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How to Start Google

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Start Google

#631

Post by Gbox4 »

shafyy wrote: post #617
paulddraper wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rich and making the world better are not incompatible, or even unaligned in general. You get rich by offering a good or service that society desires.

No billionaire made the world a better place.

Two problems with arguments like these.

First, "better" is so subjective that it almost becomes a moot point.

Second, a single counter example disproves it.

You don't think Ronaldo has entertained millions of kids around the world and made them very happy to watch him play? I would say that is a good thing.

Re: How to Start Google

#632

Post by kamaal »

happytiger wrote: post #481
codethatwerks wrote: post #416

What 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…

Wow, the older I get the more ambitious I get about what to build. A lot of the companies I created in my 20s and 30s I wouldn’t waste my time on in my 40s. I’m so the exact opposite it’s kinda funny. Go big or go home, it’s no fun to chew bones.

That Steve Jobs advice of saying no to a lot of things seems such a natural thing to do as you age.

As years that remain shrink, you have to pick and choose the battles you want to fight.

Re: How to Start Google

#633

Post by cmrdporcupine »

rgmerk wrote: post #567
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Threshold for wealthy enough to "never work again" is actually very high if you have a mortgage and a couple kids you want to put through school, and are thinking about living past 75. Even here in Canada where healthcare is not really a cost, retirement and nursing homes constitute a huge expense that could go on for years in your last phase. I'm sitting on the accumulated wealth of 25 rather up-and-downish years in…

Hmmm. I don't know exactly what your personal financial circumstances are...but from what I understand salaries and benefits to be at Google, you're getting paid plenty, and it should be possible to save at least some of that. Do it for ten years, put it in a nice boring low-cost index fund, and watch the investment returns roll in, and you're looking at a pretty big nest egg by normal people standards.

Part of the complication is the insane housing price inflation that has happened in Canada, combined with the relatively lower compensation rates of SWEs here. Also I don't work at Google anymore.

Still, I'm in a 500x better position than most.

Re: How to Start Google

#634

Post by paulddraper »

a_bonobo wrote: post #548
paulddraper wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rich and making the world better are not incompatible, or even unaligned in general. You get rich by offering a good or service that society desires.

Drug lords are making the world better?

It's controversial, but many would say that dispensaries make the world a better place.

Re: How to Start Google

#635

Post by paulddraper »

TFYS wrote: post #577
paulddraper wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rich and making the world better are not incompatible, or even unaligned in general. You get rich by offering a good or service that society desires.

Getting people to pay for something isn't the same thing as making the world a better place. You'd need to figure out all the effects and costs of the service to know if you're doing good or bad. Tobacco companies sell things that a lot of people desire, but the effect on society is surely negative. Same could be true for social media and many other types of services, but we don't know because we're not really trying…

It's not the same and there are plenty of counterexamples, but it's aligned more often than not.

People want to stay in touch with those they love.

People want to have medicines to improve their stress.

Etc.

Re: How to Start Google

#636

Post by paulddraper »

int_19h wrote: post #530
paulddraper wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rich and making the world better are not incompatible, or even unaligned in general. You get rich by offering a good or service that society desires.

No, that only makes you well-off. You get filthy rich by capturing as much of the market as possible by whatever means necessary and killing off competition - including user lock-in, artificial bundling, using successful past products to subsidize non-profitable new ones just to screw competitors etc.

Which one did Google founders do to get filthy rich?

Re: How to Start Google

#637

Post by jononomo »

zeroxfe wrote: post #92
dekhn wrote: post #37

Paul is fundamentally wrong with one thiing here: Larry knew google was going to be huge from the beginning. His brother Carl was already a multimillionare in tech and taught him everything required to set up a future successful company. Larry made it clear to me that he always planned Google to be a large cash-generating cow to invest in long-term AGI and there were only a few times at the beginning when he truly fe…

> Paul is fundamentally wrong with one thiing here: Larry knew google was going to be huge from the beginning. Nobody can know such a thing -- especially turning around a billion-dollar business, a thing with a near-zero prior probability. It's more reasonable to say that Larry had the drive, the aptitude, and the resources to maximize his odds (which would still be low.)

Do you remember the dot com boom of the late 90s, though?

Re: How to Start Google

#638

Post by dekhn »

programjames wrote: post #480
zeroxfe wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Paul is fundamentally wrong with one thiing here: Larry knew google was going to be huge from the beginning. Nobody can know such a thing -- especially turning around a billion-dollar business, a thing with a near-zero prior probability. It's more reasonable to say that Larry had the drive, the aptitude, and the resources to maximize his odds (which would still be low.)

If you're one of the smartest people in the world, working in one of the most impactful areas... the posterior probability is more like 90% than near-zero.

Depends- for example, duirng the time that Google started up, I was in grad school with a great deal of support for starting biotech companies, but when I looked... even the geniuses were struggling because at the time, biotech companies could take a decade or more to be profitable or fail. It was clear, as we were exiting the late 90s dot com crash that the economy and money for tech was going to come back, and companies that took advantage of rapidly increasing specs on cheap machines (versus buying expensive Suns, DECs, or SGIs) were going to be able to scale to immense amounts of traffic, and deliver ads for profit.

Re: How to Start Google

#639

Post by atentaten »

rwalling wrote: post #630
eggdaft wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here are a couple links if you want to get started with my work, all focused on bootstrapping profitable SaaS companies: [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

Anything on B2C?

Re: How to Start Google

#640

Post by nickpp »

ranman wrote: post #629
nickpp wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder: what better advice, that optimizes for individual outcomes, would you offer founders-to-be instead?

Be lucky? 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 P…

Incidentally, Paul's advice is the best advice I heard for maximising your luck surface area. You know that saying: luck is where preparation meets opportunity.

I don't know anybody impoverished from trying to build something. Even if they failed, the lessons they learned and people they met in the process offered plenty of future opportunities.

On the other hand, I know plenty of people unhappy with their lot in life but who didn't try anything to improve it when they could. They like to complain a lot and impose their bitterness and skepticism on the young dreamers.

And our society needs many, many more dreamers. Because when they succeed, as seldom as it happens, we all end up better thanks to them.

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