10 ms·
A relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoIt sounds good. But it kind of reminds me of High School Football or Basketball Players (choose a high paying professional sport). Who bank their whole future on focusing on one thing that is Super-Low-Percentage-Of-Success-High-Paying-Job. How many football players skip their education, and then DON'T make it? Where do they end up. Now, think Joe Blow Computer Science Major, is NOT going to be a Millionaire, but a decade later when they are applying for some middle tier IT Job, they will damn well need to show a degree..
- mattlondon 3y agoThere are often posts on here showing that it is better to spend say 10 or even 5 years doing 35-40 hour weeks at a FAANG where your total comp will end up being $2-5,000,000 over that time, than risk it at a startup working 80+ hour weeks for a chance at the big time but ultimately leave with nothing apart from exhaustion and an unheard-of failed startup on your resume. I think there is a lot of truth in that. And yeah I went to school with a bunch of kids who had semi-success as a teenager at sports or music, only to then not make it big when they needed to at 16 or 17 etc. Perhaps they all ended up at successful unicorns or are L7-FAANGs, but I doubt it
- JohnFen 3y agoBut that's also a false dichotomy. There are many options aside from those two.
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoIt can look like a false dichotomy because we are posting short blurbs on the internet, not the pros/cons of a thousand different life stories so we can categorize them into a dozen possible outcomes so we have more than two examples. But it is very much a common theme in High Earning/Low Success Rate roles, to have a lot of people shoot for them, fall short, and be in a worse position than if they had studied and stayed some more mundane course.
- mattlondon 3y agoYep - one could say that "a relatively small amount of force applied in just the right place" is enough for people to make bona fide bad decisions both career-wise and financially by chasing unrealistic dreams that have ultimately done them a huge disservice. At best they can dust themselves off after a few years and "catch up" to where their potential should have been, at worst they are financially ruined and laden with debt as they tried to boot-strap their crap startup idea while PG et al laugh all the way to the bank at these poor impressionable people's expense.
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoLOL. Yeah, like my friend gently nudged me to do some meth, now I'm living in a ditch.
- tqi 3y agoThe economics of the Bay Area really distorts things. If you make 2M over 10 years, you will almost certainly have enough money to live a good life (never go hungry, able to travel, etc), but you will absolutely not have enough to buy a house or start a family. I think this realization is what drives folks to take a third path, which is starting at established Big Tech companies before moving to early stage startups.
- sonicshadow 3y agoI almost fell for the trap a few years ago, someone was trying to convince me that making 200k in the Bay Area for 5 years and then "retiring" back to my mid-size city was far more profitable than just staying put near my family and friends and making a "measly" half of that, in a place where houses costs a third as much and the lifestyle is healthier.
- angarg12 3y agoIt drives me nuts when people point at engineers making $1M on a startup exit, without counting the average income over their tenure. If they worked in the company 5 years with a 100k base salary, the income averages to about 300k per year. Sure, that's a healthy income, but it's about on par with a big tech salary, with the difference that big tech is more stable and predictable, and not heavily backloaded.
- btilly 3y agoThe hit rate in the article is almost 1/4. That's a lot better than high school sports. The fallback if you don't succeed is called "programmer". And no, programmers don't need college degrees if they have real world experience. I've known a lot of very successful programmers with no college degree at all.
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoNot if the denominator is all Computer Science students who may think of dropping out of school when seeing these success stories. And The days of hacking something together and getting a job are kind of dwindling if not gone. The days of self learning, and showing skill isn't really as prevalent anymore. Sure, it was like that during 90-2000's. But these days, not so much.
- btilly 3y agoIf what you said was true, coding bootcamps would require you to have a college degree. They don't require it. And still place people without degrees at all sorts of companies. Maybe you are somewhere that it is required. But in general, it really is not.
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoYou wouldn't need a degree for the boot camp, you are saying a boot camp is a replacement for a degree. That these two options are equal for a company hiring. Aren't a lot of coding boot-camps going bankrupt and closing, and having various scandals for over-inflating their placement numbers? Don't get me wrong, I really love the idea of picking up a book, teaching myself, and going and getting a job. It's just that this is a quickly fading option.
- timewasterthrow 3y agoPeoples say the odds are ultra low, and talk a lot of young people out of trying. I played freshman football. I was ok. I'm 6'4", smart enough to get into Cal MechE, decently capable physically and grow muscle easily and have never been injured in my life basically even though I ride dirtbikes. My dad got me to give up on football. Later I found out that if you look at all highschool players that play all 4 years, the odds of making it are about 0.1% or 1 in 1000. That includes tons of players that are basically playing casually and not really physically the right body type to make it. If you make it to college football, something that I could have somewhere with my academics and size, the odds are about 1 in 100. At that point you can argue that just about everyone is physically capable of potentially making it, just missing the skill. But take away those that are playing still just to play with no plans of going further and thus train about that way (I'd argue thats about half of them), that means that 1 in 50 serious football players at the college level can make it. If my dad had told me that with my size and decent brain I had about 1 in 50 chance of making it, I would have stuck with it. Even if I failed, I would have learned a lot from the team work and gotten a lot of value from the comradery IMO. Instead I studied a lot more, passed some AP tests, and got some boring as hell mech engineering degree.
- bagacrap 3y agoYou make it sound as if all you need to do is study, try hard, and roll a 50-sided die. Obviously that is not sufficient. And anyone who's playing in the NFL today was far better than "ok" at all previous levels of competition.
- timewasterthrow 3y agoI actually think its better than rolling a 50 sided die. That was me just being nice about it. I think if you actually actively work with the goal of making it to the NFL, your odds are even better than 1 in 50. For example, sprinting times are atleast looked at. How often have you heard of a highschool or college athlete hiring a running and sprinting coach? I assure you its not very often. (my college gf of 7 years that went onto med school worked in medical services for our athletic department). Also, your comment about the people that make it being obvious standouts during their first year of play is basically more of the type of thinking my dad told me to discourage me from playing. I honestly dont think its true that most professionals were obvious "This kid is going to make it to the nfl one day for sure!" kind of players, atleast not their first year.
- snapplebobapple 3y agoKind of wish hackernews would screen newly registered domain names and tell people to post again when their domain is over 30 days old...
- dang 3y agoWe'd need to go over the list of submissions from such domains in order to see how many good ones were in there. As frustrating as the mediocre median is, it's more important to not lose good articles than it is to avoid bad ones.
- snapplebobapple 3y agoYah I wasn't commenting on the quality of the post. I was just annoyed because I've been hit a bunch of times recently by seeing something I wanted to read and being blocked by work dns policies (since domains less than 30 days old make up a huge portion of malware/scam attack domains). Would rather wait 30 days to see it in my hacker news feed or see a link to a twitter summary that then links to the newly created domain website so I can at least get a longer form summary before I am disappointed by my inability to see it.
- anileated 3y agoI want to start a company, but will not. The main reason why the existence of YC does not change this is because I know my idea, even if I go all in, does not promise explosive growth on par with Airbnbs of this world, and therefore is not attractive to investment. It does have the potential to eventually become a lifestyle business, though, which would be good enough for me. Unfortunately, I guess it will have to wait until I have some more spare time (ah, the age old excuse).
- JohnFen 3y agoVC money is essential for certain, specific sorts of businesses. If what you have in mind is not one of that type, then I argue VC money is something you want to actively avoid. That's not to say you should avoid investors -- there is a dizzying array of different kinds of investors outside of venture capital. > Unfortunately, I guess it will have to wait until I have some more spare time (ah, the age old excuse). In my experience, such a time will never arrive. You need to consciously prioritize starting a business (although that doesn't mean you can't hold down a day job at the very start). How does the old saying go? The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.
- brigadier132 3y agoWhy do you need investment? If you can build it on your own and there is a real niche with people willing to pay money for what you build then you can make a lot of money as an individual.
- JohnFen 3y agoYes! If your goal isn't to build a kind of empire or to shoot for unimaginable riches, but instead to start a solid small business that lets you do the sort of work you enjoy and provides enough income to live in your preferred style, then it's never been easier than it is today. All you really need is to find a niche that has a small market. How small is OK depends a lot on the specifics of a business, but if we're talking a one-person software shop, you can probably live decently with a customer base of a handful of thousands. Even less if your niche supports very high profit margins. And, as an old mentor pointed out, if you're fishing in the pool of the entire world (which the internet allows at low cost), then you can just nail two boards together and find a thousand or two who are willing to buy it.
- sonicshadow 3y ago> If Bell Labs’ scientists invented the transistor, the laser, Unix, information theory, etc, then YC’s “economic research scientists” invented OpenAI, Stripe, AirBnB, Instacart, Doordash, Dropbox, Reddit, and many more. Interesting, comparing core scientific research and output by Bell Labs to just techi-ifying existing industries and not really adding much new value (other than OpenAI).
- jrvarela56 3y agoFunny how you just picked out OpenAI, maybe Stripe and the others create value too?
- sonicshadow 3y agoNaw I'm not trying to get VC funding so I don't feel like brown-nosing them too.
- adventured 3y agoOpenAI shook the planet with something fairly groundbreaking. It's closer to the iPhone in the rapid impact it had, moving a lot faster than the iPhone did, than the extension of a payment processor made easier (which is what Stripe is). Stripe, Airbnb, Doordash, Uber etc. They're services that add value by extending existing concepts to the Internet or in a slightly better way. There's nothing revolutionary or earth shaking about them. They're eBay, taking auctions and putting it online; it's not revolutionary, it's modestly evolutionary. They certainly add very real value (although Airbnb's value add at this point may be going backwards; most services peak in value creation at some point before heading south). The connected world took notice of GPT extremely rapidly. Only a few tech lightning strikes have been like that in the past 50 years, and only a few have moved very fast. Downplaying the dramatic impact of GPT 3 / 4 would be silly, frankly. And we're only in the first or second inning. It has set off a remarkable chain reaction that is reverberating globally. It's a eureka moment the likes of which you only see a few times in a lifetime if you're lucky.
- jrvarela56 3y ago
- bfrog 3y agoPlease don’t equate DoorDash and Stripe with the laser and transistor.
- sonicshadow 3y agoDoorDash was the laser that cut the razor-thin margins of the small mom-and-pop restaurant to nothing, and Stripe "transitioned" the banking industry to a world where...they just do the same thing but a little better.
- dang 3y ago"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tlb 3y agoMost outsider analyses of YC are total nonsense. But this article focuses on the right things. One thing it gets wrong: > Despite Paul Graham’s assertion that startups should not co-locate, many of the YC startups of this period did live together (and still do today). This created a social community around YC startups that also attracted new recruits, such as Justin Kan’s brother, Dan Kan, who went on to found Exec (W12) and Cruise (W14). PG has talked about not starting your startup in co-working spaces, because the startup will take on the ambient culture instead of developing its own, and the ambient culture in co-working spaces is pretty bogus. But living with and being friends with fellow founders is great. Being a founder can be lonely, because there are parts of the struggle you can't share with the rest of the company. Being friends with people going through the same process is one of the best things you can do for the company and yourself.
- animalia 3y agoThanks, I've added this correction to the essay.
- eshack94 3y agoFeels like someone's trying to sell me something.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoMost things are ads, but especially this. I like the list of sites in as success stories. I find the majority of them absolutely awful for humanity.
- mistermann 3y agoAs long as the stack of cash keeps getting higher, all is well. No need to overthink things. :)
- dmvdoug 3y agoYet it got put in the same sentence as Bell Labs. First sign for me not to take it seriously.
- prions 3y agoComparing YC to Bell Labs, which had deep ties to academia, misses the entire philosophy of YC and Paul Graham. He constantly talks about academia being a hive of orthodoxy, and positions "smart people" as those who can think around it. By his logic, Bell Labs would be one of the largest hives of orthodox thinking to ever exist, and its the complete antithesis of vc heterodox thought
- basementdev 3y ago[dead]
- Fartus 3y ago[dead]
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- darkclouds 3y ago> was a discovery about who could do great work, how to find them, and how to massively raise their ambition. It sounds great, but life doesnt work like that, which is why besides finance, YC's main attribute, law and medicine also exists. Some people get radicalised before they even start school, just watch the news every day to see whats going on and see where people are getting radicalised.
- tehsauce 3y ago> If Bell Labs’ scientists invented the transistor, the laser, Unix, information theory, etc, then YC’s “economic research scientists” invented Stripe, AirBnB, Instacart, Doordash, Dropbox, Reddit… This comparison made me chuckle. It seems to highlight how yc is different from an organization focused on scientific research rather than how it is similar.
- amelius 3y agoThe only principle they follow is: "if you throw a shitton of money at any given problem, you can corner a market!"
- incompatible 3y agoI know which inventions I'd rather have.
- gonzo41 3y agoIt's important to learn the history of Jack Welch at GE. His choices echo through most modern society at the moment.
- shanusmagnus 3y agoCan you say more about this? Why Welch specifically, vs other important execs over time?
- cochne 3y agoI can’t say I know the truth, but the sentiment is that Welch divested from R&D, focused on “financialization” I.e. investing in financial instruments over adding real value, made big short term gains, and doomed the future of the company.
- gonzo41 3y agoGE used to be an R&D heavy company that paid it's employee's well. Welch, proved and popularized the trend of firing large business areas and hollowing out R&D to pump up the quarterly stock price. This was a sugar hit of profitability at the expense of the future.
- neilv 3y agoHow has the percentage of YC founders who are "nerds" varied over time?
- black_13 3y ago[dead]
- pepecoder 3y agoAhahaha comparing CRUDs apps to technological breakthroughs like the laser or transistor xD
- koromak 3y agoI don't know why everyone assumes "more startups!" is an unambiguously good thing. This industry is changing the world, but probably not for the better.
- YossarianFrPrez 3y agoPerhaps a bit tangential, but the reason there aren't more bio-tech startups given the cited number of bio-tech PhDs is because graduate school / academia doesn't select for "entrepreneurship potential" (broadly defined), it doesn't nurture this potential over the course of one's graduate education, and it doesn't reward entrepreneurship. Academia has favored "the mind" over every other quality of a human being for a long time. Maybe this is useful for capital-d Discovery. Jury's out on whether it is more effective to train researchers to be founders rather than training founders to be research-oriented.