11 ms·

Why It's Safe for Founders to Be Nice (2015)

121 points by traviswingo 9y ago

cisanti 9y ago
What about paying fair share of taxes that are expected to be paid by the society? Just like loopholes are legal, most of the time being not nice to people is legal. Meaning, nothing stops YC companies to sign a treaty that paying taxes is part of being nice and decent citizens of the world. I'm talking about Dropbox, for an example. Very often the moral police stops when it impacts you or your wallet. It's called a sacrifice for a reason.
- muninn_ 9y ago
  Great comment and exactly right. Kudos. Look at all these companies, Google and company who seek to "do no evil" except they don't want to pay their fair share of taxes using every loophole and deduction available. When I donate to charity I don't take tax deductions. It never made sense to me. I donate because it's right. Not because it will reduce my taxable income.
- Taek 9y ago
  If you are paying taxes optionally that your competitor is choosing not to pay, you are at a disadvantage. If you want companies to pay taxes, you have to make sure that doing so doesn't make it harder to compete. That includes competing with international companies.
- philwelch 9y ago
  I'm not a libertarian anymore, but I still don't really buy into this criticism, for a few reasons. Taxes are a legal obligation. If taxes aren't high enough, it's the government's job to fix that. Paying more taxes than you are legally obligated to pay is a disservice to shareholders, which in the case of a YC company includes almost all of your investors and employees. Corporate taxes in particular are economically inefficient. Corporations are just straw men. Any money that a corporation earns is either paid out as dividends (at which point it's taxable as individual income) or reinvested into growing the company (at which point it turns into things like "salary", which is taxable as individual income). The US in particular has exceptionally high corporate tax rates--among the highest in the developed world. And if you're going to choose a tax to avoid paying, US federal corporate tax is pretty much an ideal choice. Very little of that money goes to things like schools (which are paid for on the local and state level) or Medicare (which is paid for with payroll taxes). The biggest chunk of it pays for the US military, and a huge chunk of US military spending is pork for defense contractors. In other words, US federal corporate taxes are largely a mechanism to redistribute money from corporations like Dropbox towards corporations like Blackwater and Lockheed Martin. And you think it's nice and decent of Dropbox to play along with this scheme?
  - Retric 9y ago
    Nameplate tax rate is basically meaningless. US effective corporate tax rate after deductions is lower than the OECD average. Though by how much is up for debate. PS: You can debate various points, but it's only 11% of total federal tax revenue.
    - gnicholas 9y ago
      You're correct that the nominal rate is much higher than the effective rate for most US corporations. This is especially true for tech companies, which have R&D tax credits and are able to shift much of their income offshore because their profits are based largely on intangibles (which can be moved by signing some contracts, as opposed to factories or restaurants, which are geographically fixed).
    - adventured 9y ago
      The US effective corporate tax rate is not lower than the OECD average in fact. The most authoritative, recent report on the matter by the CBO: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/reports/52419-internationaltaxratecomp.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/115th-congress-2017-... It clearly makes the case that the US is non-competitive with other G20 nations on the corporate tax rate. The US average corporate income tax rate for 2012, was 29%. In Canada it was 16%; Brazil 22%; China 19%; UK 10%; Germany 14.5%; Australia 17%; South Korea 20%; France 20%. How much more non-competitive can the US get exactly? And when it comes to the OECD, the US is once again far from competitive: "The most recent estimate comes from the World Bank and International Finance Commission, which put the United States’ effective rate for 2014 at 27.9 percent. That’s second-highest behind New Zealand among OECD countries and 15th-highest among the 189 countries measured." http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/sep/09/eric-bolling/does-us-have-highest-corporate-tax-rate-free-world/ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/sep/09/...
      - Retric 9y ago
        Sanity check, What is total US corporate profit before taxes per year? And what's 27.9 percent of that. Or from GAO: http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/654957.pdf http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/654957.pdf "For tax year 2010 (the most recent information available), profitable U.S. corporations that filed a Schedule M-3 paid U.S. federal income taxes amounting to about 13 percent of the pretax worldwide income that they reported in their financial statements" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_tax_holiday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_tax_holiday dropped actual tax rate to 5.25% in 2004. Companies are more than happy to wait for the next one. PS: Also of note a lot of overseas profit is anything as it's easy to pretend US operations only break even by shifting around costs on paper.
- Powerofmene 9y ago
  I think you are confusing tax avoidance, which is a perfectly legal strategy with tax evasion, an illegal action. When you make the strategic decision to make a charitable contribution in December in order to pass the threshold for deductibility and thereby reduce your personal taxes, that is legal avoidance. Businesses do the same in order to maximize returns to all stakeholders. There is nothing unscrupulous or immoral in doing so. Paying taxes is not synonymous with being nice. Filing a business tax return and paying all taxes owed is a legal obligation. Filing a personal return, if you owe taxes, is a personal obligation. If you do not owe taxes, you are not obligated to file a return; however, it is required if you would like to receive the refund you are owed. There is no legal obligation to run your business in a way that maximizes taxes due to the government and no business operates in such a manner. I seriously doubt you could find many, if any, personal returns where a filer completes their return in a manner to pay the most taxes they can by ignoring legal deductions, credits, etc. Nice has nothing to do with it.
  - cisanti 9y ago
    It has everything to do with nice. If you use loopholes then you're not nice, you just know how to make more profit. It doesn't make you nice, only less noble and honest. Something being legal doesn't mean it's nice.
    - botnik 9y ago
      Surely, the same can be said 'it doesn't make you not nice, by doing something which the state considers illegal'. The assumption that the state has everyones best interest at heart is nonsense. In the UK it's becoming more apparent that the state is a considerable part of the problem. Arbitrary rules set by states is not a moral barometer.
    - valuearb 9y ago
      It's nice and honest to follow the law. Paying the minimum amount of taxes possible is following the law.
    - Powerofmene 9y ago
ivv 9y ago
When talking to startups as their prospective client, I feel I can often tell which ones are from a Y-combinator batch; they are nice, responsive, and thoughtful.
- rhizome 9y ago
  I had a phone screen with a YC company this week and left with the opposite conclusion.
- dasil003 9y ago
  What type of thing puts you in position to be a client of many startups?
  - ivv 9y ago
    I work in one of the data-related verticals that has a fair number of startups selling to companies like ours.
gallerdude 9y ago
Yeah, I think successes of the likes of Apple and Netflix show that providing the most benefit to the consumer is what always wins in the end.
- IvyMike 9y ago
  Explain Comcast.
  - gallerdude 9y ago
    Right now, lack of choices. But I think when we see Musk's satellite internet service, it'll be a completely different story.
    - mmirate 9y ago
      Bandwidth and latency aren't exactly favorable on any sort of satelite internet connection. How will the Elon Musk brand change this?
      - jbooth 9y ago
        The idea is lots and lots of low orbit satellites with cell-phone-like handoffs as they zip across the horizon. LEO is only 200 miles high or so, which is ~1ms for light to travel if they can make it work. Existing satellite internet goes out to geosynchronous orbit which is much, much farther away.
        imglorp 9y ago
        Notable exception being Iridium. The wiki points out interesting design goals including coverage and doppler shifts. I do worry about 4000 new objects in orbit. We've got tons of orbital trash already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...
      - noonespecial 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
geofft 9y ago
Why do we believe "nice" is correlated with how much you charge for your product instead of how aggressively you grow? Let's take Uber as an example of a company that a lot of people would call not nice: their prices are great (I think it's widely believed that the prices are VC-subsidized and unsustainable in the long term), but it's their growth strategy that a lot of people have problems with. I have never once heard Travis Kalanick criticized because Uber charged too much.
- rhizome 9y ago
  The essay is using a very narrow definition of "nice," which is used to differentiate them from the greedy, and is essentially an business economics essay. This is to say, we don't "believe" it, it's just the way the essay is written. Uber has gotten a lot of criticism for surge pricing.
  - geofft 9y ago
    Yeah, but ... isn't the article saying that you'll make more money if you're long-term greedy instead of short-term greedy? Is "nice" a term of art in business writing to mean short-term greed?
  - oceanplexian 9y ago
    There is nothing wrong with being greedy. Greedy does not mean that you need to take or steal from others. It means you have an excessive drive for success. "Excessive" is usually defined by society at large, and society at large is unquestionably a cesspit of low consciousness, and self-centered thinking. What I take from this article is the perception of being nice is important. But the reality between the lines is that nobody is in business to be nice (unless you're running a non profit). We're here to make money. If startup founders don't realize this someone else will, and they will eat their lunch.
    - blackrose 9y ago
      Isn't greed self-centeredness? > society at large is unquestionably a cesspit of low consciousness, and self-centered thinking That's a heck of a personal projection :) And pg disagrees with that last sentiment in the footnotes: > Many think successful startup founders are driven by money. In fact the secret weapon of the most successful founders is that they aren't. If they were, they'd have taken one of the acquisition offers that every fast-growing startup gets on the way up. What drives the most successful founders is the same thing that drives most people who make things: the company is their project.
BatFastard 9y ago
As someone who has been screwed by "rapacity", all I can say is be very very careful being "nice". As Pink Floyd said in a song "You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to, so that when they turn their backs on you. You'll get the chance to put the knife in." As someone who lost out on a billion dollar business, be nice, but watch out for knives in the back. Often those knives are in the form of law firms.
- jey 9y ago
  That sucks. Can you share more about this purported exception to the rule?
  - pfarnsworth 9y ago
    Mesh networks.
    - BatFastard 9y ago
      That was a minor detail ;-)
  - BatFastard 9y ago
    My experience was not with user rapacity but with partner rapacity. I have always found good will towards users pays back 10 fold. Partners on the other hand are much trickier. For me it was around what I thought was a carefully crafted contract. Long story by my partner seized all of the IP, than said "sue me". It was specifically prohibited in the contract, but I was not in a position at the time to spend a LOT of money fighting a team of lawyers. Unfortunately what my team had made look easy was beyond the capabilities of the team he hired to replace us. So the product floundered.
    - Sangermaine 9y ago
      In the future consider a fee-shifting provision in your contracts (meaning loser pays legal costs). If your case was as clear-cut as you say, it would have enabled you to fight it. It might also have dissuaded your partner from trying to do this to you if they knew they were in the wrong and would have had to pay the costs.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
freech 9y ago
All the comments here reply to the title, not the essay. It's about being nice to users, not the government or venture capitalists.
uptownfunk 9y ago
I can appreciate the article. However, while it may be safe to be nice, I don't think being nice is important to success in business. And I think that's what probably concerns more people. This kind of disappoints me though. I wish it were important to success to be nice, but my experience tells me otherwise. It's more important to right and just nice enough to get that across and be heard. How do you maintain your power and influence while being nice? I feel like you could kill your self by performing really well and setting a stellar track record and then earn the privilege of being able to be nice and still be respected... or you just swing your proverbial dick around and slam anyone who won't listen to you and rule by fear. The net payoff seems to suggest favoring dickish people at the top. And sad to say it seems that way many times. Also being nice can make people think you're weak and so it's harder to run a team with that mindset. I think the more definite path to success is being intelligent, shrewd and a competitive person. If that implies being nice then so be it, otherwise it doesn't seem so relevant. There's also different types of nice. Like superficial nice and genuine nice. Which are we referring to? I do envy those charismatic leaders that are successful and earn the love of their colleagues and employees. That's something I'd love to aspire to.
hosh 9y ago
Interesting. Makes me wonder about what lead Uber to be so aggressive.
erikb 9y ago
5-star cook says: "Cows are much more successful in life when cut in slices and being in a pan." The truth is that you not just need to be cunning, you need to be routine at it, so you can act nice while doing selfish things like removing founders without paying them out, putting competitors out of business, and telling guys who just spent the first three years of their child in your office instead of with their families that they need to clean out their desks. Without that ability what you can do is to sizzle nicely while being turned around in the pan.
- Mz 9y ago
  It used to take around 20 farmers to support a single non farmers, such as a noble or black smith. We now have many people supported by each farmer in the modern world. If people are too "nice," we can totally go back to a hunter-gatherer way of life instead of keeping modern institutions alive. I imagine billions would die to get there from here. But, at least we would no longer need to make hard decisions like which poor sucker to fire.
  - PeanutCurry 9y ago
    I'm not entirely sure I understand your metaphor in this case. I appreciate that it had something to do with efficiency but then I got lost because a 20:1 farmer-to-other feeding ratio seems incredibly unrealistic and made it hard to understand whether the ratio was relevant to the metaphor's point or was just an off the cuff sort of detail.
    - Mz 9y ago
      It isn't a metaphor. Without modern farming technology and techniques, the world cannot support 7 billion people. We deal with that fact or we die in droves. Those are our options.
- hasenj 9y ago
  Took me a while to read it: YC is the chef; founders are the cows.
- 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rdtsc 9y ago
> I grew up with a cartoon idea of a very successful businessman (in the cartoon it was always a man): a rapacious, cigar-smoking, table-thumping guy in his fifties who wins by exercising power, and isn't too fussy about how. I think when something new comes about it can't _look_ like something old if it wants to succeed. Basically it's hard to build a successful startup by looking like a cartoon businessman from the 80's, wearing a tie, being overtly and openly aggressive etc. If you're building something new and "cool" you had to be playful, dress informally, wear hoodie or t-shirt, on the surface appear to be super nice and friendly. Of course business is business and at the end of the day someone is getting stabbed in the back. But before that day comes it is all hugs, smiles and pats on the back. Anyone remember Google, how they succeeded not just by providing a better search experience, by also by building a "cool" company image -- playful bright colors, the whole "don't be evil" shtick, we'll feed you with gourmet food, etc. They were positioning themselves to be as different as possible from a traditional company. Now the funny thing is, the image of the startup has also become cartoonish with the shows like the "Silicon Valley" running for a few years. So CEOs wearing hoodies, being all informal and superficially nice, open office spaces and so on is getting a bit stale. I wonder what's next. Back to wearing ties and smoking cigars? Probably not. But I have heard people say they'd rather get back to having the previously derided and hated cubicles than doing the "cool" open office plan. Maybe working remotely is the new thing? But some companies have been doing that for a while as well. I hope that's the next revolution, when large giants as Google and Facebook, who sell digital connectivity as their primary product embrace the digital connectivity themselves and don't require workers to be in a physical location to get work done.
sametmax 9y ago
I love the Muslims saying: "Trust God, but tie up your camel".
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
yegor256a 9y ago
My take on this: http://www.yegor256.com/2017/08/22/to-be-nice-or-not.html http://www.yegor256.com/2017/08/22/to-be-nice-or-not.html

121 points by traviswingo 9y ago

What about paying fair share of taxes that are expected to be paid by the society? Just like loopholes are legal, most of the time being not nice to people is legal. Meaning, nothing stops YC companies to sign a treaty that paying taxes is part of being nice and decent citizens of the world. I'm talking about Dropbox, for an example. Very often the moral police stops when it impacts you or your wallet. It's called a sacrifice for a reason.

muninn_ 9y ago
Great comment and exactly right. Kudos. Look at all these companies, Google and company who seek to "do no evil" except they don't want to pay their fair share of taxes using every loophole and deduction available. When I donate to charity I don't take tax deductions. It never made sense to me. I donate because it's right. Not because it will reduce my taxable income.
Taek 9y ago
If you are paying taxes optionally that your competitor is choosing not to pay, you are at a disadvantage. If you want companies to pay taxes, you have to make sure that doing so doesn't make it harder to compete. That includes competing with international companies.
philwelch 9y ago
I'm not a libertarian anymore, but I still don't really buy into this criticism, for a few reasons. Taxes are a legal obligation. If taxes aren't high enough, it's the government's job to fix that. Paying more taxes than you are legally obligated to pay is a disservice to shareholders, which in the case of a YC company includes almost all of your investors and employees. Corporate taxes in particular are economically inefficient. Corporations are just straw men. Any money that a corporation earns is either paid out as dividends (at which point it's taxable as individual income) or reinvested into growing the company (at which point it turns into things like "salary", which is taxable as individual income). The US in particular has exceptionally high corporate tax rates--among the highest in the developed world. And if you're going to choose a tax to avoid paying, US federal corporate tax is pretty much an ideal choice. Very little of that money goes to things like schools (which are paid for on the local and state level) or Medicare (which is paid for with payroll taxes). The biggest chunk of it pays for the US military, and a huge chunk of US military spending is pork for defense contractors. In other words, US federal corporate taxes are largely a mechanism to redistribute money from corporations like Dropbox towards corporations like Blackwater and Lockheed Martin. And you think it's nice and decent of Dropbox to play along with this scheme?
- Retric 9y ago
  Nameplate tax rate is basically meaningless. US effective corporate tax rate after deductions is lower than the OECD average. Though by how much is up for debate. PS: You can debate various points, but it's only 11% of total federal tax revenue.
  - gnicholas 9y ago
    You're correct that the nominal rate is much higher than the effective rate for most US corporations. This is especially true for tech companies, which have R&D tax credits and are able to shift much of their income offshore because their profits are based largely on intangibles (which can be moved by signing some contracts, as opposed to factories or restaurants, which are geographically fixed).
  - adventured 9y ago
    The US effective corporate tax rate is not lower than the OECD average in fact. The most authoritative, recent report on the matter by the CBO: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/reports/52419-internationaltaxratecomp.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/115th-congress-2017-... It clearly makes the case that the US is non-competitive with other G20 nations on the corporate tax rate. The US average corporate income tax rate for 2012, was 29%. In Canada it was 16%; Brazil 22%; China 19%; UK 10%; Germany 14.5%; Australia 17%; South Korea 20%; France 20%. How much more non-competitive can the US get exactly? And when it comes to the OECD, the US is once again far from competitive: "The most recent estimate comes from the World Bank and International Finance Commission, which put the United States’ effective rate for 2014 at 27.9 percent. That’s second-highest behind New Zealand among OECD countries and 15th-highest among the 189 countries measured." http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/sep/09/eric-bolling/does-us-have-highest-corporate-tax-rate-free-world/ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/sep/09/...
    - Retric 9y ago
      Sanity check, What is total US corporate profit before taxes per year? And what's 27.9 percent of that. Or from GAO: http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/654957.pdf http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/654957.pdf "For tax year 2010 (the most recent information available), profitable U.S. corporations that filed a Schedule M-3 paid U.S. federal income taxes amounting to about 13 percent of the pretax worldwide income that they reported in their financial statements" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_tax_holiday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_tax_holiday dropped actual tax rate to 5.25% in 2004. Companies are more than happy to wait for the next one. PS: Also of note a lot of overseas profit is anything as it's easy to pretend US operations only break even by shifting around costs on paper.
Powerofmene 9y ago
I think you are confusing tax avoidance, which is a perfectly legal strategy with tax evasion, an illegal action. When you make the strategic decision to make a charitable contribution in December in order to pass the threshold for deductibility and thereby reduce your personal taxes, that is legal avoidance. Businesses do the same in order to maximize returns to all stakeholders. There is nothing unscrupulous or immoral in doing so. Paying taxes is not synonymous with being nice. Filing a business tax return and paying all taxes owed is a legal obligation. Filing a personal return, if you owe taxes, is a personal obligation. If you do not owe taxes, you are not obligated to file a return; however, it is required if you would like to receive the refund you are owed. There is no legal obligation to run your business in a way that maximizes taxes due to the government and no business operates in such a manner. I seriously doubt you could find many, if any, personal returns where a filer completes their return in a manner to pay the most taxes they can by ignoring legal deductions, credits, etc. Nice has nothing to do with it.
- cisanti 9y ago
  It has everything to do with nice. If you use loopholes then you're not nice, you just know how to make more profit. It doesn't make you nice, only less noble and honest. Something being legal doesn't mean it's nice.
  - botnik 9y ago
    Surely, the same can be said 'it doesn't make you not nice, by doing something which the state considers illegal'. The assumption that the state has everyones best interest at heart is nonsense. In the UK it's becoming more apparent that the state is a considerable part of the problem. Arbitrary rules set by states is not a moral barometer.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    It's nice and honest to follow the law. Paying the minimum amount of taxes possible is following the law.
  - Powerofmene 9y ago

ivv 9y ago

When talking to startups as their prospective client, I feel I can often tell which ones are from a Y-combinator batch; they are nice, responsive, and thoughtful.

rhizome 9y ago
I had a phone screen with a YC company this week and left with the opposite conclusion.
dasil003 9y ago
What type of thing puts you in position to be a client of many startups?
- ivv 9y ago
  I work in one of the data-related verticals that has a fair number of startups selling to companies like ours.

gallerdude 9y ago

Yeah, I think successes of the likes of Apple and Netflix show that providing the most benefit to the consumer is what always wins in the end.

IvyMike 9y ago
Explain Comcast.
- gallerdude 9y ago
  Right now, lack of choices. But I think when we see Musk's satellite internet service, it'll be a completely different story.
  - mmirate 9y ago
    Bandwidth and latency aren't exactly favorable on any sort of satelite internet connection. How will the Elon Musk brand change this?
    - jbooth 9y ago
      The idea is lots and lots of low orbit satellites with cell-phone-like handoffs as they zip across the horizon. LEO is only 200 miles high or so, which is ~1ms for light to travel if they can make it work. Existing satellite internet goes out to geosynchronous orbit which is much, much farther away.
      - imglorp 9y ago
        Notable exception being Iridium. The wiki points out interesting design goals including coverage and doppler shifts. I do worry about 4000 new objects in orbit. We've got tons of orbital trash already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...
    - noonespecial 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

geofft 9y ago

Why do we believe "nice" is correlated with how much you charge for your product instead of how aggressively you grow? Let's take Uber as an example of a company that a lot of people would call not nice: their prices are great (I think it's widely believed that the prices are VC-subsidized and unsustainable in the long term), but it's their growth strategy that a lot of people have problems with. I have never once heard Travis Kalanick criticized because Uber charged too much.

rhizome 9y ago
The essay is using a very narrow definition of "nice," which is used to differentiate them from the greedy, and is essentially an business economics essay. This is to say, we don't "believe" it, it's just the way the essay is written. Uber has gotten a lot of criticism for surge pricing.
- geofft 9y ago
  Yeah, but ... isn't the article saying that you'll make more money if you're long-term greedy instead of short-term greedy? Is "nice" a term of art in business writing to mean short-term greed?
- oceanplexian 9y ago
  There is nothing wrong with being greedy. Greedy does not mean that you need to take or steal from others. It means you have an excessive drive for success. "Excessive" is usually defined by society at large, and society at large is unquestionably a cesspit of low consciousness, and self-centered thinking. What I take from this article is the perception of being nice is important. But the reality between the lines is that nobody is in business to be nice (unless you're running a non profit). We're here to make money. If startup founders don't realize this someone else will, and they will eat their lunch.
  - blackrose 9y ago
    Isn't greed self-centeredness? > society at large is unquestionably a cesspit of low consciousness, and self-centered thinking That's a heck of a personal projection :) And pg disagrees with that last sentiment in the footnotes: > Many think successful startup founders are driven by money. In fact the secret weapon of the most successful founders is that they aren't. If they were, they'd have taken one of the acquisition offers that every fast-growing startup gets on the way up. What drives the most successful founders is the same thing that drives most people who make things: the company is their project.

BatFastard 9y ago

As someone who has been screwed by "rapacity", all I can say is be very very careful being "nice". As Pink Floyd said in a song "You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to, so that when they turn their backs on you. You'll get the chance to put the knife in." As someone who lost out on a billion dollar business, be nice, but watch out for knives in the back. Often those knives are in the form of law firms.

jey 9y ago
That sucks. Can you share more about this purported exception to the rule?
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  Mesh networks.
  - BatFastard 9y ago
    That was a minor detail ;-)
- BatFastard 9y ago
  My experience was not with user rapacity but with partner rapacity. I have always found good will towards users pays back 10 fold. Partners on the other hand are much trickier. For me it was around what I thought was a carefully crafted contract. Long story by my partner seized all of the IP, than said "sue me". It was specifically prohibited in the contract, but I was not in a position at the time to spend a LOT of money fighting a team of lawyers. Unfortunately what my team had made look easy was beyond the capabilities of the team he hired to replace us. So the product floundered.
  - Sangermaine 9y ago
    In the future consider a fee-shifting provision in your contracts (meaning loser pays legal costs). If your case was as clear-cut as you say, it would have enabled you to fight it. It might also have dissuaded your partner from trying to do this to you if they knew they were in the wrong and would have had to pay the costs.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

freech 9y ago

All the comments here reply to the title, not the essay. It's about being nice to users, not the government or venture capitalists.

uptownfunk 9y ago

I can appreciate the article. However, while it may be safe to be nice, I don't think being nice is important to success in business. And I think that's what probably concerns more people. This kind of disappoints me though. I wish it were important to success to be nice, but my experience tells me otherwise. It's more important to right and just nice enough to get that across and be heard. How do you maintain your power and influence while being nice? I feel like you could kill your self by performing really well and setting a stellar track record and then earn the privilege of being able to be nice and still be respected... or you just swing your proverbial dick around and slam anyone who won't listen to you and rule by fear. The net payoff seems to suggest favoring dickish people at the top. And sad to say it seems that way many times. Also being nice can make people think you're weak and so it's harder to run a team with that mindset. I think the more definite path to success is being intelligent, shrewd and a competitive person. If that implies being nice then so be it, otherwise it doesn't seem so relevant. There's also different types of nice. Like superficial nice and genuine nice. Which are we referring to? I do envy those charismatic leaders that are successful and earn the love of their colleagues and employees. That's something I'd love to aspire to.

hosh 9y ago

Interesting. Makes me wonder about what lead Uber to be so aggressive.

erikb 9y ago

5-star cook says: "Cows are much more successful in life when cut in slices and being in a pan." The truth is that you not just need to be cunning, you need to be routine at it, so you can act nice while doing selfish things like removing founders without paying them out, putting competitors out of business, and telling guys who just spent the first three years of their child in your office instead of with their families that they need to clean out their desks. Without that ability what you can do is to sizzle nicely while being turned around in the pan.

Mz 9y ago
It used to take around 20 farmers to support a single non farmers, such as a noble or black smith. We now have many people supported by each farmer in the modern world. If people are too "nice," we can totally go back to a hunter-gatherer way of life instead of keeping modern institutions alive. I imagine billions would die to get there from here. But, at least we would no longer need to make hard decisions like which poor sucker to fire.
- PeanutCurry 9y ago
  I'm not entirely sure I understand your metaphor in this case. I appreciate that it had something to do with efficiency but then I got lost because a 20:1 farmer-to-other feeding ratio seems incredibly unrealistic and made it hard to understand whether the ratio was relevant to the metaphor's point or was just an off the cuff sort of detail.
  - Mz 9y ago
    It isn't a metaphor. Without modern farming technology and techniques, the world cannot support 7 billion people. We deal with that fact or we die in droves. Those are our options.
hasenj 9y ago
Took me a while to read it: YC is the chef; founders are the cows.
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rdtsc 9y ago

> I grew up with a cartoon idea of a very successful businessman (in the cartoon it was always a man): a rapacious, cigar-smoking, table-thumping guy in his fifties who wins by exercising power, and isn't too fussy about how. I think when something new comes about it can't _look_ like something old if it wants to succeed. Basically it's hard to build a successful startup by looking like a cartoon businessman from the 80's, wearing a tie, being overtly and openly aggressive etc. If you're building something new and "cool" you had to be playful, dress informally, wear hoodie or t-shirt, on the surface appear to be super nice and friendly. Of course business is business and at the end of the day someone is getting stabbed in the back. But before that day comes it is all hugs, smiles and pats on the back. Anyone remember Google, how they succeeded not just by providing a better search experience, by also by building a "cool" company image -- playful bright colors, the whole "don't be evil" shtick, we'll feed you with gourmet food, etc. They were positioning themselves to be as different as possible from a traditional company. Now the funny thing is, the image of the startup has also become cartoonish with the shows like the "Silicon Valley" running for a few years. So CEOs wearing hoodies, being all informal and superficially nice, open office spaces and so on is getting a bit stale. I wonder what's next. Back to wearing ties and smoking cigars? Probably not. But I have heard people say they'd rather get back to having the previously derided and hated cubicles than doing the "cool" open office plan. Maybe working remotely is the new thing? But some companies have been doing that for a while as well. I hope that's the next revolution, when large giants as Google and Facebook, who sell digital connectivity as their primary product embrace the digital connectivity themselves and don't require workers to be in a physical location to get work done.

sametmax 9y ago

I love the Muslims saying: "Trust God, but tie up your camel".

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yegor256a 9y ago

My take on this: http://www.yegor256.com/2017/08/22/to-be-nice-or-not.html http://www.yegor256.com/2017/08/22/to-be-nice-or-not.html