote: post #50
Swizec wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pg has fallen out of touch. The world is very different for the young ones. I’m not old but my tech career started back around 2007. It was very different. Back then tech was exciting and new. We were changing the world. Now we have changed the world. Mobile is king, web is emperor. We’ve won. Tech is to 2020 what finance was to 1980. And VCs are seen as the big baddies. People don’t join this industry for the love o…

"Back then tech was exciting and new. We were changing the world. Now we have changed the world. Mobile is king, web is emperor. We’ve won." You must be young. The difference between 1999 and 2009 was an order of magnitude greater than 2009 to 2019. This is your personal growth journey, not really an objective thing.

I started coding in 1995 so yes I know the difference was huge. Reading Hackers reveals that back in 1960 tech was even nerdier still.

Professionalization marches on. Exponentially.

Re: Billionaires Build

#52

Post by jariel »

travisjungroth wrote: post #30
stopachka wrote: post #20

From experience, this rings very, very true. For many, this is a hard pill to swallow. Here's one way to judge it more objectively. Replace "billionaire", with something more neutral: "pro basketball player", "amazing musician", "prolific writer". The arguments tend to make a lot of sense in other categories, but our natural inclination rebels on Billionaire. This is a great sign that something is off

All three are of your examples are wildly different in that they’re top-tier individual contributors. Of course you can become a prolific writer without exploiting anyone. A more fair comparison would be something like politician.

"All three are of your examples are wildly different in that they’re top-tier individual contributors"

And founders are not?

Some founders are at that level, and frankly, more important to society than most athletes or musicians.

MLB pitchers make $10's of millions of dollars a year, far more than most of our top talent.

Re: Billionaires Build

#53

Post by tines »

buu700 wrote: post #33
tines wrote: post #23

> The crucial feature of the initial market is that it exist. Should "exist" be replaced with "exists" in this sentence? If you wanted to use "exist" I think you'd have to use a helper verb like "should [exist]". Is there a name for the grammatical feature where someone omits the "should" and uses the conjugation that would go with it?

There's nothing grammatically wrong with that. It's a standard subjunctive clause.

That's the word I was looking for, thanks.

Re: Billionaires Build

#54

Post by throwaway2245 »

damnencryption wrote: post #10

PG was cheering lambda school's free 4 weeks developer intern trial a while ago. If he doesn't think that is exploitative, maybe huge difference in morality. Airbnb spamming forums early on, sketchy marketing techniques, avoiding commercial regulations that hotel has to go through for good reasons and displacing genuine local rent seekers is not exploitative then maybe the bar is high enough for YC. Should the founde…

Airbnb is banned where I live, because it exploited democratically agreed norms of short-term rents in the city.

Re: Billionaires Build

#56

Post by throwaway2245 »

troughway wrote: post #45

Can someone pin point what is objectively wrong or out of touch with this article? Genuinely asking because the past three+ posts from pg have been met with negativity saying pg is a wealthy Londoner who doesn’t understand the prole struggle.

I don't really think this is a new theme for pg's essays [edit: I mean, I don't think pg's style or content has changed that much], although I've also noticed this change [in responses here].

Usually, HN is the space where his essays are most heavily defended.

Re: Billionaires Build

#57

Post by fudged71 »

What about that YC application question “what real world system have you successfully hacked?”

In many ways that could be seen as how you can exploit people

Re: Billionaires Build

#58

Post by cambalache »

jariel wrote: post #50
Swizec wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pg has fallen out of touch. The world is very different for the young ones. I’m not old but my tech career started back around 2007. It was very different. Back then tech was exciting and new. We were changing the world. Now we have changed the world. Mobile is king, web is emperor. We’ve won. Tech is to 2020 what finance was to 1980. And VCs are seen as the big baddies. People don’t join this industry for the love o…

"Back then tech was exciting and new. We were changing the world. Now we have changed the world. Mobile is king, web is emperor. We’ve won." You must be young. The difference between 1999 and 2009 was an order of magnitude greater than 2009 to 2019. This is your personal growth journey, not really an objective thing.

It's like all those articles you see in Medium :"What life has taught me" They all start like : "In my youth, the US was a very different place, blah blah" Then you scroll down and notice the author is 28 yo at most.

Re: Billionaires Build

#59

Post by travisporter »

dkyc wrote: post #27
glaive123 wrote: post #18

> that the only way to become a billionaire is by exploiting people Any statement that has the word "only" in it is guaranteed to be wrong. I wonder if PG worded it this way intentionally (straw man fallacy). Most people agree early employees should get more equity. This doesn't address whether startup founders are hoarding equity for themselves and their investors instead of fairly rewarding early employees.

I wouldn't say this is a straw man. Every billionaire being exploitative/criminal is a real political position among the American Left, see e.g. this tweet [0] by Robert Reich. He was secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, so not some extremist weirdo. [0] https://twitter.com/rbreich/status/1193526297647108097

I think Robert Reich is more left of center than the current political party since the 90s, in an increasingly polarizing nation. Here's the quote:

There are basically 5 ways to accumulate a billion dollars in America: 1) Profiting from a monopoly 2) Insider-trading 3) Political payoffs 4) Fraud 5) Inheritance

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