Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what I mean, when Google became generally available they had none of that on their site. For quite a while at least before they joined the crowd.
Google had ads (AdWords) since 2000, only 2 years after it started existing.
How to Start Google
621–630 of 681 posts
Re: How to Start Google
#622The challenge with programming as a career now is that most of the solely technical problems have been solved. If you're looking for the YC playbook, start a SaaS that solves a specific problem that people will pay you for, those niches have been very carefully picked over for the last 15 years, and there are few that are very profitable remaining.
Most of the big remaining problems are ones of incentives - they are cases where a whole system is fractally fucked up, with lots of human actors all doing what is individually best for themselves but with a sum result that is a net negative for humanity. If you study the housing crisis, for example, you end up with municipalities that need ever-rising housing prices and ever-restricting supply to balance their budgets; residents who depend on their rising home prices to fund their retirement; developers who need to work within the local regulations that are explicitly designed to make their lives difficult; and young people who can't move out because a second mortgage that requires their parents' ever-increasing home equity was used to fund their college education. Finding a better way to build houses doesn't help here; you need to work around all the people who actively don't want you to find a better way to build houses.
There is room for software here, but often in subtle and what seems "evil" ways. Your problem is other people; software is useful to the extent that it lets you work around other people. Technical skills are table stakes for this, but understanding people and their incentives is critical for this work.
Re: How to Start Google
#623What I want to know is how to become an individual that is able to obtain the kind of things that provide leverage. I already have the machines, I just don't have the platform to move around exciting events and I simply stay in my room. I don't even have a bank account afaik. My paypal account insists on using chinese language (it's cursed). I'm waiting for github to implement a currency I can use. Then again, maybe…
Re: How to Start Google
#624> The empirical evidence is clear on this. If you look at where the largest numbers of successful startups come from, it's pretty much the same as the list of the most selective universities.
Re: How to Start Google
#625Re: How to Start Google
#626I dislike this sort of advice for teenagers. You may as well tell them to be rock stars or professional sports people. Tell the kids to study, don't sell them an unobtainable dream
The core advice is to produce instead of consume . And the second one is to study. However, packaging it under a "being a mere employee is lame" mantra... Is lame! But I'm curious. Why do you think that doing something which is maybe not study related is a bad idea? ("Maybe not" because ie. john Mayer is both a rockstar and a Berkelee grad)
Because 99.999% of those kids won't go on to start the next Google and make more money for PG's investments.
When I was at school there were a few kids who were genuinely moderately good at football/soccer. With only minor encouragement from PE staff and family they essentially had the attitude of "I don't need to study, I am going to be a professional footballer." (who by the way make huge huge huge sums of money if you are at the very top)
And how many of those went on to to be top-flight professional footballers do you think? Yep - zero. What are they doing now considering they crashed out of out of school with no qualifications, no professional sports career, and barely able to even do basic literacy and arithmetic etc? Low skilled and relatively dead-end jobs like gardeners, working on building sites, security guards etc.
They threw away their chance to study and gain skills because irresponsible and self-interested adults told them they should abandon school and concentrate on this dream of fame and fortune with essentially zero chance of it coming true. You're fucking with people's lives by doing this - don't tell people you don't need to try hard and study and learn, you just need to become a billionaire business owner!
Re: How to Start Google
#627What is the parallel advice for a 40 year old? I guess the programming and tinkering stuff still applies. But university cannot be redone. Sure I can study but I wont have any connection to most young people. I’ll be the old guy. And this assumes I can afford the loss of income. I assume a lot of start ups are started by older people too. I think for older people an advantage is to solve older people problems. Like h…
Re: How to Start Google
#628Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is true if you require the same amount of income to maintain your lifestyle, but if you've been working in tech for 20 years, you have savings. I'm not in my 40s yet, but it's much more viable for me to take a risk now than it was when I was just starting out because I can afford to fail for a couple years without, you know, becoming homeless.
This so much. I'm 36 and I can afford to not work for many years with my savings. It's definitely easier now for me.
Re: How to Start Google
#629> Don't try to guess whether gene editing or LLMs or rockets will turn out to be the most valuable technology to know about. No one can predict that. Just work on whatever interests you the most. This optimizes for Paul's outcomes not for the individual outcomes.
I wonder: what better advice, that optimizes for individual outcomes, would you offer founders-to-be instead?
I don't have any particular advice. I've been very lucky to join a few companies that were on the run up at the time but I never really knew at the time that they were going to be successful.
I just think blindly pursuing passion to the exclusion of profit will leave most people happy (or not) but impoverished and some people happy, lucky, and wealthy.
It was really just a tongue in cheek comment. I think Paul's advice is inspirational but it should be checked with a healthy dose of reality.
Re: How to Start Google
#630What is the parallel advice for a 40 year old? I guess the programming and tinkering stuff still applies. But university cannot be redone. Sure I can study but I wont have any connection to most young people. I’ll be the old guy. And this assumes I can afford the loss of income. I assume a lot of start ups are started by older people too. I think for older people an advantage is to solve older people problems. Like h…
Sounds like you might want to start a lifestyle business. You should read and listen to everything by Rob Walling, especially his “stair step approach”. Wish someone had told me this at your stage. For meeting founders, find someone in the area you’re interested in and build stuff with them. Also consider using the YC founder network, but they may be too ambitious for you. Lifestyle businesses are probably less depen…
[Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping] https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stair-step-method-of-b...
[Podcast] https://startupsfortherestofus.com
[Book] https://saasplaybook.com
[YouTube] https://microconf.com/youtube