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A Conversation with Paul Graham [video]
- pmoriarty 8y agoCould someone please write a synopsis of this?
- jszymborski 8y ago*Could someone's AI please write a synopsis of this?
- paulcole 8y agoGreat startup idea! Could be a fun weekend project.
- anoncoward111 8y agoHow much are you all willing to bid? I'll do it for $10. That's cheaper than any AI on the market.
- wuunderbar 8y agoI'll chip in $1 for this.
- anoncoward111 8y agoI'll give you a freebie: They originally built a clunky Netscape-based website builder because they wanted to see if they could bypass Windows entirely and use Netscape to allow users to send commands over HTTP to a server.
- whitepoplar 8y agoStartup idea: "Summarize it for me" - Upload any document/video/url and pay $x for the cliffsnotes.
- whitepoplar 8y agoFor popular, public content, you could split the price amongst many buyers, like Kickstarter.
- braindead_in 8y agoHere's an automated transcript to start off with. https://scribie.com/transcript/6946cef33e3c4e3596a819daaac7380329fe2ef7 https://scribie.com/transcript/6946cef33e3c4e3596a819daaac73...
- tim333 8y agoI had a look but the YouTube transcript is more accurate. Compare: "Why combinator has the people who wrote a mail and email?" from that and "Y Combinator has the people who wrote Yahoo Mail and Gmail" from the YouTube transcript for example.
- braindead_in 8y agoYeah, our language model needs some work. We're constantly improving our engine though. Since we are manual transcription service, we can feed back the hand-made changes by humans back into our model and re-train it. Thanks for checking it out!
- tim333 8y agoNo worries. You do punctuation better than youtube. I was wondering if you could do a hack which kind of combined the two results. Youtube must be doing something kind of sophisticated to get things like "Paul Buchheit" correct like doing a pre search of people connected with Paul Graham.
- braindead_in 8y agoYeah. We can actually do that. We do have a prototype of that in the works.
- JesseAldridge 8y agoSure I'll pay $10. So like Paypal or what?
- mi_lk 8y agoCryptocurrency, obvs.
- JesseAldridge 8y agoI actually once offered some guy in India $100 to summarize a list of articles of for me. Sending the money internationally was by far the biggest pain point. So yeah, cryptocurrency could be the key ingredient that makes this idea work.
- csomar 8y agoSending money internationally is very easy. Sending money to countries with capital controls is a hustle.
- sokoloff 8y agoIt’s easy, but leaky in terms of fees and delays as compared to US-to-US transfers. When I send money to EU hobbyists, it’s often 3 days and ~10% eaten up by fees.
- csomar 8y agoThere are gateways like PayPal (which is why it skyrocketed in the first place). So you send $100 PayPal and he gets $100. He then goes and spend his full money to buy something online without any other fees.
- sokoloff 8y agoThe problem is most people have a bank account in their local currency, so PayPal is in their local currency and takes several bites at the apple before passing the core to the recipient. People doing an hour of work online for a few bucks are likely interested in buying something locally rather than spending $100US on something online.
- 1000units 8y agoRTM is a hunk, and read the essays.
- peteforde 8y agoIt's bothering me that Geoff introduced Paul as "the founder" and Paul just kind of went with it. It was a small moment but these sorts of details matter because they can contribute to unintended historical revisionism. A YouTube annotation overlay might be appreciated by the other founders.
- bing_dai 8y agoI completely agree. It bothered me as well.
- peteforde 8y agoIt's fascinating and a little sad that anyone who spoke up about this point was downvoted into oblivion... even though my point is entirely valid and easy to verify. I don't think PG would disagree with my suggestion, and he certainly doesn't need people to defend him.
- dang 8y agoPerhaps it's because you/they are focusing on some minuscule act of wording instead of on anything significant in the video. We don't need to play the internet gotcha game on HN. In fact, it's off topic by the site guidelines, since it isn't done out of intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
- peteforde 8y agoI appreciate the reply. I'll accept your wisdom on the subject, given your role and perspective. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I tried.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoYou might think it’s minutia for Jessica to be erased, but obviously many of us disagree. I think it’s a powerful data point to see Paul quietly accept the the title of Founder. It is evidence he’s not in the habit of correcting people who don’t see him as a co-founder with a woman. It speaks to his mindset. And perhaps this thread speaks to yours as well. It’s not about some kind of gotcha game. We are legitimately interested in how deeply both of you are engaged with this subject. Personally, I don’t mind if you and Paul don’t think it’s a serious issue. I don’t think you do. You are under no obligation to care. But I think we should be free to discuss the possibility that you don’t. And to notice evidence that you don’t. This is the kind of thinking that makes me realize YC isn’t a good fit for me. I think it benefits both me and YC for YC’s approach to these issues to be discussed. You don’t want people like me to apply, it would be bad for the health of the program.
- RyanShook 8y ago“The mistake you will most likely make as a startup founder is coming up with your own vision of what your product should be instead of getting feedback from actual users.”
- staunch 8y agoAlso explained very well by Jessica Livingston in "Why Startups Need to Focus on Sales, Not Marketing" > "So why wouldn’t all founders start by engaging with users individually? Because it’s hard and demoralizing. Sales gives you a kind of harsh feedback that “marketing” doesn’t. You try to convince someone to use what you’ve built, and they won’t. These conversations are painful, but necessary. I suspect from my experience that founders who want to remain in denial about the inadequacy of their product and/or the difficulty of starting a startup subconsciously prefer the broad and shallow “marketing” approach precisely because they can’t face the work and unpleasant truths they’ll find if they talk to users." https://www.google.com/search?q=jessica%20livingston%20you%20need%20sales%20not%20marketing%20site:wsj.com https://www.google.com/search?q=jessica%20livingston%20you%2... And posted here w/out the paywall: https://genius.com/Jessica-livingston-why-startups-need-to-focus-on-sales-not-marketing-annotated https://genius.com/Jessica-livingston-why-startups-need-to-f... I don't see this essay on https://www.startupschool.org/library https://www.startupschool.org/library and it probably should be at the top.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoSales is grim work for introverts, you can do it but if it's most of what you are doing then you need to question what the point of it is.
- mayankkaizen 8y agoThis seems to be the issue with me. I am more like 'laptop' guy who is rather good in researching. I am also keen on observing things. But sales stuffs, cold calling give me chills. How do I overcome it?
- 8y ago
- manigandham 8y agoThey really needed a script to follow to make it more focused, and the questions were... not great. Some good advice though still, especially about truly listening to users and launching asap, probably the single biggest thing that startups have trouble with.
- tim333 8y agoMaybe they could do another talk with a list of new points. I've missed having PGs thoughts and feel there's more good stuff there.
- jek0 8y agoI believe the issue it that many questions are too directive: I want you to say "blah blah blah", please say "blah blah blah". So yes, if the moderator just had a list of open questions, it would probably have worked better.
- submeta 8y agoMan he was really hating windows. To a point where he "wrote software for it without writing software for it directly"
- sabalaba 8y agoWriting software on windows is like using chopsticks with mittens. You can do it, it’s not pretty, and it’s not the use case the mitten sewer had in mind during development. Read the Unix Programming Environment to see the exact opposite mindset for OS design.
- mattmanser 8y agoWhat a load of nonsense. C#'s a great language and their dev tool, Visual Studio, is second to none.
- Kagerjay 8y agoDeveloping ruby on rails apps is config hell though with windows
- vivan 8y agoThere's a difference between developing on Windows and developing for Windows.
- golemotron 8y agoIn context, the Windows Paul was talking about used C, a horrific low level SDK, and a technology called COM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model .NET did not appear until much later.
- slededit 8y ago.NET integrates well with COM. You are using it all the time under the hood. COM was difficult because it was an OO framework that had to deal with: - C++ ABIs that changed on every compiler update but still had to work. -Support for C and Assembly which had no OO support at all. -Liteweight enough to run on a computer with 8MB of RAM total. Given these constraints it's unlikely you would do any better.
- auston 8y agoLoved that video. I miss having PG be a very vocal and frequent voice of YC. There was a question about the financial risk of launching early - PG's answer was really good, but it seemed pretty clear to me: Launching early costs less time and money. So you should launch something that works, as soon as possible with the minimum number of people required to build something useful (probably 2-4 people). Beyond that, you make your "vision" meet reality, where you can do magical things like learn from users/customers, which is basically priceless.
- leoc 8y agoThe odd thing is that form-based web applications must surely have right away seemed fairly obvious and familiar to people at IBM mainframe shops who were used to block-oriented terminals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block-oriented_terminal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block-oriented_terminal . The continuations-based design that Viaweb ended up using would be another story though.
- sebslomski 8y agoFor the people on the go like me, here's a podcast feed link with the video: Overcast: https://overcast.fm/+OcWu1RUwE https://overcast.fm/+OcWu1RUwE Feed: https://podsync.net/pH3E-Qhxn https://podsync.net/pH3E-Qhxn
- joseakle 8y agoThank you :)
- Aeveus 8y agoThe point regarding different levels of commitment is really interesting. I've seen a few start-ups die out, because a subset of founders wasn't happy with the level of commitment of the other(s). But having the determination to get there, that's a great point.
- Separo 8y agoI feel that PG needs to make a concerted effort to use "uhm" less. It negatively affects his ability to eloquently communicate an idea.
- ryeguy_24 8y agoI agree, but it's also his trademark. Kinda like Michael Jackson's "Hee-Hee". :)
- duncanawoods 8y agoIts a viral trademark too - you used to be able to spot YC founders and staff because they would uhm in just the same way. JL has an identical uhm to PG. It seems kind of functional - it usually follows something cheeky / provocative - its basically a pause for laughter.
- hristov 8y agoAs I mentioned elsewhere, the use "umms" is only because he tries to talk off the cuff. This makes his talks much more interesting. Most of the smooth talkers you see on tv and youtube have basically learned what they are going to say. They sound slicker, but eventually what they do say is less interesting because it has been pre-learned and thus pre-filtered. This is a general problem with Television and popular culture nowadays. If you look at old tv talk shows you can see real spontaneity, but this is mostly absent from modern tv. Of course, the other side of the coin is that on modern TV interviewers and interviewees are much smoother and more self assured, as they already know what they are going to say. I really hope that people do not get spoiled by this pre-learned smoothness of presentation as to fail to appreciate actual spontaneous interviews and conversations.
- awucs 8y agoPresumably that isn't Separo's experience nor is it mine. There is more "unedited" material out there in live streams, podcasts, talks and hobby videos than ever. PG is one of the few people I remember having to turn off repeatedly despite wanting to listen to. Maybe it is individual in how you listen, but it is what it is.
- ffwacom 8y agoWould be better as a podcast or essay, the dialog is dicey, but seeing the body language turns it into a cringefest.
- hristov 8y agoIf it is cringeworthy for you, you can just play it in the background while doing something else. I kind of liked it. It is a genuine unprepared for interview and you see very few of these nowadays. Whenever you try something this spontaneaous there will always be a lot of hesitations, a lot of ums and ahs, and some arguments as to which direction the conversation should go in. But you still get something more interesting and original.
- ffwacom 8y agoTrue, the content was great. Issue is with the dynamics between the interviewer and pg, fidgety/supplicating shit, you can feel it. It goes beyond an unprepared natural awkwardness into something more gross. But like you said, the info is great so you put the tab in the background
- pouta 8y agoI completely missed it, would you care to elaborate?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- GomatiTech 8y agoOne thing I got out of this video is the concept of "quantum of utility". It was to answer the question "When to launch?" -- launch when you have something that someone can use that wasn't there before, a new feature.
- ruang 8y agoMuch better than vague concept of “MVP”
- fullofsid 8y agoThe knowledge and insights pg has deserves more conversations like this
- ransom1538 8y agoI love PG but listening to his advice on startups always felt like discovering the steps to create a nuclear bomb. Step 1) collect seven pounds of weapons grade plutonium Step 1 of a great startup is an amazing idea. Unless you have step one I think the advice is pretty non applicable. Sure, I get the whole camp “ideas are a dime a dozen”, but, a bad idea can fall apart with millions of VC ran by MIT grads and an amazing idea can come to life with a few hundred bucks with a high school kid.
- sampl 8y agoIt’s better than saying “you can build a nuclear bomb if you just wish it hard enough”. > a bad idea can fall apart with millions of VC ran by MIT grads and an amazing idea can come to life with a few hundred bucks with a high school kid. This is a actually really wonderful thing! Unless you’re an MIT grad with no ideas about how to help customers hoping you could cash in by riding solely on your credentials I guess.
- kapad 8y agoWas Geoff adequately prepared to host? I watched a few minutes and his introduction was pathetic. As was his setting of the agenda(which he didn't do any of). Were his discussion points later on good? If they were, I'll go back and watch the rest of this. Otherwise half of the video time (when Geoff is speaking) seems a waste to me. ;)
- lsh 8y agoikr? even at 1.5x speed his dithering was rather lengthy. I have newfound respect for interviewers where their flow with the interviewee seems natural.
- kapad 8y agoi thought this as well.. i only saw the introduction, but it didn't seem there was, well, flow, if that's what you call it, between PG and Geoff
- tirumaraiselvan 8y agoHe was terrible IMHO.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dziungles 8y agoIt was even worse later on. He couldn't even formulate the questions and was constantly interrupting.
- kapad 8y agoThanks.. I'm skipping everything post 2:02 then :)
- dennisgorelik 8y agohttps://youtu.be/4WO5kJChg3w?t=745 https://youtu.be/4WO5kJChg3w?t=745 --- And we got him an earring. There are photographs on the Internet of Robert Morris with an earring. --- I could not find such photographs ... https://www.google.com/search?q=%22robert+morris%22+viaweb+earring&biw=1745&bih=866&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiVg9aG5prdAhVFn-AKHcj8ChkQ_AUICygC https://www.google.com/search?q=%22robert+morris%22+viaweb+e...
- aliakhtar 8y agohttp://paulgraham.com/pierced.html http://paulgraham.com/pierced.html
- ryeguy_24 8y agoPaul Graham says that long time employees from certain companies make really poor entrepreneurs. Does anyone know to which companies he is referring?
- nlowell 8y agoDid he say certain companies? The part I remember was just that people who have been employees for 20 years probably wouldnt be good founders. I assumed the implication is that a founder is someone with too much angst, ambition, or arrogance to be comfortable working for other people for 20 years.
- whoiswho 8y agoWho is Paul Graham?
- sytelus 8y agoIt’s just great to see pg talking and his little bites of wisdom always had been worth the time. Two specific things that popped out: - He mentions that people who have worked in some companies for 20 years could not be good founders because good founders wouldn’t be able to stand these companies for 20 years. - pg has often said founders must be nice people but then the host says he doesn’t think young Steve Jobs would get funded today at YC because YC specifically filters out such founders.
- HiroshiSan 8y agoI'm willing to bet that were he not funded his doggedness would prevail. See the joke about determination and trump (somewhere in the video)