4 ms·

The Viral Me: Inside Y Combinator

100 points by jakarta 16y ago

jakarta 16y ago
Single page print version: http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201012/viral-me-silicon-valley-social-networking-devin-friedman?printable=true http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201012/viral-me-s...
seiji 16y ago
I'm impressed. It's not just a fluff piece about how amazing it is having dropouts save the world. Devin keeps trying to figure out why omnipresent ego inflation is a good thing. He hits all the major points: it's about mindshare, addiction, and manipulating people to get a higher CPM. Is that all social media is doing? Playing psychological video games in ways that form habits and drive revenue for Internet companies? He takes interviewee's quips (reduce friction! share yourself!), actually thinks (instead of sitting dumbfounded when someone young talks about technology and business), then figures out why the fads of today are shallow substitutes for sincere social interaction.
il 16y ago
So, to sum up: To get into YC and be successful in Silicon Valley, I have to have gone to Stanford, worked at Google and be building a social app? pg, say it ain't so! Are people like me who went to state school, never had a real job and are building tools for businesses doomed?
- drusenko 16y ago
  All three Weebly founders went to a state school (Penn State!) and never had a real job. It's certainly possibly to be successful no matter what school you went to.
- joshu 16y ago
  Getting into YC and being successful in SV are orthogonal.
  - chunkbot 16y ago
    I don't think they're orthogonal; they're probably positively correlated.
  - gms 16y ago
    What does orthogonal mean here? I know what it means in linear algebra, but I have trouble translating that into a colloquial sense.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
      Generally, the meaning of orthogonal in conversation has become orthogonal to the "real" meaning: It can mean both 'perpendicular' as well as 'parallel.' "At odds" and "unrelated." It's really kind of silly.
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
    - coffee 16y ago
      My interpretation of it reads: "Getting into YC and being successful in SV do not overlap." In other words, they are independent of each other...
- mmt 16y ago
  I'm sure that's hyperbole but based on the truth. If one of YC's methods is to keep up a certain level of excitement, and that's tough to do if you're building something highly functional but with little coolness value. Arguably, this correlates with degree of success[1]. Today it's social apps, tomorrow, it's Web 4.0. It also seems apropos, considering that YC is, itself, a social program. I've only been to one of their semi-public events, as well as a couple loosely affiliated ones, and they were all clearly biased toward extroversion. Similarly, I'd suggest "doomed" is hyperbole, as well, unless you mean getting accepted into their program. As a someone heavily introverted[2], it might be a form of torture, resulting in its own doom. [1] Assuming success instead of failure. I agree there's something to be said for the potential scale of social apps compared to business tools, We haven't yet seen the likes of Facebook, and Zynga operate as public companies, without venture money pumping into the ecosystem. This tends not to be an issue, except with tools for startups. [2] Though not at all shy.
- pg 16y ago
  It ain't so. In fact I wrote a whole essay about what a bad predictor people's colleges turn out to be. http://paulgraham.com/colleges.html http://paulgraham.com/colleges.html Edit: I just took a look at a random sample of startups in the batch we just accepted. Out of 21 founders, 2 went to Stanford, and 2 went to Ivy League colleges.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - ivankirigin 16y ago
    Just 21 founders?
    - ecuzzillo 16y ago
      It was a random sample of the batch.
      - ivankirigin 16y ago
        Whoops
jedc 16y ago
My favourite quote from the article: "a guy named Rahul, a slender 27-year-old Englishman of Indian extraction who's 50 percent hair and 50 percent brain." Which is a hilarious description of YC/HN's own http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rahulvohra http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rahulvohra
siddhant 16y ago
On page 3, One of the founders of a YC company called 1000Memories.com (it's FB for dead people, only more interesting) says he heard FB can already tell when you're about to break up with someone: certain communication patterns emerge. Yes, I know that the amount of data people share on Facebook is staggering, but, you've got to be kidding me!
- hugh3 16y ago
  "Can tell", surely, with some accuracy better than random but not nearly good enough for actual predictions. It would be interesting to know how the algorithm works, though... if only for my own personal usage. Is it a flurry of sudden communication? Or one partner starts ignoring the other? Do you need to know the words they're using, or can you just get it from the frequency of various types of communication? Facebook does scare me enough, however, that I refuse to be friends (on facebook or in real life) with anyone who works at facebook. When I meet someone socially who works at facebook (which has only happened a couple of times so far) my next reaction is to edge slowly away from the conversation. And you'd have to be crazy to date someone who works at facebook. And now I come to think of it, all the facebook employees I've met have been single...
- ig1 16y ago
  Nah, I'm pretty sure that's just a Chinese Whisper that originated from David McCandless work in data mining breakups on Facebook. It can tell you what the most popular day to breakup is, but it can't predict when a couple is going to breakup. However that said it probably is possible to predict breakups with communication data. You could probably even do it with an iphone app, breakups tend to follow certain events (like drop in respect, distancing, etc.) that can detected in vocal patterns.
  - siddhant 16y ago
    There is a (YC?) company that analyzes your GMail and tells you which of your friends you haven't been in touch with, in recent times. I'm forgetting the name right now. But we all know that Facebook has an edge over GMail in terms of personal data, and they can certainly do it. Hmm. I can see an app waiting to be built there. :-)
joshu 16y ago
I still wonder if passing on Rahul's startup was a mistake.
- ig1 16y ago
  What made you decide to pass on it ?
  - joshu 16y ago
    I am already in another gmail-plugin company.
- jedc 16y ago
  Then again, you should probably be careful of someone described as 50% hair! :)
inmygarage 16y ago
I found his observations eloquent and for the most part very insightful. If nothing else, he does an excellent job of glamorizing why this market is so exciting: "These people are optimistic not only because theirs is the last ascendant American industry but because implied in all those products is the idea that the human problem can be solved."

100 points by jakarta 16y ago

Single page print version: http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201012/viral-me-silicon-valley-social-networking-devin-friedman?printable=true http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201012/viral-me-s...

seiji 16y ago

I'm impressed. It's not just a fluff piece about how amazing it is having dropouts save the world. Devin keeps trying to figure out why omnipresent ego inflation is a good thing. He hits all the major points: it's about mindshare, addiction, and manipulating people to get a higher CPM. Is that all social media is doing? Playing psychological video games in ways that form habits and drive revenue for Internet companies? He takes interviewee's quips (reduce friction! share yourself!), actually thinks (instead of sitting dumbfounded when someone young talks about technology and business), then figures out why the fads of today are shallow substitutes for sincere social interaction.

il 16y ago

So, to sum up: To get into YC and be successful in Silicon Valley, I have to have gone to Stanford, worked at Google and be building a social app? pg, say it ain't so! Are people like me who went to state school, never had a real job and are building tools for businesses doomed?

drusenko 16y ago
All three Weebly founders went to a state school (Penn State!) and never had a real job. It's certainly possibly to be successful no matter what school you went to.
joshu 16y ago
Getting into YC and being successful in SV are orthogonal.
- chunkbot 16y ago
  I don't think they're orthogonal; they're probably positively correlated.
- gms 16y ago
  What does orthogonal mean here? I know what it means in linear algebra, but I have trouble translating that into a colloquial sense.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    Generally, the meaning of orthogonal in conversation has become orthogonal to the "real" meaning: It can mean both 'perpendicular' as well as 'parallel.' "At odds" and "unrelated." It's really kind of silly.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - coffee 16y ago
    My interpretation of it reads: "Getting into YC and being successful in SV do not overlap." In other words, they are independent of each other...
mmt 16y ago
I'm sure that's hyperbole but based on the truth. If one of YC's methods is to keep up a certain level of excitement, and that's tough to do if you're building something highly functional but with little coolness value. Arguably, this correlates with degree of success[1]. Today it's social apps, tomorrow, it's Web 4.0. It also seems apropos, considering that YC is, itself, a social program. I've only been to one of their semi-public events, as well as a couple loosely affiliated ones, and they were all clearly biased toward extroversion. Similarly, I'd suggest "doomed" is hyperbole, as well, unless you mean getting accepted into their program. As a someone heavily introverted[2], it might be a form of torture, resulting in its own doom. [1] Assuming success instead of failure. I agree there's something to be said for the potential scale of social apps compared to business tools, We haven't yet seen the likes of Facebook, and Zynga operate as public companies, without venture money pumping into the ecosystem. This tends not to be an issue, except with tools for startups. [2] Though not at all shy.
pg 16y ago
It ain't so. In fact I wrote a whole essay about what a bad predictor people's colleges turn out to be. http://paulgraham.com/colleges.html http://paulgraham.com/colleges.html Edit: I just took a look at a random sample of startups in the batch we just accepted. Out of 21 founders, 2 went to Stanford, and 2 went to Ivy League colleges.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- ivankirigin 16y ago
  Just 21 founders?
  - ecuzzillo 16y ago
    It was a random sample of the batch.
    - ivankirigin 16y ago
      Whoops

jedc 16y ago

My favourite quote from the article: "a guy named Rahul, a slender 27-year-old Englishman of Indian extraction who's 50 percent hair and 50 percent brain." Which is a hilarious description of YC/HN's own http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rahulvohra http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rahulvohra

siddhant 16y ago

On page 3, One of the founders of a YC company called 1000Memories.com (it's FB for dead people, only more interesting) says he heard FB can already tell when you're about to break up with someone: certain communication patterns emerge. Yes, I know that the amount of data people share on Facebook is staggering, but, you've got to be kidding me!

hugh3 16y ago
"Can tell", surely, with some accuracy better than random but not nearly good enough for actual predictions. It would be interesting to know how the algorithm works, though... if only for my own personal usage. Is it a flurry of sudden communication? Or one partner starts ignoring the other? Do you need to know the words they're using, or can you just get it from the frequency of various types of communication? Facebook does scare me enough, however, that I refuse to be friends (on facebook or in real life) with anyone who works at facebook. When I meet someone socially who works at facebook (which has only happened a couple of times so far) my next reaction is to edge slowly away from the conversation. And you'd have to be crazy to date someone who works at facebook. And now I come to think of it, all the facebook employees I've met have been single...
ig1 16y ago
Nah, I'm pretty sure that's just a Chinese Whisper that originated from David McCandless work in data mining breakups on Facebook. It can tell you what the most popular day to breakup is, but it can't predict when a couple is going to breakup. However that said it probably is possible to predict breakups with communication data. You could probably even do it with an iphone app, breakups tend to follow certain events (like drop in respect, distancing, etc.) that can detected in vocal patterns.
- siddhant 16y ago
  There is a (YC?) company that analyzes your GMail and tells you which of your friends you haven't been in touch with, in recent times. I'm forgetting the name right now. But we all know that Facebook has an edge over GMail in terms of personal data, and they can certainly do it. Hmm. I can see an app waiting to be built there. :-)

joshu 16y ago

I still wonder if passing on Rahul's startup was a mistake.

ig1 16y ago
What made you decide to pass on it ?
- joshu 16y ago
  I am already in another gmail-plugin company.
jedc 16y ago
Then again, you should probably be careful of someone described as 50% hair! :)

inmygarage 16y ago

I found his observations eloquent and for the most part very insightful. If nothing else, he does an excellent job of glamorizing why this market is so exciting: "These people are optimistic not only because theirs is the last ascendant American industry but because implied in all those products is the idea that the human problem can be solved."