22 ms·

PG and Jessica

555 points by janvdberg 6y ago

branon 6y ago
What is PG? What is Jessica? If one isn't already immersed in the VC mindset that dominates (and is apparently a significant dynamic of) YC, how is one supposed to parse these articles?
- notadog 6y ago
  PG = Paul Graham Jessica = Jessica Livingston
  - qorrect 6y ago
    How anyone thinks its acceptable to reference initials/acronyms before first defining them is beyond me.
    - cblconfederate 6y ago
      this website belongs to YC. its kind of faux pas to not know them
    - mturmon 6y ago
      I disagree. This is actually kind of a sweet gesture and convention. Like recognizing a friend’s Unix login at 3am when you type “who” from the command prompt. There are a few people who get known that way in some contexts: rms, jwz, esr. They’re controversial, but that has become their shorthand within some context.
- kthxbye123 6y ago
  It’s just social play and backslapping among the oligarchs, don’t pay any attention to it.
- zepto 6y ago
  What is YC?
  - floatingatoll 6y ago
    YCombinator, as in this site's domain name.
  - k3liutZu 6y ago
    What 'is'?
  - Macha 6y ago
    Check the URL of this website. Y Combinator is a VC firm that specializes in investing in early stage/new tech companies and one of the first to do it on such a public scale. Their most significant successful investment is likely Stripe. Dropbox and Airbnb are other companies which had a lot of initial funding from YC
    - croes 6y ago
      What if you reached the linked page via another source? It is bad style and disrespect to the reader to use abbreviations without explaining at least once their meaning.
      - Macha 6y ago
        There comes a point where you need to decide are you writing a targeted article or a beginner's introduction. If you can't assume any knowledge and you make articles for a more advanced audience so bloating and winding that whatever point you were making gets lost. Not every article has to target the "everyone" audience. What if we applied the standard to programming article? What if an article on rendering issues in mass effect and a patch in directx for the same had to include explanations for variables and for loops? It clearly weakens the article as there is value in getting to the point.
        croes 6y ago
- blocked_again 6y ago
  Well the likelyhood of someone who come across Sam Altman's blog and don't know who is PG and Jessica is very low. You can't write a blog post for everyone in the world. Then you would have to explain what is YC, what is a founder, what is a VC etc. Would be pretty boring blog post to be honest. Oh wait, and let me introduce you to Google. https://www.google.com/search?q=pg+and+jessica&oq=pg+and+jessica https://www.google.com/search?q=pg+and+jessica&oq=pg+and+jes...
  - Macha 6y ago
    Also the blog post is explicitly targeted at people wanting to replicate YC's model. I think it's fair to expect that audience to know what YC is, who PG and Jessica are
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gus_massa 6y ago
  PG is the founder of HN and was the mod for the first ¿10? years, until he "retired" and gave the position to dang. He is in the 3rd position in the karma list. He is not very active here in the last few years. (But I guess he is still lurking. Hi!) https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg The original community here was the readers of the pg articles, so the oldtimers know who pg is. Jessica is the wife of pg, she comes here from time to time, but no too much. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jl https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jl Both of them are part of the four founders of YC. She was the less technical of the cofounders but from a pg article: http://www.paulgraham.com/jessica.html http://www.paulgraham.com/jessica.html > [...] One of the things she's best at is judging people. She's one of those rare individuals with x-ray vision for character. She can see through any kind of faker almost immediately. Her nickname within YC was the Social Radar, and this special power of hers was critical in making YC what it is. [...] > During interviews, Robert and Trevor and I would pepper the applicants with technical questions. Jessica would mostly watch. A lot of the applicants probably read her as some kind of secretary, especially early on, because she was the one who'd go out and get each new group and she didn't ask many questions. She was ok with that. It was easier for her to watch people if they didn't notice her. But after the interview, the three of us would turn to Jessica and ask "What does the Social Radar say?"
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  there is an idea of a PG, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real PG, only an entity, something illusory. And though he can hide his cold gaze and you can shake his hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense your lifestyles are probably comparable: He simply is not there
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Well, if this isn't a harbinger for where this community currently falls on the geek-mop spectrum...
- lc9er 6y ago
  A cult of personality. https://mobile.twitter.com/MJB_SF/status/1298113027737231360 https://mobile.twitter.com/MJB_SF/status/1298113027737231360
- erik_landerholm 6y ago
  Seriously, you can't google? And what does Paul or Jessica have to do with the 'VC mindset'?
cblconfederate 6y ago
> it hasn’t been close to replicated. Because not many have those values anymore
gargarplex 6y ago
On the one hand, you have a renaissance man (RISD-trained painter and Harvard-minted CS PhD) who authored On Lisp and started up and exited successfully with some of the most respected technologists as partners (Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris). On the other hand, you have the author of Founders at Work, someone who not only thoroughly interviewed tons of successful founders (& bootstraped a pattern-matching capacity) but also has a reputation for a world-class EQ that built community and kept bad apples away. So, yeah, the DNA of the founding team matters a lot. Seems like for scaling companies (like Y Combinator, itself, is a company – and by Sam's definition of creating more value for others than itself, has become a platform) – traits are extremely heritable (not so much the case with children!)
- throwaway1984zz 6y ago
  > traits are extremely heritable (not so much the case with children!) This has been conclusively debunked. https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/2016-plomin.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/2016-plomin.pdf > All psychological traits show significant and substantial genetic influence > Most measures of the “environment” show significant genetic influence > These are “big” findings, both in terms of effect size and potential impact on psychological science
  - arrel 6y ago
    Here’s a nice takedown of Plomin’s theory. I’m not a geneticist, but there seem to be a lot of holes in it. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06784-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06784-5
    - throwaway1984zt 6y ago
      I just read the whole thing, how is it a takedown? Plomin's paper is a meta-study which discusses results that are robustly replicated because there is a crisis of reproducibility in this domain and replication is the arbiter of the scientific method. This article you linked is essentially an opinion piece about Plomin... edit: Did I get shadowbanned for this?! Post not showing up on different device..
radihuq 6y ago
Do you think Kanye West[0] could be the Paul Graham of the music industry? On one hand he's been in the industry long enough to understand the system; he's generally respected as an artist; he has a platform to reach the masses; he has a track record of being able to organically grow a collective (organization/business/product) from the ground up (Yeezy). On the other hand, the music industry is huge and run by conglomerates. Going against the norm would truly be David vs. Goliath. I think if anyone could do it, it would be Kanye (with a super savvy business partner). I think he has the conviction and general anti-status-quo mindset to embark & be successful in this endeavor [0] https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1305977929180966913 https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1305977929180966913
- soheil 6y ago
  The value that music brings to people’s lives isn’t comparable to tech. There may be conglomerates that one way or another twist people’s arms to pay them and generate revenue for artists, but as a whole the music industry does not produce enough value relative to the world of startups. So there won’t be a YC of music that is large enough.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - radihuq 6y ago
    Not sure if "large enough" matters as comparing the music industry to the tech industry is like comparing a pond to an ocean. I think the real value here is that a YC of music can fundamentally change the way the industry functions by: - Allowing artists control over their masters/creations (equity) - Reducing the barrier to entry to enter the music industry by providing upfront capital, and support (mentorship, music marketing & distribution) - Concentrating talent in one area Also if anyone is interested I'd recommend checking out this documentary by J. Cole's Dreamville[0] where a bunch of artists and producers came together in a house and built an album in 10 days (basically like a hackathon) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-9mZLh5XU8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-9mZLh5XU8
vinceguidry 6y ago
People would do this for each other, but there's really nothing to keep them focused. Magic is the art of maintaining people's focus long after they would have otherwise moved on. Making magic happen requires a magician that understands how it works. You can't cast a spell that will stick around after you bounce. Once you bounce, the people that succeed you won't understand how the magic works quite as well. They'll argue with each other over how best to keep it going. It's a dynamic I've come to know intimately over the years. Once the magician leaves, the magic goes soon after. If you want magic in your life, go where the magician is, or better yet, learn how to work magic yourself.
- thowawaymom 6y ago
  You know magic isn't real, right?
- bjelkeman-again 6y ago
  I have experienced this several times in people first hand. I had a colleague who we would say sprinkled fairy dust over the customer and us. But once he left the room nobody else could maintain the magic for long. He couldn’t teach me directly, but hanging around him, a lot, helped. My own experience tells me that it takes a deep understanding of the area you work in, often intuitive understanding mixed with facts, to get to this point. You also need to be able to communicate easily with people. I am nowhere as good as some, and the little I have took years and years of practice, hard work and immersion in a subject area to achieve. Then, as you say, comes the hard part. How do you embed the magic so well in the organisation that those that follow can keep it up and improve on it, or at least not wreck it straight away. I have tried things like: make sure open source is part of the culture, start a foundation not a company, hire carefully, teach good practice in execution, only work on things that you and other are passionate about and that makes a real difference. Edit: add some hard part
  - vinceguidry 6y ago
    You're helping me along to a realization. The magician has to put themselves first, and create a world that is inviting enough that others want to join. Magic is more powerful than anything else in life. As soon as you stop working magic, it disappears. You are the source of magic. So create a life that makes you able to constantly work it. You can't make magic that outlasts you, but you can help other people gain confidence.
Kednicma 6y ago
It's useful to read between the lines, because maybe YC-like things are not good for the world. In that case, it's worth studying PG and Jessica only in order to understand how to avoid being like them.
Wump 6y ago
Reading PG's essays and Hackers and Painters back in 2005 got me to believe that entrepreneurship could be something for me, too. It changed the course of my life, both personally and professionally.
PaulHoule 6y ago
A competing hypothesis is that YC's success is tied to a geographical location. If PG and Jessica were the "key" you could send them to Pittsburgh, Berlin, or Dakar and they could do the the same. For a long time communities around the world have been asking YC to expand their business to new geographies. Except for China it has always been "talking to the hand". China didn't turn out well. YC can't have it both ways: "we can only function in one place" and "we have some value apart from being in that one sacred place". COVID-19 may be changing this, but the contradiction is one for YC to resolve. The rest of us have to recognize a gap between what they have done (beliefs that seem to be implicit in their behavior) and what they say ("the secret to our success is...")
- mrkurt 6y ago
  That's kind of a weird take. The vast majority of startup funding happens in the SF bay area. It is true that YC wouldn't have worked in another city (they did move it from Boston after all), but that's unrelated to PG and Jessica's efforts. If what you're doing is giving people credibility in an _existing_ investor ecosystem, you can't just ... create a new investor ecosystem somewhere else.
  - PaulHoule 6y ago
    It's a problem. A big problem. If you look at "racism" and other forms of inequality that are intractable in the US and other countries you find it can understood in terms of "placism". (e.g. "busing" as an answer to school inequality and the resulting backlash; if minorities lived in as a diverse set of places as white people did in the US the Democrats would have 58+ seats in the Senate, etc.) Sam could prove me wrong by sending the PG/Jessica combo to another place (Fresno, LA, Las Vegas, Dublin, Edingburgh, ...) and have them accomplish something. People have been asking for this for years but we've always heard that it's not negotiable, YC is tied to a sacred patch of land, etc. Someone who shows that "sacred land is everything" by their behavior is going to inevitable sound disingenuous when they try to distill universal principles out of the YC experience.
    - 6y ago
jkuria 6y ago
There's also a little bit of the "DARPA effect" where several key things align perfectly in time to create such an outcome i.e. The Economist did a study on numerous attempts to create another "DARPA" that would lead to break through innovations of the kind DARPA did. Not one has succeeded. From what I've heard, In YC's case: + Paul was a successful technical founder with the money and reputation. He could rally the troops with "suits and MBAs don't matter, hackers rule the world" rhetoric. + Paul had a giant megaphone with his blog (not initially done to market YC) + He had a partner who was good at reading and sizing up people, crucial in picking the first batches whose success was crucial to the whole thing working. + The cost of doing a start-up had fallen dramatically + and so on. I am sure there a few others. Similarly, everyone has tried to replicate the Kenya's mPesa, the world's most successful mobile money system. No one has succeeded because there hasn't been the same confluence of factors that led to mpesa's success:
- d3nj4l 6y ago
  India's UPI is getting close. I've lived months without any cash in my wallet, even before COVID.
- ianmobbs 6y ago
  Very long thread about How Darpa Works that was on HN a couple months ago, for those interested - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23670246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23670246
- meowface 6y ago
  I have absolutely no clue if this actually played any role, but pg is also one of the people credited with creating what's considered the first web app, and it seems plausible a vision of a future giant world of web apps could've influenced the startups he picked and the advice he gave. For example, the reddit co-founders say the site was his idea: >The next morning, on the train back to Virginia, hung over, somewhere in the middle of Connecticut, I get a call from Paul. He says, "I'm sorry, we made a mistake. We don't like your idea, but we like you guys." We got off the train, and I was able to sweet-talk the Amtrak lady into not charging us to turn around. In our conversation, Paul said, "You guys need to build the front page of the Internet." That was all Paul, and that became Reddit. (https://www.inc.com/magazine/201206/christine-lagorio/alexis-ohanian-reddit-how-i-did-it.html https://www.inc.com/magazine/201206/christine-lagorio/alexis...)
brudgers 6y ago
One feature of YC that rarely gets mentioned is adequate capitalization. That's the whole basis of YC's bets on individuals rather than companies. But it's also the way YC itself was founded. YC didn't need to extract capital from founders by charging rent for offices, taking advising fees, etc. It is the reason YC has been able to "leave money on the table" when it comes to later stage deal making. Adequate capitalization is the reason YC was able to take a longer term approach. Most businesses are not adequately capitalized. This means there is always pressure to cut corners. Always the need to try to "sell broke." Always the allure of coming up with an angle.
yesimahuman 6y ago
Having been in and around other “copycat” programs, I agree YC hasn’t been replicated, and it’s kind of a microcosm of startups in general: Unlike YC, most of the people starting copycat programs were not nerds, were not software developers, did not focus on encouraging programmers to start businesses, and most had not started their own startups despite having almost no business doing so (i.e. lack of traditional business background or classic business personality traits). And, to make matters worse, the people that funded these programs also self-selected for typical traits that YC proved were unnecessary (and possibly counter-productive!). It’s both painfully obvious and maddeningly difficult to replicate.
- halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
  I’ve heard TechStars is a close second mostly because batch sizes are so small. More intimacy and focus on the individual founders.
  - yesimahuman 6y ago
    You're getting downvoted which is unfortunate. I participated in TechStars (Cloud 2013), and yes while it is similar there are a number of things about it that are not quite like YC (disclaimer: I've not participated in YC but have interviewed a few times many years ago): 1) There is no PG or Jessica of TechStars. No PG essays, HN, or other magnet for technical would-be founders. No clear pitch to these founders that they can actually do startups! 2) There is no cohesive TechStars community. I think that's due to the "franchise" approach. They do try to help here but at this point the network isn't really valuable. 3) Partly due to the franchise approach, there is no outsized fundraising benefit since fundraising is localized to programs.
- rexreed 6y ago
  Yes! I basically commented something similar. Motivations matter even more than management.
- auganov 6y ago
  > Unlike YC, most of the people starting copycat programs were not nerds, were not software developers, did not focus on encouraging programmers to start businesses, and most had not started their own startups despite having almost no business doing so But there are many programs started by people from the industry. Many who understand the nature of YC very well. IMO the problem here is inherent to copying. Do you copy the 2005 YC or the 2020 YC? If you copy the 2005 one how do you adjust for the fact that the world isn't the same anymore? If you copy the 2020 one how do you make up for the 15 years that never happened? As a copy how will you get the same deal flow, why would people apply to you over the real deal? If you're trying to create a YC in country/place X how do you adjust for the fact that it's different from America/Silicon Valley? What usually happens is the copier realizes how futile the endeavor is and introduces "changes" trying to mitigate the problems. Usually these changes only make everything worse. And you end up with a big mess.
staunch 6y ago
The light side is that they acted in a truly benevolent way towards the people they helped. They seemed enthusiastically happy to do the right thing by founders, regardless of the cost to themselves. For example, by encouraging founders to sell early, if that's what they wanted to do. And by protecting founders from the machinations of other investors. Even from the outside, it was obvious that you could trust the founders of YC. And you would have to be stupid not to want the one investor in Silicon Valley that you could actually rely on. The darker side of YC (and its ultimate undoing IMHO) is that they focused too much on helping people like Sam Altman: upper class people from "elite" schools that didn't actually need or appreciate the help. They were polished and flattering but, for the most part, couldn't actually do the hard work of starting up. YC helped a tiny % of the people that asked for help, and not because they couldn't afford to help more, but because they wanted people of a certain "culture fit", hence the "elite" school style interview process. Then YC became a retirement home for these failed founders, where they confidentially deliver advice they couldn't follow themselves. Now, it is just another credential to be gamed by the wealthy with the requisite percentage of token exceptions. It became as fake and hollow as the "elite" schools are. Not bad, run by bad people, or totally useless, just devoid of anything authentic, energetic, or based on a genuine ethos. It has become a shell of its former self, destined to slowly burn out. With every advantage possible, YC couldn't even replicate itself. Sadly, the YC that Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston created is dead.
- pierrebai 6y ago
  I would have liked an intelligent, articulated reply. Unfortunately, you merely got down-voted, for no other reason that I can see than not parroting the extolling.
  - hitekker 6y ago
    I second the desire for a follow-up comment. I wonder if Paul Graham passing the reins over to Sam Altman in 2014 kicked off the stagnation or merely formalized it.
- juped 6y ago
  This is true and a shame. People from the upper class are genuinely blind to this phenomenon (this doesn't excuse them).
Liron 6y ago
IMO the next YC will be whatever gives founders the fastest and most straightforward process to raising their first $50-500k. Currently YC itself is #1 on that dimension (an underrated part of their success), but it doesn't have to be that way. Someone who focuses on unbundling that aspect could probably become the best at it.
ghufran_syed 6y ago
I think what’s most interesting about this article is what it doesn’t mention - the two other co-founders, Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell. Did they play important roles that have just never been described outside of YC? Or do we have to conclude that maybe not every co-founder turns out to be equally important to an organization’s future success? Of course, that may turn out to be a “thing you can’t say”... Maybe it’s time for Jessica and Paul, the authors of “Founders at work” and “Hackers and Painters” to write another book, this time the definitive history of YC? Perhaps the way to get more YC’s in the world is for people to really know and understand the early stories of YC, warts and all?
mbesto 6y ago
> I am not sure if any of this is particularly useful advice—none of it sounds that hard, and yet in the 15 years since, it hasn’t been close to replicated. There's a reason for this - PG/Jessica never set out to replicate anything. Same thing went for people like Jobs. This is the problem with trying to emulate highly successful people. We assume there is a pattern and then try to replicate it. The reality is that these people found a path that no one was looking at and exploited. Many people attempt this and fail. The older I get the more I realize that there really isn't a secret to highly successful people. The best advice I've given myself is to stop trying to find other's secret and to just find my own. Success is skill * luck.
- mellosouls 6y ago
  Success is skill x luck. And hard work. And perseverance.
  - teddyh 6y ago
    Well, hard work leads to skill, and perseverance (and optimism) leads to luck.
  - jdmichal 6y ago
    Those are just synonyms. Applying skill over and over until the luck finds you. A few people get found quickly. Others having to keep putting in the work and waiting.
  - lazyjones 6y ago
    And first mover advantage (works also for being the first to get some essential properties right).
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  Very much this. I mean there are replicable success factors like basic SEO or hiring a good accountant but i don't think that counts. The secret to your non-secret is to know when you know yourself ... or perhaps given the rest of the thread, it's easier to trust your instincts when you have a couple of million in the bank.
FlyingSnake 6y ago
“They copied all they could follow but they couldn't copy my mind, so I left them sweating and stealing a year and a half behind.“ — Rudyard Kipling
davidw 6y ago
> What did they do? They took bets on unknown people and believed in them more than anyone had before. That much is pretty evident, following their story from afar. > They set strong norms and fought back hard against bad behavior towards YC founders. They trusted their own convictions, were willing to do things their way, and were willing to be disliked by the existing power structures. I don't think this is quite as well known, from what I've read. I'm sure that's in part, by design, since Silicon Valley can be kind of... 'cozy'. I'd be curious to read more though.
- ec109685 6y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Monkeys https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Monkeys Has a good antidote about taking care of founders. Someone threatened to sue the protagonist of the book because they started the company while still employed (iirc), and basically PG, after lunch in his Palo Alto house, promised to take care if it. The author alluded to the fact that the person doing the suing would never be able to get funded again if he carried out the suit (essentially canceled). It’s ironic because cancel culture is something PG loves to rant about: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1280499919028195334?lang=en https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1280499919028195334?lang=en
thesausageking 6y ago
I don't agree with the idea that YC "left money on table". YC made a ridiculous amount of money and is one of the most successful VC funds of all time. It's true that PG and Jessica did a lot of things to defer making money in the short-term. But I'd argue that over the long-term, it was the right optimizations both for having an impact on the world and for making money.
- teacpde 6y ago
  Sam’s point is YC could have taken more money, and by not doing that it creates better chances for startups to succeed. And you are right, it is the optimal strategy in the long run and win-win for both YC and startups.
  - threeseed 6y ago
    They also could've taken far less money e.g. asking for less equity in startups.
rexreed 6y ago
I think a lot of it comes down to intentions and motivations. I see a lot of the YC / Techstars / accelerator copycats are motivated by honestly not-so-great intentions. Maybe they're run by a for-profit group. Maybe it's run by an outfit that wants to monetize in a different way. Or maybe it's run or supported by a government / quasi-government agency that's trying to spur economic development. Or perhaps it's being run by a social benefit group trying to grow economic activity for a given group or population. Or perhaps it's being run by a large company using startups as a way to further their own business development / marketing / community development. What I see aren't true copycats. I see groups that are trying to replicate the outcomes without replicating the motivations. With the wrong motivations in place it's hard to see the outcomes come out either. Even if you have a PG or Jessica in place.
samdung 6y ago
NOT BEING GREEDY That is the key.
ChuckMcM 6y ago
This "This is easy to talk about but hard to do, because it requires not being greedy." It seems that no one gets this. Today people want to replicate YC because "I want to get rich like they did." because for them, it is all about the money. From what I've read, PG wasn't about the money he was all about helping people realize their ambitions. Self help types and management coaches will say "Focus on the things people need and the money will take care of itself." And for so many of us that sounds like "start walking and have faith that you'll find food and shelter along the way." The existential threat of our voluntary action resulting in our own demise, inhibits our ability to act on the advice. On a much smaller scale, and very much closer to home for many, is the advice "Work like you don't need a job." Which is essentially do the Right thing, always, and if it gets you fired or you lose your job, that is okay because you were doing the right thing. But the thought of "What would I do if I didn't have this job? I've got rent and food and car payments and bills, I'd be homeless and never work again!" works against this advice and so people compromise their principles or their morals or their willingness to do harm to others, because they are just doing what the boss told them to do and they really need this job. My personal experience is that you definitely take an impact in your promotion/raise/advancement when you follow your principles an speak truth to power. I don't know that I've ever directly been fired over it but I have had some interesting conversations with senior leaders who did not appreciate having their ill-conceived choices called out. But I can assure you that if you have a moral compass and you follow it, even over the objections of people who would have you do otherwise, you can sleep better at night and you can look back on your life with way fewer regrets.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  >But the thought of "What would I do if I didn't have this job? I've got rent and food and car payments and bills, I'd be homeless and never work again!" works against this advice and so people compromise their principles or their morals or their willingness to do harm to others, because they are just doing what the boss told them to do and they really need this job. I have been really careful to save money for paying bills on bad days, largely with the intention of building a "wronged for doing right" fund. A responsible person has to proactively protect their soul just the same as they would anything else. :)
mattmaroon 6y ago
Jessica never gets the credit she deserves. I understand that Paul’s essays give him a lot more visibility outside of YC, and outsiders probably think she’s just Paul’s girlfriend as a result. But as Sam said, those of us who were there when they were know that the reality was very different.
- veddox 6y ago
  Though I don‘t know either of them, I was impressed by his essay about her (http://paulgraham.com/jessica.html http://paulgraham.com/jessica.html).
  - mattmaroon 6y ago
    That brought back a lot of memories. And was really sweet of Paul.
orsenthil 6y ago
Why is it titled "PG and Jessica"? I was little concerned reading a title like this.
- decasteve 6y ago
  Any chance it's their anniversary? Or a special date for them?
- neonate 6y ago
  I imagine that's the title because this is his main point: > The entire secret to YC getting going was PG and Jessica—there was no other magic trick.
tyre 6y ago
One thing that gets lost in this is that YC had money to begin with. It's like saying that Kylie Jenner is a self-made billionaire. Which isn't a criticism of PG or Jessica or YC. They had money because Paul had built a company and sold it. It was money worked for. But to say that "YC worked because of PG and Jessica and that's it" is rather disingenuous. Money grants you time to invest towards the long-term and to make mistakes. You can have a family atmosphere that invests in/bets on people if you have enough money to sustain yourself for a while. And you can equally afford to experiment on new models when you need less from outside parties. Again, this isn't a criticism.
- mattmaroon 6y ago
  I think it is just implied that anyone trying to start a seed funding organization has money, because it is very hard to provide funding with no money. And yet despite many trying to replicate YC, probably often with more money at the start, nobody has come close. I don’t think the argument was that it was just Paul and Jessica, just that they are the limiting factors.
- colincooke 6y ago
  This is a very important point. Having the flexibility that wealth allows can unlock many creative and ambitious opportunities. I've had a lot of friends talk about ambitious company ideas, giving Tesla/SpaceX as examples. What they're missing is that what made those companies great/ambitious at the time is also what made them very risky. Having buy in from a billionaire (Elon Musk) isn't the only thing that made those ideas succeed, but it certainly helped.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tomp 6y ago
  This is the same as saying "Elon Musk is successful because he started with $100m". While that's true, it's at most a necessary condition, not close to a sufficient one. In particular, there's at least another billionaire who's been funding his own rocket company (probably burning much more money than SpaceX) with no evidence of success. Same with YC vs other incubators & VCs. There's a lot of them with money. Few succeed.
jdoliner 6y ago
I can't help but wonder if this post was written as a response to Kanye's tweets about starting a Y Combinator for musicians. [0] Which Sama offered to help with. I would love to see another post about whether Kanye and Kim could function like PG and Jessica for a music based YC. (Which twitter has already dubbed Ye Combinator.) https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1305977929180966913 https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1305977929180966913
- eeallen1 6y ago
  Wow that's a great idea if they can do it well
- InitialLastName 6y ago
  I suspect that one of PG and Jessica's attributes is the ability to let their clients spend time in the spotlight when necessary. I don't know for sure, but given their joint histories of monomaniacal self-aggrandizement, it's hard to see Kim and Kanye letting anyone else in their orbits take any attention.
  - jdoliner 6y ago
    Completely agree, and that's only one of the many potential flaws I see with Ye Combinator.
- sama 6y ago
  That was the specific inspiration, yes.
fleaflicker 6y ago
Just adding a data point. I got into YC in 08 but didn’t do it because I sold my company before I had a chance to accept. PG gave me advice during the negotiation with the acquirer anyway.
- bredren 6y ago
  What was the advice?
  - fleaflicker 6y ago
    No particular words of wisdom. I was 26 and selling to a big company. It’s nice to have somebody experienced in your corner.
- idoh 6y ago
  I think I remember this. It was a fantasy football site selling? I think you were the first company to get an offer to WC and then decline. Congrats!
tchaffee 6y ago
These days I see far too many articles like this with everyone involved patting themselves on the back about how amazing they were (and are). If you take a closer look at what HN itself is: an ivory tower where uncomfortable truths are not allowed to be discussed, it also tells you something about what allowed PG and company to be so successful. PG and company were and are undoubtedly very talented and with a unique set of values. But I'd far rather hear from someone more human who talks about failings and regrets. Even the most successful out there eventually seem to reach the point where they realize that society and culture have moved on and if they had to redo things, they would have done things differently. That once upon a time your hot takes were pretty useful, but that you're growing old and a bit out of touch and it's time for a deeper kind of reflection. Those who keep blowing their own horn so loudly based on past successes so quickly fade into irrelevancy. Which is what I do see happening with PG and his like. HN is a fun place to hang out and learn some stuff. But if the cult around it had much to offer now I suspect there would be far fewer stories about how great things used to be and less of need to regularly insist it was.
- eldavido 6y ago
  This comment reflects a broader problem in our discourse: why can't it be both? Why can't we acknowledge that some of the US constitution's framers were great men who also owned slaves? They weren't perfect. You can be great, and flawed at the same time. Why can't we acknowledge that YC has had a massive positive impact on the world, while still acknowledging that it's a bit of an echo chamber and does promote a certain amount of self-congratulation?
  - tchaffee 6y ago
    > Why can't we acknowledge that YC has had a massive positive impact on the world, while still acknowledging that it's a bit of an echo chamber The question contains the answer. Because "it's a bit of an echo chamber". I also think that over time it has gotten better, so that's encouraging.
baking 6y ago
"Jessica still sadly doesn’t get nearly the same degree of public credit" Never mentions her last name. I wonder why she doesn't get public credit?
- stickfigure 6y ago
  Funny complaint; PG didn't even get a first name in that article.
  - hajimemash 6y ago
    Haha. I think these nitpicky pointless comments are lamesauce.
gdsdfe 6y ago
What's PG?
- gdsdfe 6y ago
  Ah Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston
unknown2374 6y ago
As an outsider without context, the articles does nothing to properly introduce the people (like who is PG and which Jessica?) it's talking about. Even if it's a response post to something, you should always reference some context so people interested in the subject matter have further reading material instead of relying on letting them figure it out by Ctrl-F-ing through hacker news comments.
- mcguire 6y ago
  To paraphrase other people at other times, if you don't know what the article is about, you are not the audience of it. Annoying, yes. But I'm not the audience either.
- veddox 6y ago
  PG (Paul Graham) is the founder of the seed funder Y Combinator. (A bit later, he also started HN.) Jessica is his wife and co-founder of YC. He started off as a Lisp academic, then had a web shopping startup in the 90s. He is also known for his collection of essays. If you want to know more, here‘s a good place to start: http://paulgraham.com/ycstart.html http://paulgraham.com/ycstart.html
diego 6y ago
"none of it sounds that hard, and yet in the 15 years since, it hasn’t been close to replicated." ^ That right there is the definition of luck and timing. If it's not that hard, tons have tried, and nobody has replicated, then luck and/or timing must have been a huge factor. This doesn't seem to cross Sam's mind.
- alecbz 6y ago
  That doesn't seem obvious to me. It could be that it is actually hard despite not sounding hard. Certainly not implying that luck and timing didn't play a huge role, but I think there's often subtle unspoken but super important factors at play in these kinds of things.
  - diego 6y ago
    It could be, but this is Occam's razor stuff. It doesn't sound hard, nobody knows what the factors are. Other people have tried it, they have not succeeded. Sama doesn't know what the other people look like. You'd have to prove that it's not luck by repeating it.
    - alecbz 6y ago
      I guess I don't really agree that it doesn't sound hard. Like, at some point I might have thought it didn't sound hard, but I've come to view good leadership as much more important, subtler, and rarer than I once did.
alexashka 6y ago
>In general, people seem to assume that: 1) although there was some degree of mystery or luck about how YC got going, it can’t be that hard Who are these people? Have they heard of supply and demand? How can anyone think making a profitable company from ground zero 'can't be that hard'? > 2) if you can get it off the ground, the network effects are self-sustaining. Why would a company that's essentially a filter in between people with money and people with promises have network effects? If anything, the reverse is true - as any company gets bigger, it gets worse at maintaining quality. This can be trivially seen empirically with how much large tech corps spend on R&D and yet how boring, incremental and downright sad many of their new offerings are (new emojis anyone?) Where are the results from all the billions spent? I guess the new macbook keyboards are an innovation, oh wait... The only way a filter is strengthened by network effects, is if the filter is increasingly irrelevant and through-put is what matters (spray and pray > being picky). So either it is spray and pray and then it 'isn't that hard' indeed if you have the right connections (born rich, have been introduced to billionaire friends of your father/mother), or it isn't spray and pray, but then there are no self sustaining network effects to be had.
ipqk 6y ago
You forgot the part about Peter Thiel's money.
picodguyo 6y ago
Not throwing shade on this article as I don't know anything about PG or Jessica, but I couldn't help but be reminded of my current favorite satirical Twitter account: https://twitter.com/VCBrags https://twitter.com/VCBrags
- exolymph 6y ago
  Not a good person, IMO: https://www.sonyasupposedly.com/vcbrags/ https://www.sonyasupposedly.com/vcbrags/
  - sillysaurusx 6y ago
    Give me a break. VCBrags is harmless fun. It's absolutely absurd that anyone could think that clapping emojis are harassment. In fact, VCBrags recently almost shut down. And I think this blog post is one of the many examples of bullying that led to that kind of decision. And yes, there should be reputational consequences for this behavior. Nobody needs to be fired, I'm not advocating for that, but bad-faith critics of the tech industry and those who work in it should be identified and ignored. Seriously? The world would be a worse place if people listen to this person. It's clapping emojis, for heaven's sake. I also love how people who advocate for deplatforming someone pull the "Oh no, I would never advocate they be fired. No way!" act. It's such transparent sophistry. Ugh. Enough internet for me today. Back to work.
    - exolymph 6y ago
      > In fact, VCBrags recently almost shut down. And I think this blog post is one of the many examples of bullying that led to that kind of decision. Lol, did you read it? You have the chronology backwards.
      - sillysaurusx 6y ago
        Yeah, I figured as much, but this kind of vitriol has been leveled at them for so long that whether it's this particular blog post is irrelevant. People have it out for this person. This blog post is also literally a personal attack, which is against the site guidelines, for what it's worth. (It targets one specific person, which is partly why it's so upsetting. Don't people have better things to do than to write defamatory posts about someone posting clapping emojis? Go build something!)
MrXOR 6y ago
Sorry for unrelated question: Paul (@pg) is not very active on HN, unlike Twitter. Why?
- psyc 6y ago
  This is my interpretation of events, and maybe I’m off base. PG used to comment often. Around 2010-11, there was a months-long crisis of sorts over the perceived declining quality of discourse here. PG was actively involved in trying to mitigate. Afterwards he all but disappeared. I took this as tacitly washing his hands of it.
- return1 6y ago
  I will point out that a lot of his twitter opinions would not be well received here
jondubois 6y ago
> What did they do? They took bets on unknown people and believed in them more than anyone had before. They set strong norms... This is the essence of capitalism. The idea that you can take bold risks and be rewarded for being right. By this definition, what we have today is not capitalism. Because today's investors and entrepreneurs are only rewarded for following the herd and being compliant under the watchful eyes of their corporate masters. After I joined the workforce and the startup scene in 2013, capitalism was on its way out. I arrived just in time to catch a faint glimmer of it but now it's well and truly dead. What we have now is a combination of the worst, most superficial aspects of capitalism and socialism combined into single monstrosity. Corporate surveillance socio-capitalism with theatrical democracy.
tomcat27 6y ago
They both have done more service than all business schools combined!
troelsSteegin 6y ago
Jessica is Jessica Livingston. From Paul Graham's tribute [0], Livingston was a shrewd judge of people, which was an essential complement to the rest of the team's skillset. She is not a self-promoter. Her YC bio mentions her book [1], Founders at Work. The story from Sam Altman and Paul Graham is that diverse talent and decency was necessary for YC's success, and I would say the sentiment on thread here is that that is neither necessary nor sufficient for replication of YC's success. My view is that decency is under valued in business. Perhaps if it were easier to measure ... [0] https://www.ycombinator.com/library?query=Jessica%20Livingston https://www.ycombinator.com/library?query=Jessica%20Livingst... [1] https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early-dp-148422034X/dp/148422034X/ https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early-...
- meowface 6y ago
  >Jessica is Jessica Livingston. From Paul Graham's tribute, Livingston was a shrewd judge of people, which was an essential complement to the rest of the team's skillset. Just in case anyone misinterprets this based on "tribute" and the past tense: Jessica is still very much alive and I would assume still all of those things. (They've both just stepped down from active roles in YC, AFAIK.)
deleted 6y ago
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alphachloride 6y ago
What's PG? And who's Jessica?
einarvollset 6y ago
There’s a lot of things I don’t love about startups, the Bay Area, etc. Jessica and Paul (and Trevor!) are definitely among the main reasons why I love those things. There’s hopefully no doubt in anyone of their minds how big an impact they made, but if there’s even a shred of doubt: thank you. The chili was never that great, but everything else was life changing. And I’m confident I speak on behalf of hundreds of people.
quickthrower2 6y ago
I think that "A lot of people want to replicate YC in some other industry or some other place or with some other strategy" is a bit of a narrow lens. Maybe people are replicating it, but it doesn't look real obvious like billionaires in SV and their flagship investments. It can be replicated in ideas that spread, which don't need VC and people can set up shop without them. Unknown companies that bootstrap up using strategies that would be barely known on HN. Sort of like the dark matter of capital, where 99.9% is dark matter.
grandinj 6y ago
VS Code is the modern emacs.
ReptileMan 6y ago
To anyone building something like a platform - leaving money on the table is the best way to get network effects and partners. That was well understood by the early Microsoft and not well understood by late Apple. Which is why I think their appstore model will be broken eventually
michaelmcmillan 6y ago
yc was 0 to 1, not 1 to n. You can't be greedy when doing 0 to 1: you'll just fail. But those imitating yc are doing 1 to n, and it's easy to underestimate what made 0 to 1 work in the first place.
peter_d_sherman 6y ago
>"The entire secret to YC getting going was PG and Jessica—there was no other magic trick." [...] "What did they do? They took bets on unknown people and believed in them more than anyone had before. They set strong norms and fought back hard against bad behavior towards YC founders. They trusted their own convictions, were willing to do things their way, and were willing to be disliked by the existing power structures. They focused on the most important things, they worked hard, and they spent a huge amount of time 1:1 with people. They understood the value of community and long-term orientation. When YC was very small, it felt like a family. Perhaps most importantly, they built an ecosystem [...]. This is easy to talk about, but hard to do, because it requires not being greedy."

555 points by janvdberg 6y ago

What is PG? What is Jessica? If one isn't already immersed in the VC mindset that dominates (and is apparently a significant dynamic of) YC, how is one supposed to parse these articles?

notadog 6y ago
PG = Paul Graham Jessica = Jessica Livingston
- qorrect 6y ago
  How anyone thinks its acceptable to reference initials/acronyms before first defining them is beyond me.
  - cblconfederate 6y ago
    this website belongs to YC. its kind of faux pas to not know them
  - mturmon 6y ago
    I disagree. This is actually kind of a sweet gesture and convention. Like recognizing a friend’s Unix login at 3am when you type “who” from the command prompt. There are a few people who get known that way in some contexts: rms, jwz, esr. They’re controversial, but that has become their shorthand within some context.
kthxbye123 6y ago
It’s just social play and backslapping among the oligarchs, don’t pay any attention to it.
zepto 6y ago
What is YC?
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  YCombinator, as in this site's domain name.
- k3liutZu 6y ago
  What 'is'?
- Macha 6y ago
  Check the URL of this website. Y Combinator is a VC firm that specializes in investing in early stage/new tech companies and one of the first to do it on such a public scale. Their most significant successful investment is likely Stripe. Dropbox and Airbnb are other companies which had a lot of initial funding from YC
  - croes 6y ago
    What if you reached the linked page via another source? It is bad style and disrespect to the reader to use abbreviations without explaining at least once their meaning.
    - Macha 6y ago
      There comes a point where you need to decide are you writing a targeted article or a beginner's introduction. If you can't assume any knowledge and you make articles for a more advanced audience so bloating and winding that whatever point you were making gets lost. Not every article has to target the "everyone" audience. What if we applied the standard to programming article? What if an article on rendering issues in mass effect and a patch in directx for the same had to include explanations for variables and for loops? It clearly weakens the article as there is value in getting to the point.
      - croes 6y ago
blocked_again 6y ago
Well the likelyhood of someone who come across Sam Altman's blog and don't know who is PG and Jessica is very low. You can't write a blog post for everyone in the world. Then you would have to explain what is YC, what is a founder, what is a VC etc. Would be pretty boring blog post to be honest. Oh wait, and let me introduce you to Google. https://www.google.com/search?q=pg+and+jessica&oq=pg+and+jessica https://www.google.com/search?q=pg+and+jessica&oq=pg+and+jes...
- Macha 6y ago
  Also the blog post is explicitly targeted at people wanting to replicate YC's model. I think it's fair to expect that audience to know what YC is, who PG and Jessica are
deleted 6y ago
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gus_massa 6y ago
PG is the founder of HN and was the mod for the first ¿10? years, until he "retired" and gave the position to dang. He is in the 3rd position in the karma list. He is not very active here in the last few years. (But I guess he is still lurking. Hi!) https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg The original community here was the readers of the pg articles, so the oldtimers know who pg is. Jessica is the wife of pg, she comes here from time to time, but no too much. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jl https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jl Both of them are part of the four founders of YC. She was the less technical of the cofounders but from a pg article: http://www.paulgraham.com/jessica.html http://www.paulgraham.com/jessica.html > [...] One of the things she's best at is judging people. She's one of those rare individuals with x-ray vision for character. She can see through any kind of faker almost immediately. Her nickname within YC was the Social Radar, and this special power of hers was critical in making YC what it is. [...] > During interviews, Robert and Trevor and I would pepper the applicants with technical questions. Jessica would mostly watch. A lot of the applicants probably read her as some kind of secretary, especially early on, because she was the one who'd go out and get each new group and she didn't ask many questions. She was ok with that. It was easier for her to watch people if they didn't notice her. But after the interview, the three of us would turn to Jessica and ask "What does the Social Radar say?"
cblconfederate 6y ago
there is an idea of a PG, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real PG, only an entity, something illusory. And though he can hide his cold gaze and you can shake his hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense your lifestyles are probably comparable: He simply is not there
deleted 6y ago
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renewiltord 6y ago
Well, if this isn't a harbinger for where this community currently falls on the geek-mop spectrum...
lc9er 6y ago
A cult of personality. https://mobile.twitter.com/MJB_SF/status/1298113027737231360 https://mobile.twitter.com/MJB_SF/status/1298113027737231360
erik_landerholm 6y ago
Seriously, you can't google? And what does Paul or Jessica have to do with the 'VC mindset'?

cblconfederate 6y ago

> it hasn’t been close to replicated. Because not many have those values anymore

gargarplex 6y ago

On the one hand, you have a renaissance man (RISD-trained painter and Harvard-minted CS PhD) who authored On Lisp and started up and exited successfully with some of the most respected technologists as partners (Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris). On the other hand, you have the author of Founders at Work, someone who not only thoroughly interviewed tons of successful founders (& bootstraped a pattern-matching capacity) but also has a reputation for a world-class EQ that built community and kept bad apples away. So, yeah, the DNA of the founding team matters a lot. Seems like for scaling companies (like Y Combinator, itself, is a company – and by Sam's definition of creating more value for others than itself, has become a platform) – traits are extremely heritable (not so much the case with children!)

throwaway1984zz 6y ago
> traits are extremely heritable (not so much the case with children!) This has been conclusively debunked. https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/2016-plomin.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/2016-plomin.pdf > All psychological traits show significant and substantial genetic influence > Most measures of the “environment” show significant genetic influence > These are “big” findings, both in terms of effect size and potential impact on psychological science
- arrel 6y ago
  Here’s a nice takedown of Plomin’s theory. I’m not a geneticist, but there seem to be a lot of holes in it. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06784-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06784-5
  - throwaway1984zt 6y ago
    I just read the whole thing, how is it a takedown? Plomin's paper is a meta-study which discusses results that are robustly replicated because there is a crisis of reproducibility in this domain and replication is the arbiter of the scientific method. This article you linked is essentially an opinion piece about Plomin... edit: Did I get shadowbanned for this?! Post not showing up on different device..

radihuq 6y ago

Do you think Kanye West[0] could be the Paul Graham of the music industry? On one hand he's been in the industry long enough to understand the system; he's generally respected as an artist; he has a platform to reach the masses; he has a track record of being able to organically grow a collective (organization/business/product) from the ground up (Yeezy). On the other hand, the music industry is huge and run by conglomerates. Going against the norm would truly be David vs. Goliath. I think if anyone could do it, it would be Kanye (with a super savvy business partner). I think he has the conviction and general anti-status-quo mindset to embark & be successful in this endeavor [0] https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1305977929180966913 https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1305977929180966913

soheil 6y ago
The value that music brings to people’s lives isn’t comparable to tech. There may be conglomerates that one way or another twist people’s arms to pay them and generate revenue for artists, but as a whole the music industry does not produce enough value relative to the world of startups. So there won’t be a YC of music that is large enough.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- radihuq 6y ago
  Not sure if "large enough" matters as comparing the music industry to the tech industry is like comparing a pond to an ocean. I think the real value here is that a YC of music can fundamentally change the way the industry functions by: - Allowing artists control over their masters/creations (equity) - Reducing the barrier to entry to enter the music industry by providing upfront capital, and support (mentorship, music marketing & distribution) - Concentrating talent in one area Also if anyone is interested I'd recommend checking out this documentary by J. Cole's Dreamville[0] where a bunch of artists and producers came together in a house and built an album in 10 days (basically like a hackathon) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-9mZLh5XU8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-9mZLh5XU8

vinceguidry 6y ago

People would do this for each other, but there's really nothing to keep them focused. Magic is the art of maintaining people's focus long after they would have otherwise moved on. Making magic happen requires a magician that understands how it works. You can't cast a spell that will stick around after you bounce. Once you bounce, the people that succeed you won't understand how the magic works quite as well. They'll argue with each other over how best to keep it going. It's a dynamic I've come to know intimately over the years. Once the magician leaves, the magic goes soon after. If you want magic in your life, go where the magician is, or better yet, learn how to work magic yourself.

thowawaymom 6y ago
You know magic isn't real, right?
bjelkeman-again 6y ago
I have experienced this several times in people first hand. I had a colleague who we would say sprinkled fairy dust over the customer and us. But once he left the room nobody else could maintain the magic for long. He couldn’t teach me directly, but hanging around him, a lot, helped. My own experience tells me that it takes a deep understanding of the area you work in, often intuitive understanding mixed with facts, to get to this point. You also need to be able to communicate easily with people. I am nowhere as good as some, and the little I have took years and years of practice, hard work and immersion in a subject area to achieve. Then, as you say, comes the hard part. How do you embed the magic so well in the organisation that those that follow can keep it up and improve on it, or at least not wreck it straight away. I have tried things like: make sure open source is part of the culture, start a foundation not a company, hire carefully, teach good practice in execution, only work on things that you and other are passionate about and that makes a real difference. Edit: add some hard part
- vinceguidry 6y ago
  You're helping me along to a realization. The magician has to put themselves first, and create a world that is inviting enough that others want to join. Magic is more powerful than anything else in life. As soon as you stop working magic, it disappears. You are the source of magic. So create a life that makes you able to constantly work it. You can't make magic that outlasts you, but you can help other people gain confidence.

Kednicma 6y ago

It's useful to read between the lines, because maybe YC-like things are not good for the world. In that case, it's worth studying PG and Jessica only in order to understand how to avoid being like them.

Wump 6y ago

Reading PG's essays and Hackers and Painters back in 2005 got me to believe that entrepreneurship could be something for me, too. It changed the course of my life, both personally and professionally.

PaulHoule 6y ago

A competing hypothesis is that YC's success is tied to a geographical location. If PG and Jessica were the "key" you could send them to Pittsburgh, Berlin, or Dakar and they could do the the same. For a long time communities around the world have been asking YC to expand their business to new geographies. Except for China it has always been "talking to the hand". China didn't turn out well. YC can't have it both ways: "we can only function in one place" and "we have some value apart from being in that one sacred place". COVID-19 may be changing this, but the contradiction is one for YC to resolve. The rest of us have to recognize a gap between what they have done (beliefs that seem to be implicit in their behavior) and what they say ("the secret to our success is...")

mrkurt 6y ago
That's kind of a weird take. The vast majority of startup funding happens in the SF bay area. It is true that YC wouldn't have worked in another city (they did move it from Boston after all), but that's unrelated to PG and Jessica's efforts. If what you're doing is giving people credibility in an _existing_ investor ecosystem, you can't just ... create a new investor ecosystem somewhere else.
- PaulHoule 6y ago
  It's a problem. A big problem. If you look at "racism" and other forms of inequality that are intractable in the US and other countries you find it can understood in terms of "placism". (e.g. "busing" as an answer to school inequality and the resulting backlash; if minorities lived in as a diverse set of places as white people did in the US the Democrats would have 58+ seats in the Senate, etc.) Sam could prove me wrong by sending the PG/Jessica combo to another place (Fresno, LA, Las Vegas, Dublin, Edingburgh, ...) and have them accomplish something. People have been asking for this for years but we've always heard that it's not negotiable, YC is tied to a sacred patch of land, etc. Someone who shows that "sacred land is everything" by their behavior is going to inevitable sound disingenuous when they try to distill universal principles out of the YC experience.
  - 6y ago

jkuria 6y ago

There's also a little bit of the "DARPA effect" where several key things align perfectly in time to create such an outcome i.e. The Economist did a study on numerous attempts to create another "DARPA" that would lead to break through innovations of the kind DARPA did. Not one has succeeded. From what I've heard, In YC's case: + Paul was a successful technical founder with the money and reputation. He could rally the troops with "suits and MBAs don't matter, hackers rule the world" rhetoric. + Paul had a giant megaphone with his blog (not initially done to market YC) + He had a partner who was good at reading and sizing up people, crucial in picking the first batches whose success was crucial to the whole thing working. + The cost of doing a start-up had fallen dramatically + and so on. I am sure there a few others. Similarly, everyone has tried to replicate the Kenya's mPesa, the world's most successful mobile money system. No one has succeeded because there hasn't been the same confluence of factors that led to mpesa's success:

d3nj4l 6y ago
India's UPI is getting close. I've lived months without any cash in my wallet, even before COVID.
ianmobbs 6y ago
Very long thread about How Darpa Works that was on HN a couple months ago, for those interested - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23670246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23670246
meowface 6y ago
I have absolutely no clue if this actually played any role, but pg is also one of the people credited with creating what's considered the first web app, and it seems plausible a vision of a future giant world of web apps could've influenced the startups he picked and the advice he gave. For example, the reddit co-founders say the site was his idea: >The next morning, on the train back to Virginia, hung over, somewhere in the middle of Connecticut, I get a call from Paul. He says, "I'm sorry, we made a mistake. We don't like your idea, but we like you guys." We got off the train, and I was able to sweet-talk the Amtrak lady into not charging us to turn around. In our conversation, Paul said, "You guys need to build the front page of the Internet." That was all Paul, and that became Reddit. (https://www.inc.com/magazine/201206/christine-lagorio/alexis-ohanian-reddit-how-i-did-it.html https://www.inc.com/magazine/201206/christine-lagorio/alexis...)

brudgers 6y ago

One feature of YC that rarely gets mentioned is adequate capitalization. That's the whole basis of YC's bets on individuals rather than companies. But it's also the way YC itself was founded. YC didn't need to extract capital from founders by charging rent for offices, taking advising fees, etc. It is the reason YC has been able to "leave money on the table" when it comes to later stage deal making. Adequate capitalization is the reason YC was able to take a longer term approach. Most businesses are not adequately capitalized. This means there is always pressure to cut corners. Always the need to try to "sell broke." Always the allure of coming up with an angle.

yesimahuman 6y ago

Having been in and around other “copycat” programs, I agree YC hasn’t been replicated, and it’s kind of a microcosm of startups in general: Unlike YC, most of the people starting copycat programs were not nerds, were not software developers, did not focus on encouraging programmers to start businesses, and most had not started their own startups despite having almost no business doing so (i.e. lack of traditional business background or classic business personality traits). And, to make matters worse, the people that funded these programs also self-selected for typical traits that YC proved were unnecessary (and possibly counter-productive!). It’s both painfully obvious and maddeningly difficult to replicate.

halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
I’ve heard TechStars is a close second mostly because batch sizes are so small. More intimacy and focus on the individual founders.
- yesimahuman 6y ago
  You're getting downvoted which is unfortunate. I participated in TechStars (Cloud 2013), and yes while it is similar there are a number of things about it that are not quite like YC (disclaimer: I've not participated in YC but have interviewed a few times many years ago): 1) There is no PG or Jessica of TechStars. No PG essays, HN, or other magnet for technical would-be founders. No clear pitch to these founders that they can actually do startups! 2) There is no cohesive TechStars community. I think that's due to the "franchise" approach. They do try to help here but at this point the network isn't really valuable. 3) Partly due to the franchise approach, there is no outsized fundraising benefit since fundraising is localized to programs.
rexreed 6y ago
Yes! I basically commented something similar. Motivations matter even more than management.
auganov 6y ago
> Unlike YC, most of the people starting copycat programs were not nerds, were not software developers, did not focus on encouraging programmers to start businesses, and most had not started their own startups despite having almost no business doing so But there are many programs started by people from the industry. Many who understand the nature of YC very well. IMO the problem here is inherent to copying. Do you copy the 2005 YC or the 2020 YC? If you copy the 2005 one how do you adjust for the fact that the world isn't the same anymore? If you copy the 2020 one how do you make up for the 15 years that never happened? As a copy how will you get the same deal flow, why would people apply to you over the real deal? If you're trying to create a YC in country/place X how do you adjust for the fact that it's different from America/Silicon Valley? What usually happens is the copier realizes how futile the endeavor is and introduces "changes" trying to mitigate the problems. Usually these changes only make everything worse. And you end up with a big mess.

staunch 6y ago

The light side is that they acted in a truly benevolent way towards the people they helped. They seemed enthusiastically happy to do the right thing by founders, regardless of the cost to themselves. For example, by encouraging founders to sell early, if that's what they wanted to do. And by protecting founders from the machinations of other investors. Even from the outside, it was obvious that you could trust the founders of YC. And you would have to be stupid not to want the one investor in Silicon Valley that you could actually rely on. The darker side of YC (and its ultimate undoing IMHO) is that they focused too much on helping people like Sam Altman: upper class people from "elite" schools that didn't actually need or appreciate the help. They were polished and flattering but, for the most part, couldn't actually do the hard work of starting up. YC helped a tiny % of the people that asked for help, and not because they couldn't afford to help more, but because they wanted people of a certain "culture fit", hence the "elite" school style interview process. Then YC became a retirement home for these failed founders, where they confidentially deliver advice they couldn't follow themselves. Now, it is just another credential to be gamed by the wealthy with the requisite percentage of token exceptions. It became as fake and hollow as the "elite" schools are. Not bad, run by bad people, or totally useless, just devoid of anything authentic, energetic, or based on a genuine ethos. It has become a shell of its former self, destined to slowly burn out. With every advantage possible, YC couldn't even replicate itself. Sadly, the YC that Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston created is dead.

pierrebai 6y ago
I would have liked an intelligent, articulated reply. Unfortunately, you merely got down-voted, for no other reason that I can see than not parroting the extolling.
- hitekker 6y ago
  I second the desire for a follow-up comment. I wonder if Paul Graham passing the reins over to Sam Altman in 2014 kicked off the stagnation or merely formalized it.
juped 6y ago
This is true and a shame. People from the upper class are genuinely blind to this phenomenon (this doesn't excuse them).

Liron 6y ago

IMO the next YC will be whatever gives founders the fastest and most straightforward process to raising their first $50-500k. Currently YC itself is #1 on that dimension (an underrated part of their success), but it doesn't have to be that way. Someone who focuses on unbundling that aspect could probably become the best at it.

ghufran_syed 6y ago

I think what’s most interesting about this article is what it doesn’t mention - the two other co-founders, Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell. Did they play important roles that have just never been described outside of YC? Or do we have to conclude that maybe not every co-founder turns out to be equally important to an organization’s future success? Of course, that may turn out to be a “thing you can’t say”... Maybe it’s time for Jessica and Paul, the authors of “Founders at work” and “Hackers and Painters” to write another book, this time the definitive history of YC? Perhaps the way to get more YC’s in the world is for people to really know and understand the early stories of YC, warts and all?

mbesto 6y ago

> I am not sure if any of this is particularly useful advice—none of it sounds that hard, and yet in the 15 years since, it hasn’t been close to replicated. There's a reason for this - PG/Jessica never set out to replicate anything. Same thing went for people like Jobs. This is the problem with trying to emulate highly successful people. We assume there is a pattern and then try to replicate it. The reality is that these people found a path that no one was looking at and exploited. Many people attempt this and fail. The older I get the more I realize that there really isn't a secret to highly successful people. The best advice I've given myself is to stop trying to find other's secret and to just find my own. Success is skill * luck.

mellosouls 6y ago
Success is skill x luck. And hard work. And perseverance.
- teddyh 6y ago
  Well, hard work leads to skill, and perseverance (and optimism) leads to luck.
- jdmichal 6y ago
  Those are just synonyms. Applying skill over and over until the luck finds you. A few people get found quickly. Others having to keep putting in the work and waiting.
- lazyjones 6y ago
  And first mover advantage (works also for being the first to get some essential properties right).
lifeisstillgood 6y ago
Very much this. I mean there are replicable success factors like basic SEO or hiring a good accountant but i don't think that counts. The secret to your non-secret is to know when you know yourself ... or perhaps given the rest of the thread, it's easier to trust your instincts when you have a couple of million in the bank.

FlyingSnake 6y ago

“They copied all they could follow but they couldn't copy my mind, so I left them sweating and stealing a year and a half behind.“ — Rudyard Kipling

davidw 6y ago

> What did they do? They took bets on unknown people and believed in them more than anyone had before. That much is pretty evident, following their story from afar. > They set strong norms and fought back hard against bad behavior towards YC founders. They trusted their own convictions, were willing to do things their way, and were willing to be disliked by the existing power structures. I don't think this is quite as well known, from what I've read. I'm sure that's in part, by design, since Silicon Valley can be kind of... 'cozy'. I'd be curious to read more though.

ec109685 6y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Monkeys https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Monkeys Has a good antidote about taking care of founders. Someone threatened to sue the protagonist of the book because they started the company while still employed (iirc), and basically PG, after lunch in his Palo Alto house, promised to take care if it. The author alluded to the fact that the person doing the suing would never be able to get funded again if he carried out the suit (essentially canceled). It’s ironic because cancel culture is something PG loves to rant about: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1280499919028195334?lang=en https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1280499919028195334?lang=en

thesausageking 6y ago

I don't agree with the idea that YC "left money on table". YC made a ridiculous amount of money and is one of the most successful VC funds of all time. It's true that PG and Jessica did a lot of things to defer making money in the short-term. But I'd argue that over the long-term, it was the right optimizations both for having an impact on the world and for making money.

teacpde 6y ago
Sam’s point is YC could have taken more money, and by not doing that it creates better chances for startups to succeed. And you are right, it is the optimal strategy in the long run and win-win for both YC and startups.
- threeseed 6y ago
  They also could've taken far less money e.g. asking for less equity in startups.

rexreed 6y ago

I think a lot of it comes down to intentions and motivations. I see a lot of the YC / Techstars / accelerator copycats are motivated by honestly not-so-great intentions. Maybe they're run by a for-profit group. Maybe it's run by an outfit that wants to monetize in a different way. Or maybe it's run or supported by a government / quasi-government agency that's trying to spur economic development. Or perhaps it's being run by a social benefit group trying to grow economic activity for a given group or population. Or perhaps it's being run by a large company using startups as a way to further their own business development / marketing / community development. What I see aren't true copycats. I see groups that are trying to replicate the outcomes without replicating the motivations. With the wrong motivations in place it's hard to see the outcomes come out either. Even if you have a PG or Jessica in place.

samdung 6y ago

NOT BEING GREEDY That is the key.

ChuckMcM 6y ago

This "This is easy to talk about but hard to do, because it requires not being greedy." It seems that no one gets this. Today people want to replicate YC because "I want to get rich like they did." because for them, it is all about the money. From what I've read, PG wasn't about the money he was all about helping people realize their ambitions. Self help types and management coaches will say "Focus on the things people need and the money will take care of itself." And for so many of us that sounds like "start walking and have faith that you'll find food and shelter along the way." The existential threat of our voluntary action resulting in our own demise, inhibits our ability to act on the advice. On a much smaller scale, and very much closer to home for many, is the advice "Work like you don't need a job." Which is essentially do the Right thing, always, and if it gets you fired or you lose your job, that is okay because you were doing the right thing. But the thought of "What would I do if I didn't have this job? I've got rent and food and car payments and bills, I'd be homeless and never work again!" works against this advice and so people compromise their principles or their morals or their willingness to do harm to others, because they are just doing what the boss told them to do and they really need this job. My personal experience is that you definitely take an impact in your promotion/raise/advancement when you follow your principles an speak truth to power. I don't know that I've ever directly been fired over it but I have had some interesting conversations with senior leaders who did not appreciate having their ill-conceived choices called out. But I can assure you that if you have a moral compass and you follow it, even over the objections of people who would have you do otherwise, you can sleep better at night and you can look back on your life with way fewer regrets.

whatshisface 6y ago
>But the thought of "What would I do if I didn't have this job? I've got rent and food and car payments and bills, I'd be homeless and never work again!" works against this advice and so people compromise their principles or their morals or their willingness to do harm to others, because they are just doing what the boss told them to do and they really need this job. I have been really careful to save money for paying bills on bad days, largely with the intention of building a "wronged for doing right" fund. A responsible person has to proactively protect their soul just the same as they would anything else. :)

mattmaroon 6y ago

Jessica never gets the credit she deserves. I understand that Paul’s essays give him a lot more visibility outside of YC, and outsiders probably think she’s just Paul’s girlfriend as a result. But as Sam said, those of us who were there when they were know that the reality was very different.

veddox 6y ago
Though I don‘t know either of them, I was impressed by his essay about her (http://paulgraham.com/jessica.html http://paulgraham.com/jessica.html).
- mattmaroon 6y ago
  That brought back a lot of memories. And was really sweet of Paul.

orsenthil 6y ago

Why is it titled "PG and Jessica"? I was little concerned reading a title like this.

decasteve 6y ago
Any chance it's their anniversary? Or a special date for them?
neonate 6y ago
I imagine that's the title because this is his main point: > The entire secret to YC getting going was PG and Jessica—there was no other magic trick.

tyre 6y ago

One thing that gets lost in this is that YC had money to begin with. It's like saying that Kylie Jenner is a self-made billionaire. Which isn't a criticism of PG or Jessica or YC. They had money because Paul had built a company and sold it. It was money worked for. But to say that "YC worked because of PG and Jessica and that's it" is rather disingenuous. Money grants you time to invest towards the long-term and to make mistakes. You can have a family atmosphere that invests in/bets on people if you have enough money to sustain yourself for a while. And you can equally afford to experiment on new models when you need less from outside parties. Again, this isn't a criticism.

mattmaroon 6y ago
I think it is just implied that anyone trying to start a seed funding organization has money, because it is very hard to provide funding with no money. And yet despite many trying to replicate YC, probably often with more money at the start, nobody has come close. I don’t think the argument was that it was just Paul and Jessica, just that they are the limiting factors.
colincooke 6y ago
This is a very important point. Having the flexibility that wealth allows can unlock many creative and ambitious opportunities. I've had a lot of friends talk about ambitious company ideas, giving Tesla/SpaceX as examples. What they're missing is that what made those companies great/ambitious at the time is also what made them very risky. Having buy in from a billionaire (Elon Musk) isn't the only thing that made those ideas succeed, but it certainly helped.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tomp 6y ago
This is the same as saying "Elon Musk is successful because he started with $100m". While that's true, it's at most a necessary condition, not close to a sufficient one. In particular, there's at least another billionaire who's been funding his own rocket company (probably burning much more money than SpaceX) with no evidence of success. Same with YC vs other incubators & VCs. There's a lot of them with money. Few succeed.

jdoliner 6y ago

I can't help but wonder if this post was written as a response to Kanye's tweets about starting a Y Combinator for musicians. [0] Which Sama offered to help with. I would love to see another post about whether Kanye and Kim could function like PG and Jessica for a music based YC. (Which twitter has already dubbed Ye Combinator.) https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1305977929180966913 https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1305977929180966913

eeallen1 6y ago
Wow that's a great idea if they can do it well
InitialLastName 6y ago
I suspect that one of PG and Jessica's attributes is the ability to let their clients spend time in the spotlight when necessary. I don't know for sure, but given their joint histories of monomaniacal self-aggrandizement, it's hard to see Kim and Kanye letting anyone else in their orbits take any attention.
- jdoliner 6y ago
  Completely agree, and that's only one of the many potential flaws I see with Ye Combinator.
sama 6y ago
That was the specific inspiration, yes.

fleaflicker 6y ago

Just adding a data point. I got into YC in 08 but didn’t do it because I sold my company before I had a chance to accept. PG gave me advice during the negotiation with the acquirer anyway.

bredren 6y ago
What was the advice?
- fleaflicker 6y ago
  No particular words of wisdom. I was 26 and selling to a big company. It’s nice to have somebody experienced in your corner.
idoh 6y ago
I think I remember this. It was a fantasy football site selling? I think you were the first company to get an offer to WC and then decline. Congrats!

tchaffee 6y ago

These days I see far too many articles like this with everyone involved patting themselves on the back about how amazing they were (and are). If you take a closer look at what HN itself is: an ivory tower where uncomfortable truths are not allowed to be discussed, it also tells you something about what allowed PG and company to be so successful. PG and company were and are undoubtedly very talented and with a unique set of values. But I'd far rather hear from someone more human who talks about failings and regrets. Even the most successful out there eventually seem to reach the point where they realize that society and culture have moved on and if they had to redo things, they would have done things differently. That once upon a time your hot takes were pretty useful, but that you're growing old and a bit out of touch and it's time for a deeper kind of reflection. Those who keep blowing their own horn so loudly based on past successes so quickly fade into irrelevancy. Which is what I do see happening with PG and his like. HN is a fun place to hang out and learn some stuff. But if the cult around it had much to offer now I suspect there would be far fewer stories about how great things used to be and less of need to regularly insist it was.

eldavido 6y ago
This comment reflects a broader problem in our discourse: why can't it be both? Why can't we acknowledge that some of the US constitution's framers were great men who also owned slaves? They weren't perfect. You can be great, and flawed at the same time. Why can't we acknowledge that YC has had a massive positive impact on the world, while still acknowledging that it's a bit of an echo chamber and does promote a certain amount of self-congratulation?
- tchaffee 6y ago
  > Why can't we acknowledge that YC has had a massive positive impact on the world, while still acknowledging that it's a bit of an echo chamber The question contains the answer. Because "it's a bit of an echo chamber". I also think that over time it has gotten better, so that's encouraging.

baking 6y ago

"Jessica still sadly doesn’t get nearly the same degree of public credit" Never mentions her last name. I wonder why she doesn't get public credit?

stickfigure 6y ago
Funny complaint; PG didn't even get a first name in that article.
- hajimemash 6y ago
  Haha. I think these nitpicky pointless comments are lamesauce.

gdsdfe 6y ago

What's PG?

gdsdfe 6y ago
Ah Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston

unknown2374 6y ago

As an outsider without context, the articles does nothing to properly introduce the people (like who is PG and which Jessica?) it's talking about. Even if it's a response post to something, you should always reference some context so people interested in the subject matter have further reading material instead of relying on letting them figure it out by Ctrl-F-ing through hacker news comments.

mcguire 6y ago
To paraphrase other people at other times, if you don't know what the article is about, you are not the audience of it. Annoying, yes. But I'm not the audience either.
veddox 6y ago
PG (Paul Graham) is the founder of the seed funder Y Combinator. (A bit later, he also started HN.) Jessica is his wife and co-founder of YC. He started off as a Lisp academic, then had a web shopping startup in the 90s. He is also known for his collection of essays. If you want to know more, here‘s a good place to start: http://paulgraham.com/ycstart.html http://paulgraham.com/ycstart.html

diego 6y ago

"none of it sounds that hard, and yet in the 15 years since, it hasn’t been close to replicated." ^ That right there is the definition of luck and timing. If it's not that hard, tons have tried, and nobody has replicated, then luck and/or timing must have been a huge factor. This doesn't seem to cross Sam's mind.

alecbz 6y ago
That doesn't seem obvious to me. It could be that it is actually hard despite not sounding hard. Certainly not implying that luck and timing didn't play a huge role, but I think there's often subtle unspoken but super important factors at play in these kinds of things.
- diego 6y ago
  It could be, but this is Occam's razor stuff. It doesn't sound hard, nobody knows what the factors are. Other people have tried it, they have not succeeded. Sama doesn't know what the other people look like. You'd have to prove that it's not luck by repeating it.
  - alecbz 6y ago
    I guess I don't really agree that it doesn't sound hard. Like, at some point I might have thought it didn't sound hard, but I've come to view good leadership as much more important, subtler, and rarer than I once did.

alexashka 6y ago

>In general, people seem to assume that: 1) although there was some degree of mystery or luck about how YC got going, it can’t be that hard Who are these people? Have they heard of supply and demand? How can anyone think making a profitable company from ground zero 'can't be that hard'? > 2) if you can get it off the ground, the network effects are self-sustaining. Why would a company that's essentially a filter in between people with money and people with promises have network effects? If anything, the reverse is true - as any company gets bigger, it gets worse at maintaining quality. This can be trivially seen empirically with how much large tech corps spend on R&D and yet how boring, incremental and downright sad many of their new offerings are (new emojis anyone?) Where are the results from all the billions spent? I guess the new macbook keyboards are an innovation, oh wait... The only way a filter is strengthened by network effects, is if the filter is increasingly irrelevant and through-put is what matters (spray and pray > being picky). So either it is spray and pray and then it 'isn't that hard' indeed if you have the right connections (born rich, have been introduced to billionaire friends of your father/mother), or it isn't spray and pray, but then there are no self sustaining network effects to be had.

ipqk 6y ago

You forgot the part about Peter Thiel's money.

picodguyo 6y ago

Not throwing shade on this article as I don't know anything about PG or Jessica, but I couldn't help but be reminded of my current favorite satirical Twitter account: https://twitter.com/VCBrags https://twitter.com/VCBrags

exolymph 6y ago
Not a good person, IMO: https://www.sonyasupposedly.com/vcbrags/ https://www.sonyasupposedly.com/vcbrags/
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  Give me a break. VCBrags is harmless fun. It's absolutely absurd that anyone could think that clapping emojis are harassment. In fact, VCBrags recently almost shut down. And I think this blog post is one of the many examples of bullying that led to that kind of decision. And yes, there should be reputational consequences for this behavior. Nobody needs to be fired, I'm not advocating for that, but bad-faith critics of the tech industry and those who work in it should be identified and ignored. Seriously? The world would be a worse place if people listen to this person. It's clapping emojis, for heaven's sake. I also love how people who advocate for deplatforming someone pull the "Oh no, I would never advocate they be fired. No way!" act. It's such transparent sophistry. Ugh. Enough internet for me today. Back to work.
  - exolymph 6y ago
    > In fact, VCBrags recently almost shut down. And I think this blog post is one of the many examples of bullying that led to that kind of decision. Lol, did you read it? You have the chronology backwards.
    - sillysaurusx 6y ago
      Yeah, I figured as much, but this kind of vitriol has been leveled at them for so long that whether it's this particular blog post is irrelevant. People have it out for this person. This blog post is also literally a personal attack, which is against the site guidelines, for what it's worth. (It targets one specific person, which is partly why it's so upsetting. Don't people have better things to do than to write defamatory posts about someone posting clapping emojis? Go build something!)

MrXOR 6y ago

Sorry for unrelated question: Paul (@pg) is not very active on HN, unlike Twitter. Why?

psyc 6y ago
This is my interpretation of events, and maybe I’m off base. PG used to comment often. Around 2010-11, there was a months-long crisis of sorts over the perceived declining quality of discourse here. PG was actively involved in trying to mitigate. Afterwards he all but disappeared. I took this as tacitly washing his hands of it.
return1 6y ago
I will point out that a lot of his twitter opinions would not be well received here

jondubois 6y ago

> What did they do? They took bets on unknown people and believed in them more than anyone had before. They set strong norms... This is the essence of capitalism. The idea that you can take bold risks and be rewarded for being right. By this definition, what we have today is not capitalism. Because today's investors and entrepreneurs are only rewarded for following the herd and being compliant under the watchful eyes of their corporate masters. After I joined the workforce and the startup scene in 2013, capitalism was on its way out. I arrived just in time to catch a faint glimmer of it but now it's well and truly dead. What we have now is a combination of the worst, most superficial aspects of capitalism and socialism combined into single monstrosity. Corporate surveillance socio-capitalism with theatrical democracy.

tomcat27 6y ago

They both have done more service than all business schools combined!

troelsSteegin 6y ago

Jessica is Jessica Livingston. From Paul Graham's tribute [0], Livingston was a shrewd judge of people, which was an essential complement to the rest of the team's skillset. She is not a self-promoter. Her YC bio mentions her book [1], Founders at Work. The story from Sam Altman and Paul Graham is that diverse talent and decency was necessary for YC's success, and I would say the sentiment on thread here is that that is neither necessary nor sufficient for replication of YC's success. My view is that decency is under valued in business. Perhaps if it were easier to measure ... [0] https://www.ycombinator.com/library?query=Jessica%20Livingston https://www.ycombinator.com/library?query=Jessica%20Livingst... [1] https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early-dp-148422034X/dp/148422034X/ https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early-...

meowface 6y ago
>Jessica is Jessica Livingston. From Paul Graham's tribute, Livingston was a shrewd judge of people, which was an essential complement to the rest of the team's skillset. Just in case anyone misinterprets this based on "tribute" and the past tense: Jessica is still very much alive and I would assume still all of those things. (They've both just stepped down from active roles in YC, AFAIK.)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

alphachloride 6y ago

What's PG? And who's Jessica?

einarvollset 6y ago

There’s a lot of things I don’t love about startups, the Bay Area, etc. Jessica and Paul (and Trevor!) are definitely among the main reasons why I love those things. There’s hopefully no doubt in anyone of their minds how big an impact they made, but if there’s even a shred of doubt: thank you. The chili was never that great, but everything else was life changing. And I’m confident I speak on behalf of hundreds of people.

quickthrower2 6y ago

I think that "A lot of people want to replicate YC in some other industry or some other place or with some other strategy" is a bit of a narrow lens. Maybe people are replicating it, but it doesn't look real obvious like billionaires in SV and their flagship investments. It can be replicated in ideas that spread, which don't need VC and people can set up shop without them. Unknown companies that bootstrap up using strategies that would be barely known on HN. Sort of like the dark matter of capital, where 99.9% is dark matter.

grandinj 6y ago

VS Code is the modern emacs.

ReptileMan 6y ago

To anyone building something like a platform - leaving money on the table is the best way to get network effects and partners. That was well understood by the early Microsoft and not well understood by late Apple. Which is why I think their appstore model will be broken eventually

michaelmcmillan 6y ago

yc was 0 to 1, not 1 to n. You can't be greedy when doing 0 to 1: you'll just fail. But those imitating yc are doing 1 to n, and it's easy to underestimate what made 0 to 1 work in the first place.

peter_d_sherman 6y ago

>"The entire secret to YC getting going was PG and Jessica—there was no other magic trick." [...] "What did they do? They took bets on unknown people and believed in them more than anyone had before. They set strong norms and fought back hard against bad behavior towards YC founders. They trusted their own convictions, were willing to do things their way, and were willing to be disliked by the existing power structures. They focused on the most important things, they worked hard, and they spent a huge amount of time 1:1 with people. They understood the value of community and long-term orientation. When YC was very small, it felt like a family. Perhaps most importantly, they built an ecosystem [...]. This is easy to talk about, but hard to do, because it requires not being greedy."