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Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

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Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#51

Post by Osmigo »

pbreit wrote: post #50
Osmigo wrote: post #48

>You can be surprisingly stupid if you’re sufficiently determined I think one reason we're wrestling with this smart/stupid/success/fail subject is that these words paint with broad brushes. It's not just being smart or stupid, it's what you're smart or stupid about. For example, I knew an uneducated couple who opened a small clothing store. At first, they naively sold merchandise for less than they paid for it. They…

I don't quite understand your markup anecdote. Did time pass between the $4 and $3 markups?

No, sir. That was all at once. I was expected to stand there with a calculator, add $4 to the wholesale price, then add another $3.

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#52

Post by nl »

GuiA wrote: post #27
oskarth wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are the Richard Feynman of your field, don't you think you could pick up if someone is a good physicist or not in 10 minutes of talking about physics? Not just physics per say, but the mental models you have, the experiments you are going to perform, what kind of theories you have, what you've worked on before, etc. I certainly do, especially if you get to ask the questions.

There are Richard Feynmans in math, biology, physics, computer science, etc. I'm not sure there are Richard Feynmans in startups or similarly "soft" fields.

I'm not sure there are Richard Feynmans in startups or similarly "soft" fields.

There are. Game recognize Game[1] is a thing for a reason.

[1] If you need this footnote then it doesn't apply to you.

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#53

Post by siwei »

Osmigo wrote: post #51
pbreit wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite understand your markup anecdote. Did time pass between the $4 and $3 markups?

No, sir. That was all at once. I was expected to stand there with a calculator, add $4 to the wholesale price, then add another $3.

Commutativity of addition is not at all an obvious fact and I applaud your erstwhile employers for holding you to a higher standard of rigor.

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#54

Post by jpeterson »

Ologn wrote: post #16
lazyjones wrote: post #5

> Graham said that, after thousands of founder presentations and pitches, he and the YC partners are now able to tell “within minutes” whether a startup will pass muster or not. This I find slightly worrying. It's amazing if it still works (and I've been wondering how YC was still able to scale), but is the minimum amount of information that needs to be exchanged between startup and YC in order to get a good assessme…

Having interviewed many people over the years (not for an accelerator though), you can easily tell within ten minutes if someone can not pass muster. I have never had anyone who stumbled over the first three questions I asked them, recover on subsequent questions. Nowadays, the only reason I keep interviewing people who stumble over the first three questions is out of politeness. As I am usually interviewing people f…

you can easily tell within ten minutes if someone can not pass muster

Nope, you cannot. I think it's highly likely that there are some rather large biases in your process.

This goes for pg too.

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#55

Post by 001sky »

Arnor wrote: post #35
sridharvembu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree with the "can easily tell within ten minutes if someone cannot pass muster" part. Interviewing is hard. We tend to make such snap judgments but those judgments reflect our own biases. I have come to believe over the years that interviewing measures interviewing skills. Test scores measure test taking skills. Success on the job requires success-on-the-job (to coin a phrase) skills. All those things…

Aren't "interviewing skills" essential to founders? Isn't a YC interview basically a chance to pitch your company and answer probing questions about your plan? Seems like a pretty fair qualification to me...

This is absurdly reductionist.

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#56

Post by count »

nl wrote: post #52
GuiA wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are Richard Feynmans in math, biology, physics, computer science, etc. I'm not sure there are Richard Feynmans in startups or similarly "soft" fields.

I'm not sure there are Richard Feynmans in startups or similarly "soft" fields. There are. Game recognize Game[1] is a thing for a reason. [1] If you need this footnote then it doesn't apply to you.

Game recognize game, and you looking might unfamiliar!

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#57

Post by jacalata »

yohanatan wrote: post #38
awwstn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PG points out regularly that there is no way of predicting whether a startup will succeed. So, I'd guess that much of what they do is try to filter out companies that are likely to not succeed. If YC has nailed down the process, then only formidable teams would make it to the interview, and then the interview would serve to simply make sure the dynamic and attitude of the team is not such that they'd be likely to not…

You could say 'fail' instead of 'not succeed'.

Well, they're really trying to filter out companies which won't sell for millions. I don't think that everything below that is failure. Perhaps he should have gone with "won't wildly succeed"?

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#58

Post by pjscott »

001sky wrote: post #55
Arnor wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't "interviewing skills" essential to founders? Isn't a YC interview basically a chance to pitch your company and answer probing questions about your plan? Seems like a pretty fair qualification to me...

This is absurdly reductionist.

Assume for a moment that I don't know what you mean by 'reductionist'; why is it wrong?

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#59

Post by sumedh »

jpeterson wrote: post #54
Ologn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having interviewed many people over the years (not for an accelerator though), you can easily tell within ten minutes if someone can not pass muster. I have never had anyone who stumbled over the first three questions I asked them, recover on subsequent questions. Nowadays, the only reason I keep interviewing people who stumble over the first three questions is out of politeness. As I am usually interviewing people f…

you can easily tell within ten minutes if someone can not pass muster Nope, you cannot. I think it's highly likely that there are some rather large biases in your process. This goes for pg too.

> Nope, you cannot. This goes for pg too.

I dont know about PG but Warren Buffett says the same thing when it comes to buying new business that he make a decision within 5 minutes.

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#60

Post by sergiosgc »

siwei wrote: post #53
Osmigo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, sir. That was all at once. I was expected to stand there with a calculator, add $4 to the wholesale price, then add another $3.

Commutativity of addition is not at all an obvious fact and I applaud your erstwhile employers for holding you to a higher standard of rigor.

Nitpick: the property observed here is associativity(sp?), not commutativity.
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