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Am I the only one is getting pretty bored of "formula for success" content? This essay and other's like it, without evidence or data, implies that some of us k

Am I the only one is getting pretty bored of "formula for success" content? This essay and other's like it, without evidence or data, implies that some of us know the formula for success. I get it, the things that change convention are unconventional at first. This is the definition of unconventional. I agree with the general vector of his essay but this is just boring to me. Here is my formula for success (in case anyone cares): Enjoy life, try to make the world better, be a good person, go towards your passions (whether for hobby or career) and cultivate relationships because that seems to be the thing people regret most when they die. Now, let's move on to to the actual unconventional ideas and observations.

m4eta 6y ago
Humans are excellent at finding patterns where there are none. I don't think that changes when a bunch of 0s end up in your bank account.
- qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago
  A successful investor is almost by definition someone who's good at finding and exploiting patterns in the market.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ardit33 6y ago
I don't know, but I rather hear sporting/fitness advice from someone that won NBA finals, or the soccer World Cup, then just some random loser. The winner at least can tell you how they did succeed personally, even if they have no comprehensive studies with data. On the other hand, you are just a random guy from the internet, and offering advice with no data at all. You might be broke and posting from your mom's basement, or from the top of a penthouse that you bought from building successful companies/startups. We don't know, so your advice will be treated like: just another opinion, from a internet rando/keyboard warrior, and everyone has opinions. I listen to PG as he has been more right then wrong, also he was very successful, multiple times, and is single handedly a major contributer to many products I use.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jolux 6y ago
  Many successful people overrate their personal characteristics and underrate the degree to which they were merely in the right place at the right time and such. Fortune favors the prepared, of course, but I personally believe there are far more people in the world who are adequately prepared for success who do not succeed because they are under-resourced or poorly connected.
  - pgayed 6y ago
    > because they are under-resourced or poorly connected This is soluble.
    - jolux 6y ago
      Often not by the people in that situation but as a society yes it absolutely should be soluble.
      - pgayed 6y ago
        Then how did the first people in that situation do it? Said differently, who invented the first bootstraps and how did they do it without bootstraps?
  - chenpengcheng 6y ago
    only when the tide turns, you get to see who was swimming naked. luck plays an important part, but not everyone realizes it or admits it.
    - andrewseanryan 6y ago
      And yet... those who stay in the game and who try new things regularly get “lucky” while those who quit, don’t develop and learn from a process, and who try the same methods over and over don’t get lucky. It is far too simple to say that it is only luck. Persistence and good processes often lead to “luck”.
dang 6y ago
I don't see that here. I see someone trying to figure out things that interest him. As for unconventional ideas and observations, here's one: Political extremists [...] think themselves nonconformists, but actually they're niche conformists. Their opinions may be different from the average person's, but they are often more influenced by their peers' opinions than the average person's are. The material of that bit may not be unusual, but its precision and density certainly are, and the fact that it coins a great name for the phenomenon (niche conformism) easily clears the bar for "unconventional idea/observation" in my book. Also, there's nothing formula-for-successy there. You might be missing the best reasons for reading these things?
- davidivadavid 6y ago
  The phenomenon is called "conformity." Nothing in it ever suggested it only applies to large groups. Reading the first paragraph of Wikipedia will tell you as much.
  - Sniffnoy 6y ago
    Nonetheless, people do in fact make that mistake -- such as the niche conformists PG mentions -- so it is worth rebutting, and doing so in an understandable manner. The fact that you may not have seen a particular mistake, does not mean the mistake is not out there (and personally, based on my own experience, I'd say this one is rather common).
- Barrin92 6y ago
  yeah but the funny thing is it applies to the VC and tech scene more than to almost anything else. Tech people are niche conformists, a lot of them read the same books, speak the same language, share the same hobbies, look the same, and copy each others ideas. Copying something well and then deluding yourself or others into thinking you've dug up novelty is in fact one of the best sales strategies there is. Paul is also not accurate in one important way. Investors, by definition of how they make money, can't be too novel. They only can be ahead of the curve, because if you're so independent minded that the market doesn't catch up with what you believe you don't make any money. They're not independent-minded so much as they know what others want when they don't yet know it themselves. That's a different thing.
networkimprov 6y ago
The purpose of these essays might be more PR exercise for YC than an effort to foster efficacy among would-be world-beaters. "When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen" ;-)
- dang 6y ago
  He was writing this way and thinking about this for years before YC existed. I think it's more that these essays and YC have a common cause.
aerosmile 6y ago
I think you missed the point of the article. It explains why Bob is better than Sally in job A, but Sally is better than Bob in job B. Perhaps you figured that out, but I can't see that from your response, so I'll give you why this was so impactful for me. I went into Aerospace Engineering thinking that I'll be able to design radically different looking airplanes. After two degrees, three internships, three years of employment and several promotions, I quit the industry and started from scratch as a tech entrepreneur looking for a more fulfilling career path. I genuinely believe I could have avoided that whole AE thing if I had been exposed to this article at the right time.
- Judgmentality 6y ago
  > I quit the industry and started from scratch as a tech entrepreneur looking for a more fulfilling career path What is it you're doing as an entrepreneur you find so rewarding?
  - fossuser 6y ago
    Maybe they founded boom?
    - aerosmile 6y ago
      I wish! I left AE before I realized that more recently opportunities started opening up for entrepreneurially-minded engineers. The whole quadcopter space was probably a pretty good opportunity for people with a background in AE.
  - neckardt 6y ago
    > > I went into Aerospace Engineering thinking that I'll be able to design radically different looking airplanes. > What is it you're doing as an entrepreneur you find so rewarding? The aerospace industry rewards making minor improvements to conventional airplanes rather than building something novel. Entrepreneurship rewards building something new and "radically different", which is what he was looking for in the first place.
dboreham 6y ago
1. Luck 2. Don't screw up.
ekianjo 6y ago
> cultivate relationships because that seems to be the thing people regret most when they die. Dying regrets are bullshit, because those people actually made conscious choices not to invest into such relationships on a daily basis and would do it again if they were in the same situation. I don't buy it.
mkl 6y ago
> This essay [...], without evidence or data, implies that some of us know the formula for success. PG isn't claiming to know "the" formula for success, or that anyone else knows it (I doubt there could be such a thing). He's identifying and exploring traits that, from his considerable experience, seem to correlate with business success in a very narrow field, startup companies.
- ryeguy_24 6y ago
  I get your point and I get the reason people like to find correlations. I just think reducing dimensionality of really complex stuff is a waste of our time unless your purely talking about investing/gambling and increasing your odds on many bets. It just doesn’t help the “single path” people out there (maybe it wasn’t intended to). We aren’t an average of a simulation, we are just one scenario. Analogy (because I love analogies): “Seems like people over 7 feet tall make great basketball players.” This is great but it’s much more interesting that a guy named Muggsy Bogues made it to the NBA at 5 foot 3 inches.
  - mkl 6y ago
    I think that's why PG's discussion of whether and how a motivated individual can change or enhance these attributes is interesting, along with the observation that strength in one can make up for relative weakness in another. I think your analogy fails in that hanging out with tall people can't make you taller. Exceptions to general rules are interesting, but don't have much predictive or explanatory power.
andrei_says_ 6y ago
This is what I came here to write. “How to think for yourself... let me teach you!” I’m not sure how reading the advice of one of the most privileged and powerful people in the world relates to my experiences. I am not a VC. What if I am unable to apply these secrets of “thinking for myself” as they have been generously mansplained, whitesplained, rich-splained and VC-sprained and neoliberal-sprained to me? Probably my fault.
- ghayes 6y ago
  > How to think for yourself... let me teach you! I actually find this advice (taken literally) to be the best advice for thinking for yourself. Teach others and you’ll find yourself opening up to new viewpoints on topics versus “learning” the same topic.
- F_J_H 6y ago
  Then move on and find something that is more helpful for you? Why the need to trash it, (complete with fashionably dragging in gender, race, economic inequality and political ideology), because it doesn't resonate with you? I got a lot out of it, and am glad he took the time to write it.
- smabie 6y ago
  why are you so upset?
cratermoon 6y ago
This article is self-contradictory. The premise of the article is that you have to be unconventional and do things others aren't do to be successful. And then the author "proves" the premise by saying, "just like all these other successful people did!" The formulae are all driven by survivorship bias anyway.
- qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago
  It can simultaneously be true that to be successful in your field, you need to be unconventional relative to that field, and also that the means and methods for being usefully unconventional transfer across fields. "This article is self-contradictory. The article says good programmers write code in a way that doesn't cause surprises for the reader. But the only way for a program to be totally unsurprising is if it's an exact copy of another program which already exists!" ... "The formulae are all driven by survivorship bias anyway." In PG's case, he's had a chance to observe a lot of startups, both successes and failures. But even aside from this, survivorship bias is mainly a problem in the presence of downside risk. Let's say we look at Olympic champions and find that they all trained really hard. You cry: "Survivorship bias! It could be that you will train really hard and not become an Olympic champion!" Yes. It could be. But since the risks of training hard are relatively low, you may as well go ahead and train hard if being an Olympic champion is a serious goal for you.
  - cratermoon 6y ago
    Perhaps I'm misusing the term or using the wrong term. Could by hindsight bias. I'm talking about when a person a group accomplishes something, looks back at what they did, and they tries to decide post hoc which of the things they did contributed to their success.
- b0rsuk 6y ago
  He claims you have to be unconventional to be successful in pursuits which reward independent thinking. He named at least one profession where being conventional is desirable: an administrator.
trabant00 6y ago
Largely, successful people have little idea what they did to succeed at something. I observed this first in others and then in myself when trying to teach others. One reason is - like PG says - the inclination for activities is more nature vs nurture than we like to think. We want the success to be caused by our choices and intelect. When it was largely chosen for us at birth. Another aspect is post fact rationalization. Again like he says the unconscious mind decides first. Then the rational part tries to explain the choice but it often fails even to identify it, let alone pinpoint the reasons for it. Third: teaching is mostly done through example and practicing toghether. Simple words are very ineffective at passing on experience. And finally successful actions depend on context. For example what makes appropriate bussiness conduct varies from culture to culture, varies in time as the culture changes, is different even in the same culture depending on social class, etc. And these are just some points in the infinite variable group I called context. All this makes such articles pretty much pointless as a recipe for success. But I'm not sure it is intended as that. There is value in the text, it's just not all true and all applicable to everybody. But then which text is?
- pdimitar 6y ago
  Extremely well-written comment! Enjoyed reading it. To answer your last question I'd say my takeaway is "apply critical thinking to everything, this article included". As you and others point out, PG suffers from survivorship bias and likes to post-hoc rationalize how genius he was. That definitely isn't something to learn from. One could analyze his career and maybe extract some valuable lessons from it. However I am not even sure PG is a good example at all; once some critical mass is accrued the rest of the success is pretty much inevitable. So maybe the conclusion is: strive to achieve that critical mass with all your might? Could be.
- astatine 6y ago
  > Largely, successful people have little idea what they did to succeed at something Well said. However, most don't seem to realize. There are people who are perfectly willing to pontificate using literally any situation and relating it to their success. Not sure, if it is them or the rest of the plebs who seek their views and put them on a pedestal.
qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago
"without evidence or data" It seems worth noting that although this essay doesn't have a lot of the way in evidence/data, it is likely informed by PG's extensive experience as a startup investor. I would guess that YC has a proprietary dataset of the startups they've funded that they use to test hypotheses etc.
bsdz 6y ago
> Here is my formula for success (in case anyone cares): Enjoy life, try to make the world better, be a good person, go towards your passions (whether for hobby or career) and cultivate relationships because that seems to be the thing people regret most when they die. A nice mantra. Not dissimilar to the top of PG's to do list. There he also describes "the biggest regrets of the dying".. "Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy." http://www.paulgraham.com/todo.html http://www.paulgraham.com/todo.html
mindhash 6y ago
I wouldn't consider this as a formula for success but a sounding board. Most times we are lost in complexities of life and choices, articles like these enable us to get back and re-think, provide clarity. They should be considered as triggers or questions that we should be asking ourselves than a formula. This is philosophy, should be treated as such.
rdslw 6y ago
It is even worse. This article is (yet another) attemp to romanticize and put to pedestal 'startup with a novel idea'. It is worth to mention that trying to trick/persuade/convince (choose freely) thousands (literaly) of people to go this path, benefits tremendously ycombinator - not the persuaded founders. Because for YC if only few are (hugely) successfull they win. Not so for the other thousands. The fact that few means 200 here, does not change that 'other' means around dozens of thousands. Startups with 'right but not novel' are also GOOD. But they are muuuuch worse for YC. YC is not seeking all investments to end with modest returns. YC is seeking few, but with HUGE returns. Pay attention also, that ycombinator itself is in the 'right, but not inventive' camp. It's like 'selling investing advices', while in the same time, author makes money on sth completly different (advices :). BAD ADVICES, to be exact. p.s. I'm also tired on romanticizing airbnb in literally 3 paragraph (search for airbeds if you missed it). This is a pattern.
- ryeguy_24 6y ago
  I agree with you entirely. To add to your point, we readers aren’t an an average of a simulation. We are a single path. So, this advice works for the those that reap benefits of the average but it may not be the advice suited for individuals. “Jump off a cliff because statistically, one of you may fly”.
  - Agreed99 6y ago
    It’s a generational Ponzi scheme. We buy in as they say, they never have to pay out (in taxes). New wealth is generated by newcomers buying in (which conveniently keeps their wealth up). In the end we get left with the environmental cleanup bill. I have no respect left for western society. Its social experts outside science are average people acting emotionally. It’s no different to me than Sky wizard missionaries generating titillating story to grift off workers they came across. Beamed into our homes now. Grifters don’t even need to do more than show up on set. Businessmen to me are the final form of priests or kings. Story mode characters finely tuning a top-down hierarchy story in which they insert themselves near the top, but never do much but ramble inconsistency.
  - angry_octet 6y ago
yuriko_boyko 6y ago
The title itself is very ironic. Learn how to think for yourselves from? Yourselves? No. From Paul Graham who doesn't even know your name.
libeclipse 6y ago
Plus there's the irony of an article telling you how to think for yourself.
martingoodson 6y ago
No you’re not the only one to think this. That’s why this is currently the top comment. I guess you’re not very independent-minded.
brightball 6y ago
Formula for success: 1. Find a way to afford time to focus on what you care about. 2. Repeat step 1. For a lot of people, step 1 is a steady job so they can do things they care about outside of work with family and friends. For others, it’s finding time to work on a project or startup you care about. Ultimately, buying your own time back is the key to it all. What that key unlocks is up to you to decide.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

m4eta 6y ago

Humans are excellent at finding patterns where there are none. I don't think that changes when a bunch of 0s end up in your bank account.

qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago
A successful investor is almost by definition someone who's good at finding and exploiting patterns in the market.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ardit33 6y ago

I don't know, but I rather hear sporting/fitness advice from someone that won NBA finals, or the soccer World Cup, then just some random loser. The winner at least can tell you how they did succeed personally, even if they have no comprehensive studies with data. On the other hand, you are just a random guy from the internet, and offering advice with no data at all. You might be broke and posting from your mom's basement, or from the top of a penthouse that you bought from building successful companies/startups. We don't know, so your advice will be treated like: just another opinion, from a internet rando/keyboard warrior, and everyone has opinions. I listen to PG as he has been more right then wrong, also he was very successful, multiple times, and is single handedly a major contributer to many products I use.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jolux 6y ago
Many successful people overrate their personal characteristics and underrate the degree to which they were merely in the right place at the right time and such. Fortune favors the prepared, of course, but I personally believe there are far more people in the world who are adequately prepared for success who do not succeed because they are under-resourced or poorly connected.
- pgayed 6y ago
  > because they are under-resourced or poorly connected This is soluble.
  - jolux 6y ago
    Often not by the people in that situation but as a society yes it absolutely should be soluble.
    - pgayed 6y ago
      Then how did the first people in that situation do it? Said differently, who invented the first bootstraps and how did they do it without bootstraps?
- chenpengcheng 6y ago
  only when the tide turns, you get to see who was swimming naked. luck plays an important part, but not everyone realizes it or admits it.
  - andrewseanryan 6y ago
    And yet... those who stay in the game and who try new things regularly get “lucky” while those who quit, don’t develop and learn from a process, and who try the same methods over and over don’t get lucky. It is far too simple to say that it is only luck. Persistence and good processes often lead to “luck”.

dang 6y ago

I don't see that here. I see someone trying to figure out things that interest him. As for unconventional ideas and observations, here's one: Political extremists [...] think themselves nonconformists, but actually they're niche conformists. Their opinions may be different from the average person's, but they are often more influenced by their peers' opinions than the average person's are. The material of that bit may not be unusual, but its precision and density certainly are, and the fact that it coins a great name for the phenomenon (niche conformism) easily clears the bar for "unconventional idea/observation" in my book. Also, there's nothing formula-for-successy there. You might be missing the best reasons for reading these things?

davidivadavid 6y ago
The phenomenon is called "conformity." Nothing in it ever suggested it only applies to large groups. Reading the first paragraph of Wikipedia will tell you as much.
- Sniffnoy 6y ago
  Nonetheless, people do in fact make that mistake -- such as the niche conformists PG mentions -- so it is worth rebutting, and doing so in an understandable manner. The fact that you may not have seen a particular mistake, does not mean the mistake is not out there (and personally, based on my own experience, I'd say this one is rather common).
Barrin92 6y ago
yeah but the funny thing is it applies to the VC and tech scene more than to almost anything else. Tech people are niche conformists, a lot of them read the same books, speak the same language, share the same hobbies, look the same, and copy each others ideas. Copying something well and then deluding yourself or others into thinking you've dug up novelty is in fact one of the best sales strategies there is. Paul is also not accurate in one important way. Investors, by definition of how they make money, can't be too novel. They only can be ahead of the curve, because if you're so independent minded that the market doesn't catch up with what you believe you don't make any money. They're not independent-minded so much as they know what others want when they don't yet know it themselves. That's a different thing.

networkimprov 6y ago

The purpose of these essays might be more PR exercise for YC than an effort to foster efficacy among would-be world-beaters. "When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen" ;-)

dang 6y ago
He was writing this way and thinking about this for years before YC existed. I think it's more that these essays and YC have a common cause.

aerosmile 6y ago

I think you missed the point of the article. It explains why Bob is better than Sally in job A, but Sally is better than Bob in job B. Perhaps you figured that out, but I can't see that from your response, so I'll give you why this was so impactful for me. I went into Aerospace Engineering thinking that I'll be able to design radically different looking airplanes. After two degrees, three internships, three years of employment and several promotions, I quit the industry and started from scratch as a tech entrepreneur looking for a more fulfilling career path. I genuinely believe I could have avoided that whole AE thing if I had been exposed to this article at the right time.

Judgmentality 6y ago
> I quit the industry and started from scratch as a tech entrepreneur looking for a more fulfilling career path What is it you're doing as an entrepreneur you find so rewarding?
- fossuser 6y ago
  Maybe they founded boom?
  - aerosmile 6y ago
    I wish! I left AE before I realized that more recently opportunities started opening up for entrepreneurially-minded engineers. The whole quadcopter space was probably a pretty good opportunity for people with a background in AE.
- neckardt 6y ago
  > > I went into Aerospace Engineering thinking that I'll be able to design radically different looking airplanes. > What is it you're doing as an entrepreneur you find so rewarding? The aerospace industry rewards making minor improvements to conventional airplanes rather than building something novel. Entrepreneurship rewards building something new and "radically different", which is what he was looking for in the first place.

dboreham 6y ago

1. Luck 2. Don't screw up.

ekianjo 6y ago

> cultivate relationships because that seems to be the thing people regret most when they die. Dying regrets are bullshit, because those people actually made conscious choices not to invest into such relationships on a daily basis and would do it again if they were in the same situation. I don't buy it.

mkl 6y ago

> This essay [...], without evidence or data, implies that some of us know the formula for success. PG isn't claiming to know "the" formula for success, or that anyone else knows it (I doubt there could be such a thing). He's identifying and exploring traits that, from his considerable experience, seem to correlate with business success in a very narrow field, startup companies.

ryeguy_24 6y ago
I get your point and I get the reason people like to find correlations. I just think reducing dimensionality of really complex stuff is a waste of our time unless your purely talking about investing/gambling and increasing your odds on many bets. It just doesn’t help the “single path” people out there (maybe it wasn’t intended to). We aren’t an average of a simulation, we are just one scenario. Analogy (because I love analogies): “Seems like people over 7 feet tall make great basketball players.” This is great but it’s much more interesting that a guy named Muggsy Bogues made it to the NBA at 5 foot 3 inches.
- mkl 6y ago
  I think that's why PG's discussion of whether and how a motivated individual can change or enhance these attributes is interesting, along with the observation that strength in one can make up for relative weakness in another. I think your analogy fails in that hanging out with tall people can't make you taller. Exceptions to general rules are interesting, but don't have much predictive or explanatory power.

andrei_says_ 6y ago

This is what I came here to write. “How to think for yourself... let me teach you!” I’m not sure how reading the advice of one of the most privileged and powerful people in the world relates to my experiences. I am not a VC. What if I am unable to apply these secrets of “thinking for myself” as they have been generously mansplained, whitesplained, rich-splained and VC-sprained and neoliberal-sprained to me? Probably my fault.

ghayes 6y ago
> How to think for yourself... let me teach you! I actually find this advice (taken literally) to be the best advice for thinking for yourself. Teach others and you’ll find yourself opening up to new viewpoints on topics versus “learning” the same topic.
F_J_H 6y ago
Then move on and find something that is more helpful for you? Why the need to trash it, (complete with fashionably dragging in gender, race, economic inequality and political ideology), because it doesn't resonate with you? I got a lot out of it, and am glad he took the time to write it.
smabie 6y ago
why are you so upset?

cratermoon 6y ago

This article is self-contradictory. The premise of the article is that you have to be unconventional and do things others aren't do to be successful. And then the author "proves" the premise by saying, "just like all these other successful people did!" The formulae are all driven by survivorship bias anyway.

qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago
It can simultaneously be true that to be successful in your field, you need to be unconventional relative to that field, and also that the means and methods for being usefully unconventional transfer across fields. "This article is self-contradictory. The article says good programmers write code in a way that doesn't cause surprises for the reader. But the only way for a program to be totally unsurprising is if it's an exact copy of another program which already exists!" ... "The formulae are all driven by survivorship bias anyway." In PG's case, he's had a chance to observe a lot of startups, both successes and failures. But even aside from this, survivorship bias is mainly a problem in the presence of downside risk. Let's say we look at Olympic champions and find that they all trained really hard. You cry: "Survivorship bias! It could be that you will train really hard and not become an Olympic champion!" Yes. It could be. But since the risks of training hard are relatively low, you may as well go ahead and train hard if being an Olympic champion is a serious goal for you.
- cratermoon 6y ago
  Perhaps I'm misusing the term or using the wrong term. Could by hindsight bias. I'm talking about when a person a group accomplishes something, looks back at what they did, and they tries to decide post hoc which of the things they did contributed to their success.
b0rsuk 6y ago
He claims you have to be unconventional to be successful in pursuits which reward independent thinking. He named at least one profession where being conventional is desirable: an administrator.

trabant00 6y ago

Largely, successful people have little idea what they did to succeed at something. I observed this first in others and then in myself when trying to teach others. One reason is - like PG says - the inclination for activities is more nature vs nurture than we like to think. We want the success to be caused by our choices and intelect. When it was largely chosen for us at birth. Another aspect is post fact rationalization. Again like he says the unconscious mind decides first. Then the rational part tries to explain the choice but it often fails even to identify it, let alone pinpoint the reasons for it. Third: teaching is mostly done through example and practicing toghether. Simple words are very ineffective at passing on experience. And finally successful actions depend on context. For example what makes appropriate bussiness conduct varies from culture to culture, varies in time as the culture changes, is different even in the same culture depending on social class, etc. And these are just some points in the infinite variable group I called context. All this makes such articles pretty much pointless as a recipe for success. But I'm not sure it is intended as that. There is value in the text, it's just not all true and all applicable to everybody. But then which text is?

pdimitar 6y ago
Extremely well-written comment! Enjoyed reading it. To answer your last question I'd say my takeaway is "apply critical thinking to everything, this article included". As you and others point out, PG suffers from survivorship bias and likes to post-hoc rationalize how genius he was. That definitely isn't something to learn from. One could analyze his career and maybe extract some valuable lessons from it. However I am not even sure PG is a good example at all; once some critical mass is accrued the rest of the success is pretty much inevitable. So maybe the conclusion is: strive to achieve that critical mass with all your might? Could be.
astatine 6y ago
> Largely, successful people have little idea what they did to succeed at something Well said. However, most don't seem to realize. There are people who are perfectly willing to pontificate using literally any situation and relating it to their success. Not sure, if it is them or the rest of the plebs who seek their views and put them on a pedestal.

qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago

"without evidence or data" It seems worth noting that although this essay doesn't have a lot of the way in evidence/data, it is likely informed by PG's extensive experience as a startup investor. I would guess that YC has a proprietary dataset of the startups they've funded that they use to test hypotheses etc.

bsdz 6y ago

> Here is my formula for success (in case anyone cares): Enjoy life, try to make the world better, be a good person, go towards your passions (whether for hobby or career) and cultivate relationships because that seems to be the thing people regret most when they die. A nice mantra. Not dissimilar to the top of PG's to do list. There he also describes "the biggest regrets of the dying".. "Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy." http://www.paulgraham.com/todo.html http://www.paulgraham.com/todo.html

mindhash 6y ago

I wouldn't consider this as a formula for success but a sounding board. Most times we are lost in complexities of life and choices, articles like these enable us to get back and re-think, provide clarity. They should be considered as triggers or questions that we should be asking ourselves than a formula. This is philosophy, should be treated as such.

rdslw 6y ago

It is even worse. This article is (yet another) attemp to romanticize and put to pedestal 'startup with a novel idea'. It is worth to mention that trying to trick/persuade/convince (choose freely) thousands (literaly) of people to go this path, benefits tremendously ycombinator - not the persuaded founders. Because for YC if only few are (hugely) successfull they win. Not so for the other thousands. The fact that few means 200 here, does not change that 'other' means around dozens of thousands. Startups with 'right but not novel' are also GOOD. But they are muuuuch worse for YC. YC is not seeking all investments to end with modest returns. YC is seeking few, but with HUGE returns. Pay attention also, that ycombinator itself is in the 'right, but not inventive' camp. It's like 'selling investing advices', while in the same time, author makes money on sth completly different (advices :). BAD ADVICES, to be exact. p.s. I'm also tired on romanticizing airbnb in literally 3 paragraph (search for airbeds if you missed it). This is a pattern.

ryeguy_24 6y ago
I agree with you entirely. To add to your point, we readers aren’t an an average of a simulation. We are a single path. So, this advice works for the those that reap benefits of the average but it may not be the advice suited for individuals. “Jump off a cliff because statistically, one of you may fly”.
- Agreed99 6y ago
  It’s a generational Ponzi scheme. We buy in as they say, they never have to pay out (in taxes). New wealth is generated by newcomers buying in (which conveniently keeps their wealth up). In the end we get left with the environmental cleanup bill. I have no respect left for western society. Its social experts outside science are average people acting emotionally. It’s no different to me than Sky wizard missionaries generating titillating story to grift off workers they came across. Beamed into our homes now. Grifters don’t even need to do more than show up on set. Businessmen to me are the final form of priests or kings. Story mode characters finely tuning a top-down hierarchy story in which they insert themselves near the top, but never do much but ramble inconsistency.
- angry_octet 6y ago

yuriko_boyko 6y ago

The title itself is very ironic. Learn how to think for yourselves from? Yourselves? No. From Paul Graham who doesn't even know your name.

libeclipse 6y ago

Plus there's the irony of an article telling you how to think for yourself.

martingoodson 6y ago

No you’re not the only one to think this. That’s why this is currently the top comment. I guess you’re not very independent-minded.

brightball 6y ago

Formula for success: 1. Find a way to afford time to focus on what you care about. 2. Repeat step 1. For a lot of people, step 1 is a steady job so they can do things they care about outside of work with family and friends. For others, it’s finding time to work on a project or startup you care about. Ultimately, buying your own time back is the key to it all. What that key unlocks is up to you to decide.

deleted 6y ago

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