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Anti-Application video for YC120

194 points by puzza007 8y ago

TAForObvReasons 8y ago
Scott McNealy's one-sentence summary of Sun is truly something we should all want in our obituaries: > kicked butt, had fun, didn't cheat, loved our customers and changed computing forever
AJRF 8y ago
This is what perspective looks like
davej 8y ago
Wow, that was an extremely eloquent 4 minute piece to camera. Seems a little misplaced though. YC 120 seems to be about bringing people together who haven't already worked with great teams in SF. It seems to be for those with enthusiasm, ideas, energy, passion and drive but perhaps not a pre-existing network and connections. I would still consider accepting him on the strength of this video because he seems like he'd be an interesting guy to throw in the mixing pot. And perhaps that's the intention of this video.
- juststeve 8y ago
  woosh
  - mack1001 8y ago
    Double woosh
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
warp_factor 8y ago
I love Bryan Cantrill for being that classy bad-ass engineer with so much integrity. His talk on companies principles is a must-watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=9QMGAtxUlAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=9QMGAtxUlAc
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dm3730 8y ago
  > I love Bryan Cantrill for being that classy bad-ass engineer with so much integrity. I have never worked with Bryan. What's the general opinion about Valerie's statements about working with him. https://blog.valerieaurora.org/2016/10/22/why-i-wont-be-attending-systems-we-love/ https://blog.valerieaurora.org/2016/10/22/why-i-wont-be-atte... https://blog.valerieaurora.org/2018/07/01/bryan-cantrill-has-been-accused-of-verbal-abuse-by-at-least-seven-people/ https://blog.valerieaurora.org/2018/07/01/bryan-cantrill-has...
  - trymas 8y ago
    Also this drama by Bryan seemed over the top: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6845351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6845351, http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun
    - eurticket 8y ago
      Misdirected, not over the top, it's very appropriate especially when it was a sponsored project and they were getting called out as if Ben was their employee and they were cosigning whatever Ben's views were. Regardless how you feel on gendered pronouns, if you're writing documentation regarding all users it seems like a no brainier to actually involve all users in the language, something which Bryan puts great significance into. Bryan's talks[0] usually involve tone and messaging (as well as being triggered and raged) as key points. But back to the drama issue. The problem about this whole thing isn't about the pronouns really, it was the actions that Ben took even after it was explained and the hard stance Joyent felt it needed to take on the issue in the aftermath. Ben, if we're giving him the benefit of the doubt (because he isn't a native English speaker) to word something 'wrong', is a simple fix, who cares. - The real part of this whole mess was because he tried reversing a commit that was made by the project lead after it was worded to include more users. Ben was the main agitator in this almost 6 year old mess regardless of his amount of contributions. [0] https://youtu.be/9QMGAtxUlAc https://youtu.be/9QMGAtxUlAc
dman 8y ago
How do we get Bryan his own TV/Netflix show? There hasn’t been a video from him that I did not watch all the way to the end.
nopinsight 8y ago
The vast majority of cities in the world are nowhere near Silicon Valley in terms of the availability of talent, drive, deep technical expertise, and supportive environment. This is even more true in developing countries where over 80% of the world’s population live. Allowing passionate people outside of Silicon Valley the opportunity to meet others who might share their passion and have complementary skills, form connections, and possibly find matching teammates to work on challenging projects together is a good reason for supporting YC120.
haberman 8y ago
If a potential investor asks you basic questions about your ambitions and you interpret it as "offensive" and "an attack on Silicon Valley", and you end up at William Shockley, I think that says more about you than them. Bryan is clearly passionate about his beliefs, which probably works great for people who share them. Sometimes I wonder if 2013 Bryan (https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Ben-Noordhuis-decide-to-leave-Node-js-development https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Ben-Noordhuis-decide-to-leave-...) would have fired 1996 Bryan (https://web.archive.org/web/20170328074611/http://www.cryptnet.net/mirrors/texts/kissedagirl.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170328074611/http://www.cryptn...)
- mcny 8y ago
  I'd agree with you if it was someone like Goldman Sachs or HSBC that I wanted to get funding from. I wouldn't criticize them like this because I know it would fall into deaf ears. I think the reason we criticize YC is we believe the people at the top actually care about more than their own quarterly bonus.
  - omeid2 8y ago
    I think the issue you're bringing up is valid but is just a dark-side of VC in general than just a problem with YC. Startups and VCs tend to bang on about community values a whole lot more than they actually care, if at all, in contrast, big corps at least don't pretend as much, though it seems like that is changing with recent shift of marketing trends.
    - frano 8y ago
      I think the "problem with YC", and in a larger perspective SV, these days is quite specific. What makes, or made, these environments different is that they weren't made for geniuses so much as taking overall average people with an interest in technology and giving them the opportunity to use that interest to build something new instead of it getting lost at some random corporate job. The same way a new music scene isn't usually made up of child music prodigies. But now they are seemingly moving away from that.
- 8y ago
eaenki 8y ago
That’s so stupid (this video). What’s the point of this? A cringeworthy individual who thinks he’s so right about how the questions of an application are so wrong. Really?
- kgraves 8y ago
  You're right, I stopped watching for about 20 seconds in, it was cringe-inducing.
keiferski 8y ago
I really don't understand the backlash. It's a simple, 3-question application designed (presumably) to find ambitious people that, for whatever reason, don't have access to the YC network. It's not a treatise on why "family isn't important" or "why you should throw away everything to chase the Silicon Valley dream". If your response to these questions is to make an angry 4-minute video ranting about how these questions indicate a "lust for Mammon", perhaps consider if you are the intended audience. I'm sorry, but I have zero association with Silicon Valley or Y Combinator and I find this video completely absurd.
snickmy 8y ago
I'm not a VC, but I'd be happy to give this guy the same amount of money that YC gives to their startups. Seriously.
sbr464 8y ago
I realize this is a touchy subject, but here goes: I especially appreciate how there is no talk of innovation or ideas, which in my mind, is what YC stands for. Instead (interpreted as an outsider), a rant on unfamiliar, incumbent (sf?) issues/frustrations. Somewhat obvious that YC is looking for new blood.
- david927 8y ago
  Somewhat obvious that YC is looking for new blood. Definitely, and it should, otherwise it won't outlast the next (looming) market correction. And I don't mind YC trying a new tack; I mind that they still don't get it. Bryan is right. True innovators care only about the problem and their ideas. Few who are concerned about what their obit will say will ever do anything great. You can fund innovation or you can make money off of previous innovation. Silicon Valley has been doing the latter for so long that it has forgotten that the former is even possible.
z3t4 8y ago
If there is anything you need as a founder it is self confidence. Bryan is right that it takes teamwork to do great things, but first you need to convince others to follow your lead. People with good self confidence contribute success to themselves and failure because of things outside their reach. It however helps to have a healthy dose of self awareness, and have both feet on the ground (metaphorically).
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
santoriv 8y ago
I would agree with him that the last couple of questions are BS, but perhaps the point of it is to evaluate how good you are at convincingly BSing your way through a situation? Most people don't have the luxury of being brilliant or well-known enough to be able to be unapologetically blunt all of the time. Especially when dealing with customers and/or investors.
tomhoward 8y ago
In all his rage I think Bryan misses the point that people who are doing valuable work in teams already have access to support networks and have achieved some kind of “insider” status - by virtue of the very fact that they’re doing valuable work in teams. Such people can already launch startups, receive mentorship, raise funding, apply to YC, etc. As I understand it, YC120 is specifically looking for people who aren’t already connected to groups/networks who can help them thrive, and the program is wholly designed to connect them to others so new teams of capable people can form. As for the obituary question: isn’t it obvious that the whole point of this question is to establish that the applicant has noble, benevolent ambitions?
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
"What do you want your obituary to say?" Is this really one of the questions? So, it's funny, I tell people there's usually two kinds of people. Those that want to be a <X> and those who want to have been an <X>. The former enjoys the journey. The latter wants to skip to the end. This question seems like it is targeting the latter group. Shouldn't YC be trying to target the former?
- michaelt 8y ago
  Not sure I see the distinction here? I mean, if you want to invent a flying car, if successful you'll be the inventor of the flying car, and your obituary will say so. The question just seems like a roundabout way of asking "Tell us how your startup idea is going get huge and stay huge for ages"
  - JustSomeNobody 8y ago
    I thought I was pretty clear. Some people want to skip the being and go straight to have been. They want to be remembered as being Stephen King, but they don't want to put in the effort of writing on a consistent enough basis to actually be Stephen King. They're the type who always has some plan their working on, but really they aren't. > "Tell us how your startup idea is going get huge and stay huge for ages" Then ask that question.
caseymarquis 8y ago
Question 2 is "What have you done so far that shows your potential for greatness, adjusted for whatever life circumstances you were born into?" TBH, I'm not sure I would want a ticket to the narcissist convention that question implies. The obituary question is a great question IMO.
- nerflad 8y ago
  The only way I could comfortably answer that question is "Irrespective of greatness or potential for it, here's a list of projects I've done/been involved in and am proud of:". The "adjusted for privilege" bit seems to be trying to discourage people from talking about where they went to college. It is definitely an awkward question and I think Bryan was right to skewer it.
Jach 8y ago
Great individuals exist, they can do humanity-advancing feats of greatness essentially by themselves. Put a bunch of greats together though, and you can get truly amazing things not possible from a single mind, and what's more create an environment for maximal expression of each individual's greatness. If YC's goal here is to try and bring together great (or potentially great) individuals, that's fine, but perhaps there are better approaches.[0] Perhaps it's a bad approach having the second and third questions as they are when they're going to filter out great people like Bryan. The second question's qualifier for "life circumstances" is such a cop-out too... Yes it's "great" if you came up from nothing and somehow managed to go to college and get a nice well-paying stable job, surpassing the achievements of at least your ancestors in living memory, but that isn't actually greatness. On the other hand maybe the two bad questions are by design, Google interview style, trying to weed out false positives for whatever their goal is no matter the (potentially counterfactual) false negatives. It trivially filters me out correctly; I have no potential for greatness, and in the best case I don't plan on dying so there'd be no obituary. [0] Might I suggest a method that would probably be more effective, at least for collecting potentially great scientists, Asimov's Sword. (http://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/1963-asimov http://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/1963-asimov) Target 10-to-15-year-olds already reading good sci-fi. Edit: a reply highlighted some ambiguity in my usage of "like Bryan" but they deleted it before I replied back.. here's clearing it up anyway. YC120's phrasing is a problem in filtering out literally Bryan from the 20 if they had plans to ask him, but I was more aiming to describe filtering out people like Bryan from the 100 based on having similar responses. I knew a guy in high school with a good supply of "intelligence, drive and vision" who had started working with a local university team around something to do with MEMS fabrication. Let's assume YC120 if it was around then would have been interested to have him as part of the 100, and that it'd be useful to him to expand his network beyond that university or academia in general for the grand possibility of getting a group together in the future to do for MEMS what Fairchild Semiconductor did for semiconductors. That sort of vision is all pointless if he were to have a similar reaction to Bryan's or other commenters here, either due to the second question giving off vibes of joining a group of narcissists or the example interests on the page (gene editing, solving physics, etc.) pointing exclusively at a particular subset of SV's fashions. Either he'd filter himself or maybe the reactions are on to something and an earnest application would be filtered by YC for insufficient alignment on greatness potential or SV-compatible interests.
dpflan 8y ago
Is this a response to highlight issues with the application or a response to applying and not getting accepted or applying and getting accepted (but rejecting on principle?)?
- ardy42 8y ago
  > Is this a response to highlight issues with the application or a response to applying and not getting accepted or applying and getting accepted (but rejecting on principle?)? The former. This is a guy who already has a lot of accomplishments under his belt, he seems more of a peer of YC than someone who's ever needed to seek it's approval.
Jabbles 8y ago
Could we have a summary for people that are out of the loop please?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bob_theslob646 8y ago
Apparently this guy is a dick. https://blog.valerieaurora.org/2018/07/01/bryan-cantrill-has-been-accused-of-verbal-abuse-by-at-least-seven-people/ https://blog.valerieaurora.org/2018/07/01/bryan-cantrill-has... Also, why does he deserve a Wikipedia page? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Cantrill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Cantrill
- throwaway415415 8y ago
  Usually what happens is that they themselves create their own wikipedia pages. I see that all the time. I don't get why wikipedia allows that, it's becoming a collection of resumes.
- kiddico 8y ago
  Does being a dick remove someone from history? Primary contributors to projects smaller than DTrace have wiki pages, and I bet at least a few of them are dicks. I suppose wipe those out too.
- ttsda 8y ago
  Why don't you read the Wikipedia notability guidelines, or look at the history of the 13 year old page you just linked and find out?
nudpiedo 8y ago
Everyone knows there is a tone of bullshit at time to recruit, but recruiters, and human resources in general, need to justify their job and authority based on psychological assumptions put out of context. Or even just pure bias. The range of valid people for a job or a task is always very wide, and they with they could somehow purge the bottom of the applicant pools. The truth is that they have no idea because even the less innovative person, with some apparent red flags, given the right circumstances, could surpass the people who apparently qualified better. It's true that attitude is very important, but even people working only for a salary can innovate, alone or in team, and accidentally ending up doing something greater than expected. In the other hand, why is this obsession of linking innovation with business success? Steve Jobs damaged the IT culture way too much, and he even wasn't the mythological creature commonly believed. P.D. Diversity of thought, personality and attitude... does this diversity matter as well?
pluto9 8y ago
This is needelessly contrarian. Really, he's offended because someone implied that individuals could be great? They never said teams couldn't be, but unless he's planning to bring his team of kernel developers from 15 years ago to YC, the question is about him, not them. In any case, I'm sure it would be acceptable, maybe even expected, to credit his team when talking about his accomplishments. No need to be "offended". "The implication here is that my obituary should say I was at the YC 120". I see no reason to think this. Does he assume YCers are a bunch of heartless workaholics who value professional accomplishment above all else, things like family and community be damned? This is a "get to know you" type question. They want to know what's important to you. That's all. I also find the grandiloquence about his heroism in "standing up for Silicon Valley" pretty ironic after he put so much effort into showing how humble he was in the first question. I don't know what was going through this guy's head, but the sole function of this video seems to be as a soapbox to talk about what a man of integrity he is.
chriselles 8y ago
Perhaps the application questions could have been further refined. But perhaps the questions are intended to raise some people’s hackles. I get temporarily disappointed every time I’m declined by YC, but I appreciate what they are trying to do in a number of ways: Sharing everything(well, most things) they have learned with complete transparency. Constantly talking down Seed/Series A valuations in aggregate because they see the crazy. Experimenting with universal basic income(UBI) using their own money in what appears to me as an attempt to apply the scientific method to public policy lobbying. So I can excuse YC for some application questions that might come across as pretentious or more likely to appeal to the self aggrandizing. Two thins I’d like to see with YC120 are: 1) livestream the weekend as it could help with building attendees networks 2) Use YC120 applicant/application pool(with applicants permission) with data anonymised as an experiment on applicants/applications.

194 points by puzza007 8y ago

Scott McNealy's one-sentence summary of Sun is truly something we should all want in our obituaries: > kicked butt, had fun, didn't cheat, loved our customers and changed computing forever

AJRF 8y ago

This is what perspective looks like

davej 8y ago

Wow, that was an extremely eloquent 4 minute piece to camera. Seems a little misplaced though. YC 120 seems to be about bringing people together who haven't already worked with great teams in SF. It seems to be for those with enthusiasm, ideas, energy, passion and drive but perhaps not a pre-existing network and connections. I would still consider accepting him on the strength of this video because he seems like he'd be an interesting guy to throw in the mixing pot. And perhaps that's the intention of this video.

juststeve 8y ago
woosh
- mack1001 8y ago
  Double woosh
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

warp_factor 8y ago

I love Bryan Cantrill for being that classy bad-ass engineer with so much integrity. His talk on companies principles is a must-watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=9QMGAtxUlAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=9QMGAtxUlAc

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dm3730 8y ago
> I love Bryan Cantrill for being that classy bad-ass engineer with so much integrity. I have never worked with Bryan. What's the general opinion about Valerie's statements about working with him. https://blog.valerieaurora.org/2016/10/22/why-i-wont-be-attending-systems-we-love/ https://blog.valerieaurora.org/2016/10/22/why-i-wont-be-atte... https://blog.valerieaurora.org/2018/07/01/bryan-cantrill-has-been-accused-of-verbal-abuse-by-at-least-seven-people/ https://blog.valerieaurora.org/2018/07/01/bryan-cantrill-has...
- trymas 8y ago
  Also this drama by Bryan seemed over the top: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6845351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6845351, http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun
  - eurticket 8y ago
    Misdirected, not over the top, it's very appropriate especially when it was a sponsored project and they were getting called out as if Ben was their employee and they were cosigning whatever Ben's views were. Regardless how you feel on gendered pronouns, if you're writing documentation regarding all users it seems like a no brainier to actually involve all users in the language, something which Bryan puts great significance into. Bryan's talks[0] usually involve tone and messaging (as well as being triggered and raged) as key points. But back to the drama issue. The problem about this whole thing isn't about the pronouns really, it was the actions that Ben took even after it was explained and the hard stance Joyent felt it needed to take on the issue in the aftermath. Ben, if we're giving him the benefit of the doubt (because he isn't a native English speaker) to word something 'wrong', is a simple fix, who cares. - The real part of this whole mess was because he tried reversing a commit that was made by the project lead after it was worded to include more users. Ben was the main agitator in this almost 6 year old mess regardless of his amount of contributions. [0] https://youtu.be/9QMGAtxUlAc https://youtu.be/9QMGAtxUlAc

dman 8y ago

How do we get Bryan his own TV/Netflix show? There hasn’t been a video from him that I did not watch all the way to the end.

nopinsight 8y ago

The vast majority of cities in the world are nowhere near Silicon Valley in terms of the availability of talent, drive, deep technical expertise, and supportive environment. This is even more true in developing countries where over 80% of the world’s population live. Allowing passionate people outside of Silicon Valley the opportunity to meet others who might share their passion and have complementary skills, form connections, and possibly find matching teammates to work on challenging projects together is a good reason for supporting YC120.

haberman 8y ago

If a potential investor asks you basic questions about your ambitions and you interpret it as "offensive" and "an attack on Silicon Valley", and you end up at William Shockley, I think that says more about you than them. Bryan is clearly passionate about his beliefs, which probably works great for people who share them. Sometimes I wonder if 2013 Bryan (https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Ben-Noordhuis-decide-to-leave-Node-js-development https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Ben-Noordhuis-decide-to-leave-...) would have fired 1996 Bryan (https://web.archive.org/web/20170328074611/http://www.cryptnet.net/mirrors/texts/kissedagirl.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170328074611/http://www.cryptn...)

mcny 8y ago
I'd agree with you if it was someone like Goldman Sachs or HSBC that I wanted to get funding from. I wouldn't criticize them like this because I know it would fall into deaf ears. I think the reason we criticize YC is we believe the people at the top actually care about more than their own quarterly bonus.
- omeid2 8y ago
  I think the issue you're bringing up is valid but is just a dark-side of VC in general than just a problem with YC. Startups and VCs tend to bang on about community values a whole lot more than they actually care, if at all, in contrast, big corps at least don't pretend as much, though it seems like that is changing with recent shift of marketing trends.
  - frano 8y ago
    I think the "problem with YC", and in a larger perspective SV, these days is quite specific. What makes, or made, these environments different is that they weren't made for geniuses so much as taking overall average people with an interest in technology and giving them the opportunity to use that interest to build something new instead of it getting lost at some random corporate job. The same way a new music scene isn't usually made up of child music prodigies. But now they are seemingly moving away from that.
8y ago

eaenki 8y ago

That’s so stupid (this video). What’s the point of this? A cringeworthy individual who thinks he’s so right about how the questions of an application are so wrong. Really?

kgraves 8y ago
You're right, I stopped watching for about 20 seconds in, it was cringe-inducing.

keiferski 8y ago

I really don't understand the backlash. It's a simple, 3-question application designed (presumably) to find ambitious people that, for whatever reason, don't have access to the YC network. It's not a treatise on why "family isn't important" or "why you should throw away everything to chase the Silicon Valley dream". If your response to these questions is to make an angry 4-minute video ranting about how these questions indicate a "lust for Mammon", perhaps consider if you are the intended audience. I'm sorry, but I have zero association with Silicon Valley or Y Combinator and I find this video completely absurd.

snickmy 8y ago

I'm not a VC, but I'd be happy to give this guy the same amount of money that YC gives to their startups. Seriously.

sbr464 8y ago

I realize this is a touchy subject, but here goes: I especially appreciate how there is no talk of innovation or ideas, which in my mind, is what YC stands for. Instead (interpreted as an outsider), a rant on unfamiliar, incumbent (sf?) issues/frustrations. Somewhat obvious that YC is looking for new blood.

david927 8y ago
Somewhat obvious that YC is looking for new blood. Definitely, and it should, otherwise it won't outlast the next (looming) market correction. And I don't mind YC trying a new tack; I mind that they still don't get it. Bryan is right. True innovators care only about the problem and their ideas. Few who are concerned about what their obit will say will ever do anything great. You can fund innovation or you can make money off of previous innovation. Silicon Valley has been doing the latter for so long that it has forgotten that the former is even possible.

z3t4 8y ago

If there is anything you need as a founder it is self confidence. Bryan is right that it takes teamwork to do great things, but first you need to convince others to follow your lead. People with good self confidence contribute success to themselves and failure because of things outside their reach. It however helps to have a healthy dose of self awareness, and have both feet on the ground (metaphorically).

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

santoriv 8y ago

I would agree with him that the last couple of questions are BS, but perhaps the point of it is to evaluate how good you are at convincingly BSing your way through a situation? Most people don't have the luxury of being brilliant or well-known enough to be able to be unapologetically blunt all of the time. Especially when dealing with customers and/or investors.

tomhoward 8y ago

In all his rage I think Bryan misses the point that people who are doing valuable work in teams already have access to support networks and have achieved some kind of “insider” status - by virtue of the very fact that they’re doing valuable work in teams. Such people can already launch startups, receive mentorship, raise funding, apply to YC, etc. As I understand it, YC120 is specifically looking for people who aren’t already connected to groups/networks who can help them thrive, and the program is wholly designed to connect them to others so new teams of capable people can form. As for the obituary question: isn’t it obvious that the whole point of this question is to establish that the applicant has noble, benevolent ambitions?

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

"What do you want your obituary to say?" Is this really one of the questions? So, it's funny, I tell people there's usually two kinds of people. Those that want to be a <X> and those who want to have been an <X>. The former enjoys the journey. The latter wants to skip to the end. This question seems like it is targeting the latter group. Shouldn't YC be trying to target the former?

michaelt 8y ago
Not sure I see the distinction here? I mean, if you want to invent a flying car, if successful you'll be the inventor of the flying car, and your obituary will say so. The question just seems like a roundabout way of asking "Tell us how your startup idea is going get huge and stay huge for ages"
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  I thought I was pretty clear. Some people want to skip the being and go straight to have been. They want to be remembered as being Stephen King, but they don't want to put in the effort of writing on a consistent enough basis to actually be Stephen King. They're the type who always has some plan their working on, but really they aren't. > "Tell us how your startup idea is going get huge and stay huge for ages" Then ask that question.

caseymarquis 8y ago

Question 2 is "What have you done so far that shows your potential for greatness, adjusted for whatever life circumstances you were born into?" TBH, I'm not sure I would want a ticket to the narcissist convention that question implies. The obituary question is a great question IMO.

nerflad 8y ago
The only way I could comfortably answer that question is "Irrespective of greatness or potential for it, here's a list of projects I've done/been involved in and am proud of:". The "adjusted for privilege" bit seems to be trying to discourage people from talking about where they went to college. It is definitely an awkward question and I think Bryan was right to skewer it.

Jach 8y ago

Great individuals exist, they can do humanity-advancing feats of greatness essentially by themselves. Put a bunch of greats together though, and you can get truly amazing things not possible from a single mind, and what's more create an environment for maximal expression of each individual's greatness. If YC's goal here is to try and bring together great (or potentially great) individuals, that's fine, but perhaps there are better approaches.[0] Perhaps it's a bad approach having the second and third questions as they are when they're going to filter out great people like Bryan. The second question's qualifier for "life circumstances" is such a cop-out too... Yes it's "great" if you came up from nothing and somehow managed to go to college and get a nice well-paying stable job, surpassing the achievements of at least your ancestors in living memory, but that isn't actually greatness. On the other hand maybe the two bad questions are by design, Google interview style, trying to weed out false positives for whatever their goal is no matter the (potentially counterfactual) false negatives. It trivially filters me out correctly; I have no potential for greatness, and in the best case I don't plan on dying so there'd be no obituary. [0] Might I suggest a method that would probably be more effective, at least for collecting potentially great scientists, Asimov's Sword. (http://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/1963-asimov http://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/1963-asimov) Target 10-to-15-year-olds already reading good sci-fi. Edit: a reply highlighted some ambiguity in my usage of "like Bryan" but they deleted it before I replied back.. here's clearing it up anyway. YC120's phrasing is a problem in filtering out literally Bryan from the 20 if they had plans to ask him, but I was more aiming to describe filtering out people like Bryan from the 100 based on having similar responses. I knew a guy in high school with a good supply of "intelligence, drive and vision" who had started working with a local university team around something to do with MEMS fabrication. Let's assume YC120 if it was around then would have been interested to have him as part of the 100, and that it'd be useful to him to expand his network beyond that university or academia in general for the grand possibility of getting a group together in the future to do for MEMS what Fairchild Semiconductor did for semiconductors. That sort of vision is all pointless if he were to have a similar reaction to Bryan's or other commenters here, either due to the second question giving off vibes of joining a group of narcissists or the example interests on the page (gene editing, solving physics, etc.) pointing exclusively at a particular subset of SV's fashions. Either he'd filter himself or maybe the reactions are on to something and an earnest application would be filtered by YC for insufficient alignment on greatness potential or SV-compatible interests.

dpflan 8y ago

Is this a response to highlight issues with the application or a response to applying and not getting accepted or applying and getting accepted (but rejecting on principle?)?

ardy42 8y ago
> Is this a response to highlight issues with the application or a response to applying and not getting accepted or applying and getting accepted (but rejecting on principle?)? The former. This is a guy who already has a lot of accomplishments under his belt, he seems more of a peer of YC than someone who's ever needed to seek it's approval.

Jabbles 8y ago

Could we have a summary for people that are out of the loop please?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

bob_theslob646 8y ago

Apparently this guy is a dick. https://blog.valerieaurora.org/2018/07/01/bryan-cantrill-has-been-accused-of-verbal-abuse-by-at-least-seven-people/ https://blog.valerieaurora.org/2018/07/01/bryan-cantrill-has... Also, why does he deserve a Wikipedia page? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Cantrill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Cantrill

throwaway415415 8y ago
Usually what happens is that they themselves create their own wikipedia pages. I see that all the time. I don't get why wikipedia allows that, it's becoming a collection of resumes.
kiddico 8y ago
Does being a dick remove someone from history? Primary contributors to projects smaller than DTrace have wiki pages, and I bet at least a few of them are dicks. I suppose wipe those out too.
ttsda 8y ago
Why don't you read the Wikipedia notability guidelines, or look at the history of the 13 year old page you just linked and find out?

nudpiedo 8y ago

Everyone knows there is a tone of bullshit at time to recruit, but recruiters, and human resources in general, need to justify their job and authority based on psychological assumptions put out of context. Or even just pure bias. The range of valid people for a job or a task is always very wide, and they with they could somehow purge the bottom of the applicant pools. The truth is that they have no idea because even the less innovative person, with some apparent red flags, given the right circumstances, could surpass the people who apparently qualified better. It's true that attitude is very important, but even people working only for a salary can innovate, alone or in team, and accidentally ending up doing something greater than expected. In the other hand, why is this obsession of linking innovation with business success? Steve Jobs damaged the IT culture way too much, and he even wasn't the mythological creature commonly believed. P.D. Diversity of thought, personality and attitude... does this diversity matter as well?

pluto9 8y ago

This is needelessly contrarian. Really, he's offended because someone implied that individuals could be great? They never said teams couldn't be, but unless he's planning to bring his team of kernel developers from 15 years ago to YC, the question is about him, not them. In any case, I'm sure it would be acceptable, maybe even expected, to credit his team when talking about his accomplishments. No need to be "offended". "The implication here is that my obituary should say I was at the YC 120". I see no reason to think this. Does he assume YCers are a bunch of heartless workaholics who value professional accomplishment above all else, things like family and community be damned? This is a "get to know you" type question. They want to know what's important to you. That's all. I also find the grandiloquence about his heroism in "standing up for Silicon Valley" pretty ironic after he put so much effort into showing how humble he was in the first question. I don't know what was going through this guy's head, but the sole function of this video seems to be as a soapbox to talk about what a man of integrity he is.

chriselles 8y ago

Perhaps the application questions could have been further refined. But perhaps the questions are intended to raise some people’s hackles. I get temporarily disappointed every time I’m declined by YC, but I appreciate what they are trying to do in a number of ways: Sharing everything(well, most things) they have learned with complete transparency. Constantly talking down Seed/Series A valuations in aggregate because they see the crazy. Experimenting with universal basic income(UBI) using their own money in what appears to me as an attempt to apply the scientific method to public policy lobbying. So I can excuse YC for some application questions that might come across as pretentious or more likely to appeal to the self aggrandizing. Two thins I’d like to see with YC120 are: 1) livestream the weekend as it could help with building attendees networks 2) Use YC120 applicant/application pool(with applicants permission) with data anonymised as an experiment on applicants/applications.