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This isn’t a surprise. The religion that formed here hanging off his every word subscribed to it to get rich, just like he started YC to get rich. Now he’s happ
by iur12 5y ago
This isn’t a surprise. The religion that formed here hanging off his every word subscribed to it to get rich, just like he started YC to get rich. Now he’s happily rich, barely even looks in the mirror at these adherents that he left behind, and is writing for his new friends who are also rich. It was always pointless snake oil but the Sand Hill Greed here made everyone overlook that because maybe, just maybe, the key to get into YC and skip the bread line was buried in the ninth paragraph of some polemic from a guy who figured out retail in Lisp and somehow convinced a greed-seeking generation of hackers that he had all the answers.
I’ll take my -4 for hitting close to home. The grayer I get — silencing unpopular ideas by making them grayer was his idea too — the more confident I’m right. We stopped telling you folks you were following someone who only cared about your impact on his RoI because that sort of unwashed heathen isn’t welcome here. Paul Graham, YC, and this creation of his on which we speak now has done more to distort and destroy any foundation of computing remotely paying attention to making the world better than almost anything before it, and while I’m happy to see people finally figuring out that it just might be bullshit, it’s a bit too late.
- exhaze 5y agoMaybe one day, you'll even be confident enough to not make a throwaway account to say something like this.
- iur12 5y agoThis is kind of like a Clippy suggestion: hi there, it looks like you’re criticizing the forum. Would you like to establish a reputation on the forum?
- CRConrad 5y agoHow does one get to make more than three comments a day? Maybe that's why some people create new accounts, because they've filled their daily quota on the other ones.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoDownvoted not because you're right, but because you're mostly wrong. I mean, you're maybe 10% right. You take that 10% and inflate it to the point that it's almost completely wrong, though.
- iur12 5y agoI appreciate your well-defended and reasoned argument. I learned a lot from your countless examples of what I got wrong and given that I’ve missed the mark on earning your vote, I’ll be sure to factor your feedback into my future comments.
- read_if_gay_ 5y agoYour post is just a bunch of empty accusations, too. You're trying so hard to be snarky but everything you said might as well be applied to your own post. You just had to talk big hiding behind a throwaway, didn't you?
- nvr219 5y agoDang now that you're back in the black I don't know if you're right or not :-/
- iur12 5y agoCONUNDRUM OF THE AGES
- layoutIfNeeded 5y agoI'm kind of a contrarian myself, and what you've said resonates with me a lot. Take my upvote!
- mattmanser 5y agoI don't think it's at all fair to say he started YC to get rich. His own thoughts about are here: http://www.paulgraham.com/whyyc.html http://www.paulgraham.com/whyyc.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ycstart.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ycstart.html Whether you believe that or not is up to you, but back then there was no guarantee it would work. To look with hindsight and say it was just greed is easy for you to hurl, but not at all what it looked like at the beginning.
- mattknox 5y agoHe was rich enough not to need more money before starting YC-the acquisition price for viaweb was $49M, and it roughly ~10x'd between then and the peak in late 1999. (cites: https://www.cnet.com/news/yahoo-buys-viaweb-for-49-million/ https://www.cnet.com/news/yahoo-buys-viaweb-for-49-million/ https://venturebeat.com/2008/10/08/as-other-tech-stocks-rally-yahoo-hits-where-it-was-in-october1998/ https://venturebeat.com/2008/10/08/as-other-tech-stocks-rall... ). I don't know how long he spent there or what fraction of the company he still held, but I'd assume that he'd have stayed long enough to get to his personal Fuck You Money. More generally, I know many many people (maybe literally tons by weight?) who continue to work long after they don't need to, usually because they're just deeply interested in the domain. I've seen this up close with my father, who continues to farm at 70, and with some founders who keep founding despite having more money than they will ever need. So when someone in that situation says they work on a thing because it is interesting to them, I generally believe them.