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Dustin Moskovitz: Y Combinator’s “No Idea” Round Bad for Silicon Valley

144 points by dwynings 14y ago

byoung2 14y ago
People who decide first that they want to be an entrepreneur and then go looking for an idea are getting it the wrong way around I disagree. These kinds of "hey, let's start a business" conversations happen all the time among would-be entrepreneurs long before they've come up with an idea. YC's "no idea" round is simply taking what would have been a discussion over drinks with friends, or in a dorm room full of CS majors before applying and moving it later, so it happens under supervision.
- skrish 14y ago
  Absolutely. My friend and I wanted to quit & run a business. We kept discussing about different ideas over a period of time and then just decided to quit & get started. Looking back, it was so naive to have written a few business plans, waiting for that 'unique' idea to come up. I would say, talk to 50 folks (potential customers) about a problem. See if they acknowledge the pain and if they would pay for it to be solved. Try to put a number to solve that problem - how much would it cost (direct or indirect) them without that solution and just build it. Does not matter whether competitors out there are already building it. Every business would take its own course based on customer feedback and no two businesses' vision will be the same over the years.
collegeportalme 14y ago
I think it really depends. If YC makes it a point to select only ex-entrepreneurs who have proven themselves, it could be a good thing. But if they start letting anyone who has good background into this, Dustin is absolutely right.
- fredsters_s 14y ago
  Why? Because Moskovitz's aims would have been better served if they had gone to work for Facebook instead? Seems like a pretty shaky argument to me.
tomwalsham 14y ago
The representation of this move as a gateway for 'glory hunters' or wantrepreneurs is surely at odds with the intentions or the likely implementation (not that many of the applications no doubt fit this). I don't imagine the interviews to be along the lines of "Do you really want this? Do you reckon you can make something awesome? Great, you're in", rather that this is more for successful teams 'in between ideas' or great combinations of proven individuals. Otherwise I find it hard to see what the selection criteria could be. Different people have different aspirations, and not all them involve Sr. Moskovitz' opinions of 'success' or 'impact'.
shantanubala 14y ago
Or maybe the reason we don't have enough entrepreneurs is that we've convinced everyone that they need to have some type of eureka moment where they come up with the next greatest idea. I think YC is making a statement here: talk is cheap and ideas are cheap, but people are really expensive. If you want a solid company, the people matter more than the idea, because the idea will change over time anyway. I know a lot of people who think that they have to have a "stroke of genius" where they think of something innovative before they can be a successful entrepreneur, when a lot of the most successful companies really did reinvent the wheel (they just did it better!). The idea for a company is an artificial barrier to becoming an entrepreneur, because the idea isn't nearly as relevant as the execution (It's simple: what makes Apple or Google special, or more specifically, what made them special when they were starting out?). It almost always boils down to their approach to a problem instead of just the problem they were trying to solve.
- rguzman 14y ago
  > talk is cheap and ideas are cheap, but people are really expensive [...] because the idea will change over time anyway. I largely agree with this sentiment in general. However, all ideas are not created equal. Most successful companies seem to make 2nd order corrections and refinements to their ideas, but not change them all that much. Case in point, facebook hasn't changed that much in terms of vision and what it provides for its users since it started. Same for google, apple, airbnb, heroku, dropbox, reddit, mint, basecamp, ... [i don't mean to say that those are the same type of success, just illustrating that what i said applies to a lot of very different types of successes]
  - rhizome 14y ago
    I think the utility of this approach is unproven, so we'll see how successful it is. I view it completely as an code-factory type experiment.
  - drumdance 14y ago
    Those examples are huge, beyond-your-wildest-dream successes, For every one of these there are a tons of made-me-rich pivots.
jsprinkles 14y ago
If you Google that misspelling ("Dustin Moskvitz"), it's a repetitive mistake that only pandodaily seems to make. How on earth can a publication spell his name incorrectly that many times, in multiple stories? Edit: They fixed it. It lives on in the URL, and a comment below.
- hristov 14y ago
  Furthermore, the word "Moskvitz" sounds like one of the shittier brands of Russian cars. Probably not a flattering mistake to make.
- ryanwhitney 14y ago
  Finally, a semi-relevent excuse to post the titles of Pando's last 7 articles, their misspellings included. "Dustin Moskovitz Doesn’t Plan to Leave His Wealth to the Next Generation" "Dustin Moskovitz: Asana Could “Certainly” Be a $100 Billion Business" "Dustin Moskvitz: Y Combinator’s “No Idea” Round Bad for Silicon Valley" "Dustin Moskvitz: Leaving Facebook One of the Hardest Things I’ve Ever Done" "Key To Facebook’s Early Success? Slow Growth, Moskovitz Says" "Dustin Moskovitz’s Worst Grade at Harvard Was a B+ in Intro to Computer Science" "Live From PandoMonthly: Sarah Lacy’s Fireside Chat"
  - robryan 14y ago
    There is something about this that I really don't like. Usually we would reasonably expect one interview to be one article, it feels like they are trying to extract every possible page view and search engine ranking. Completely contrary to Sarahs started aims when it started.
    - wyclif 14y ago
      I completely agree. PandoDaily is not a serious tech news source. Never has been, never will be.
- DanBC 14y ago
  People put misspellings into their dictionaries. They don't know how to remove the misspelling. Thus, there's no red[1] squiggly line telling them there's an error. [1] Who chose red / green? I'm not colour blind, but I think these are not a good choice. Especially since the squiggles are the same - at least make the shapes different.
pinchyfingers 14y ago
When speaking at Y Combinator's Startup School, Mark Zuckerberg made it clear that some people can do a great service for the world, even if their only motive is to "be an entrepreneur". Zuckerberg said that he created Facebook because he felt like it needed to exist, but that he had immense respect for Jeff Bezos, even though Bezos' motivation for being in business was of a different nature than his own.
capred 14y ago
This is a classic case of someone who doesn't realize that their own situation is not everyone's situation. Not everyone comes to the valley as a cofounder of a company that becomes a $100B+ phenomena. Here's a clue: they didn't invest in Asan because of you - but because of Facebook. I wonder what Dustin would have to say in an alternate universe where he was just another Harvard CS grad. What YC is doing is opening up entrepreneurship to a whole new group of people - who might be just as competent as you - but don't want to work for you. Also, I think what type of 'impact' I make is something I'll decide for myself. Working for your companies is not what I think is the best thing to do with my 1 and only life.
yukyukyuk 14y ago
If you have an opinion, and you live in a free society, then you are entitled to freedom of speech, so you have the right to express your opinion. You also have a corresponding responsibility to maintain a high level of debate on whatever it is you want to talk about. Let me paraphrase what Dustin is saying: "Person X is doing Y, and I think this will attract person of type Z. I'm prejudiced against people of type Z, so naturally I think Y is a bad idea." Thanks for your opinion, Dustin.
steve8918 14y ago
Even PG said that they have no idea whether or not this is going to work, or if it's a good idea. But they were willing to give it a shot, which is the most interesting part of this whole thing, since they have the guts to try. If it doesn't work out, then no harm, no foul.
- sixQuarks 14y ago
  I agree. They're just testing an idea out, let's see what the results will be.
- hessenwolf 14y ago
  Erm, money to try, rather than guts to try, and we can all benefit from sitting back and watching to see if it works. It looks likes an interesting experiment.
evoxed 14y ago
I think "no idea" is a poor choice of language for the YCombinator application in my opinion. The first bit of the introduction was much better: > We're going to have a separate application track for groups that don't have AN idea yet. If this was all they said it wouldn't take much clarification to show another (more likely) meaning... you [your team] does in fact have ideas, but none of them are the one. You have a demonstrated ability to see problems and invent creative solutions, but in this case you're looking to find the problem that can best use your talents– YC being one of the best places to do that.
EricDeb 14y ago
I think it's a fine idea. In my experience the start up mindset is something some people have and is not necessarily tied to a particular idea. Also, programmers aren't usually the best at networking. So why not let YC do it for them and tack them on as a founder to a company with massive potential?
dkrich 14y ago
I think there are two competing schools of thought and neither is completely right or wrong. One believes that an entrepreneur needs to serve a cause and do something to better the world and success will come proportionally to how much they have enriched others' lives. The other believes that an entrepreneur just needs to make a boatload of cash. There are countless examples of successful entrepreneurs that pursued both routes, but I do believe that those in one camp probably wouldn't do well if they tried the other. Some people are just very smart, and sometimes smarts, hard work, and some luck is all you need.
areyoukiddingme 14y ago
Is this guy for real? "More impact"? Did he really say that? Facebook has to be the creepiest company in the history of business. It really shouldn't even be a company. It's just a website that an enormous number of people have decided to simultaneous use, thereby creating connections. (Which is a great thing, but I would not give Mark Zuckerberg or this guy any more credit than any other web developer. They were lucky, not brilliant.) People could choose any website to make such connections. And there are hundreds of thousands of kids who could create such a site. Zuckerberg himself had to take the FB idea from someone else- his HotOrNOt clone (FaceMash) or filesharing application (WireHog) would never have made it- he did not even have a solid idea. If this kid had his way, he'd ensure they were all his under his employ. And all their ideas would be property of FB. Nice try.
rdl 14y ago
I think the question is how many people actually got in from no-idea. If a bunch of people submitted apps, thought about entrepreneurship, and 5-10 groups or individuals got interviews, thought more about entrepreneurship, and some (or none) got into YC, I don't see how this really changes things. In fact, I think we'd all win from 10-18 year olds learning more about entrepreneurship (at least as an option), so they could steer their careers toward it -- by working on independent projects, by working for great companies (like facebook) where they can learn and meet cofounders, etc. I agree that working for a company like Facebook is probably a better purely-financial decision than starting a startup, for a lot of of people, but I'd rather do a startup anyway.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
DodgyEggplant 14y ago
"no idea" means "no idea at the time we apply"
prostoalex 14y ago
It doesn't seem that a "no idea" entrepreneur at YCombinator is that much different than "entrepreneur-in-residence" position at other venture funds.
brainless 14y ago
A largely unsuccessful entrepreneur's 2 cents: The idea is what you fight for. Even if you run out of money, you still believe in the idea to keep moving and eventually (maybe) succeed. The idea is your child, she may grow and become a musician instead of doctor that you wanted, but she is still your child. I am not sure how that applies when "no idea" teams just take duty of someone else's child.
tlb 14y ago
The world needs both kinds of companies: ones that express an original idea of the founders, and ones that respond to a discovered customer need.
areyoukiddingme 14y ago
Bad for SV? Or just bad for FB? And Asan. What he's really saying is he knows others can do what FB does and do it better. But he'd like them to just concede the social networking space to FB. "Don't bother trying to compete. You won't have an impact."
ericflo 14y ago
A good chunk of the companies in YC have "pivoted" to the point of working on completely new ideas. Some of those pivots are very successful. So, it didn't really matter which idea they applied with, did it?
ajju 14y ago
The original idea is probably the least important thing about most startups. There are cases where the founders have been working in a domain for many years and start a company with a very specific pain point in mind. Those are the exceptions. Most successful founders have an initial idea, talk to potential customers, and find a related and sometimes completely unrelated thing that people want more and/or that excites them more. It may yet turn out that having an idea is an indicator of something that is currently unknown but important, and that cannot be filtered for otherwise. If this happens, it will be apparent to YC soon. Meanwhile they are innovating, taking risks, and trying new things - which is exactly what I would expect from a group of people teaching others how to build better startups.
paulsutter 14y ago
Some people become entrepreneurs because they don't really have a choice. I'm just not suited to general employment, so I started a search engine company (sold to Altavista), a high performance networking company (sold to Citrix), and Quantcast. In each case, I sat down and said "I wonder what kind of company I should start", and followed a methodical process. I didnt really have a choice. I would have been miserable if I'd stayed as an engineer at Apple.
- vincentchan 14y ago
  Just curious, what methodical process did you follow? Did you first test the market using tactics similar to the lean startup approach? Thanks for your advice.
  - pinchyfingers 14y ago
    I am also curious and would love some more info.
  - paulsutter 14y ago
    Basically, make a list of known problems that you're well suited to solving, rank them by criteria, fail a lot, bang your head against the wall, and eventually things start to stick. For example, Quantcast. Konrad had done an applied stats company and I had a big data background. So we think about insurance fraud (sales cycle too long, concentrated customers), starting a quant fund (which is more fickle, the market or investors?), etc, or ad targeting. Ad targeting. Big, fast growing market, and it's all script kiddies except for google (this was 2006). But where do you get the data? I knew that publishers hated comscore and Nielsen with a passion. So, free measurement service and provide targeting along with. Then, how to promote it? Using SEO. Create a web page for every site so that it shows up when a webmaster searches for his site name. Once you have have petabytes of data, hire PhDs and give them powerful tools. And voila, powerful as targeting with a unique data advantage and publisher relationships. You want big market, fast sales cycles (aka easy customer decisions), fast growth, slow witted competitors, and most of all don't even start unless you know how you will promote and sell it. I'm partial to b2b because consumer is so random, it's a tipping point thing and there's almost never any technology involved. Cool problems are cool problems. Find them, choose the one you can solve.
gfodor 14y ago
To me, the "no idea" idea is easy to laugh at. That means it's either absurd, or brilliant. Anyone who tells you they know which of the two is guessing. In fact, I'd say anyone who makes bold claims about the result of YC's experiment is being very "un-entrepreneur"-like since an entrepreneur knows better than to write off ideas that seem ridiculous. Ironically enough, this meta-idea might be so revolutionary that the ideas that come out of it from the entrepreneurs (since they will be forming in a different environment) could turn out to be dramatically more impactful than if left to come up with their idea on their own.
- coopdog 14y ago
  Agree At it's best there's a brilliance to it. What's your idea? "Does it really matter? Throw me something horrible and I'll still execute flawlessly" At it's worst: I can't think of anything... tell me what to do. Obviously these people get filtered out
giftedbygod 14y ago
A company without an idea sounds as bad as mortgage without a downpayment. I think that this will be quoted in the future to indicate when bubble became obvious. I mean, come on, how much money must be flying around there for free, if they are willing to fund a band of 18 year olds who don't even know what they want.
forgottenpaswrd 14y ago
I am totally shocked! One cofounder of a big company believes that if the good workers try to compete with his company instead of working for the big company is outright bad.
drsim 14y ago
Isn't Dustin contradicting himself? “The only reason you should be an entrepreneur is because that’s the only way the idea will come into the world,” Vs "A lot of great people are wasting their time and talent by pursuing 'something that doesn’t exist yet,' instead of joining bigger projects that already have proven ideas." So, isn't YC trying to achieve precisely the latter: getting talented people into a proven entrepreneur's business?
neya 14y ago
Makes perfect sense. IMO, a true entrepreneur devotes himself to an Idea he loves, an Idea he will want to spend the rest of his life with, working on. Thats the case with Bill Gates, Steve jobs and other successful entrepreneurs. Now if they say you don't need an idea to become an entrepreneur, then wtf will that guy work on? Come on, this is irony at its best.
netmau5 14y ago
Well we just started up without an idea. So my life is literally 100% about proving this guy wrong - or I starve. There are more paths than your path Mr. Moskovitz.
rythie 14y ago
No idea, should really mean, lots of ideas but not tied to a particular one yet. It would be bit worrying if someone couldn't think of a single idea before applying.
deepGem 14y ago
If I understand properly, pg is looking for great people who may not have the 'greatest billion dollar idea'. This individual he is looking for, has creativity, has built products and is a passionate technologist, not an empty-head. I think what he's doing is great. This proces brings a new breed of people into the YC engine. People who couldn't find co-founders, who couldn't launch startups in their college, who don't have access to a great technological community.
jeffpersonified 14y ago
To say that the "No Idea" round is bad for Silicon Valley is to give an overly simplistic view of the "entrepreneur." However, the interesting thing here may not be one of whether an idea is necessary to initially catalyze a great company... or not. That seems like a chicken or the egg kind of question. (Do great companies breed great ideas or do great ideas breed great companies?) Instead, I think the focus on the individual may be the most pertinent from this article. For some, those who are great at building within a company, being engineer #100 at Facebook is perhaps the greatest place of impact that person could have. Of course the converse can be true as well, which is the story we're all too used to. The underlying assumption is that a person's greatest placement is proportional to her natural inclination and disposition, and I'm inclined to agree.
dgregd 14y ago
"No idea" is just an idea how to create successful company. Actually a new one. Time will tell if this is good or bad. Anyway having more engineers with that kind of experience, creating a business from scratch, is great for the ecosystem.
revorad 14y ago
It's funny to see when people seem to get personally offended any time someone tries a crazy new idea. To anyone having even a fleeting interest in "entrepreneurship": you don't need any special reason to do it. You don't need to justify it to anyone. Leave the Grand Unified Theory of Startups to VCs and tech pundits. Do it just because you want to. You don't ask permission to write code, do you?
kul 14y ago
Max Levchin and Evan Williams are good counterexamples. Both decided to be entrepreneurs first. Ideas followed.
moubarak 14y ago
Guys, they mention its an experiment and will continue only if it works. It's always good to experiment. "We're not sure this will work, but if it does we'll do it from now on"
bootload 14y ago
"The 100th engineer at Facebook did way better than the vast majority of entrepreneurs in the Valley, had more impact". ...building on an existing idea. This reads like a pitch to hire talent in a tight technical market from a platform company. All those little startups wasting their time again.
michaelochurch 14y ago
The "no idea" round is an interesting experiment, but I think the crop of startups it generates is going to be weaker than those that emerge in other seasons. The danger's not that the ideas will be mediocre, because ideas change so frequently at the seed stage as to be dispensable. I think the real problem is more subtle, and it's the fact that this kind of presentation will attract the wrong sorts of people: narcissists who are attracted to the "we don't invest in ideas, we invest in people" rhetoric that VCs often use. That line is practically designed to appeal to narcissists, because a pathological, arrogant narcissist is going to hear those words and think, "well, I'm already a shoe-in then, because I'm better than all those other idiots who are applying". People will apply just for the personal validation of getting in, and in a "no idea" round, there's no way to filter them out. There's a flip side of this as well: if you're rejecting or accepting a business strategy or technology concept, people who get rejected will be able to walk away with their dignity intact, because you're turning down a strategy or a plan rather than that individual as a person. So it's entirely impersonal, and they'll apply again in a year or two with a better idea. The "no idea" round is going to leave a sour taste in the mouth of everyone who gets rejected, even though simple mathematics tells us that the vast majority of applicants will be. By the way, although I don't think PG's motives are such, here's what most venture capitalists actually mean when they say, "oh, we invest in people, not ideas". It means that they invest in stories, and that their decisions are going to be swung by unusual personal stories and heroic narratives, so you can expect a lot of Aleksey Vayner types to get in.
- lolcraft 14y ago
  Narcissists with skill sometimes seem to be good founders. Look at Howard Hughes, Steve Jobs, Julian Assange...
- neutronicus 14y ago
  It's interesting that you presume that narcissists motivated by personal validation are a bad bet.
RyanMcGreal 14y ago
Do you decide to become an entrepreneur and then set about finding a business idea to exploit, or do you find a business idea to exploit and then set about becoming an entrepreneur? This question assumes only one of these is a viable path to a successful business, when it's clear that the path into entrepreneurship, like the path into a good idea itself, is anything but linear. It's easy to insist on a priori grounds that someone is doing it wrong, but the only proof that matters is whether a viable business emerges from the end of the process.
chmike 14y ago
What is unclear to me is what YC will do with these "no idea people" ? Does YC intend to throw ideas at them and see what happens ? Will these people be invited to join YC funded startups ? Without this information it is difficult to check if Dustin's critic make any sense.
clarebear 14y ago
It is amusing that some people have so much trouble differentiating between "not firmly committed to one idea" and not able to generate ideas."
zbruhnke 14y ago
I think DM kind of missed the point of what YC is doing here. Their argument is not that smart people can just make anything work, but that smart people who have the desire to change things in the world for the better almost always have an idea lingering in their head. They just need help finding out what that idea is and YC finds they are good at helping people do that. Think about how many people left good companies for bad ideas and pivoted to something else. With Dustin's point of view they would have been stupid for leaving said big company in the first place, but alot of times the struggles after leaving the security blanket are what make the greatest ideas come to life. I hope YC continues to be transparent with the results of this experiment, I think it could prove to be even better for the valley as it gives people who are truly qualified the confidence to do something without feeling like they are going at it alone. In my experience some of the most risk-averse people who think the least of themselves are some of the smartest people I know. I'd be willing to bet I'm not the only one who sees that pattern.

144 points by dwynings 14y ago

People who decide first that they want to be an entrepreneur and then go looking for an idea are getting it the wrong way around I disagree. These kinds of "hey, let's start a business" conversations happen all the time among would-be entrepreneurs long before they've come up with an idea. YC's "no idea" round is simply taking what would have been a discussion over drinks with friends, or in a dorm room full of CS majors before applying and moving it later, so it happens under supervision.

skrish 14y ago
Absolutely. My friend and I wanted to quit & run a business. We kept discussing about different ideas over a period of time and then just decided to quit & get started. Looking back, it was so naive to have written a few business plans, waiting for that 'unique' idea to come up. I would say, talk to 50 folks (potential customers) about a problem. See if they acknowledge the pain and if they would pay for it to be solved. Try to put a number to solve that problem - how much would it cost (direct or indirect) them without that solution and just build it. Does not matter whether competitors out there are already building it. Every business would take its own course based on customer feedback and no two businesses' vision will be the same over the years.

collegeportalme 14y ago

I think it really depends. If YC makes it a point to select only ex-entrepreneurs who have proven themselves, it could be a good thing. But if they start letting anyone who has good background into this, Dustin is absolutely right.

fredsters_s 14y ago
Why? Because Moskovitz's aims would have been better served if they had gone to work for Facebook instead? Seems like a pretty shaky argument to me.

tomwalsham 14y ago

The representation of this move as a gateway for 'glory hunters' or wantrepreneurs is surely at odds with the intentions or the likely implementation (not that many of the applications no doubt fit this). I don't imagine the interviews to be along the lines of "Do you really want this? Do you reckon you can make something awesome? Great, you're in", rather that this is more for successful teams 'in between ideas' or great combinations of proven individuals. Otherwise I find it hard to see what the selection criteria could be. Different people have different aspirations, and not all them involve Sr. Moskovitz' opinions of 'success' or 'impact'.

shantanubala 14y ago

Or maybe the reason we don't have enough entrepreneurs is that we've convinced everyone that they need to have some type of eureka moment where they come up with the next greatest idea. I think YC is making a statement here: talk is cheap and ideas are cheap, but people are really expensive. If you want a solid company, the people matter more than the idea, because the idea will change over time anyway. I know a lot of people who think that they have to have a "stroke of genius" where they think of something innovative before they can be a successful entrepreneur, when a lot of the most successful companies really did reinvent the wheel (they just did it better!). The idea for a company is an artificial barrier to becoming an entrepreneur, because the idea isn't nearly as relevant as the execution (It's simple: what makes Apple or Google special, or more specifically, what made them special when they were starting out?). It almost always boils down to their approach to a problem instead of just the problem they were trying to solve.

rguzman 14y ago
> talk is cheap and ideas are cheap, but people are really expensive [...] because the idea will change over time anyway. I largely agree with this sentiment in general. However, all ideas are not created equal. Most successful companies seem to make 2nd order corrections and refinements to their ideas, but not change them all that much. Case in point, facebook hasn't changed that much in terms of vision and what it provides for its users since it started. Same for google, apple, airbnb, heroku, dropbox, reddit, mint, basecamp, ... [i don't mean to say that those are the same type of success, just illustrating that what i said applies to a lot of very different types of successes]
- rhizome 14y ago
  I think the utility of this approach is unproven, so we'll see how successful it is. I view it completely as an code-factory type experiment.
- drumdance 14y ago
  Those examples are huge, beyond-your-wildest-dream successes, For every one of these there are a tons of made-me-rich pivots.

jsprinkles 14y ago

If you Google that misspelling ("Dustin Moskvitz"), it's a repetitive mistake that only pandodaily seems to make. How on earth can a publication spell his name incorrectly that many times, in multiple stories? Edit: They fixed it. It lives on in the URL, and a comment below.

hristov 14y ago
Furthermore, the word "Moskvitz" sounds like one of the shittier brands of Russian cars. Probably not a flattering mistake to make.
ryanwhitney 14y ago
Finally, a semi-relevent excuse to post the titles of Pando's last 7 articles, their misspellings included. "Dustin Moskovitz Doesn’t Plan to Leave His Wealth to the Next Generation" "Dustin Moskovitz: Asana Could “Certainly” Be a $100 Billion Business" "Dustin Moskvitz: Y Combinator’s “No Idea” Round Bad for Silicon Valley" "Dustin Moskvitz: Leaving Facebook One of the Hardest Things I’ve Ever Done" "Key To Facebook’s Early Success? Slow Growth, Moskovitz Says" "Dustin Moskovitz’s Worst Grade at Harvard Was a B+ in Intro to Computer Science" "Live From PandoMonthly: Sarah Lacy’s Fireside Chat"
- robryan 14y ago
  There is something about this that I really don't like. Usually we would reasonably expect one interview to be one article, it feels like they are trying to extract every possible page view and search engine ranking. Completely contrary to Sarahs started aims when it started.
  - wyclif 14y ago
    I completely agree. PandoDaily is not a serious tech news source. Never has been, never will be.
DanBC 14y ago
People put misspellings into their dictionaries. They don't know how to remove the misspelling. Thus, there's no red[1] squiggly line telling them there's an error. [1] Who chose red / green? I'm not colour blind, but I think these are not a good choice. Especially since the squiggles are the same - at least make the shapes different.

pinchyfingers 14y ago

When speaking at Y Combinator's Startup School, Mark Zuckerberg made it clear that some people can do a great service for the world, even if their only motive is to "be an entrepreneur". Zuckerberg said that he created Facebook because he felt like it needed to exist, but that he had immense respect for Jeff Bezos, even though Bezos' motivation for being in business was of a different nature than his own.

capred 14y ago

This is a classic case of someone who doesn't realize that their own situation is not everyone's situation. Not everyone comes to the valley as a cofounder of a company that becomes a $100B+ phenomena. Here's a clue: they didn't invest in Asan because of you - but because of Facebook. I wonder what Dustin would have to say in an alternate universe where he was just another Harvard CS grad. What YC is doing is opening up entrepreneurship to a whole new group of people - who might be just as competent as you - but don't want to work for you. Also, I think what type of 'impact' I make is something I'll decide for myself. Working for your companies is not what I think is the best thing to do with my 1 and only life.

yukyukyuk 14y ago

If you have an opinion, and you live in a free society, then you are entitled to freedom of speech, so you have the right to express your opinion. You also have a corresponding responsibility to maintain a high level of debate on whatever it is you want to talk about. Let me paraphrase what Dustin is saying: "Person X is doing Y, and I think this will attract person of type Z. I'm prejudiced against people of type Z, so naturally I think Y is a bad idea." Thanks for your opinion, Dustin.

steve8918 14y ago

Even PG said that they have no idea whether or not this is going to work, or if it's a good idea. But they were willing to give it a shot, which is the most interesting part of this whole thing, since they have the guts to try. If it doesn't work out, then no harm, no foul.

sixQuarks 14y ago
I agree. They're just testing an idea out, let's see what the results will be.
hessenwolf 14y ago
Erm, money to try, rather than guts to try, and we can all benefit from sitting back and watching to see if it works. It looks likes an interesting experiment.

evoxed 14y ago

I think "no idea" is a poor choice of language for the YCombinator application in my opinion. The first bit of the introduction was much better: > We're going to have a separate application track for groups that don't have AN idea yet. If this was all they said it wouldn't take much clarification to show another (more likely) meaning... you [your team] does in fact have ideas, but none of them are the one. You have a demonstrated ability to see problems and invent creative solutions, but in this case you're looking to find the problem that can best use your talents– YC being one of the best places to do that.

EricDeb 14y ago

I think it's a fine idea. In my experience the start up mindset is something some people have and is not necessarily tied to a particular idea. Also, programmers aren't usually the best at networking. So why not let YC do it for them and tack them on as a founder to a company with massive potential?

dkrich 14y ago

I think there are two competing schools of thought and neither is completely right or wrong. One believes that an entrepreneur needs to serve a cause and do something to better the world and success will come proportionally to how much they have enriched others' lives. The other believes that an entrepreneur just needs to make a boatload of cash. There are countless examples of successful entrepreneurs that pursued both routes, but I do believe that those in one camp probably wouldn't do well if they tried the other. Some people are just very smart, and sometimes smarts, hard work, and some luck is all you need.

areyoukiddingme 14y ago

Is this guy for real? "More impact"? Did he really say that? Facebook has to be the creepiest company in the history of business. It really shouldn't even be a company. It's just a website that an enormous number of people have decided to simultaneous use, thereby creating connections. (Which is a great thing, but I would not give Mark Zuckerberg or this guy any more credit than any other web developer. They were lucky, not brilliant.) People could choose any website to make such connections. And there are hundreds of thousands of kids who could create such a site. Zuckerberg himself had to take the FB idea from someone else- his HotOrNOt clone (FaceMash) or filesharing application (WireHog) would never have made it- he did not even have a solid idea. If this kid had his way, he'd ensure they were all his under his employ. And all their ideas would be property of FB. Nice try.

rdl 14y ago

I think the question is how many people actually got in from no-idea. If a bunch of people submitted apps, thought about entrepreneurship, and 5-10 groups or individuals got interviews, thought more about entrepreneurship, and some (or none) got into YC, I don't see how this really changes things. In fact, I think we'd all win from 10-18 year olds learning more about entrepreneurship (at least as an option), so they could steer their careers toward it -- by working on independent projects, by working for great companies (like facebook) where they can learn and meet cofounders, etc. I agree that working for a company like Facebook is probably a better purely-financial decision than starting a startup, for a lot of of people, but I'd rather do a startup anyway.

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DodgyEggplant 14y ago

"no idea" means "no idea at the time we apply"

prostoalex 14y ago

It doesn't seem that a "no idea" entrepreneur at YCombinator is that much different than "entrepreneur-in-residence" position at other venture funds.

brainless 14y ago

A largely unsuccessful entrepreneur's 2 cents: The idea is what you fight for. Even if you run out of money, you still believe in the idea to keep moving and eventually (maybe) succeed. The idea is your child, she may grow and become a musician instead of doctor that you wanted, but she is still your child. I am not sure how that applies when "no idea" teams just take duty of someone else's child.

tlb 14y ago

The world needs both kinds of companies: ones that express an original idea of the founders, and ones that respond to a discovered customer need.

areyoukiddingme 14y ago

Bad for SV? Or just bad for FB? And Asan. What he's really saying is he knows others can do what FB does and do it better. But he'd like them to just concede the social networking space to FB. "Don't bother trying to compete. You won't have an impact."

ericflo 14y ago

A good chunk of the companies in YC have "pivoted" to the point of working on completely new ideas. Some of those pivots are very successful. So, it didn't really matter which idea they applied with, did it?

ajju 14y ago

The original idea is probably the least important thing about most startups. There are cases where the founders have been working in a domain for many years and start a company with a very specific pain point in mind. Those are the exceptions. Most successful founders have an initial idea, talk to potential customers, and find a related and sometimes completely unrelated thing that people want more and/or that excites them more. It may yet turn out that having an idea is an indicator of something that is currently unknown but important, and that cannot be filtered for otherwise. If this happens, it will be apparent to YC soon. Meanwhile they are innovating, taking risks, and trying new things - which is exactly what I would expect from a group of people teaching others how to build better startups.

paulsutter 14y ago

Some people become entrepreneurs because they don't really have a choice. I'm just not suited to general employment, so I started a search engine company (sold to Altavista), a high performance networking company (sold to Citrix), and Quantcast. In each case, I sat down and said "I wonder what kind of company I should start", and followed a methodical process. I didnt really have a choice. I would have been miserable if I'd stayed as an engineer at Apple.

vincentchan 14y ago
Just curious, what methodical process did you follow? Did you first test the market using tactics similar to the lean startup approach? Thanks for your advice.
- pinchyfingers 14y ago
  I am also curious and would love some more info.
- paulsutter 14y ago
  Basically, make a list of known problems that you're well suited to solving, rank them by criteria, fail a lot, bang your head against the wall, and eventually things start to stick. For example, Quantcast. Konrad had done an applied stats company and I had a big data background. So we think about insurance fraud (sales cycle too long, concentrated customers), starting a quant fund (which is more fickle, the market or investors?), etc, or ad targeting. Ad targeting. Big, fast growing market, and it's all script kiddies except for google (this was 2006). But where do you get the data? I knew that publishers hated comscore and Nielsen with a passion. So, free measurement service and provide targeting along with. Then, how to promote it? Using SEO. Create a web page for every site so that it shows up when a webmaster searches for his site name. Once you have have petabytes of data, hire PhDs and give them powerful tools. And voila, powerful as targeting with a unique data advantage and publisher relationships. You want big market, fast sales cycles (aka easy customer decisions), fast growth, slow witted competitors, and most of all don't even start unless you know how you will promote and sell it. I'm partial to b2b because consumer is so random, it's a tipping point thing and there's almost never any technology involved. Cool problems are cool problems. Find them, choose the one you can solve.

gfodor 14y ago

To me, the "no idea" idea is easy to laugh at. That means it's either absurd, or brilliant. Anyone who tells you they know which of the two is guessing. In fact, I'd say anyone who makes bold claims about the result of YC's experiment is being very "un-entrepreneur"-like since an entrepreneur knows better than to write off ideas that seem ridiculous. Ironically enough, this meta-idea might be so revolutionary that the ideas that come out of it from the entrepreneurs (since they will be forming in a different environment) could turn out to be dramatically more impactful than if left to come up with their idea on their own.

coopdog 14y ago
Agree At it's best there's a brilliance to it. What's your idea? "Does it really matter? Throw me something horrible and I'll still execute flawlessly" At it's worst: I can't think of anything... tell me what to do. Obviously these people get filtered out

giftedbygod 14y ago

A company without an idea sounds as bad as mortgage without a downpayment. I think that this will be quoted in the future to indicate when bubble became obvious. I mean, come on, how much money must be flying around there for free, if they are willing to fund a band of 18 year olds who don't even know what they want.

forgottenpaswrd 14y ago

I am totally shocked! One cofounder of a big company believes that if the good workers try to compete with his company instead of working for the big company is outright bad.

drsim 14y ago

Isn't Dustin contradicting himself? “The only reason you should be an entrepreneur is because that’s the only way the idea will come into the world,” Vs "A lot of great people are wasting their time and talent by pursuing 'something that doesn’t exist yet,' instead of joining bigger projects that already have proven ideas." So, isn't YC trying to achieve precisely the latter: getting talented people into a proven entrepreneur's business?

neya 14y ago

Makes perfect sense. IMO, a true entrepreneur devotes himself to an Idea he loves, an Idea he will want to spend the rest of his life with, working on. Thats the case with Bill Gates, Steve jobs and other successful entrepreneurs. Now if they say you don't need an idea to become an entrepreneur, then wtf will that guy work on? Come on, this is irony at its best.

netmau5 14y ago

Well we just started up without an idea. So my life is literally 100% about proving this guy wrong - or I starve. There are more paths than your path Mr. Moskovitz.

rythie 14y ago

No idea, should really mean, lots of ideas but not tied to a particular one yet. It would be bit worrying if someone couldn't think of a single idea before applying.

deepGem 14y ago

If I understand properly, pg is looking for great people who may not have the 'greatest billion dollar idea'. This individual he is looking for, has creativity, has built products and is a passionate technologist, not an empty-head. I think what he's doing is great. This proces brings a new breed of people into the YC engine. People who couldn't find co-founders, who couldn't launch startups in their college, who don't have access to a great technological community.

jeffpersonified 14y ago

To say that the "No Idea" round is bad for Silicon Valley is to give an overly simplistic view of the "entrepreneur." However, the interesting thing here may not be one of whether an idea is necessary to initially catalyze a great company... or not. That seems like a chicken or the egg kind of question. (Do great companies breed great ideas or do great ideas breed great companies?) Instead, I think the focus on the individual may be the most pertinent from this article. For some, those who are great at building within a company, being engineer #100 at Facebook is perhaps the greatest place of impact that person could have. Of course the converse can be true as well, which is the story we're all too used to. The underlying assumption is that a person's greatest placement is proportional to her natural inclination and disposition, and I'm inclined to agree.

dgregd 14y ago

"No idea" is just an idea how to create successful company. Actually a new one. Time will tell if this is good or bad. Anyway having more engineers with that kind of experience, creating a business from scratch, is great for the ecosystem.

revorad 14y ago

It's funny to see when people seem to get personally offended any time someone tries a crazy new idea. To anyone having even a fleeting interest in "entrepreneurship": you don't need any special reason to do it. You don't need to justify it to anyone. Leave the Grand Unified Theory of Startups to VCs and tech pundits. Do it just because you want to. You don't ask permission to write code, do you?

kul 14y ago

Max Levchin and Evan Williams are good counterexamples. Both decided to be entrepreneurs first. Ideas followed.

moubarak 14y ago

Guys, they mention its an experiment and will continue only if it works. It's always good to experiment. "We're not sure this will work, but if it does we'll do it from now on"

bootload 14y ago

"The 100th engineer at Facebook did way better than the vast majority of entrepreneurs in the Valley, had more impact". ...building on an existing idea. This reads like a pitch to hire talent in a tight technical market from a platform company. All those little startups wasting their time again.

michaelochurch 14y ago

The "no idea" round is an interesting experiment, but I think the crop of startups it generates is going to be weaker than those that emerge in other seasons. The danger's not that the ideas will be mediocre, because ideas change so frequently at the seed stage as to be dispensable. I think the real problem is more subtle, and it's the fact that this kind of presentation will attract the wrong sorts of people: narcissists who are attracted to the "we don't invest in ideas, we invest in people" rhetoric that VCs often use. That line is practically designed to appeal to narcissists, because a pathological, arrogant narcissist is going to hear those words and think, "well, I'm already a shoe-in then, because I'm better than all those other idiots who are applying". People will apply just for the personal validation of getting in, and in a "no idea" round, there's no way to filter them out. There's a flip side of this as well: if you're rejecting or accepting a business strategy or technology concept, people who get rejected will be able to walk away with their dignity intact, because you're turning down a strategy or a plan rather than that individual as a person. So it's entirely impersonal, and they'll apply again in a year or two with a better idea. The "no idea" round is going to leave a sour taste in the mouth of everyone who gets rejected, even though simple mathematics tells us that the vast majority of applicants will be. By the way, although I don't think PG's motives are such, here's what most venture capitalists actually mean when they say, "oh, we invest in people, not ideas". It means that they invest in stories, and that their decisions are going to be swung by unusual personal stories and heroic narratives, so you can expect a lot of Aleksey Vayner types to get in.

lolcraft 14y ago
Narcissists with skill sometimes seem to be good founders. Look at Howard Hughes, Steve Jobs, Julian Assange...
neutronicus 14y ago
It's interesting that you presume that narcissists motivated by personal validation are a bad bet.

RyanMcGreal 14y ago

Do you decide to become an entrepreneur and then set about finding a business idea to exploit, or do you find a business idea to exploit and then set about becoming an entrepreneur? This question assumes only one of these is a viable path to a successful business, when it's clear that the path into entrepreneurship, like the path into a good idea itself, is anything but linear. It's easy to insist on a priori grounds that someone is doing it wrong, but the only proof that matters is whether a viable business emerges from the end of the process.

chmike 14y ago

What is unclear to me is what YC will do with these "no idea people" ? Does YC intend to throw ideas at them and see what happens ? Will these people be invited to join YC funded startups ? Without this information it is difficult to check if Dustin's critic make any sense.

clarebear 14y ago

It is amusing that some people have so much trouble differentiating between "not firmly committed to one idea" and not able to generate ideas."

zbruhnke 14y ago

I think DM kind of missed the point of what YC is doing here. Their argument is not that smart people can just make anything work, but that smart people who have the desire to change things in the world for the better almost always have an idea lingering in their head. They just need help finding out what that idea is and YC finds they are good at helping people do that. Think about how many people left good companies for bad ideas and pivoted to something else. With Dustin's point of view they would have been stupid for leaving said big company in the first place, but alot of times the struggles after leaving the security blanket are what make the greatest ideas come to life. I hope YC continues to be transparent with the results of this experiment, I think it could prove to be even better for the valley as it gives people who are truly qualified the confidence to do something without feeling like they are going at it alone. In my experience some of the most risk-averse people who think the least of themselves are some of the smartest people I know. I'd be willing to bet I'm not the only one who sees that pattern.