3 ms·

I like Paul. He is one of rare cases when an engineer, besides being good at what he does (engineering), on top of that also has business smarts and CAN WRITE.

by tx 19y ago

I like Paul. He is one of rare cases when an engineer, besides being good at what he does (engineering), on top of that also has business smarts and CAN WRITE. That is very refreshing after all this MBA BS in the mainstream media. As an investor, however, PS and Co is not a very good fit for vast majority of engineers because... because they give you only what... 5K per founder? That is much less than good engineer's one month salary after-taxes. That limits his investments to trivial weekend projects completed by fresh college grads. It's the investment side of PG, that the blog post is bitching about.

davidw 19y ago
I don't see what the point of complaining is, though. Everyone knows what the terms are, so do your own calculations, and if it's not worth it to you, don't apply.
- tx 19y ago
  I guess alot of people, including this guy, are openly questioning "validity" of YComb's startups. Since everything they do is so trivial, can their creations be considered "products with value"? My personal issue with YComb's approach is that they actively (via this site, for instance) promote engineering mediocrity. Remember posts "PG made me drop out of college today!" ? I have seen several of those. Web 2.0 is all about this: cheap&quick high-school level programming project done over a weekend, polluted with google ads with mandatory "blog" attached to it. To me that is sad, There is nothing "glamorous" about it. My major in school was AI, and our professor used to dream alot about more powerful hardware that was supposed to become a reality soon. Well, it became. And for what? To run 8 Mongrels with some quick&dirty Ruby scripts converting contents of 4 DB tables into nicely looking HTML with roundeed corners? What a waste...
  - davidw 19y ago
    It's all about opportunity costs. Neither the world, nor Linus would probably be better off had he started a company rather than hacking on Linux. The world, and PG, are probably better off that he pursued Viaweb rather than some earlier version of Arc. But it's ultimately up the individual to choose what they want most. This site and PG certainly promote one route, but sensible people realize it's not the only thing out there.
  - whacked_new 19y ago
    Business does not equal mastery. if you complain about MBA BS then it should be obvious enough. The iPod was nothing new in terms of technical mastery. But it was innovative in terms of interface design, and a damn good example of successful marketing and integration into a whole product family; as such, it's also an innovation of process. But does an iPod engineer understand any AI? Probably not. Steve Jobs made stupid comments in his presentations (still remember the "branch prediction... it predicts branches!"). But he has an eye for opportunities that not even your professor can boast having. If there's a market, and you know what it takes to supply it, supply it. In my view, YC is addressing this; it may saturate quickly, but the need obviously exists. If your expertise targets the extremely educated, by all means make something that satisfies them. But don't forget that there are a lot of people to please. Just please the ones you understand, or think you do. I'm completely taken aback by twitter's success, but hey, people use it, what can I say.

by tx 19y ago

davidw 19y ago

I don't see what the point of complaining is, though. Everyone knows what the terms are, so do your own calculations, and if it's not worth it to you, don't apply.

tx 19y ago
I guess alot of people, including this guy, are openly questioning "validity" of YComb's startups. Since everything they do is so trivial, can their creations be considered "products with value"? My personal issue with YComb's approach is that they actively (via this site, for instance) promote engineering mediocrity. Remember posts "PG made me drop out of college today!" ? I have seen several of those. Web 2.0 is all about this: cheap&quick high-school level programming project done over a weekend, polluted with google ads with mandatory "blog" attached to it. To me that is sad, There is nothing "glamorous" about it. My major in school was AI, and our professor used to dream alot about more powerful hardware that was supposed to become a reality soon. Well, it became. And for what? To run 8 Mongrels with some quick&dirty Ruby scripts converting contents of 4 DB tables into nicely looking HTML with roundeed corners? What a waste...
- davidw 19y ago
  It's all about opportunity costs. Neither the world, nor Linus would probably be better off had he started a company rather than hacking on Linux. The world, and PG, are probably better off that he pursued Viaweb rather than some earlier version of Arc. But it's ultimately up the individual to choose what they want most. This site and PG certainly promote one route, but sensible people realize it's not the only thing out there.
- whacked_new 19y ago
  Business does not equal mastery. if you complain about MBA BS then it should be obvious enough. The iPod was nothing new in terms of technical mastery. But it was innovative in terms of interface design, and a damn good example of successful marketing and integration into a whole product family; as such, it's also an innovation of process. But does an iPod engineer understand any AI? Probably not. Steve Jobs made stupid comments in his presentations (still remember the "branch prediction... it predicts branches!"). But he has an eye for opportunities that not even your professor can boast having. If there's a market, and you know what it takes to supply it, supply it. In my view, YC is addressing this; it may saturate quickly, but the need obviously exists. If your expertise targets the extremely educated, by all means make something that satisfies them. But don't forget that there are a lot of people to please. Just please the ones you understand, or think you do. I'm completely taken aback by twitter's success, but hey, people use it, what can I say.