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How to Start Google

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Start Google

#51

Post by DonsDiscountGas »

photochemsyn wrote: post #27

This article only mentions Stanford once, so here's some additional information: https://new.nsf.gov/news/origins-google > "The National Science Foundation led the multi-agency Digital Library Initiative (DLI) that, in 1994, made its first six awards. One of those awards supported a Stanford University project led by professors Hector Garcia-Molina and Terry Winograd... Around the same time, one of the graduate stude…

The PageRank patent expired 5 years ago, and frankly a lot of other search engines were copying the method a long time before that. Search results have been deteriorating since "SEO" became a thing.

Re: How to Start Google

#52

Post by eddieroger »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #23

This essay glosses over the fact that most startups die a horrible death and earn little to no money for the founders. Somewhere in this essay it needs to say “99% of you who try this will fail”.

I was sad to search for the word "luck" and come up empty. You can do everything right and still fail. You can do everything wrong and win. Sometimes you're just in the right place at the right time, and that external factor is completely out of your control and can be the difference you need.

Re: How to Start Google

#53

Post by jjackson5324 »

eloisant wrote: post #44
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #21

While I agree with a lot of the criticisms that have been posted here (first and foremost that it is exceedingly bad advice to take advice on being successful from someone who is like six sigmas to the right of the curve on how their efforts were rewarded - it's like reading from Taylor Swift or Simone Biles or Usain Bolt about "to succeed you just need hard work and to believe!". As it's taken many, many years of th…

Also "the standard way to get rich"... It's much easier to get rich by getting hired at a FAANG than starting your own company. You only get rich by starting your own company if you win the startup lottery. Otherwise you're better off getting a high paid job.

That depends entirely on your definition of rich.

PG's definition of rich is probably 100x what yours is.

Re: How to Start Google

#55

Post by memset »

I am baffled by the criticisms of this essay. I can't identify any statements here which are false. We're on hacker news, which is a site about programming and startups and capitalism. There theoretically couldn't be a better audience.

I suppose the strongest criticism would be that pg's advice outlines necessary conditions to start the next Google but are not sufficient. Yes, the stuff you "make" needs to feel like a fun project, but without the "...something people want" then your company will not make you rich. As with any advice, there there will always be exceptions ("do you really need a cofounder?") but as far as "here is some advice to achieve x", where x is "create a billion-dollar company" this isn't a bad start.

Re: How to Start Google

#56

Post by scarface_74 »

ericd wrote: post #47
scarface_74 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then they hit the reality that thier startup is going to fail, even if they get funding in a non zero interest rate environment and they would have been better off just “grinding leetCode and working for a FAANG” (tm r/cscareerquestions) or even just working as a CRUD/Enterprise Corp dev and still be able to make the median household income in the US a couple of years out of school

They might have been better off financially - statistically, they probably would've been. But even my failed startups were more rewarding experiences by far than working in large companies. And it doesn't preclude you from going and getting paid too much at a big tech co afterwards if it doesn't work. This field has been so lucrative recently that you can generally afford to not be earning at peak potential for a bit…

I bet you had parents or some other financial nest egg to fall back on to support your addiction to food and shelter.

Yes most people would rather not work to support those addictions I mentioned. But that’s what most people have to do.

Re: How to Start Google

#57

Post by joshuahutt »

eloisant wrote: post #44
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #21

While I agree with a lot of the criticisms that have been posted here (first and foremost that it is exceedingly bad advice to take advice on being successful from someone who is like six sigmas to the right of the curve on how their efforts were rewarded - it's like reading from Taylor Swift or Simone Biles or Usain Bolt about "to succeed you just need hard work and to believe!". As it's taken many, many years of th…

Also "the standard way to get rich"... It's much easier to get rich by getting hired at a FAANG than starting your own company. You only get rich by starting your own company if you win the startup lottery. Otherwise you're better off getting a high paid job.

There are very different definitions of "rich."

Take the old comparison between Gates and Jordan. "If Jordan saves 100% of his income for the next 450 years, he'll still have less than Bill Gates has today."

You can become wealthy and comfortable working for a salary. But, the canonical way to get "FU money" is to win the lottery.

Re: How to Start Google

#58

Post by anonzzzies »

shafyy wrote: post #4

> It's more exciting to work on your own project than someone else's. And you can also get a lot richer. In fact, this is the standard way to get really rich. If you look at the lists of the richest people that occasionally get published in the press, nearly all of them did it by starting their own companies. People like Paul Graham telling 14-year-olds that basically getting rich is the most important thing is one o…

> but if you think for a second you can do whatever the fuck you want when you start your own company

I know too many people born rich who think exactly this. And in their experience it works like that; they have no money stress anyway, take a little bit more risk and if it fails, well, they just fold and brag about ‘at least I tried’ and then try again or, you know, sit on the boat and get slobbered. Same thing. The rest of us don’t quite have this and especially bootstrapping your own company is hard, really hard; you will be doing a great deal of things that have nothing to do with what you want or set out to do and those probably turn out to be more important than what you started it for.

Re: How to Start Google

#59

Post by IllIlIIllI »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #8
hiddencost wrote: post #2

"If you look at the lists of the richest people that occasionally get published in the press, nearly all of them did it by starting their own companies." "Of the 137 people in the global study who achieved billionaire status in the 12-month study period, 53 of them inherited $150.8 billion collectively, more than the $140.7 billion that was earned by the 84 new self-made billionaires in the same time period, the UBS…

Maybe merely having a billion dollars isn't what pg was thinking of when talking about "the richest people". If you look at the top 100, like he quotes in his article, only 27 inherited their fortune.

Maybe only 27 inherited large fortunes, but many more started at a much more privileged position than anyone in the rooms Paul is talking to. Maybe they're not from billionaire families, but almost all of them come from families the top 1-3% in terms of wealth.

Re: How to Start Google

#60

Post by evrimoztamur »

verelo wrote: post #38
Scubabear68 wrote: post #23

This essay glosses over the fact that most startups die a horrible death and earn little to no money for the founders. Somewhere in this essay it needs to say “99% of you who try this will fail”.

if i had a 1 in 100 shot of becoming google I'd just do it 100 times. I'm pretty sure its more like 99.99999%

It's closer to 63% (binomial distribution of 1% chance with 100 trials, P(X>=1) is 63.4%).
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