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How Not to Die

paulgraham.com

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Re: How Not to Die

#81

Post by rms »

SwellJoe wrote: post #56
rms wrote: post #14

It's kind of depressing to not have any real startup peer group in Pittsburgh. News.yc is serving as a kind of substitute, for me. I'm really looking forward to when we get to turn our startup's shopping cart on and ask news.yc for feedback.

You need to get to a startup hub, if you're serious. It makes a huge difference in mindset, and odds of success. I've started companies in Houston, Austin, and now in the Valley. Austin was vastly better than Houston, but Silicon Valley is worlds apart from anything I've ever seen. The only benefit to not being in a startup hub is that you don't have as short of a runway during that very early self-funded stage. You…

I'm an undergraduate in college, studying industrial engineering. I ask myself regularly what the point is, because I have absolutely no desire to work as an industrial engineer. You may remember industrial engineers as the efficiency experts from films such as Office Space and American Beauty.

So I know the thing to do is to drop out and move to the Valley. But the only socially acceptable way I had to do that was acceptance into Y Combinator, or angel funding from someone else.

So for now, my company is in Pittsburgh. It's going to be really easy to "not die" because there is absolutely no way for my company to fail because we have no expenses. Unless we get sued and can't afford to defend ourselves. While we're not dying, we should start making money. So if we have enough revenue to support a Bay Area or NYC lifestyle, we would happily move the company there, regardless of college education.

Re: How Not to Die

#82

Post by oditogre »

sam wrote: post #70
oditogre wrote: post #43

I wish I had known about Octopart before reading this essay. I needed a part a couple weeks ago that I had no idea what the technical term for it was, my best guesses lead to things that were totally wrong, and the company that made it was now under a different name, and I could find no trace of the device or anything similar on their online catalog. Oh, and my predecessor, who bought the thing in the first place, 'p…

Cool. Could you shoot me an email with the part number? Just curious. (sam octopart.com)

Will do. And BTW, Octopart is now in my bookmarks toolbar at work, so please follow this essay's advice and don't die. :)

Re: How Not to Die

#84

Post by imp »

mynameishere wrote: post #44
jsjenkins168 wrote: post #13

I will say it plainly: This is the most influential, well written essay I have ever read. It hit a chord very deep with me..

I hate to always be the jerk on this board, but: 1) How can a just-now-released essay be influential at all? 2) At least half of pg's essays are better written than this, which to me seemed a little phoned-in. It's not really an essay anyway, but a peptalk. He didn't even have the usual cavalcade of proofreaders at the bottom. 3) The most influential essay I've ever read is the first essay of "Genealogy of Morals".

I think that sometimes off-the cuff speeches/essays are more influential because they aren't heavily edited and flow more like how a normal person would speak. I thought this was a great essay.

Re: How Not to Die

#85

Post by sbraford »

Dangit Mr. Graham you're making me want to do a startup again!

(just when I'm finally making > $100k if you include all the bad-ass benefits & shit!)

Re: How Not to Die

#87

Post by vlad »

nostrademons wrote: post #69
vlad wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" It makes sense when you think about it. The yCombinator application weeds out people who are unintelligent; the interview weeds out people who are inflexible. So anyone who gets into the program is bound to be both intelligent and flexible. " That statement is self-serving, so, whether it is true or not, it stands that there must be a better way to express what you're saying (and without speaking for YCombinator, a…

There's a difference between "Everyone who gets into yCombinator is smart" and "Everyone who doesn't get into yCombinator is not". The former is true as far as I've observed; I don't have a whole lot to go on, but I've met a couple YC applicants at startup gatherings and frequent the sites of a few more, and they all seem like sharp cookies. I never claimed the latter. There are bound to be smart people that don't ge…

Yeah, it makes sense that you didn't mean that. I got stuck on the line that said "The YCombinator application weeds out people who are unintelligent"--which of course clearly implies that 90% of the applicants are NOT smart, unless they got to the interview stage--but the second paragraph has a great message.

Of course YCombinator founders are smart. That's why I said so. I haven't met a stupid one. But it doesn't mean that they were the only smart people, or that stupid people make bad entrepreneurs, or that a great way to judge how smart someone is is by their degree, or that a great way to predict success in the consumer app space is how 'smart' someone is. All of those assumptions go against what is preached time and time again by both Pauls, Max Levchin, and others.

And I still disagree that, based on Paul's application, essays, interviews, and speeches, that YCombinator's main filter is how smart the team is. The order is likely 1) how famous the company already is, 2) whether the team is incorporated already, 3) whether the team is bigger than one person, 4) followed by how dedicated the team is, 5) and, how smart it is. (But it's the same kind of speculation as anyone else's.)

Please let me know what you think, because I respect your opinion.

Re: How Not to Die

#88

Post by juwo »

dfranke wrote: post #67
juwo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about this: If you are in the YC club, you and your cofounders, the idea, prototype, business model, user base have passed muster. Your team is in a startup hub like SFO/BOS. You will have the backing, connections and resources of YC. Otherwise, the qualifiers that apply to any other startup in general, apply.

If this talk didn't apply to people not accepted by YC, Paul wouldn't have bothered publishing it.

before you follow the herd and blindly down mod my comment:

you dont have to get into YC to succeed, but understand he was talking at an exclusive event - the final YC dinner.

Also understand the odds. He picks teams most likely to succeed. If he rates odds of success as 1/2 (or whatever the article said), and the odds of getting in are 20/400, then the odds of success for you and me, those who didnt get in, is 1/40. Which is 2.5% and vibes with I recall that people generally say that startup odds are 2%.

Re: How Not to Die

#89

Post by vlad »

SwellJoe wrote: post #57
geebee wrote: post #17

50% sounds like really good odds to me, given the payout. It depends to some extent on what it means to fail, and how long it takes to succeed. But if your odds of a substantial payout are 50%, and the length of time to get to success or failure is less than 4 years, then these are phenomenal odds. Of course, it's not just money - you "pay" in other ways. If it takes, say, 4 years to get to the success or failure poi…

I'm on my second startup. My first was a "failure" by some definitions of failure (it paid the bills, bought me a 350Z, and worked me nearly to death for seven years...it never really stopped being a service business despite my attempts to convince myself that I was selling products--I consider it a failure, but I learned a lot). "Wisdom and exhaustion in equal parts, I'd suspect, and only one side is going to win."…

Vote this guy up, he's smart. I, too, will never do a startup alone, as it's just too draining to do so.

At the same time, it's exactly what someone should do who's starting out, if they can't get funding or a team together. Try to get all three for as long as it takes.

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