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PG is remarkably consistent in his advice; much of his writing is about developing a nose for "what's missing" and having the chops and resources to attempt a s

PG is remarkably consistent in his advice; much of his writing is about developing a nose for "what's missing" and having the chops and resources to attempt a solution. Also, I think 'Google' in this instance is more for motivation rather than a literal comparison. He's leaving out the part that Google was founded by graduate CS students a) looking for a thesis, b) into node-link graphs, and c) inspired by academic citation metrics. Would PG advise anyone to go to grad school to learn how to find scientific-discovery-based startup ideas these days?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
This is what is fundamentally missing from most talk about "tech" startups by VC types these days. They're not actually interested in the nerdy stuff, just in the "disruption" stuff. L&S were, and they hired other people who were. They didn't start with a business idea, but with a technical one. They filled in the blanks on the business side after they survived the .com crash. I didn't get to Google until 2011, but it became clear to me after joining that in the past they had gone on a very nerdy mission to hire all the nerdy people and collect them into one place to do nerdy things. (Unfortunately that nerdy thing ended up being selling ads really efficient, but that's another story.) My fundamental point is that the Google story is very unlike the kind of stories that YCombinator or a16z like. It started, like you said, as a set of intellectual/technical interests. The other stuff, that VCs today like, came later. In a way they did the opposite of the usual advice. They started with the hammer (the tech) rather than the nail (the business problem.) They certainly didn't start with a "Like X but for Y" statement like seems to be desired by VC today. And they didn't look like the typical .com story at the time (which was usually: give us lots of VC $$ so we can sell something on the web that is currently not sold on the web, but we'll just use the $$ to buy customers and make no profit...) I would posit that if today's Google came to YCombinator today they'd be shown the "no thanks" door.
- YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
  Very interesting to hear your thoughts and experience. I wonder if we really shouldn't make a bit more out of the fact that there are different types of startups: those that pick off low-hanging fruit really well, those that combine novel technology with novel problems (for instance, the recent YC LLM meeting note-taking / transcription service), those that are scientific-discovery based (see, for example the NSF Small Business Innovation Research program), etc. I am not experienced enough to create an ontology of startup ideas, but I think it'd be an interesting exercise.
  - theGnuMe 3y ago
    The nsf program basically exists to fill the gap between research and product market fit. Except They focus on commercialization plans which we know that in reality is subject to change (aka meaningless).
- light_triad 3y ago
  Hopefully 2 Stanford CS PhD students hacking on their project would be funded by YC today :) You bring up a good point about starting from the tech rather than the problem. Usually the advice from VCs is to start from the problem and iterate on the tech until you solve it. What was very fortunate for Google is that the tech translated into a great business problem. Open up any CS textbook and 'Search' is always a major section. It was also a great business because the problem is important, frequent, and had not been properly solved by the big players in the mid 90s. "And then we realized that we had a querying tool..." (Page)
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    But that's the thing. "Search" was not a great business problem. It still isn't. I used Google for years before their IPO and people were always like "how is this thing going to make money" and believe it or not there was a lot of skepticism even at IPO time that they even had a possible reasonable business model. (Same for Facebook at their IPO, too.) Search is not a good business. Ad sales over top of search turned out to be. AdWords is the thing that catapulted Google towards (insane) profitability. And for the first few years, Google didn't really sell ads, or market themselves as even aiming to sell ads. But AdWords could only be successful because they had already captured the market on search, and so had a captive audience to show ads to (and relevance information based on their searches). AdWords rolled out in 2000. Many of us had been using Google as a search engine since before the company had even been founded (1998).
paulpauper 3y ago
Google in 1999 had the the fortuitous alignment of every possible factor: brains, Stanford connections, timing, extremely scalable and lucrative business model, funding, etc.
- fuzzfactor 3y ago
  Even more fortuitous was having no ads or anything else that the small number of early Googlers would have considered evil in any way.
  - Karrot_Kream 3y ago
    Huh? Did we ask forget about the era of pop-up ads on the Internet?
    - fuzzfactor 3y ago
      That's what I mean, when Google became generally available they had none of that on their site. For quite a while at least before they joined the crowd.
      - dangus 3y ago
        Google had ads (AdWords) since 2000, only 2 years after it started existing.
        fuzzfactor 3y ago
        Those were the best years.
        nostrademons 3y ago
        It was very different from the punch-the-monkey style ads that had taken over the Internet, though. Google ads were exclusively text based and unobtrusive. They relied on showing you the right ad for what you happened to be searching for at the moment, rather than grabbing your attention and forcing you to think about stuff you didn't really care about.
fuzzfactor 3y ago
>go to grad school to learn how to find scientific-discovery-based startup ideas these days? Nope, ended up going to scientific-discovery-based-startup-ideas-R-us instead, by client demand.
bbor 3y ago
He should! As I hope to convince people of next month, there’s a wealth of classical AI knowledge that’s just begging to be applied to modern systems. That’s not to speak of the wizardry happening in neuroscience and drug discovery right now… Isn’t “you shouldn’t focus on science to start a good tech company” a good indicator that our conception of “tech” company is completely broken? That we’re really talking about ways to milk money from gambling billionaires, not change the world with successful products?
alphazard 3y ago
I wouldn't fixate on the Google part too much. It's pretty clear he is using it as a common point of reference for 14 and 15 year olds. "You guys know about Google?, the giant company with the web site? Okay well let me tell you how companies like that are built." Building a successful company depends on many things. The point made here is that you are unlikely to be expert enough, and motivated enough to build a successful business in an area you are not interested in, and haven't played around in. So to increase the amount of domains that you could create a business in from 0 to a small positive integer you should build things that interest you. Of course if you have money, or know how to persuade people who have money, you can be something of an idiot and still develop a successful business. Usually you are not really developing the business in this case, more attaching yourself to a business that smart people are running for you. In a pool of high school freshmen, most probably have a better chance of success following the first path, than the second.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

This is what is fundamentally missing from most talk about "tech" startups by VC types these days. They're not actually interested in the nerdy stuff, just in the "disruption" stuff. L&S were, and they hired other people who were. They didn't start with a business idea, but with a technical one. They filled in the blanks on the business side after they survived the .com crash. I didn't get to Google until 2011, but it became clear to me after joining that in the past they had gone on a very nerdy mission to hire all the nerdy people and collect them into one place to do nerdy things. (Unfortunately that nerdy thing ended up being selling ads really efficient, but that's another story.) My fundamental point is that the Google story is very unlike the kind of stories that YCombinator or a16z like. It started, like you said, as a set of intellectual/technical interests. The other stuff, that VCs today like, came later. In a way they did the opposite of the usual advice. They started with the hammer (the tech) rather than the nail (the business problem.) They certainly didn't start with a "Like X but for Y" statement like seems to be desired by VC today. And they didn't look like the typical .com story at the time (which was usually: give us lots of VC $$ so we can sell something on the web that is currently not sold on the web, but we'll just use the $$ to buy customers and make no profit...) I would posit that if today's Google came to YCombinator today they'd be shown the "no thanks" door.

YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
Very interesting to hear your thoughts and experience. I wonder if we really shouldn't make a bit more out of the fact that there are different types of startups: those that pick off low-hanging fruit really well, those that combine novel technology with novel problems (for instance, the recent YC LLM meeting note-taking / transcription service), those that are scientific-discovery based (see, for example the NSF Small Business Innovation Research program), etc. I am not experienced enough to create an ontology of startup ideas, but I think it'd be an interesting exercise.
- theGnuMe 3y ago
  The nsf program basically exists to fill the gap between research and product market fit. Except They focus on commercialization plans which we know that in reality is subject to change (aka meaningless).
light_triad 3y ago
Hopefully 2 Stanford CS PhD students hacking on their project would be funded by YC today :) You bring up a good point about starting from the tech rather than the problem. Usually the advice from VCs is to start from the problem and iterate on the tech until you solve it. What was very fortunate for Google is that the tech translated into a great business problem. Open up any CS textbook and 'Search' is always a major section. It was also a great business because the problem is important, frequent, and had not been properly solved by the big players in the mid 90s. "And then we realized that we had a querying tool..." (Page)
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  But that's the thing. "Search" was not a great business problem. It still isn't. I used Google for years before their IPO and people were always like "how is this thing going to make money" and believe it or not there was a lot of skepticism even at IPO time that they even had a possible reasonable business model. (Same for Facebook at their IPO, too.) Search is not a good business. Ad sales over top of search turned out to be. AdWords is the thing that catapulted Google towards (insane) profitability. And for the first few years, Google didn't really sell ads, or market themselves as even aiming to sell ads. But AdWords could only be successful because they had already captured the market on search, and so had a captive audience to show ads to (and relevance information based on their searches). AdWords rolled out in 2000. Many of us had been using Google as a search engine since before the company had even been founded (1998).

paulpauper 3y ago

Google in 1999 had the the fortuitous alignment of every possible factor: brains, Stanford connections, timing, extremely scalable and lucrative business model, funding, etc.

fuzzfactor 3y ago
Even more fortuitous was having no ads or anything else that the small number of early Googlers would have considered evil in any way.
- Karrot_Kream 3y ago
  Huh? Did we ask forget about the era of pop-up ads on the Internet?
  - fuzzfactor 3y ago
    That's what I mean, when Google became generally available they had none of that on their site. For quite a while at least before they joined the crowd.
    - dangus 3y ago
      Google had ads (AdWords) since 2000, only 2 years after it started existing.
      - fuzzfactor 3y ago
        Those were the best years.
      - nostrademons 3y ago
        It was very different from the punch-the-monkey style ads that had taken over the Internet, though. Google ads were exclusively text based and unobtrusive. They relied on showing you the right ad for what you happened to be searching for at the moment, rather than grabbing your attention and forcing you to think about stuff you didn't really care about.

fuzzfactor 3y ago

>go to grad school to learn how to find scientific-discovery-based startup ideas these days? Nope, ended up going to scientific-discovery-based-startup-ideas-R-us instead, by client demand.

bbor 3y ago

He should! As I hope to convince people of next month, there’s a wealth of classical AI knowledge that’s just begging to be applied to modern systems. That’s not to speak of the wizardry happening in neuroscience and drug discovery right now… Isn’t “you shouldn’t focus on science to start a good tech company” a good indicator that our conception of “tech” company is completely broken? That we’re really talking about ways to milk money from gambling billionaires, not change the world with successful products?

alphazard 3y ago

I wouldn't fixate on the Google part too much. It's pretty clear he is using it as a common point of reference for 14 and 15 year olds. "You guys know about Google?, the giant company with the web site? Okay well let me tell you how companies like that are built." Building a successful company depends on many things. The point made here is that you are unlikely to be expert enough, and motivated enough to build a successful business in an area you are not interested in, and haven't played around in. So to increase the amount of domains that you could create a business in from 0 to a small positive integer you should build things that interest you. Of course if you have money, or know how to persuade people who have money, you can be something of an idiot and still develop a successful business. Usually you are not really developing the business in this case, more attaching yourself to a business that smart people are running for you. In a pool of high school freshmen, most probably have a better chance of success following the first path, than the second.