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Y Combinator's Altman: What I Worry About in Business [video]
- sarciszewski 11y agoAnyone have a text transcript handy? I don't like multimedia.
- tristanho 11y agoIt's very similar to what he talked about here: http://blog.samaltman.com/unit-economics http://blog.samaltman.com/unit-economics At least for the first section of the interview.
- on_ 11y ago> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-09-24/y-contributor-s-altman-what-i-worry-about http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-09-24/y-contributo... Ahh yes, Dan Altman, a recent hire at SV clone "Y Contributor", talks about attention to detail, and working with the Samwer bros. Edit: << pun intended.
- ThomPete 11y agoI am not actually sure why people have so much against the Samwer brothers. Have they done anything particularly despicable? I know their model is to copy any potential idea coming out of the US which I don't understand the issue with. One thing they really did well was to have a structure that makes it easy for them to localize any company. I hear the work environment is hard but so is it many other places. Or maybe I am missing your joke?
- on_ 11y agoI have nothing against them, they are an organization founded by smart MBAs with a strong focus on software and finance. Some of their media companies are a bit derivative, but what would you expect from a finance company. The organization is run by detail oriented, anal-retentive founders who know how to edit a team. Sometimes though, I think they get a bit lost in repackaging other peoples content, and in their haste, miss a few titular details.
- seiji 11y agocopy any potential idea coming out of the US which I don't understand the issue with. Except, they don't just copy the idea, they copy the entire products and companies wholesale (interface, API, UI, user interaction model). How is that not bad?
- gnaritas 11y agoHow is it bad? Business doesn't have to be original.
- pavlov 11y agoThere are plenty of legal protections for corporate IP: patents, copyrights, trade secrets... If an aspect of a business can't be protected, competitors are free to copy it. Consider a small coffee shop. Are they allowed to write the customer's name on the cup? That's clearly not an original idea, they copied it from a bigger competitor. Should it be forbidden?
- peterjancelis 11y agoI love how everybody in Silicon Valley claims ideas don't matter, only execution does, then hate on the company that is taking that maxim to its ultimate conclusion.
- ThomPete 11y agoExactly!
- lmm 11y agoAs a European they're adding a lot of value for me, by making useful products available for me. Don't like your products being copied? Stop making them US-only. I would use the "real thing" if I could.
- stock_toaster 11y agoWith the recent "death" of safe harbor in Europe, I can only assume it will become more pervasive, as it gets harder for silicon valley startups to do business internationally (at least until they are large enough to afford multi-presence).
- gozo 11y agoI think they are implicitly challenging peoples ideas how startup works. Both for people who are "waiting for the right moment" to start a startup and people already running a startup and feel they have an advantage. While I'm not a big personal fan of them I think competition is good. US startups need to step up their game and not coast until getting acquired.
- wpietri 11y agoPersonally, I despise them because they're parasites. I'm also not a big fan of, say, tapeworms. Sure, I don't doubt that tapeworms are also miracles of evolution. And sure, I guess even tapeworms have to eat. But at the end of the day, they're still parasites, and I still think they're repulsive. Ugh.
- lmm 11y agoAll businesses take things from those that have come before. These guys make money because they're providing a valuable service.
- wpietri 11y agoThe problem isn't that they borrow ideas from others; it's that they do it in such volume and with such little creativity of their own. Zynga faced similar criticism: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/08/08/a-photo-retrospective-of-the-games-developers-claim-zynga-has-cloned/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/08/08/a-photo-re... Both companies do of course make money. But that doesn't entitle them to respect, just money.
- on_ 11y agoThey really drive home a few points often overlooked: Business fundamentals are really important, while not the only thing, that are a critical aspect of longevity. Ideas are less important than execution. Porter's 5 forces model provides some basic criteria for evaluating competition. If you provide something easy to copy and the barriers to entry are low, it could be a good idea but not a great business. In one of Sam Altman's lectures the "when to expand internationally" question is brought up. I don't want to misqoute it, so I won't. The context might have been the Samwer bros, but he gives some good insight.
- ThomPete 11y agoSo ideas do matter after all? Not just execution? Again an italian restaurant opening up on the blog right next to another isn't going to complain that someone steals their idea even though they sell more or less the same products. Furthermore Rocket Internet takes ideas that haven't yet come to Europe. People do that all the time just very few have been so successful as the Samwer Brothers.
- wakeless 11y agoNo [video] ?
- ibsufupu 11y agoGood job dodging those landmines. It's always nice to hear him talk about this stuff. What I would like even more is to just hear people knowledgeable about this kind of stuff just chat. Doesn't even have to be able what they're good at. I just want to witness their mindset.
- firasd 11y agoI know what you mean and there's surprisingly good content on youtube along those lines. Some examples: (1) How to Start a Startup (by Sam Altman et al): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxIJaCMEptJjxmmQgGFsnCg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxIJaCMEptJjxmmQgGFsnCg (2) CS183C: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnsTB8Q5VgnVzh1S-VMCXiuwJglk5AV-- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnsTB8Q5VgnVzh1S-VMCX... (3) PreMoney conference: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOStnEM8wBOYdQ6FFXTnYfBVjSCsQ7dlQ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOStnEM8wBOYdQ6FFXTnY... And of course a lot of great podcasts.
- rokhayakebe 11y agoI would like to see a YC clone for Dude's businesses, companies that interested in building a profitable business that pays dividend yearly. No exit, No billion dollar valuation, actually no valuation necessary.
- firasd 11y agoGreat quote about ‘Unicorns’ (lightly edited from verbal form): “I looked through the list of companies that have an over a billion dollar valuation recently, and more than half, I think, were valued between like a billion and 1.5 billion, and something like a quarter were valued exactly at a billion. So people are clearly obsessed with getting to this mark, and they are willing to put all sorts of weird structure on their terms to get there. If you were looking at the financial data, you would say something is amiss. You’d say there is some fraud going on or something, if you were just looking at the numbers. Because they don’t fit the distribution you’d expect. There is this huge desire to get right to a billion or just over. I don’t care about it. I think it’s dumb, but that’s not going to make a company great or not.” As a sidenote, Sam should probably stop antagonizing his interviewers by dismissing the business pontification featured on their shows :) I agree with him but it’s also a bit unnecessary.
- lambdasquirrel 11y agoWell how do you address a trollish question then? Honest question. At some point, you need to push back.
- firasd 11y agoWell, why isn’t he interested in pontificating about the business environment? It’s probably because he doesn’t consider it worthwhile. I would just say that: I don’t pontificate on trends when I don’t see concrete value in reasoning about them. If you’re literally on someone’s show and dismissing their program or channel it’s a bit biting. Their whole raison d’etre is to talk about the business environment.
- zem 11y agonope. pet peeve - symbolism isn't irrational. "a billion dollars" is a powerful symbol, and may well pay off as much in psychological benefits as it loses in structural weirdness. or it may not, but it's definitely not clear-cut enough to dismiss as "dumb".
- firasd 11y ago
- vasilipupkin 11y agoGreat interview, but my advice for Sam would be to drop the use of "like". I think it makes him sound a little bit like a high school student :)
- rokhayakebe 11y agoSam's audience and customers will either like the "like," or not care.
- efoto 11y agoAs far as I can tell his use of the word is totally appropriate and not even close to high schoolers "like". Trust me, I have one at home.
- vasilipupkin 11y agoperhaps, but I counted like between 4 and 6 likes, that were, like, totally unnecessary :)
- peterjancelis 11y agoI also hate the overuse of the word 'like' but didn't notice it here until you mentioned it. It was fine.
- userium 11y agoI agree with the comment about diversity; "Everyone talks about diversity in tech. I think the best thing you can do is not talk about it but just act on it". With over 40% of women leaving tech, we (http://keepwomen.com/ http://keepwomen.com/) have been doing research into this topic and talked to lots of women in tech. One of the things we found out was the importance of finding a company culture that’s right for you. Those women who persisted and changed jobs eventually found a company that was a good match for them. So we think one of the ways to "act on it", is to help women find a company culture that's right for them.
- curiousjorge 11y agohe seems like he doesnt know whats going to happen next, just like everyone else.
- jaoued 11y agoMy view is that the ones, who first hand know will succeed are the founders and co. (even if they sometime doubt)... Investors, etc..., on the other hand, once they invest will always put the right spin and word to fullfill the prophecy. Before they invest, most of of them have no clue, hence invest in large numbers of startup projects with the hope, at least one of each portfolio will make boom for the entire portfolio. "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." dixit Niels Bohr. Good interview from Sam though.