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Wow, I came here to say that this was possibly Paul's best essay ever. There is so much to learn here. Completely surprised by the negative comments and so many

Wow, I came here to say that this was possibly Paul's best essay ever. There is so much to learn here. Completely surprised by the negative comments and so many of them :). Specially on an essay that is essentially asking to not being critical right away. In my short startup life, I have had the opportunity of meet many founders, VCs and also get solicited and unsolicited opinions from friends and family. Most of the VCs, friends and family members were critical of my ideas or simply didn't spend the effort to really listen. I see the same thing happening to other founders and startups. Specially fun is meeting VCs who have never built a startup themselves or coming from a non technical background be overly critical and share their strongly held opinions on how my startup could fail. I ran out of fingers counting how many ways. Ofcourse a startup can fail. Thats why it's not a company yet. There is a saying that it takes many miracles to make a startup a success. Most founders know that already. We are already scared. Paul is suggesting a different approach. A more positive one. And given the statistics around Paul's and YC's success versus other VCs, you would think that the HN crowd of all people would at-least pay attention. P.S: My startup was rejected multiple times by YC. So not a fan exactly.

gustavo-fring 5y ago
Do you not think there is a balance between unalloyed boosterism and lying (the YC way) and not giving you any good feedback? There are just way more people that I know and trust personally that I think could give positive, but constructive advice. I would believe absolutely nothing coming out of Paul's mouth because he hasn't shown that he's an honest person. He's not disinterested about any of this, but feigns like he is above it. I think some of us are very sick of the absolutely fake and fraudulent way he and others like him and Musk operate. They do not care about the truth or other people, they care about their own egos and people for whatever reason buy that.
- fillskills 5y ago
  After marriage and running a decent sized org, I learnt that all people are not exactly like me. They are different. In many ways. While some like PG like to support others and shy from confrontation, others like Steve Jobs etc found success by being more direct. Looks like both ways can work. And I am teaching my team at work the same - that there are many paths to a win. This was not easy in the beginning for me personally, I could not appreciate the differences. But I am learning.
- dang 5y ago
  You can't post personal attacks like this to HN, regardless of who you're attacking. Perhaps you don't feel that you owe $person better, but you owe this community much better if you want to participate here. You crossed badly into bannable territory in this thread. I've responded in more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27066921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27066921.
  - gustavo-fring 5y ago
    How exactly would we deal with this issue then? I'm sure you've seen where people have accused you of editing Austin Allred's username on his account. Nobody else can do that.If I believe that lambda school or coinbase has been involved in shady business practices, is HN not the place to discuss that? Do you not have a conflict of interest here?
    - dang 5y ago
      (Although your account is rate-limited because of the quantity of flamewar comments you've posted, I've temporarily turned the rate limit off so you can reply. You don't need to create new accounts, which HN's anti-troll software is rejecting anyhow.) You posted surprisingly vicious smears in this thread, even blaming one person for the death of another. Some of that you edited in an extremely misleading way, so that the community's original response seemed unreasonable, when in fact it had been appropriate. Even in the above comment, which is still up, you've accused someone of being fake, fraudulent, and dishonest, with zero basis. When asked not to do any of this, you haven't even acknowledged what you did—instead you're changing the subject dramatically. Isn't that a little distasteful? > I'm sure you've seen where people have accused you Since you saw the thread where people were bringing it up, I'm surprised you didn't see the explanations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26959559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26959559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26959675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26959675 > is HN not the place to discuss that People discuss companies, including YC-funded companies, at great length on HN all the time. That's not the issue here. The issue is that you've been breaking the site guidelines very badly, and we need you to stop. > Do you not have a conflict of interest I've written extensively about that over the years. If you or anyone is interested, some of those past explanations can be found at the following links: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20less%20%22not%20more%22%20yc&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=yc%20business%20interests%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... The short version is that we don't moderate HN to suppress criticism of YC or YC startups, because that would be (a) wrong, (b) futile, and (c) dumb. We moderate HN to try to keep it interesting and in line with the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) — that's all. I'd never claim to be immune from bias (who could?) but I can tell you what principles we try to apply and can at least claim to have years' worth of practice at them. There's nothing secret here, by the way, in the sense that anyone can get an answer to any question about how HN works (other than technical details about anti-abuse software, and that only because they would stop working if they weren't secret). Trying to run an online community any other way would be inefficient and self-defeating. We try to never do anything that isn't defensible to the community, because the community's good will is the only asset HN has. I completely understand how easy it is for unexplained details to compound into weird and sinister pictures. That's a fact of human life that we all have to deal with, especially online. But really the cleanest and freshest way to deal with it is to check what's actually happening, when that option is available. HN, even though it has millions of users, is still small enough that that option is actually available. Why not take advantage of that?
npsimons 5y ago
I don't know if I'd say it's Graham's best essay ("Beating the Averages" still ranks as one of my favorites), but reading this most recent essay, I was thinking of Elon Musk. Say what you will about the guy, and there's an argument to be made that Tesla at least is incremental and not a crazy new idea, but Musk co-founded Paypal and is now pushing limits in spaceflight.
- enraged_camel 5y ago
  >> but Musk co-founded Paypal I don't think that's correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#X.com_and_PayPal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#X.com_and_PayPal

gustavo-fring 5y ago

Do you not think there is a balance between unalloyed boosterism and lying (the YC way) and not giving you any good feedback? There are just way more people that I know and trust personally that I think could give positive, but constructive advice. I would believe absolutely nothing coming out of Paul's mouth because he hasn't shown that he's an honest person. He's not disinterested about any of this, but feigns like he is above it. I think some of us are very sick of the absolutely fake and fraudulent way he and others like him and Musk operate. They do not care about the truth or other people, they care about their own egos and people for whatever reason buy that.

fillskills 5y ago
After marriage and running a decent sized org, I learnt that all people are not exactly like me. They are different. In many ways. While some like PG like to support others and shy from confrontation, others like Steve Jobs etc found success by being more direct. Looks like both ways can work. And I am teaching my team at work the same - that there are many paths to a win. This was not easy in the beginning for me personally, I could not appreciate the differences. But I am learning.
dang 5y ago
You can't post personal attacks like this to HN, regardless of who you're attacking. Perhaps you don't feel that you owe $person better, but you owe this community much better if you want to participate here. You crossed badly into bannable territory in this thread. I've responded in more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27066921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27066921.
- gustavo-fring 5y ago
  How exactly would we deal with this issue then? I'm sure you've seen where people have accused you of editing Austin Allred's username on his account. Nobody else can do that.If I believe that lambda school or coinbase has been involved in shady business practices, is HN not the place to discuss that? Do you not have a conflict of interest here?
  - dang 5y ago
    (Although your account is rate-limited because of the quantity of flamewar comments you've posted, I've temporarily turned the rate limit off so you can reply. You don't need to create new accounts, which HN's anti-troll software is rejecting anyhow.) You posted surprisingly vicious smears in this thread, even blaming one person for the death of another. Some of that you edited in an extremely misleading way, so that the community's original response seemed unreasonable, when in fact it had been appropriate. Even in the above comment, which is still up, you've accused someone of being fake, fraudulent, and dishonest, with zero basis. When asked not to do any of this, you haven't even acknowledged what you did—instead you're changing the subject dramatically. Isn't that a little distasteful? > I'm sure you've seen where people have accused you Since you saw the thread where people were bringing it up, I'm surprised you didn't see the explanations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26959559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26959559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26959675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26959675 > is HN not the place to discuss that People discuss companies, including YC-funded companies, at great length on HN all the time. That's not the issue here. The issue is that you've been breaking the site guidelines very badly, and we need you to stop. > Do you not have a conflict of interest I've written extensively about that over the years. If you or anyone is interested, some of those past explanations can be found at the following links: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20less%20%22not%20more%22%20yc&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=yc%20business%20interests%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... The short version is that we don't moderate HN to suppress criticism of YC or YC startups, because that would be (a) wrong, (b) futile, and (c) dumb. We moderate HN to try to keep it interesting and in line with the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) — that's all. I'd never claim to be immune from bias (who could?) but I can tell you what principles we try to apply and can at least claim to have years' worth of practice at them. There's nothing secret here, by the way, in the sense that anyone can get an answer to any question about how HN works (other than technical details about anti-abuse software, and that only because they would stop working if they weren't secret). Trying to run an online community any other way would be inefficient and self-defeating. We try to never do anything that isn't defensible to the community, because the community's good will is the only asset HN has. I completely understand how easy it is for unexplained details to compound into weird and sinister pictures. That's a fact of human life that we all have to deal with, especially online. But really the cleanest and freshest way to deal with it is to check what's actually happening, when that option is available. HN, even though it has millions of users, is still small enough that that option is actually available. Why not take advantage of that?

npsimons 5y ago

I don't know if I'd say it's Graham's best essay ("Beating the Averages" still ranks as one of my favorites), but reading this most recent essay, I was thinking of Elon Musk. Say what you will about the guy, and there's an argument to be made that Tesla at least is incremental and not a crazy new idea, but Musk co-founded Paypal and is now pushing limits in spaceflight.

enraged_camel 5y ago
>> but Musk co-founded Paypal I don't think that's correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#X.com_and_PayPal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#X.com_and_PayPal