8 ms·
Paul Graham spills: Why some companies get his cash and others don't
- rch 16y agoTrue: "If you really understand something, you can say it in the fewest words, instead of thrashing about."
- sdizdar 16y agoNot necessary - by using this rule you might miss a lot of truly brilliant people (I know a couple of them: they just mumble about things and you understand what they were saying only after you see their design and code). This again tries to equate somebody being able to express something using English (in other words, being a good communicator) and ability to really understand the nature and working of a very complex system or idea. But each startup must have at least one founder which has this capability.
- Jebdm 16y agoNot necessarily. My friend and cofounder is one of the smartest people I know, but even when he talks about things I know he is an expert at (as demonstrated by his skill), he's often a bit verbose. Personally, I can generate concise statements (and I'm good at it when I try), but the first couple of times I verbalize an idea I'm usually somewhat verbose. I make an explicit effort to figure out a concise way to say things once I've noticed that I'll probably be expressing the same idea again (and when I write). Perhaps other people become significantly more concise over time without effort, but I'd estimate my baseline compression rate is only something like 10% (whereas when I explicitly compress I can often get 30% or better). I think the difference is that some people think very verbally and linearly, whereas I tend to think more visually and abstractly. A lot of the time, I have to translate the ideas in my head from these somewhat amorphous concepts or visual ideas into English (or German, or code, or whatever).
- rch 16y agoI think what you're referring to is synthesis, which I consider an important aspect of understanding. One might be an expert only through knowing, another precursor to understanding (see, expert Visual Basic programmer). My girlfriend might take this opportunity to point out I much I like to ramble on sometimes. shrugs
- Jebdm 16y agoThe thing is, I tend to think about the sorts of things which are complex enough that you can't trivially describe them in a linear format. Imagine that somebody asked you to tell them about programming. Programming is such a huge and complex topic that there really isn't an effective way to begin explaining it without putting significant forethought into how to explain it, even if you're an expert programmer. So, unless you've put thought into how to explain and teach it, if someone randomly asks you, you're probably going to fumble and be verbose. (This is one of the reasons many professors are bad at teaching.) Of course, in the context of the article, somebody interviewing with investors probably should have thought out in advance about the sorts of things the investors would want to know and ask about, so they shouldn't be fumbling too much.
- scott_s 16y agoThis is true, and teaching is hard because of this, but I think there is a "correct" way of handling it. Think about the kind of background the questioner has, what they already know, what they don't know, and what they want to know. Phrase your answer on that level. Doing this in a few seconds time requires both intimiate knowledge of the subject at hand, and the ability to intuit a person's world-view as it relates to that subject. If I know nothing about the person asking the question, then I ask them questions so I can figure out what kind of an answer is appropriate.
- gnaritas 16y agoI don't know, if someone randomly asks me to tell them about programming, I'd reply that it's the ability to make the computer do what I want it to do by speaking a language it understands. That'd shut most people up while giving them a basic understanding.
- btam 16y agoWhat you're missing is that PG says "can." When you're in a ten-minute interview that could change your life forever, you're going to be concise when possible. That being said, I don't believe that one's 'natural' verbosity has any correlation with intelligence. Minds aren't that simple.
- Jebdm 16y agoSure; in the particular context of a ten minute interview, you'll have prepared and it ought to be relatively easy to be concise most of the time. But if they throw you a curveball, then I don't think it ought to reflect negatively on you if you're a bit verbose (though it might reflect negatively on you that you didn't anticipate whatever the question was). I replied because the quote was taken out of context, and I don't think that the idea applies in the general case.
- Alex3917 16y agoI think this is true, but I don't think it's the whole story. What I see is that the best entrepreneurs understand that it's ok to leave 70% of the potential value on the table in order to have a business that's more explainable to investors and customers.
- Jebdm 16y agoI think that's a particularly salient point for most intelligent/dedicated people to understand; if you're intelligent, you've got to remember that most people have a harder time understanding things than you, and if you're dedicated to your idea, you've got to remember that most people don't care about your idea as much as you do.
- delineal 16y agoI would add that I think the Y Combinator application process forces you to leave most of the potential value of your idea on the table (assuming your idea has a moderate or high level of complexity). Since they're more interested in founders, this is probably a wise choice.
- iqster 16y ago"But if you start discarding determination, you very quickly get an ineffectual and perpetual grad student.": Love this line!
- pg 16y agoThere are a few transcription errors in this. What I actually said was "ineffectual perpetual grad student."
- nbaumann 16y agoThat is something I've always agreed with. I have respect for someone that goes from undergrad to doctorate, but I certainly have no admiration for them.
- djahng 16y agoI don't think this is what he meant. After all, PG does have a PhD. I think he's referring to those multiple-masters degrees grad students, or the 10+ year grad student and still no PhD...
- nbaumann 16y agoThat is very true. I guess I should have explained myself. During my years in college, a lot of grad and doctorate students would come in and try to help undergrads with their studies, projects, research, senior design projects etc.. What I came to realize is that you can't take what they say too seriously especially when you're aspiring to create something out of the ordinary. For me they weigh too heavily on research, research, research and if you can't validate every single thing you do, then don't do it. I don't agree with that, if you have an idea and think it'll work, do it, and if you execute it properly you will have some degree of success. For me that's the attitude that most of them had. Don't get me wrong, they were extremely intelligent but were too constrained by exact academic procedure and a lot of them had no experience in the real world, let alone the startup world. They would shoot down ideas and make you do ridiculous things for projects, that to me, made no sense and took away time from working on your product. I am not saying those things have no place, but at least from my experience, they weren't terribly interesting people, they were institutionalized by the academic system and didn’t really understand what you were trying to do. When I say I have no admiration, I don't want to label every PHD that way. They are brilliant people. But for me when you do 4 years as an undergrad, go straight to your Masters in the same school and then to your Doctorate in the same school without anything in between, that doesn't require a lot of determination and resourcefulness. It's a lot easier and less risky to do that than create a startup around a crazy idea and potentially crash and burn. Then again, it might just have been my school.
- shawndumas 16y agoPrintable Link: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/printthis/219377.html http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/printthis/219377.html
- ccc3 16y agoKnowing the business. If we ask a bunch of questions and they have the answers at their fingertips because they understand the domain really well, that's a good sign. An old boss of mine is a design judge for a student engineering competition. Often times he will ask a team for a specific piece of information about their project, only to have the team pull out a giant binder and start shuffling through looking for the answer. At this point he tells them "If I ask you to tell me your girlfriends phone number and you pull out your phone book and start searching for it, you're probably not in love" I think the same sentiment applies here
- corin_ 16y agoI love the comparison, but I would imagine that due to mobile phones and contact lists, it's quite possible to be in love without knowing any phone numbers. Personally I know the numbers of the (at a guess) 20 people I call most often, but I always assumed that, in 2011, I'm the exception not the rule. Not particularly relevant, his point stands either way, just interested to know if other people on HN still find themselves memorising phone numbers.
- Jebdm 16y agoThe only numbers I know are the ones that haven't changed since before I was a teenager (basically just my parents' numbers and 911), my own Google Voice number, and Bing 411. That's partially because I can always look up numbers in my contacts, on Facebook, or online, and partially because I make phone calls less than once a week.
- pavel_lishin 16y agoI don't bother remembering a phone number, unless calling that number will result in the person on the other end bailing me out of jail. So far, 100% success rate.
- lanstein 16y agowrt being bailed out of jail?
- zbruhnke 16y agoInteresting article that I think most of the people who apply to YC already understand (Hopefully) As someone who does not have a co-founder and has now applied for the second time I have decided I am moving to the bay area in June whether I get into YC or not and I am either going to find a co-founder to continue with or go to work at another startup while retaining my rights to the work on this project until I meet some more interesting people interested in working long hours for low pay and having lots of fun while doing it. I cant imagine my life any other way but in a culture where I am creating every day, life is just not the same for me otherwise and working a 9 to 5 like my parents did when i was growing up has never been an option as far as I am concerned.
- spoiledtechie 16y agoIt was never an option for me either, but now that I have it, im sort of stuck until my after work life catches up to make the same as my work life.
- blhack 16y agoWhat are you working on right now, Zach? Why not start living the crazy-startup-founder lifestyle today? That's what I'm trying to do. [1]The time I spend at my current job is like sleeping to me. It's time during a 24 hour period that I just plain will not get back. I have to do it or I will die. But the hours I spend not sleeping are hours that I spend reading, and hacking, and writing, and more reading, and more hacking. As much as I'd prefer the weather (and the availability of coffee) in the Bay Area to the weather in Phoenix, I can't make the move happen right now, so I'm just doing the "crazy hours" thing anyway :) [1]: I just want to clarify that I don't mean I'm slacking off at my job, if anything, being in "work" mode 100% of the time, as well as having a passion for learning new stuff has benefited my employer. When I say "sleeping", I just mean something that I don't have a choice about doing.
- zbruhnke 16y agoI am working on my current startup idea, right now it is simply a side project. I work for myself as it is so sleep is certainly a commodity in my life. I am hacking just about all day every day and enjoying the heck out of it. unfortunately I am in Louisiana and with a shortage of hackers to network with here moving to the bay area just seems to make sense for my work as well as my sanity :)
- clistctrl 16y agoAs a stupid, but determined person this gives me hope :D
- rokhayakebe 16y agoWell you need to be a bit stupid to want to start a business. You would be considered stupid if someone told you you have a 5% chance at every kissing this girl, yet you decide to spend the next 3 years of your life pursuing her and her only. This is exactly what we do.
- cperciva 16y agoYou would be considered stupid if someone told you you have a 5% chance at every kissing this girl, yet you decide to spend the next 3 years of your life pursuing her and her only. If that girl is worth more than 20x as much to you as any other girl, a 5% chance is worth it.
- jacoblyles 16y agoMost people have some risk aversion. For example, few people would trade $10 million for a 10% chance at $100 million.
- rokhayakebe 16y agoInteresting. I am assuming you would. Can you briefly explain your reasoning?
- marvin 16y agoUnless you really, really need 100 million, no reasoning will make that a good bet. The expected value is 10 million, and since that's what you're putting at stake, you have nothing to gain. Whereas the utility value of a guaranteed 10 million, assuming you're not very rich already, is huge. It's more than an average lifetime of hard work.
- 16y ago
- VaedaStrike 16y agoTo be concise is more indicative of mastery rather than proficiency. You can understand something very well and be able to navigate your way through your own domain of expertise at whim. But if you can do that AND also communicate your domain to those for whom your domain is horribly foreign then you've demonstrated that you've not merely mastered the domain but that you have a grasp on a more foundational framework that translates to virtually limitless perspectives. Proficiency is to navigate your world, Mastery is to successfully guide a complete alien through that world and have them see it, even if just dimmly, with the eyes of a native.
- Jebdm 16y agoI don't think that what you're calling mastery and proficiency are matters of degree like you seem to be expressing. Ability to communicate can be completely separate from understanding, because (particularly if you're of above-average intelligence) most people don't understand things the same way that you do.
- VaedaStrike 16y agoI don't think that the underlying inherent knowledge that accompanies the capacity to successfully transmit understanding can be set apart from a more complete understanding. For example if you can produce any number of outcomes in a single language but lack the capacity to do the same things in another language there's a level of abstraction that you simply have not witnessed which itself gives greater dimension to the fundamental capacities that are being exercised. If all you know is English, even if you speak it very very very well you can go your whole life missing out on seeing language itself rather than just a one dimensional perspective on a single language. You can have all the parts held in theory but until you can see equivalents in another language in action you lack understanding of English. The mere capacity to communicate something real demands an empathy that speaks to experience on a higher level. If you can't, in some degree of abundance, find analogous material from which you can more clearly communicate your realm of knowledge to the uninitiated then it says something about the true depth of your knowledge. Just as you can't get real depth perception without a plurality of vistas neither can you truly see what you're doing unless you have experience, and thereby the capacity for empathy and making links with that empathy, from far outside of your field of focus.
- RobMcCullough 16y agoTried to read but I am distracted by all the clutter!
- VaedaStrike 16y agoTo put it concisely :) A demonstration of empathy that translates to real communication with the particular lay person you are engaging with regard to your domain of expertise shows mastery rather than mere proficiency.
- grncdr 16y agoAgreed, the important part about being concise is not that you can boil down a complex idea into a short statement, but that you can give the questioner the information relevant to them. When there is too much relevant information to be concise, that is in itself a relevant (and concise) answer, the art is giving the questioner just enough information to ask another question. Personally I find doing that sort of thing _extremely_ difficult, and doing it in real-time as part of a verbal conversation orders of magnitude more so.
- gerner 16y agoa great related article at Wired: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/what-is-success-true-grit/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/what-is-success-tr... what PG calls determination I think Wired (quoting Angela Duckworth) calls "grit"
- gerner 16y agoand the survey measuring how gritty you are is here: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/17-item%2520Grit%2520and%2520Ambition.040709.pdf http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/17-item%2520Grit%2...
- kenjackson 16y agoClicked it, it didn't work, gave up, moved on.
- wpeterson 16y agohttp://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/12-item%20Grit%20Scale.pdf http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/12-item%20Grit%20S...
- jacoblyles 16y agoOld news.
- 6ren 16y agoIt's nice and concise. > If you imagine someone with 100 percent determination and 100 percent intelligence, you can discard a lot of intelligence before they stop succeeding. How much? What percentage lobotomy are we talking about? I totally agree btw: provided you are focussed on meeting a need ("make something people want"), and are willing to iterate trial-and-error (that's the determination part), massive intelligence isn't required: the inside of your software doesn't need to be great; and it doesn't need to implemen some fundamentally new technology; it's what it does that counts. > Or when Google started, there were eight to 10 successful established search engines already... I read a great interview (maybe a co-founder of tripod...?) who went through the evolution of search engines over a decade, each time saying that it was too late to enter the field, and playfully finishing with "[of course, now with google, it really is too late]". I've searched and searched for this but can't find it - anyone recognize it?
- rfzabick 16y ago> I read a great interview (maybe a co-founder of tripod...?) who went through the evolution of search engines over a decade, each time saying that it was too late to enter the field, and playfully finishing with "[of course, now with google, it really is too late]". I've searched and searched for this but can't find it - anyone recognize it? Well, I guess it's not too late to enter the search field, then.
- kchronis 16y agoWhen an entrepreneur is determined and passionate they will find a way to succeed. Without both of those, the "intelligent" individual will just move on to another idea or company.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- joelrunyon 16y agoGreat line & sentiment --> "And you can see where that line is? Well, this is why we pick based on founders."
- Ruudjah 16y ago> What do you look for? Determination. When we started, we thought we were looking for smart people, but it turned out that intelligence was not as important as we expected. If you imagine someone with 100 percent determination and 100 percent intelligence, you can discard a lot of intelligence before they stop succeeding. But if you start discarding determination, you very quickly get an ineffectual and perpetual grad student. This is awesome.