What I’ve learned from users

Totally depends on the ambition; perhaps it was never PG’s ambition to completely understand and “own” the target audience of HN, but rather wanted to delegate that responsibility, to focus on YC’s core users instead.

It may be precisely because of a tendency to understand and improve, that it is a mental sinkhole.

Prompted by the negative feedback that this essay received, ranging from being a sales pitch in disguise, to being a word salad going in all directions without answering the central question posed by the author right in the opening paragraphs, I had to go and re-examine the piece and see if these concerns are valid or not, and unexpectedly the second reading reaffirmed my initial positive reaction that this is actually a good piece, maybe not the best, but still good.

In spirit of open discussion and intellectual curiosity here, I share my insights in the following order matching that of the post:

1) PG opens with the best advice that he could dispense to prospective applicants which is "what you've learned from users".

2) He proceeds to ask himself the same question.

3) He then informs readers that his users; startup founders, usually face the same set of problems across the board.

4) Since these problems are the same, he thought of automating the solution to scale his business (dogfooding in some sense).

5) That blew up in his face spectacularly that he had to rework the plan and concede that his solution won't scale.

6) But these same problems are not recognized uniformly by founders as they sometimes face difficulties identifying them in the first place, that's where the YC partners' role come to fill this unmet need.

7) Even when people are good at identifying problems, some are bad at determining the severity or urgency that these problems pose, cue again the YC partners' role.

8) Even when they're good at risk assessment, some are bad at risk mitigation, and won't listen to the advice given by the partners but it is not made clear what he means exactly by "not listening", dismissing/not acting on solutions proposed by YC staff, or not acknowledging that there's a problem to begin with?

9) Getting down to business to solve these problems warrants focus, and how this focus is tied into speed, and how YC can help with that.

10) Startup colleagues are more important than YC partners when it comes to realizing success with their feedback, guidance and even practical help, and how YC is the best in class in this regard.

Even though the marketing language, esp the value propositions in the piece is a bit stronger for my taste, but I can't say with honesty that it overpowered the core message of the essay nor was it incoherent or disjointed in anyway that made following or understanding impossible as some have claimed here.

Verdict: 8/10

> Not that founders listen. That was another big surprise: how often founders don't listen to us. A couple weeks ago I talked to a partner who had been working for YC for a couple batches and was starting to see the pattern. "They come back a year later," she said, "and say 'We wish we'd listened to you.'"

I have a theory I've shared a few times that one of our main problems is Exceptionalism, and stuff like this go into the evidence pile. My first thought on reading this paragraph was, "Someone needs to watch more Gordon Ramsay shows."

PG's observation is practically the thesis of GR's Kitchen Nightmares. Owners think their business is in trouble, not that they are in trouble, and so any advice that touches their identity is abruptly and sometimes aggressively dismissed. One guy was so invested in the fact that he'd bought some fancy french stove that Ramsay had to bully him into selling it. Even used the price versus a stove more appropriate for the business was enough cash to keep the owner afloat for an extra 3-6 months. It seemed like Ramsay thought that if he hadn't bought it in the first place, the restaurant wouldn't have gotten on his show at all.

Most of the computing problems in software were solved in the 70's and 80's. The new solutions trickle in just fast enough to keep things from getting tedious. Most of what we spend time on are 'process' or 'style' issues that are really people problems, ranging from cognition to group dynamics. But we don't want to face that because, as someone once put it, some of us were drawn to computers because we thought we could avoid interpersonal dynamics, and instead what happened is that we spent years looking at computers while our peers were practicing interpersonal skills, putting us several years more behind, and then we find out the job is substantially about interpersonal skills. We don't want to look at it because it both breaks the illusion and suggests that we made a mistake, and we can't make those, can we.

Everybody has these problems to some degree or another. You can learn how to deal with them by watching other people do it. On TV, doing hobbies (with or without social groups), volunteering, heck even exercise comes down to getting the emotional part of your brain to allow the objective part to low-grade torture you so that you feel better the rest of the time.

If you look at the list of essay titles at https://paulgraham.com/articles.html, I think there are a lot of interesting topics that are a lot broader than startups - e.g. "heresy", "putting ideas into words", "how to work hard", "donate unrestricted", which are all from Feb 21 or later

pg actually reminds me of Eliyahu Goldratt, who developed the "theory of constraints"("TOC"). Dr Goldratt was a physicist who then tried to apply the logical problem-solving approach from physics to business problems initially, but whose work has been also used for interpersonal conflict resolution [1]. I get the same vibe from pg's essays, just trying to apply the same critical thinking skills to new areas from first principles, and just trying to see where it leads regardless of what the "established" wisdom is.

If anyone is interested in learning more, most people start by reading "The Goal", which is application of TOC to manufacturing, but if you're interested in how to think about how to apply new technology to existing human systems in a way that actually brings benefits, "beyond the goal" by goldratt is an audiobook that you should really listen to.

Fyi I have no financial interest in TOC :) But if anyone is interested in discussing how TOC thinking might apply to the problems startups face, I'd love to chat, please get in touch! (Contact info in profile)

[1] https://www.tocforeducation.com/yanibook.html

"paying it forward"? Getting personal satisfaction from helping others? E.g https://www.indiehackers.com/ ? I haven't spent a lot of time there but it seems to be a community of exactly the kind of founders you describe trying to help each other out.