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Did they? It’s surprising because your description can’t possibly be a recipe for generating startup ideas. pg was most passionate about lisp. There must be mo

Did they? It’s surprising because your description can’t possibly be a recipe for generating startup ideas. pg was most passionate about lisp. There must be more to it than what you said. I try not to dismiss ideas out of hand, but this seems like bad advice for someone explicitly trying to become wealthy. It’s great advice for YC to be giving, because it would maximize YC’s returns over decades: if everyone works on what they’re most passionate about, YC would get a flood of applications from exactly the type of people most likely to be effective founders. But for every passionate founder that chooses to build Stripe, there are dozens who would choose to work on programming languages, or game engines. “Passion project" is practically synonymous with an artist not intending to make money. Even if today you were most passionate about spreadsheets, would you really choose to build skysheet again? It’s impossible to imagine pg writing "If I wanted to start a startup, I would work on what I was most passionate about, since it’s the most likely way I’d succeed." The sentence seems mistaken, so pg must have said something more precise.

sungho_ 3y ago
No advice has a 100% success rate. The existence of failure cases doesn't inherently make the advice bad. The advice to pursue your passion as a startup idea is still relatively good advice. It's the best way to avoid the most trite and cliché ideas. I don't know what someone passionate about spreadsheets would create, but it would be more unexpected than building a generic AI writing app. Whether it succeeds or fails.
dang 3y ago
I was probably too concise. What I mean is that if I had to choose between two different ideas for what people want, I would pick the one I was more interested in, even if it seemed smaller at first, over one that had a better cover story but which I was bored by. And yes this is what Jessica said, advising a particular founder who had grown weary of what he was working on. I think the basic philosophy is that your starting point is not so important—you can get anywhere from anywhere, as long as you are (in pg's phrase) relentlessly resourceful. Given that starting point isn't so important, you're better off starting with something you have a lot of energy for. You're going to need it. Of course I would work on Skysheet again! When did spreadsheets stop being the most important thing in programming?

sungho_ 3y ago

No advice has a 100% success rate. The existence of failure cases doesn't inherently make the advice bad. The advice to pursue your passion as a startup idea is still relatively good advice. It's the best way to avoid the most trite and cliché ideas. I don't know what someone passionate about spreadsheets would create, but it would be more unexpected than building a generic AI writing app. Whether it succeeds or fails.

dang 3y ago

I was probably too concise. What I mean is that if I had to choose between two different ideas for what people want, I would pick the one I was more interested in, even if it seemed smaller at first, over one that had a better cover story but which I was bored by. And yes this is what Jessica said, advising a particular founder who had grown weary of what he was working on. I think the basic philosophy is that your starting point is not so important—you can get anywhere from anywhere, as long as you are (in pg's phrase) relentlessly resourceful. Given that starting point isn't so important, you're better off starting with something you have a lot of energy for. You're going to need it. Of course I would work on Skysheet again! When did spreadsheets stop being the most important thing in programming?