5 ms·

Ask PG: What would your next startup be?

58 points by nick007 17y ago

PG, have you ever considered doing another startup? Or, even if you aren't considering it anymore, did you ever consider it after finishing up at Yahoo? If so, what would it be? Merry Christmas

leelin 17y ago
Is Y Combinator not an ambitious, challenging, and impressive enough startup?
- gruseom 17y ago
  It's a meta-startup, which is probably different enough that the original question doesn't answer itself.
- richardburton 17y ago
  Great point. But the question still stands: if pg wasn't investing all his time and energy into dozens of startups and wanted to put his energies into a new company, what would he go for?
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - mechanical_fish 17y ago
    Isn't this like asking my grandfather which of his eleven children is his favorite?
    - derefr 17y ago
      There's a difference between "which of these do you like best," and "which of these do you think your own skills would be best suited to."
    - moe 17y ago
      Always the smallest girl. But they never admit that.
- nick007 17y ago
  I wouldn't consider YC a "startup" in the sense of the word that most people here think of it. Note that YC was just nominated for a Crunchie in the Angel Investor category.
jmonegro 17y ago
It wouldn't surprise me if he stayed at YC for a very long time. As far as I can tell, he loves this.
staunch 17y ago
"10. Independently wealthy This is my excuse for not starting a startup. Startups are stressful. Why do it if you don't need the money? For every "serial entrepreneur," there are probably twenty sane ones who think "Start another company? Are you crazy?"" -- http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html
alanthonyc 17y ago
He's got a request for startup (http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html). I'd think that he'd be working on one of these if were willing to spend the time.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
SlyShy 17y ago
I too would like to know what idea of PG's to best steal. ;)
pg 17y ago
Leelin's right in a way. We think of YC as a kind of of startup. Our m.o. is to treat investing as if it were a technical problem. If I had to start another startup in the classic sense, I might do RFS 1: http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html I did consider trying another startup once after Yahoo. I hired 3 hackers during the summer of 2000 to work on a prototype of a hosted application platform. I couldn't convince Rtm or Trevor to work on it with me, though, and I wasn't into the project enough to do it without cofounders.
- coffeemug 17y ago
  I always thought that the problem statement for rfs1 is excellent - far more insightful than other rfs statements and hints. Perhaps this is because you've spent more time thinking about the problem. This is an incredibly interesting problem I've thought a lot about, so I'll say the following despite the danger of turning this into discussion about rfs1. Since I first read it, I found myself disagreeing with the following statement: We think they will mostly die, because we think we know what will replace them, and it is too far from their current model for them to reach it in time. I think one of the fundamental questions is what type of content is valuable today (compared to what type of content was valuable two hundred years ago). Back when the newspaper business started, news were extremely desirable and difficult to get (and therefore valuable). Someone actually had to travel to the front lines, record the news, and then break it faster than everyone else in order to make money. The cultural artifact of this remains today - newspapers are still called newspapers, and when you turn on CNN you often see the term breaking news (despite the fact that every other channel is "breaking" the news as well). But this model has almost no differentiating value today - real-time publishing technology is so cheap that anyone can break news, and therefore no one wants to pay for it. News is a cheap commodity, not unlike orange juice. Today we have an opposite problem - there is an exponential explosion of content, and people are willing to pay a lot of money for services that filter rare, excellent, original content from the rest of the noise (I don't count digg and reddit because they do a very poor job at finding excellent content). People are willing to pay for excellent writers, balanced and insightful opinion pieces, and articles about current events that actually teach us something, rather than tell us what happened. Some "traditional" publications have already figured this out - Economist, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal (although the future of the latter is in question precisely because of potential for declining quality). They didn't completely embrace this model and don't take nearly full advantage of information technology, but they're on the right track - they accept great guest authors, provide valuable and insightful opinion pieces, and give us articles that teach us things. In exchange, their customers have consistently payed up while other publishers have seen a steady loss of readership. The trick here is branding - Economist has a world class brand that's recognized for their valuable content. Once they get around to using modern technology to take this model to its logical extreme, there is no stopping them. I suppose a startup could do it first if it figures out a good way to quickly build a brand (which shouldn't be hard, considering how little good content is out there and how many people complain about it), but fundamentally there is nothing stopping Economist from doing this - they're already in a perfect position to do it. All they need a little bit of technology (this should be easy), and a bit of a psychological shift in their culture. They're already on the right track - the solution is definitely not too far from their current model.

58 points by nick007 17y ago

PG, have you ever considered doing another startup? Or, even if you aren't considering it anymore, did you ever consider it after finishing up at Yahoo? If so, what would it be? Merry Christmas

leelin 17y ago

Is Y Combinator not an ambitious, challenging, and impressive enough startup?

gruseom 17y ago
It's a meta-startup, which is probably different enough that the original question doesn't answer itself.
richardburton 17y ago
Great point. But the question still stands: if pg wasn't investing all his time and energy into dozens of startups and wanted to put his energies into a new company, what would he go for?
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- mechanical_fish 17y ago
  Isn't this like asking my grandfather which of his eleven children is his favorite?
  - derefr 17y ago
    There's a difference between "which of these do you like best," and "which of these do you think your own skills would be best suited to."
  - moe 17y ago
    Always the smallest girl. But they never admit that.
nick007 17y ago
I wouldn't consider YC a "startup" in the sense of the word that most people here think of it. Note that YC was just nominated for a Crunchie in the Angel Investor category.

jmonegro 17y ago

It wouldn't surprise me if he stayed at YC for a very long time. As far as I can tell, he loves this.

staunch 17y ago

"10. Independently wealthy This is my excuse for not starting a startup. Startups are stressful. Why do it if you don't need the money? For every "serial entrepreneur," there are probably twenty sane ones who think "Start another company? Are you crazy?"" -- http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html

alanthonyc 17y ago

He's got a request for startup (http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html). I'd think that he'd be working on one of these if were willing to spend the time.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

SlyShy 17y ago

I too would like to know what idea of PG's to best steal. ;)

pg 17y ago

Leelin's right in a way. We think of YC as a kind of of startup. Our m.o. is to treat investing as if it were a technical problem. If I had to start another startup in the classic sense, I might do RFS 1: http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html I did consider trying another startup once after Yahoo. I hired 3 hackers during the summer of 2000 to work on a prototype of a hosted application platform. I couldn't convince Rtm or Trevor to work on it with me, though, and I wasn't into the project enough to do it without cofounders.

coffeemug 17y ago
I always thought that the problem statement for rfs1 is excellent - far more insightful than other rfs statements and hints. Perhaps this is because you've spent more time thinking about the problem. This is an incredibly interesting problem I've thought a lot about, so I'll say the following despite the danger of turning this into discussion about rfs1. Since I first read it, I found myself disagreeing with the following statement: We think they will mostly die, because we think we know what will replace them, and it is too far from their current model for them to reach it in time. I think one of the fundamental questions is what type of content is valuable today (compared to what type of content was valuable two hundred years ago). Back when the newspaper business started, news were extremely desirable and difficult to get (and therefore valuable). Someone actually had to travel to the front lines, record the news, and then break it faster than everyone else in order to make money. The cultural artifact of this remains today - newspapers are still called newspapers, and when you turn on CNN you often see the term breaking news (despite the fact that every other channel is "breaking" the news as well). But this model has almost no differentiating value today - real-time publishing technology is so cheap that anyone can break news, and therefore no one wants to pay for it. News is a cheap commodity, not unlike orange juice. Today we have an opposite problem - there is an exponential explosion of content, and people are willing to pay a lot of money for services that filter rare, excellent, original content from the rest of the noise (I don't count digg and reddit because they do a very poor job at finding excellent content). People are willing to pay for excellent writers, balanced and insightful opinion pieces, and articles about current events that actually teach us something, rather than tell us what happened. Some "traditional" publications have already figured this out - Economist, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal (although the future of the latter is in question precisely because of potential for declining quality). They didn't completely embrace this model and don't take nearly full advantage of information technology, but they're on the right track - they accept great guest authors, provide valuable and insightful opinion pieces, and give us articles that teach us things. In exchange, their customers have consistently payed up while other publishers have seen a steady loss of readership. The trick here is branding - Economist has a world class brand that's recognized for their valuable content. Once they get around to using modern technology to take this model to its logical extreme, there is no stopping them. I suppose a startup could do it first if it figures out a good way to quickly build a brand (which shouldn't be hard, considering how little good content is out there and how many people complain about it), but fundamentally there is nothing stopping Economist from doing this - they're already in a perfect position to do it. All they need a little bit of technology (this should be easy), and a bit of a psychological shift in their culture. They're already on the right track - the solution is definitely not too far from their current model.