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Nobody that saying everyone who questions or criticises is a hater. Just that there is an important difference between people who raise legitimate questions or

Nobody that saying everyone who questions or criticises is a hater. Just that there is an important difference between people who raise legitimate questions or objections and express them reasonably, vs saying they "root for [your] company to crash and burn on principle" and "hope [your company and others like it] fails and fails hard" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26961051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26961051. The thread had its share of both. The top comment was reasonable and Suhail replied to it with an interesting perspective. PG's point is that the more successful you are, the more "haters" you'll attract, in addition to fanboys, reasonable supporters and reasonable critics, and that a key to surviving the rollercoaster of commercial success is being able to identify the haters from the rest and avoiding letting them hold you back from doing good work. EDIT: People are objecting to the sentence in the original version of my comment that the linked comment "wish[ed] for personal harm". Fair enough that that can be seen as an inflammatory interpretation. For what it's worth I consider people angrily wishing for your company to go bust, which can often lead to personal impoverishment and career/reputational damage to the founder to be equivalent to a wish for harm to them, but I don't need others to agree with that.

lanternfish 5y ago
Where in that comment does it advocate for personal harm? It seems to me to be an entirely valid (if somewhat extreme) ideological viewpoint about cloud computing applied to a product. This is absolutely a _reasonable_ critic, it's just that their criticism is fundamentally non-constructive because, by their analysis, the entire business model is in violation of some goodness criteria. Haters exist, but haters are fanatical. That threat had pretty much exclusively well reasoned and argued analysis, even if that analysis was remarkably critical.
morelisp 5y ago
That comment does not wish personal harm on the product's creator.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
geofft 5y ago
That comment is not wishing for "personal harm to a new product's creator." It's wishing that the market rejects a business. There's a deeply reasoned argument in that comment about the merits of the business model and it is anti-intellectual to dismiss it the way you would dismiss unhinged claims for violence. I understand that a side effect of a business failing is that the people working for the business lose their jobs. But if anything, that argument would apply primarily to the employees of the new product, not the creator. The creator understands that a new business is a venture - an attempt, not a guarantee - and that for many reasons it could fail. And, more generally, it seems like an awful slippery slope to characterize wanting some other business to not succeed as a desire to harm anyone. Suppose I agree with Suhail's goals but also I think I can execute on the idea better and I start a competitor. If there's only enough room in the market for one winner, and I want to be that winner, am I now wishing harm on Suhail too? Suppose I start a business that competes with some old-school giant ripe for disruption. Am I attempting to cause personal harm to the C-suite of that business? This is exactly what people are concerned about with Paul's article. Once you get comfortable painting some critics as "haters," it's easy to dismiss all critics that way. Haters and fanboys do not spring up from the quantum foam; they might not present their arguments in the best way, but if you have an overwhelming number of one or the other, there's quite possibly a reason for it.
- tomhoward 5y ago
  There's all the difference in the world between saying you hope the company "fails and fails hard", vs saying "I understand what the company is trying to do, here's how I think they can do it better". What could be more hateful that wishing someone "fails hard" vs hoping for them to find a way to succeed in a way you think is worthy? Anyway, it doesn't matter what you or I think about this. As I said in another comment, the ability to discern between valid criticism and hate is one of the most important skills a founder/executive can have, so real world outcomes matter far more than arguments about it here. All the essay is saying is that some critics cross over into being haters, and where that is the case they can be ignored. It's up to practitioners to discern what is and isn't hateful. People chiming in here saying "some criticism is valid and shouldn't all be dismissed as hate" are not disproving the article's thesis or saying anything PG would dispute.
morelisp 5y ago
> I consider people angrily wishing for your company to go bust, which can often lead to personal impoverishment and career/reputational damage to the founder to be equivalent to a wish for harm to them I believe this view (maybe pithily summarized as "people are corporations") is also the root of Graham's dumb article. If someone expends a lot of effort towards a bad idea and suffers "reputational damage" that's called consequences, not personal harm. Meanwhile, I will continue hoping ~all of Peter Thiel's company's fail, which is not even a very controversial opinion on HN.
- tomhoward 5y ago
  Good founders can accept failing if they were unable to build a product people want/need. That's hammered into you from the moment you join YC (and well before - PG has been writing essays about this since at least 2005). This essay is not about that. It's about people who attack a product/company/founder for reasons that are not about a product's functionality but are about their own issues. This can be presumed to be be true of a critic who actively desires to see a founder's company "crash and burn" (leading to financial damage to them and their family if they have one), rather than just thinking it would be better for the founder to change their product or company direction.
  - morelisp 5y ago
    Your writing in this thread sounds consistently like a cult member. A completely closed world where YC is beyond reproach because YC does the things YC says make one beyond reproach.
    - tomhoward 5y ago
      YC doesn't need me to defend it, and nothing I've written is specific to YC. I have plenty of points of disagreement with YC, and people/companies connected to it. This essay/thread isn't about any of those things. It's just about "haters" vs valid criticism, and I keep replying to people who try and refute the essay by saying founders should be accepting of valid criticism, which the essay doesn't dispute. If you think I'm wrong about that, explain how I'm wrong. Refuting a person's contribution to a discussion by casting them as a "cult member" doesn't help your case in this of all topics. For what it's worth, the personal bias I do have in this topic is in support of people like Suhail who are building products/ideas that seem crazy to most. The one I want to be working on, and that I earnestly believe could solve a lot of big problems over the long term, is one that even YC likely wouldn't fund/support, and that would certainly attract more resistance than Mighty. But that's for me to work through. I'm cool with where I'm at, but I’m going to keep having a soft spot for people like Suhail who spend years working on something that others think are crazy, as that’s the way the important problems (indeed, far bigger problems than slow websites) are going to be solved.

lanternfish 5y ago

Where in that comment does it advocate for personal harm? It seems to me to be an entirely valid (if somewhat extreme) ideological viewpoint about cloud computing applied to a product. This is absolutely a _reasonable_ critic, it's just that their criticism is fundamentally non-constructive because, by their analysis, the entire business model is in violation of some goodness criteria. Haters exist, but haters are fanatical. That threat had pretty much exclusively well reasoned and argued analysis, even if that analysis was remarkably critical.

morelisp 5y ago

That comment does not wish personal harm on the product's creator.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

geofft 5y ago

That comment is not wishing for "personal harm to a new product's creator." It's wishing that the market rejects a business. There's a deeply reasoned argument in that comment about the merits of the business model and it is anti-intellectual to dismiss it the way you would dismiss unhinged claims for violence. I understand that a side effect of a business failing is that the people working for the business lose their jobs. But if anything, that argument would apply primarily to the employees of the new product, not the creator. The creator understands that a new business is a venture - an attempt, not a guarantee - and that for many reasons it could fail. And, more generally, it seems like an awful slippery slope to characterize wanting some other business to not succeed as a desire to harm anyone. Suppose I agree with Suhail's goals but also I think I can execute on the idea better and I start a competitor. If there's only enough room in the market for one winner, and I want to be that winner, am I now wishing harm on Suhail too? Suppose I start a business that competes with some old-school giant ripe for disruption. Am I attempting to cause personal harm to the C-suite of that business? This is exactly what people are concerned about with Paul's article. Once you get comfortable painting some critics as "haters," it's easy to dismiss all critics that way. Haters and fanboys do not spring up from the quantum foam; they might not present their arguments in the best way, but if you have an overwhelming number of one or the other, there's quite possibly a reason for it.

tomhoward 5y ago
There's all the difference in the world between saying you hope the company "fails and fails hard", vs saying "I understand what the company is trying to do, here's how I think they can do it better". What could be more hateful that wishing someone "fails hard" vs hoping for them to find a way to succeed in a way you think is worthy? Anyway, it doesn't matter what you or I think about this. As I said in another comment, the ability to discern between valid criticism and hate is one of the most important skills a founder/executive can have, so real world outcomes matter far more than arguments about it here. All the essay is saying is that some critics cross over into being haters, and where that is the case they can be ignored. It's up to practitioners to discern what is and isn't hateful. People chiming in here saying "some criticism is valid and shouldn't all be dismissed as hate" are not disproving the article's thesis or saying anything PG would dispute.

morelisp 5y ago

> I consider people angrily wishing for your company to go bust, which can often lead to personal impoverishment and career/reputational damage to the founder to be equivalent to a wish for harm to them I believe this view (maybe pithily summarized as "people are corporations") is also the root of Graham's dumb article. If someone expends a lot of effort towards a bad idea and suffers "reputational damage" that's called consequences, not personal harm. Meanwhile, I will continue hoping ~all of Peter Thiel's company's fail, which is not even a very controversial opinion on HN.

tomhoward 5y ago
Good founders can accept failing if they were unable to build a product people want/need. That's hammered into you from the moment you join YC (and well before - PG has been writing essays about this since at least 2005). This essay is not about that. It's about people who attack a product/company/founder for reasons that are not about a product's functionality but are about their own issues. This can be presumed to be be true of a critic who actively desires to see a founder's company "crash and burn" (leading to financial damage to them and their family if they have one), rather than just thinking it would be better for the founder to change their product or company direction.
- morelisp 5y ago
  Your writing in this thread sounds consistently like a cult member. A completely closed world where YC is beyond reproach because YC does the things YC says make one beyond reproach.
  - tomhoward 5y ago
    YC doesn't need me to defend it, and nothing I've written is specific to YC. I have plenty of points of disagreement with YC, and people/companies connected to it. This essay/thread isn't about any of those things. It's just about "haters" vs valid criticism, and I keep replying to people who try and refute the essay by saying founders should be accepting of valid criticism, which the essay doesn't dispute. If you think I'm wrong about that, explain how I'm wrong. Refuting a person's contribution to a discussion by casting them as a "cult member" doesn't help your case in this of all topics. For what it's worth, the personal bias I do have in this topic is in support of people like Suhail who are building products/ideas that seem crazy to most. The one I want to be working on, and that I earnestly believe could solve a lot of big problems over the long term, is one that even YC likely wouldn't fund/support, and that would certainly attract more resistance than Mighty. But that's for me to work through. I'm cool with where I'm at, but I’m going to keep having a soft spot for people like Suhail who spend years working on something that others think are crazy, as that’s the way the important problems (indeed, far bigger problems than slow websites) are going to be solved.