4 ms·

Daniel's coding ability, or love of writing code, isn't the reason he's managed to get this far. I remember meeting with him regularly after demo day; no invest

by Harj 16y ago

Daniel's coding ability, or love of writing code, isn't the reason he's managed to get this far. I remember meeting with him regularly after demo day; no investors were interested, he had no co-founder and an idea that was all of a week old with a very buggy prototype (by very buggy, I mean didn't work). Things looked bleak. I still believed in Daniel's determination but even I was thinking in the back of my head, at least he'll be able to take these experiences with him on his next startup. "Extraordinary skill" or not, the fact is the majority of people would have given up at this point. Daniel instead kept doing back to back investor meetings during the day and coding at night. He's of course benefitted from being smart and part of YC but clearly those can't be sufficient conditions for success, if they were we'd have a 0% failure rate at YC.

jganetsk 16y ago
Well, this is the interesting part of the story I'd like to hear. Harj, I wish you the best in selecting people for the program. But, I don't know what the moral of the story is for the rest of us. Be determined? Never give up? That's not quite right... because that's not sufficient. I'm just tired of the heroic founder myth.
- johnrob 16y ago
  There's a selection bias at work: we only hear about the success stories (whether success means raising money or an exit). It stands to reason there will be a heroic tone to it since succeeding is hard. If the press wrote about every founder, the myth would be less heroic and more foolhardy.
- Harj 16y ago
  The only sufficient ingredient for success is luck. Luck is out of your control so the best you can do is to put yourself in a position that increases your chances of being lucky. That includes surrounding yourself with good people but fundamentally, the best way to be lucky is to keep going and not giving up. Perhaps that doesn't feel quite right because it's not sufficient, you're not guaranteed luck by being determined, but the alternative of saying "be lucky" isn't very meaningful.

by Harj 16y ago

jganetsk 16y ago

Well, this is the interesting part of the story I'd like to hear. Harj, I wish you the best in selecting people for the program. But, I don't know what the moral of the story is for the rest of us. Be determined? Never give up? That's not quite right... because that's not sufficient. I'm just tired of the heroic founder myth.

johnrob 16y ago
There's a selection bias at work: we only hear about the success stories (whether success means raising money or an exit). It stands to reason there will be a heroic tone to it since succeeding is hard. If the press wrote about every founder, the myth would be less heroic and more foolhardy.
Harj 16y ago
The only sufficient ingredient for success is luck. Luck is out of your control so the best you can do is to put yourself in a position that increases your chances of being lucky. That includes surrounding yourself with good people but fundamentally, the best way to be lucky is to keep going and not giving up. Perhaps that doesn't feel quite right because it's not sufficient, you're not guaranteed luck by being determined, but the alternative of saying "be lucky" isn't very meaningful.