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A Word to the Resourceful

• kanchax 15y ago
  Thanks for pinging the article. It applies very well to my actual situation, which is different and yet similar in its essence. I am still in school and when I had problems I dealt with it by myself no matter how hard or the quantity of extra activities. Since then I have learned to rely on the help of actual people not only internet. I guess thats a problem many of you guys already solved. Anyway, it was mine to solve and this article only makes the map neater.
• jorleif 15y ago
  This was a very insightful post which confirms my experience that generally working with people you can't communicate easily with almost always leads to bad results. What I'm wondering though, is if it really is a property of the person, or the fit between the two parties. Some people just don't get each other. Maybe their values are too far apart or something. Maybe they try to follow the other parties implications, but it leads somewhere they don't want to go, or then they cannot even fill in the blanks correctly because of different mental models. So an alternative explanation for pg's observation is that when there is founder-advisor fit, communication is easy, because both parties can follow the implications of the other party and value similar things. Then the startups with better founder-advisor fit do better in the outside world, because they can actually benefit from the advice they are getting, whereas for the ones without founder-advisor fit the advice is pure noise to them, and does not guide them in the right direction (that is the one they want to go).
• tom_b 15y ago
  The "hard to talk to" test is almost the perfect description of how I feel about working with certain clients (for lack of a better phrase) in my current job. Prior to this gig, I would have said one my strengths was actually working and communicating with users of software I helped write or support. Now, it seems like our team is mostly "walled off" from the external people we could do the most for. Any tips out there for breaking through that wall? It is really discouraging . . .
  • ssharp 15y ago
    Organizations can be complicated things, so I'm guessing there is some history behind the wall. I think the first step is thinking about (and hopefully understanding) why the gap is there. What do you think the reasons for the wall are?
    • larrik 15y ago
      This reminded me of one of the "motivational" posters we have in my building: *Never take down a fence before you know why it was put up in the first place." I'm still not sure I agree with it, since it sounds like rationalization for "We've always done it this way." EDIT: All of your responses are correct, and I appreciate knowing where the quote/paraphrase comes from. Unfortunately, the unique environment I'm in means that this paraphrase is aimed at the type of people (warehouse workers) who would most certainly read into it as a cop-out, and not the nuanced and thoughtful call to rational thinking that it is. Oh well.
      • tomjen3 15y ago
        Not really. It merely means that you should ask people 'why do we do this' until you get a better answer than 'We have always done it this way' (unless the actual answer is that). It is a good warning to heed too -- otherwise you will end up redoing all the mistakes of the past.
      • sp332 15y ago
        It's taken out of context. You can read the passage by G.K. Chesterton here: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#The_Thing_.281929.29 https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#The_Thing_.28...
        • jcromartie 15y ago
          I'd say it's a good paraphrase. That larger passage is really great and has many implications for software and technology, for sure.
        • 15y ago
• losethos 15y ago
  God is just. God says... Confessions reject beholder intent triumph derides founded weapon filled settled invited READ recess license wax consigned hapless Will household come hills psaltery thick sounds sword abject talent preparing wealthy True nsolently agreement attacked than absolute Trine equalled unhappiness famished IT Adeodatus dispel overturned ensues falls him On desiring prose collects restoration avoid saw never destruction lovingly subjects serenity equal imaginations father serving dialogue fears accomplices US emptiness mould draught capital accord narrowness mountains mingling interpretation wonted impure strives motions charioteer blasphemy transferred infinitely hurried equably repress III --- God says...QUIX.TXT as reduced to such a state that there was nothing left to level--and to do the work more quickly and easily they mined it in three places; but nowhere were they able to blow up the part which seemed to be the least strong, that is to say, the old walls, while all that remained standing of the new fortifications that the Fratin had made came to the ground with the greatest ease. Finally the fleet returned victorious and triumphant to Constantinople, and a few months later died my master, El Uchali, o --- I saw a crazy story on Everest bodies. Lots of operating system projects abandoned. Most people don't survive being crazy with God and stuff. God says... smoke Whether larger difficulty seduction PROJECT receive wherefrom colour slowly Canticles regarding reject casters cried envy Defect poor as severer Anubis Academics unity steeping neck kindled desireth END applauds feeding unyielding
• troll24601 15y ago
  I'm not an investor, but I've had a parallel experience having been involved with roughly 150 tech contracts in my career. A strong predictor for mediocrity is when communication is troubled. If we're unable to have two-way conversations with all project stakeholders, it's almost a guarantee that we'll end up delivering something that has less value than it could, at a higher cost than was possible, and that nobody is thrilled with.
• dotBen 15y ago
  Honestly I think this same observation is true of engineers (good ones you can give them the direction and they'll go work out how to solve whatever problem they're having, the bad ones will look at you blankly and you end up doing the work yourself). And then, as someone who has been a founder, an engineer and a corporate worker in enterprise during my career to date, I realized that this is also true of people in big companies. I guess in startup world the stakes are greater (your company will fail vs you won't get promoted or make bonus) but this is no different to middle managers who reach a glass ceiling. The bottom line is this: if you identify with the negative character trait PG identifies, you need to snap out of it anyway regardless of whether you're being bold and doing a startup or whether you want to play it safe and take a corporate job.
• jcromartie 15y ago
  It bothers me to hear this, because I know that I tend to fall on the "hard to talk to" side. I used to be really bad at this kind of resourcefulness, and I would have a hard time "chasing down" those various implications. I like to think that I'm better now. I think that, as with many areas, deliberate practice has helped.
  • ljf 15y ago
    If you know it, then that is half the battle won - as you say you've been able to work towards fixing it. I honestly think most people like this have no idea that they are hard to talk with, or if they do they have not interest in fixing it, and just want to be left alone: The "I thought doing this job meant I didn't have to speak to people?" types.
  • tomjen3 15y ago
    Can you specify how you did deliberate practice to overcome that weakness?
    • jcromartie 15y ago
      Someone told me once: "You're good at putting the puzzle together, but only when you have all the pieces." I can't really give specific examples, but it really is a daily thing, where I remind myself to follow things to their logical conclusions, in order to know how to proceed with a task/project/question/etc..
    • makmanalp 15y ago
      Just sit down and think not just about what a person said, but why they are saying it. If my dad says, "Son, never date girls who are hippies", that probably means that he himself was burned from an experience like that. While reading it plain would have given me a catch-all theory that is not necessarily true, reading into the reasons told me two extra factoids: my dad doesn't want me to get hurt, and he has dated a hippie girl and that ended badly.
  • untog 15y ago
    For me it's not that I'm hard to talk to (I like to think?!), it's that I'm just not great at forcing a conversation. I think of this particularly in terms of VCs, like PG discusses. I think I can handle most things, but the real detail of negotiating funding, or even being "forceful" enough in a first impression worries me.
• sawyer 15y ago
  This effect goes both ways; resourceful people should be wary of people who are hard to listen to. I feel like when I'm speaking to someone on the same wavelength about a specific topic it's quite easy to take shortcuts through a lot of the conversation with a simple nod and a word. The opposite type of conversation feels like you're walking through a swamp with no end. You know exactly where they're going with their point many sentences before they reach it, however they continue to drag out the thought.
• abarringer 15y ago
  Reminds me of the historic "Message to Garcia" http://www.foundationsmag.com/garcia.html http://www.foundationsmag.com/garcia.html "The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?" By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this or that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing—"Carry a message to Garcia."
  • tomjen3 15y ago
    Ok that seems stupid in the extreme. Yes in this case he was right, but what if you knew something about where the man is? He might have saved days of this crucial journey. To me, he is no smarter than I would be if I was late for a train and ran out of the house rather than look up how to get to the trainstation.
• raganwald 15y ago
  Reminds me of an anecdote about Tim Cook: In a meeting convened to tackle a problem in China, he had said: "This is really bad someone should be in China driving this." Thirty-minutes in the meeting he chided Sabih Khan, the then operations executive, saying "Why are you still here?". Khan responded by immediately booking a ticket to China, sans a change of clothes. http://www.theverge.com/2011/08/24/tim-cook-apples-ceo/ http://www.theverge.com/2011/08/24/tim-cook-apples-ceo/
  • mechanical_fish 15y ago
    Which brings up a relevant point: It is very easy for an organization to undermine the resourcefulness of its employees. Indeed, this is so common that one may eventually come to expect it. That's why this story is as much of a story about Tim Cook as it is about Sabih Khan.
    • deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  • philwelch 15y ago
    I've always found that story really interesting, for a number of reasons. For instance, was Khan obviously the right person to take responsibility for that problem? Maybe the story is an illustration that saying "somebody go take care of this" is less effective than assigning a particular individual to take care of it.
    • SatvikBeri 15y ago
      According to the Steve Jobs biography, Khan did really well at Apple following that incident. I would guess this incident taught Khan to take more initiative in the future. That's much more valuable than saving half an hour by assigning the task to one person directly.
      • philwelch 15y ago
        I hope he also learned to keep a change of clothes around, or swing home on the way to the airport next time.
• brador 15y ago
  Hmm...not sure about the conclusion from the data here. Maybe they lacked "resourcefullness" (noticed by a difficulty in closing) because their startup wasn't so hot...maybe they were hard to talk to because, again, their startup wasn't so great and they didn't want to talk about it. It's the old "basketball players are tall because they are good at basketball" thinking... Look deeper, I suggest the cause-effect be inverted.
• forensic 15y ago
  It's called "Will" Schopenhauer and Nietzsche figured this out a long time ago.
• aarlo 15y ago
  It's all about the anxiety caused by the fear. Deep-down the unresourceful founders are afraid, which causes anxiety that their decisions are wrong, so anything that approaches being wrong causes the anxiety to repress and get in the way of the freedom to explore things. Resourcefulness is also about letting new ideas and opportunities come to you, which helps if you listen to your unconscious, which you can't do if anxiety makes your conscious mind jumpy.
• Jd 15y ago
  An even older adage (from Confucius) : "I will hold up one corner. If the student does not return, with enthusiasm, having raised the other three, the Lesson ends."
  • gwern 15y ago
    Hm, the version I have runs 'The Master said, "I do not open the way for students who are not driven with eagerness; I do not supply a vocabulary for students who are not trying desperately to find the language for their ideas. If on showing students one corner they do not come back to me with the other three, I will not repeat myself."' (Analects 7.8)
• zach 15y ago
  The note at the end is priceless. I think there is something in operating under a fearful authority that spoils people in this way — that causes them to make excuses, obfuscate, counterattack, pass the buck or shut down when confronted by a sound argument against their way of thinking. Once someone has succumbed to the politics within a large organization, they have likely internalized these patterns of dealing with objections.
  • garry 15y ago
    This is a critical observation. By default, for most people who have been through the modern school system, and/or worked for companies -- they're used to covering their ass and sounding smart. The market doesn't care about cover-your-ass -- it only cares if their problems get solved and if your product is any good.
• steder 15y ago
  Regardless of profession I think listening and reading are the most important skills. Unfortunately I find many technology people are programmed to discount or deprecate any and all "soft" skills.
• ChuckMcM 15y ago
  So here is a reference, 'Confronting Reality' by Bossidy and Charan [1] it's worth a read. (Their book on execution is better but they are both worth reading) The core thesis is exactly what Paul writes about, successful enterprises are successful at confronting a reality which does not agree with their world view, or their desired world view. Fundamentally, if there is a problem, or more importantly a problem in a place where you won't look, it needs to be dealt with. If you don't deal with it sooner, then you will be forced to deal with it when it does so much damage that you cannot deny it any more. People who can confront those issues fix them when they are small and thus don't waste any time on excess damage control. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Reality-Doing-Matters-Things/dp/B001T0I7KA/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_3 http://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Reality-Doing-Matters-Thin...
• martinrue 15y ago
  The partner note at the bottom is spot on. I have reflectively seen myself doing it. I used to get so focused on the particular idea I had that I lost sight of the fact I was solving a problem, for which there were likely many solutions – blinded by wanting to simply do it the way I had in my head. Conversations would just be a way for me to validate my concrete idea, not to search for additional ideas or entirely new approaches to the problem. I like this essay because it serves as a personal reminder to always avoid that. As soon as you close your mind off from the ideas others may give you (directly or indirectly), you've lost.
• heed 15y ago
  I don't know if 'resourcefulness' is the right description for trait pg observed. I think 'assertiveness' is more accurate.
  • noblethrasher 15y ago
    'Assertiveness' is decidedly the wrong word (though it might apply to the specific example that he mentioned). Resourcefulness means that you can do a lot with a little. In the context of this piece, it means you can turn a little advice into a lot of (useful) action.
• jameslevy 15y ago
  The unsuccessful founders weren't stupid. Intellectually they were as capable as the successful founders of following all the implications of what one said to them. They just weren't eager to. Startup founders should read 'The Denial of Death' (http://www.amazon.com/Denial-Death-Ernest-Becker/dp/0684832402 http://www.amazon.com/Denial-Death-Ernest-Becker/dp/06848324...) Of course, as a founder, you could make it a point to embrace the reality not just of your inevitable death, but also your startup's inevitable eventual death. I say this because I'm guessing a lot of the things pg says to the least successful startups involves the reality that their startup will die if there are not quick and radical changes to some part of the business. I'm sure many physicians must have this problem when talking to their patients who smoke, binge-eat, do not take their medicine, etc.
• konaaceo 15y ago
  @pg Coming from an outsider looking in, I wonder how much of the issues is with you and other YC mentors. I know you have an incredible amount of knowledge but how you impress that information on people is very crucial. I wonder if the process of sharing your knowledge with people needs some refining. Watching you do office hours and other interactions, you often make the situation uncomfortable to people who are already unsure of whats next. When you ask them a question, you cut them off as they are trying to explain what they see, only to try and answer the question for them. This has been feedback from many who have experienced the YC process. There are people like me who have built a company and held true to our vision. We make money and we know how to run our business. We have applied to incubators not to have someone tell us what to do, rather to get advice from people who have experience similar challenges and the apply them to our structure. Granted there are groups coming through YC that don't have that experience and those people need some direction. But for both sets of groups, they want you to actually listen to them. When you bring them in for their hour each week, listen to them. The wall is not that they cannot communicate or motivated to take down leads. They are put out because every time they try to communicate they feel the door is slammed in their face as if their thought or idea doesn't matter. In a recent blog post I wrote "When people feel comfortable, essential and free to be individually themselves, a person can become a solar flare of focused energy that fuels the world we call business." So make them feel like they are not only essential to their company but that you actually care enough to listen and hear them. People going on rants are an altogether different issue, but sometimes people need to just talk out loud to work their head around an idea. As a matter of fact, you are one of those people! But you have to give people the sense that their voice is relevant in the direction they are taking and not driven. Give people time to understand why your suggestions should be heavily considered, so they can figure it out for themselves. Again, this is from the outside but maybe it is a place to start.
  • pg 15y ago
    At first I did worry that the problem was on my end. That is always one's initial assumption when people don't seem to understand. Maybe I wasn't clear enough, you think, and you try again to to explain it a different way. The reason it seems unlikely that the problem is on our end is the correlation between being difficult to talk to and failure in the outside world. If the problem was on our end, we would experience difficulty talking to both successful and unsuccessful startups. Incidentally, if all you've seen is "office hours" on stage at a conference, you don't really know what office hours are like. Office hours onstage at an event are about 1/4 as long as real office hours, and with people I've never met before. So of course they are all over the place. Office hours at events are more like YC interviews than YC office hours.
• jonnathanson 15y ago
  A very good mentor of mine once put it succinctly: when thinking about a problem, he said, "don't start with the barriers." Don't frame the thought process as "Here are all the reasons why not; now I need to figure out why." Instead, start from a place of "Absent all barriers or obstacles, here's what I would like to accomplish." There will be plenty of time to address obstacles, but it's best to be energized by them when you get there. If not, you'll see every obstacle as a crushing defeat. If this sounds new-agey, well, perhaps it is. It's a mindset thing. But mindsets can be extremely critical. There's a huge difference between someone who sets out to succeed and prepares for failure, and someone who sets out to avoid failure and hopes for success. The former will exhaust every option to circumvent the obstacles; the latter will almost look at the obstacles as vindication of a deep-seated suspicion that he's wrong.
  • gcv 15y ago
    This applies to other things, in my experience. In making a drawing, for example, a mental dialog can go one of two ways: - "this is wrong", "that line can't be right", "the shadow doesn't work" or - "how does this line relate to this other line?", "how does the light hit this plane", "what shapes does this decompose into?" The critical dialog option leads to bad and abandoned drawings. The constructive dialog option leads to restatements and completed work.
  • bitops 15y ago
    > mindsets can be extremely critical. I would go so far as to say that they are the only thing that matters. You can look at a problem from one mindset and see that it's going to take you 5 days or 5 weeks. Change your mindset and you might see that it's going to take you 5 minutes.
    • gnaritas 15y ago
      "Perspective is worth 80 IQ points." -- Alan Kay
  • _sh 15y ago
    This is how I write scheme macros. First I write some sample code in exactly the syntax I'd like to use, in an ideal way ignoring whether it's possible or not to produce. Then I create a macro to transform that syntax into code, iterating the sample code if I encounter barriers (usually unparseable syntax). It has really helped me (a poor to mediocre scheme programmer) create good macros very quickly, improving the expressive power of my code dramatically.
• doubleconfess 15y ago
  A great deal of this article seemed to be concerned more about flexibility than resourcefulness. "Like real world resourcefulness, conversational resourcefulness often means doing things you don't want to. Chasing down all the implications of what's said to you can sometimes lead to uncomfortable conclusions." "My feeling with the bad groups is that coming into office hours, they've already decided what they're going to do and everything I say is being put through an internal process in their heads, which either desperately tries to munge what I've said into something that conforms with their decision or just outright dismisses it and creates a rationalization for doing so." This sounds like a testament to the lean-startup movement, where success is more dictated on the ability to iterate on user feedback rather than being stuck in one static idea of what your business is or is meant to be.
• jseliger 15y ago
  This: My feeling with the bad groups is that coming into office hours, they've already decided what they're going to do and everything I say is being put through an internal process in their heads, which either desperately tries to munge what I've said into something that conforms with their decision or just outright dismisses it and creates a rationalization for doing so. They may not even be conscious of this process but that's what I think is happening when you say something to bad groups and they have that glazed over look. I don't think it's confusion or lack of understanding per se, it's this internal process at work. is precisely what happens with students, too. A few weeks ago a former student wrote to me about career choices and whether she should major in biochem or English, because she'd struggled in biochem classes. My girlfriend was a biochem major, so together we wrote a thorough response that turned into an essay called "How to think about science, becoming a scientist, and life" that should go up soon. After spending a couple hours on the response, we sent it, and I got back an e-mail from the student saying. . . she's going to go to law school and "become a judge." So all of the considered reasoning and description and discussion was merely "put through an internal process in" her head. Experiences like this teach me why a) a lot of professors aren't eager to interact with students and often distance themselves from students and b) why writing "How to get your professors' attention, along with coaching and mentoring" was useful, if only for the relative handful of students who get it: http://jseliger.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your-professors%E2%80%99-attention-or-how-to-get-the-coaching-and-mentorship-you-need http://jseliger.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your-professors%E2... .
  • a_a_r_o_n 15y ago
    I'm not saying your student didn't have a pre-filter as you describe. On the other hand, you may have been just one source of advice for your student. Asking for advice doesn't mean that taking it is always the best course, it's information to be weighed against all other advice and information.
  • bermanoid 15y ago
    So all of the considered reasoning and description and discussion was merely "put through an internal process in" her head. I think that's a bit of an leap - isn't it also possible that she actually took your "How to think about science" essay to heart, and realized that she didn't actually want to do it? This is not uncommon, even if someone is good at something - even if they're the best - that doesn't necessarily mean that they should pursue it. When I used to advise grad students in the context of GRE training, I considered myself very successful when I talked students out of pursuing graduate education in fields that they were not passionate enough about to commit themselves to properly (or, in a couple of sad cases, where they flat out didn't have the skills - this happened a couple of times with people hoping to go into physics or math that just weren't good enough at math to make it, and as horrible as it was to do so, I had to be honest [gently] about that fact). This is particularly relevant to me because I was one of those people that understood (and I like to think, still understands) how science is done, was good at it, even had a passion for it, and still decided to pursue another path - I've written the very e-mail that you mention, though it was "program computers" instead of "become a judge". But I think very highly of the professors that gave me an accurate and honest view of how tough the field was (physics, in my case) and how it functioned. Though they might have been disappointed that their feedback played a part in my staying away (honestly, it was money - I realized that unless I was a shining star in the field [I wasn't], I'd probably never have enough, and I didn't have it in me), I consider it to have been extremely important in my decision, and for that I'm really grateful.
• adrianwaj 15y ago
  Sounds like executive intelligence coupled with a willingness to take personal responsibility if it fails - that's why they chase up the implications. Hard to talk to can also translate into talking to users. The paradox with startups comes in building something very much for yourself, but also very much for other people: possibly a similar maturity in talking to others, requiring a mental leap of faith.
• johngalt 15y ago
  Another indicator of this is verbal ping-pong. How granular you have to answer questions/give direction. If you get a lot of "What do I do next?" or "you never told me to do that!" A non-resourceful person would say "How am I supposed to know that an introduction means X, Y, Z?!"
• eande 15y ago
  "bad groups is that coming into office hours, they've already decided what they're going to do" If someone has this kind of set in mind and not listening to the context what the other end has to say meritocracy is at best the outcome.
• nostrademons 15y ago
  Applies to employees as well. One of the better things about Google is that with most engineers, you can raise some concern or some alternative way of doing things, and they'll just get it, understand all the implications, and be able to implement it with no further direction. (The ones that can't are pretty infuriating to work with, because it takes you longer to hand-hold than it would to just do it yourself.) I had an intern last fall where I could just give him the name of a product or technology to look into, or a contact e-mail for the team in charge, and he'd go look into it and come up with a working implementation. He's just been given an offer, so with any luck he'll be a coworker next year. The thing is - I'm not certain this is entirely a property of the person involved. Yes, there are certain skills that make it easier to find information on your own. But this is also a function of the problem domain and how well you know it. If you give me a credit card and a problem statement, chances are that I can come up with a working webapp that solves the problem. But if you give me the name of a VC and tell me to go raise money - where do I start? How do I approach him? What will burn bridges and what won't? So my question to PG and any other resourceful folks out there is: how do you approach a problem domain in which you know nothing, and manage to gain enough of a map of the territory so that you listen to someone's one-word suggestions and instantly grasp the implications?
  • drumdance 15y ago
    But if you give me the name of a VC and tell me to go raise money - where do I start? How do I approach him? What will burn bridges and what won't? I think in this case "getting it done" also includes asking questions like this. So if someone says they'll into you to a VC but you're not sure what to do next, don't try to guess. Ask for advice. My sense is that PG's frustration comes from people who don't act without him prodding them every step of the way. If you're afraid or unwilling to admit your weaknesses and ask for advice, you're ipso facto closing off communication.
    • loceng 15y ago
      Would 'asking for advice' not be contrued as 'hand-holding' then - as it's not something you take and immediately run with? I personally don't see anything wrong with it, but I'm guessing the VC and entrepreneurs aren't aligned in expectations in that instance then.
• ozataman 15y ago
  To further explore this topic, I would recommend reading the book Iconoclast[1]. It identifies "a lack of fear and mental laziness" as some of the key qualities rare extraordinary individuals possess. Having a child's mind and looking at things fresh was another way of putting it for me at the time I read it. Reading PG's post, it immediately reminded me of the detailed analysis of this quality in the book. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Iconoclast-Neuroscientist-Reveals-Think-Differently/dp/1422133303/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327002753&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Iconoclast-Neuroscientist-Reveals-Thin...
• markkat 15y ago
  This just crystalized something for me. I like to create stuff with people. Once I find that someone is thoughtful, reflective, or whatever you want to call it, I like to talk with them in a manner that prods the abstract. It now makes sense to me that my most successful collaborations have happened with people with whom I can easily speak in the abstract. Details and competence are real things, but they are not the most important things by a long shot. Details can't be accounted for except for the fact that they will arise and they will have to be dealt with in one manner or another. Also, besides a reticence to talk in the abstract, one thing that puts serious doubt in my mind about people is self-help books.
  • jodrellblank 15y ago
    Also, besides a reticence to talk in the abstract, one thing that puts serious doubt in my mind about people is self-help books. Any particular reasons?
    • markkat 15y ago
      Well, I am sure that some will disagree, but what I've seen, most of what is in self-help books is common sense, although the best wrap it in amusing or counter-intuitive anecdotes. I think self-help allows people to convince themselves that there's formulae to life, when it's really just a matter of doing things in earnest and learning as you go. So, basically I see self-help books as a sign that someone over-values impersonal advice. Not a sign of confidence, IMHO.
      • dmoney 15y ago
        So you're saying the formula is to do things in earnest and learn as you go?
        • markkat 15y ago
          Hardly a formula. But sure, even if you consider it to be one, it's not book worthy. It's common sense.
• caublestone 15y ago
  "A Word to the Resourceful" or "Do or Do not, there is no try"
• deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
• MattGrommes 15y ago
  I would love to see more stories of YC companies that didn't work out (no personal details needed of course). It seems like the weeding process is good enough to have a very high success rate so the ones that don't do well should be good examples to keep in mind.
• mhartl 15y ago
  While it's tempting to treat "resourcefulness" as a trait intrinsic to founders, in my experience it can be a sharp function of the founder/startup fit. When I did YC, I didn't feel resourceful at all, but that's because I was working on the wrong problems. (Don't ask; it was painful.) As soon as I switched to education and technical publishing (the Ruby on Rails Tutorial, started after YC), I was suddenly resourceful as all get-out—and I started to feel unstoppable. I suspect that if I ever do YC again, the resourcefulness transformation will appear miraculous, not because of any change in my intrinsic resourcefulness, but because the new startup will be a much better fit for my interests and abilities. One could argue that truly resourceful founders will iterate until they find a good fit. That's probably true—and it's exactly what I did. It's just that sometimes the penultimate "iteration" involves shutting the old thing down and starting something new. Chalk it up to my Artix Phase (http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html).
  • pg 15y ago
    It can also change over time, especially in younger founders. As Garry pointed out elsewhere in this thread, most schools and jobs train you to be somewhat passive.
    • AndyNemmity 15y ago
      I agree with this. I actually didn't go the route of school, preferring to just go out on my own, and I was/am amazed at all the passivity. I think if anything the defining quality of my career is a total lack of being passive. Having no formal training allows you the quality of never being intimidated. I didn't know anything when I started. I am not concerned about taking on any challenge I know nothing about.
• bh42222 15y ago
  This is going to sound mean, but I don't mean to be mean. I am genuinely curios: Could you describe "hard to talk to" as not having very high social skills? I would say that a lot of average folk could be described as hard to talk to, but super smooth people are never hard to talk to. So I mean to restrict my question to well above average social skills. And this leads me to my next question. Could it be that social skills require more brain power than traditionally intellectual pursuits? We know from AI work that things which come naturally to humans are some of the most computationally intensive and most difficult to replicate. Whereas things like math and playing chess are much easier to implement in software. Doing math in your head can feel much more difficult than just having a conversation with someone. But what if having a conversation feels easier only because a huge amount of brain power is genetically devoted to vision, language processing, face recognition, and reading other humans' emotions? (This is what's going to get me grayed out) What if socially awkward geeks are truly lacking brain power compared to socially super smooth but not particularly intellectual people? And does pg's experience prove that social smoothness provides higher fitness even in the high-tech startup environment? Are then technically brilliant but socially awkward people truly less fit in almost all areas of life? Do socially awkward people only out-compete socially smooth people strictly in situations where interaction among humans is truly minimal?
  • bitops 15y ago
    > Are then technically brilliant but socially awkward people truly less fit in almost all areas of life? I would say no, they are not, if they recognize their lack of fitness and choose to do something about it. I think it's true that a lot of technically brilliant people are socially awkward. It makes sense why they are that way, though. In order to become technically brilliant, they had to log many hours in front of a computer screen to practice and get good. Those hours spent programming didn't go into sports, theater, public debate, or whatever other activity might have built up their social skills. The clincher for a lot of these technically brilliant people, from what I've observed, is that they start to feel superior to others because they are so smart/talented. They then begin to feel like the whole "smooth thing" is a waste of time, because we should just be able to compute our relationships with each other. (That may sound like I'm being sarcastic, but that is not my intention). It's kind of the old story about "book smart but not street wise". There is a lot of value in learning how to make others feel comfortable around you, or to being able to work smoothly through challenging situations. I'm thinking of the kind of situation where everyone in the room is tense and somebody is able to defuse the feeling. Being able to do that requires emotional intelligence, which is something many engineers don't always have in abundance. Acquiring those abilities begins with seeing their value. If somebody who is socially awkward thinks it might be worthwhile to become less awkward, they can definitely do it. (I am speaking from personal experience here!)
• aswell 15y ago
  I think a huge portion of the blame of this is on the YC partners. I'm extremely comfortable debating and discussing ideas in an extremely logical and thoughtful way. My favorite question every day to myself is "If I was starting over today what would I do". And Joe Kraus's "Face reality". I found it impossible to do that during my YC interview though. From minute one it was a series of arrogant and condescending statements after another. Their ideas were nuggets of golden insight and my (far more educated in many instances) responses were dismissed out of hand. I've had countless discussions of the same type with many other smart people (successful founders, investors, regular smart people) before and since. Some who raised far more difficult questions. I have reason to suspect the biggest problem was the YC partners and not some problem I have being flexible or thoughtful. I think the essay as well as this quote are very revealing: With the good groups, you can tell that everything you say is being looked at with fresh eyes and even if it's dismissed, it's because of some logical reason e.g. "we already tried that" or "from speaking to our users that isn't what they'd like," etc. Those groups never have that glazed over look. I think you're mistaking some founders ability to placate you with thoughtfulness in many, but certainly not all, cases. One person who publicly talked about this phenomenon (in a joking way) was one of the founders of Heroku. He said that pg said "You're an Oracle killer" so he "smiled and nodded because I wanted to get in" (paraphrasing). I think that's very indicative of the way many founders probably feel when talking to the YC partners. The ones who disregard that idea are likely marked as "difficult to talk to." I think there's a very real danger you guys aren't hearing stuff like this because who in their right mind would tell you and who would you listen to? You would probably just say they're difficult to talk to. The problem with being so damn smart (which all the YC partners truly are) is that you can start to think that any problem you run into (like founders who seem hard to talk to) you're assumption is that it's their fault instead of your own. I do think there's some unbiased truth to the essay and maybe the founders who are good at placating will make better founders. But you have to consider: would Bill Gates or Steve Jobs really have smiled and nodded or would they have said "What the hell are you talking about, that's stupid." (We know what Jobs would have done anyway.) I'm still a really big fan of YC and all the YC partners, but I do think you might have let some arrogance creep in to your process. You guys are doing alright though, so feel free to ignore little ol' me.
  • 15y ago
• ericb 15y ago
  How much of a factor in pg's perception is the know-it-all phenomenon, I wonder? I find the most unteachable folks to be the ones who already "know."
• bitops 15y ago
  Though I'm not otherwise a big fan of Donald Trump, I read one of his books to see what he had to say. The book was called "Think Like A Champion" (I suppose that says something about Trump, but let that go by). He pointed something out which I thought was a great business lesson: if you can't explain yourself in 5 minutes or less, you are going to be in trouble. Relating this to pg's story, it means: you have to be able to express your ideas cleanly, succintly, and then forget all about them so you can take feedback. You have to drop the fact that it's "your idea" and just listen to what is being said. I've worked with a number of people who were really, really, really excellent technically, but you could literally see the cogs churning in their head as you were speaking to them. And it was very much like what Paul describes, a sort of glazed over look. Afterwards, you'd have to rev the same idea with the a few times until they got it, or until you had to give up and make a decision by yourself. I think it's a hard habit for some people to break, but it can be done.
  • TheSOB88 15y ago
    I think glazing is something different - basically, when you're ignoring what's being said.
• lionheart 15y ago
  I wonder how much this "resourcefulness" characteristic is innate vs learned? Can you learn to be more resourceful? To be easier to talk to? I think you can, but aside from going out there and doing your thing and failing and trying again, I don't see how.
• tpatke 15y ago
  While I think that PG is probably right in his observation, it is not actually very helpful. It is kind of like when he said, "When we haven't heard from, or about, a startup for a couple months, that's a bad sign. If we send them an email asking what's up, and they don't reply, that's a really bad sign." [1] Well... ok. But is that cause or effect? I doubt business was booming and they just decided to stop responding to email. If you have a startup that is growing I am sure it is easier to take advice and get funding. ...all sorts of things. If the business is not doing as well I can see where it is more difficult to see the correct action. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html
  • pg 15y ago
    It's true I didn't write this as a source of advice for founders so much as just a report on a surprising (to me) connection I'd discovered. But it's not useless. It should be very useful to investors, for example, because it offers a quick way to detect which startups will succeed. It even helped me understand the procedure we've evolved for YC interviews. What we do during YC interviews is essentially to start YC right then, as if we'd funded them. Now I know why that works so well. It should also be useful for founders, as a warning sign to look for. People can change, and they can also stand outside themselves to some degree. So some founders will probably be able to read something like this and ask themselves "does this happen with us?" and if the answer is yes, to try to be less timid.
    • startupfounder 15y ago
      People who are timid are less willing to attack schleps, to acknowledge schleps and ask for help with schleps. Maybe this is the correlation? Maybe people are timid because they are embarrassed or unconfident in their ability to overcome schleps? Maybe they put up a wall or get defensive so that others who seem smart (and who blow through schleps) don't see them as unintelligent. This is why successful people I have interacted with have most often been extremely welcoming and nice, because they have learned that putting everything on the table when surrounded by peers and mentors is the best trait of success. If this is the case then the solution to making more successful companies (and not "wasting" investment) is to get around this dilemma somehow. The solution might be for founders to practice a little "mindfulness" or "self-awareness" throughout the day. This could be a check-in with your body before meetings or after an important call in the form of being aware of the breath or feeling sensations like your feet on the floor. If your body is tight or you are feeling defensive or unconfident then air it out. Any other ways people think founders can solve this dilemma?
• tnuc 15y ago
  At a company I used to work at they used to put the new engineers through kindergarten. They had a few tasks that needed doing and the way to get these tasks done needed a little bit of resourcefulness. One of the tasks was to get a set of data from a very old computer (PDP-11) into excel. Of course there were lots of problems with doing this and of course most things were broken. I was working at some crappy desk hidden near the PDP-11. The easiest solution I would tell everyone was to type the numbers into a laptop, it would take them about 2 hours. The difference in the way people would listen to what I would tell them was as different as their responses. Most people would try something for about an hour or so then type it in. A few resourceful people would implement some very amazing solutions and then tell me about it, I was impressed. And then there were quite a few people who would spend two days trying to implement a technical solution only to end up typing it in or just give up completely. Some of the resourceful results where quite simple. The main thing I found was that trying to tell the difference between the resourceful people who came up with a solution in 30 minutes and those who took 2 days was impossible. Neither of them really wanted to hear my answer. Observing the differences in how people would deal with the problem and then with the advice was enlightening to say the least. The people who gave up because they didn't want to type in data for 2 hours ceased their employment rather quickly.
• dmethvin 15y ago
  > I could never quite tell if they understood what I was saying. Still it seems this is just coming down to communication. Is it possible that the less successful ones were doing things in areas where you personally had less expertise? Perhaps your advice was impractical or irrelevant, but they felt intimidated into silence rather than feeling they could discuss the problems honestly and see how the advice could be adapted.
  • pg 15y ago
    You are (unconsciously) giving me far too much credit.
  • AndyNemmity 15y ago
    I don't think anyone I've ever considered competent or successful would be "intimidated into silence." Silent resignation to authority? Sure. Intimidated because PG's advice was impractical or irrelevant? I can't even imagine such a thing. If anything I'd be emboldened by impractical or irrelevant advice! It's sort of like in boxing when you take the first punch and realize, that wasn't so hard. I can do this. I belong here.
• NDizzle 15y ago
  How do you say that you actually have this skill on a resume without sounding like a pompous d-bag?
  • mikeklaas 15y ago
    Same as all other skills: give examples from your past where you demonstrate the relevant skill (and don't explicitly say that you have it)
• maxklein 15y ago
  I think both are just manifestations of intellectual curiosity - some people, when they talk to you, are asking themselves: "what is this guy trying to say?" So they listen. Those same people, when they see something unusual, for example, a new type of design, they ask themselves - why did these people do this? So they are constantly discovering, and it's that discovering of methods and ways that ultimately leads to them discovering the path that works. The other people - the non-listeners - are not observing what's going on. They are looking inwards, so are unable to react to changes, and they are unable to see the path when they stumble across it.
  • larrys 15y ago
    "manifestations of intellectual curiosity" Exactly. A person who is constantly reverse engineering business, peoples behavior and life in general. Curiosity is a big thing. Before I wrote this reply I clicked your handle to see what you did and who you are. I guess that's fairly common on HN but there are people that I know in the local area who still haven't visited my website and have no idea what I do. They just aren't curious in the least.
• revorad 15y ago
  I want to know about the successful exceptions. Which groups succeeded despite being hard to talk to?
• nodemaker 15y ago
  I think entrepreneurs/founders are inundated with so much advice from every direction that their brains train themselves to ignore all advice at the present moment and maybe give it a thought later. This is actually a good thing since a founder needs to have capacity for independent thought but it misfires when the advice is from someone like pg. My recommendation would be to consciously admit when you are doing this and then to consciously stop yourself from doing it when someone really knowledgeable is talking to you.
• jroseattle 15y ago
  I agree with Paul's comments here, and think they hold true far outside the bounds of this conversation. However, there is something about the context in the original post that doesn't seem clear to me. It relates to what qualifies as "being hard to talk to." It sounds like the label is being assigned to those who don't jump at something, take a ball and run with it, or whatever metaphor you'd like to insert. And the summary reaches a point of "hard to talk to yields lack of resourcefulness." And as evidence, those who weren't hard to talk to were those who closed funding, grabbed users, or some other metric. And those who were hard to talk to were the ones who didn't. Those who succeeded at something were easy to talk to, but those who didn't succeed at something were more difficult? Not really a surprise, but what's smoke and what's fire? Seems to me there exists the possibility that failure in those areas may be the cause, and hard-to-talk-to was merely a symptom representative of a point in time. I imagine this is contextual in the relationship of YC to its member companies, but from an outsider's perspective I could see this working out differently.
• dennisgorelik 15y ago
  It looks like PG is talking about the need of being flexible and open-minded.
  • AndyNemmity 15y ago
    I don't read that from the writing. It just isn't relevant to what he is saying. What he is saying is, taking the ball and running with it on your own, and really attacking the issue, for all it's faults is better than saying you're taking the ball and running with it, and instead allowing challenges throw you off the path. That's what I read from it. Nothing about flexibility or being open minded. You can be both of those things, and still allow challenges to make you focus on other topics.
    • dennisgorelik 15y ago
      How does "difficulty to talk with" fit into your picture of "really attacking the issue"?
      • AndyNemmity 15y ago
        If you're really attacking the issue, you're not concerned with talking about it. The whole issue comes down to fear. Fear that the challenges and issues are a negative, and feeling embarrassed by it. Being bold, attacking the issue, tracking down details, giving updates on status without fear. These are the qualities. Vs. Being timid. Hearing the request, and putting it off because you don't know where to start. Not asking for help because you don't want to be thought of as someone who doesn't know something. Working on other tasks that you are good at, but not addressing the tasks you're not good at. The next time you think about it (aside from worry), is you being asked for a status and you have nothing. You put off the email. That's the difference no? That's what I see working in startups. There are the types that you hand them something, and they own it, and there are the types that you hand them something, and they fidget with it, and delay it at the first challenge that they don't know. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong. That's my experience.
        • 15y ago
• alexwolfe 15y ago
  This reminds me of the book "Blink" by Malcom Gladwell. Something doesn't seem right and our instincts pick up on it way before we understand it. Communication is such an import part of business, relationships, and life. If there is a lack of communication it can spell trouble in many different areas down the line. In this case it seemed to be an indicator of many other problems as well. Thanks for sharing, interesting to see how the pieces are connected from a business/startup perspective.
• frasertimo 15y ago
  I think the primary flaw that PG has identified in start-up founders who fail is the inability to acknowledge and deal with potential weaknesses in your plans. This can come as a result of many things, but here are a few off the top of my head: 1)Having a set idea about a product or feature and not wanting to adjust it to user feedback due to being enamored with that idea. 2)Not wanting to accept that something will take many hours of tedious work and then having to put in that tedious work. 3)Worrying that if X essential feature is necessary that you don't have the ability to create X 4)Having to learn and work hard in an area that doesn't come naturally to you (tech founder doing sales/marketing or non-tech founder doing programming) 5)Social encounters that require one of the following hard to master traits: charisma, confidence, tact, or stubbornness. Social anxiety or nervousness are a given for most people trying to employ these (VC pitches are the obvious example here, but closing a big deal or just talking to your users also applies). 6)Having to seek/turn down investment after working on the basis that you were going to do the opposite. 7)Etc. I don't think the communication with the YC partners is necessarily the problem (although if you can't communicate well with them, then it's likely you can't communicate well in other crucial areas. Even socially awkward types like Zuck and Houston have found a way over time to communicate well where they need to), it's just a symptom of it. If you can't communicate well with them then it's likely because they're exposing you to some uncomfortable truths that you don't want to hear. But there are still founders who are bad communicators who have the necessary honesty about their business to succeed.
• frasertimo 15y ago
  I think the primary flaw that PG has identified in start-up founders who fail is the inability to acknowledge and deal with potential weaknesses in your plans. This can come as a result of many things, but here are a few off the top of my head: 1)Having a set idea about a product or feature and not wanting to adjust it to user feedback due to being enamored with that idea. 2)Not wanting to accept that something will take many hours of tedious work and then having to put in that tedious work. 3)Worrying that if X essential feature is necessary that you don't have the ability to create X 4)Having to learn and work hard in an area that doesn't come naturally to you (tech founder doing sales/marketing or non-tech founder doing programming) 5)Social encounters that require one of the following hard to master traits: charisma, confidence, tact, or stubbornness. Social anxiety or nervousness are a given for most people trying to employ these (VC pitches are the obvious example here, but closing a big deal or just talking to your users also applies). 6)Having to seek/turn down investment after working on the basis that you were going to do the opposite. 7)Etc. I don't think the communication with the YC partners is necessarily the problem (although if you can't communicate well with them, then it's likely you can't communicate well in other crucial areas. Even socially awkward types like Zuck and Houston have found a way over time to communicate well where they need to), it's just a symptom of it. If you can't communicate well with them then it's likely because they're exposing you to some uncomfortable truths that you don't want to hear. But there are still founders who are bad communicators who have the necessary honesty about their business to succeed.
• PaulHoule 15y ago
  word to the wise pg, watch out for getting nailed for age discrimination...
• joebadmo 15y ago
  I have of late been grappling with Dunning-Kruger, which I'd like to apply to this topic. How do I know if I have this problem? Because everyone filters advice through their brain in one way or another, right? How can I tell if my brain is filtering in such a way to conform advice to my preconceptions, or if I'm truly grappling with the advice? And if I do have this problem, how do I fix it? Is it remediable?
• studentrob 15y ago
  Please. This is the manager's side of the argument whenever there is miscommunication. There are 100 you things you can do to fix communication problems. Besides being overly general without any anecdotes, this article completely overlooks that there are solutions to miscommunication on both sides of the table, and that some people simply are not suited to work together, whether in a investor-to-founder relationship, or at the manager-employee level.
• cwilson 15y ago
  I've spent much of my professional career thinking about this concept, because I've experienced it so often, but more out of frustration for my peers who DON'T seem to work this way. There is nothing better than the feeling of clicking with someone intellectually, or even on a romantic level, when either of you can say one word and the other just gets it. That said, there is nothing more frustrating than watching a peer, co-founder, or employee doing the exact opposite. PG doesn't mention the situation where you're witnessing someone over-explain something, when the other party clearly understood after one word, but the person explaining hasn't realized it. This infuriates me to no end (especially when pitching), but it's almost impossible to explain this to the guilty party!
• danielharan 15y ago
  @pg are you giving founders psychometric tests? Resourcefulness might decompose into several well-defined traits or aptitudes. If I had to guess, I'd expect successful startup founders to score low for neuroticism, high in conscientiousness & openness as well as having an internal locus of control. This could be invaluable, both in selecting the companies as well as for coaching and teaching.
• hristov 15y ago
  I think Paul is only partially right. There is another side to this. It is the people that do ask a lot of questions that are usually more able to look at things from a different perspective and to be innovative. A man of action is great for getting things done but he (or she) will usually always do things the same old and usual way and not think much about what he is doing. A more contemplative person will ask a lot of questions and figure out the problem in its entirety and then be able to test the boundaries and question the implicit assumptions. I think a good team requires one of each, although having at least on man (or woman) of action for a team is important.
• 6ren 15y ago
  True, it can be hard to think about something, if it means we have to then do something irksome, or terrifying, or beneath us etc. But why not ask them? They mightn't know (or be right), but they have inside information.
• tlogan 15y ago
  The note at the end perfectly described myself :( Now the question is: how to improve? How to be better?
• philwelch 15y ago
  > My feeling with the bad groups is that coming into office hours, they've already decided what they're going to do and everything I say is being put through an internal process in their heads, which either desperately tries to munge what I've said into something that conforms with their decision or just outright dismisses it and creates a rationalization for doing so. They may not even be conscious of this process but that's what I think is happening when you say something to bad groups and they have that glazed over look. I don't think it's confusion or lack of understanding per se, it's this internal process at work. This sounds suspiciously like a rousing game of "Why Don't You/Yes But". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis#Why_Don.27t_You.2FYes_But http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis#Why_Don....
• EGreg 15y ago
  I like that at the end they added: "With the good groups, you can tell that everything you say is being looked at with fresh eyes and even if it's dismissed, it's because of some logical reason e.g. "we already tried that" or "from speaking to our users that isn't what they'd like," etc. Those groups never have that glazed over look." Because honestly ... sometimes it suck when someone with general knowledge tells you to do something you've already tried, and you have been having success with your own paradigm. Sometimes it's hard to work with someone who has a different paradigm but is also successful. Which is a shame! It would have been great to know that there's more than one way to approach things.
• anantzoid 15y ago
  Paul Graham is my idol! Always looking forward to getting more and more stuff from him.
• chegra 15y ago
  Is this a play on "A word to the Bad" - Jermaine Jackson ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88d67-ypsXM&noredirect=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88d67-ypsXM&noredirect=1
• itmag 15y ago
  This elegantly summarizes some thoughts I've been having myself the past years. PG applies it to founders, whereas I apply to potential friends. The word I've been using internally for this: pounceability. As in, with high-quality friends they will POUNCE on stuff you say to them and return to you later having independently researched whatever it was that you told them about. Whereas others have to be hammered into submission pretty much.