4 ms·

This reminds me of the most frustrating conversation I have ever had: This summer my startup, located in Virginia, was in final talks to join a large seed fund

This reminds me of the most frustrating conversation I have ever had: This summer my startup, located in Virginia, was in final talks to join a large seed fund/accelerator in SV and both sides were trying to decide if it made sense. Our only issue was our lead software engineer was still in college and needed to convince his mother that taking time off (or dropping out if things went well) to do this program was a good idea. His mother was, shall we say, less than receptive to the idea. She decided to have her brother, an executive in the valley, reach out to his VC friends to see if this accelerator, an extremely well thought of and prominent accelerator, was worth doing. He reached out to a former partner at KPCB who said he'd never heard of the accelerator, which is in itself insane, but also that our startup wasn't doing something "differentiated" enough to even justify continuing to do. I reached out to him to clarify, and he said "you've got to find something that truly stands out, that nobody else sees. For instance Google didn't win because they built the best search engine, but because they figured out how to sell those little ads better than anyone had ever sold them before". I stared at my screen reading that sentence over and over again. I couldn't believe it. There was a former PARTNER from KPCB that led a round of investment at Google that did not know that Google actually got the idea for Pay Per Click advertising from Overture and Adsense from Applied Semantics. This person thought that what made Google great was they had an idea so different from what everyone else was doing, NOT that they just out executed everyone by a country mile. I was so dumbfounded by that, it barely even registered with me that a partner at a huge VC firm had never heard of the largest seed accelerator in the world. I never responded to that email, I get too sad every time I try.

pbreit 14y ago
I'm not sure how what the KPCB person said was wrong (here it is again: "they figured out how to sell those little ads better than anyone had ever sold them before")(not "they invented pay per click"). And if your accelerator was any other than YC, I, too, would probably suggest staying in school for the year.
- tomasien 14y ago
  Google didn't win because they monetized the best, they didn't. The got the biggest following that nobody could steal because they became and remained THE BEST search engine ever. They then took innovations from other companies to monetize their search engine as a pure search engine, something that the larger search engines, especially Yahoo!, hadn't been able to do because they weren't particularly good search engines. While not every accelerator program is a good one, this one has proven to be extremely beneficial to its startups, with a near 100% full raise rate after the program and perhaps the best value added in terms of resources and mentors of any accelerator including YC. I will submit that perhaps I didn't do a good job explaining those two things in my post, so I hope that clears it up. There is no argument that YC is the only accelerator worth doing that matches up with the numbers (although there are MANY not worth doing) and the argument that Google won because it sold ads better than its competitors, who's ideas on selling ads they either stole or bought is ludicrous when matched up to the facts.
- tcgv 14y ago
  Google won because they were able to provide much more meaningful results then its competitors, thanks to the PageRank algorithm[1]. When you have the most efficient SE, it is easy to 'monetize' without risking losing your users. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
  - lutusp 14y ago
    > it is easy to 'monetize' without risking loosing your users. http://www.ericpinder.com/html/lose.html http://www.ericpinder.com/html/lose.html
    - tcgv 14y ago
      Thanks for correcting my grammar. I'm actually not a native english speaker, and I'm not writing from home where I have a grammar checker plugin in my browser... so that's my excuse ;)
      - lutusp 14y ago
        > I'm not writing from home where I have a grammar checker plugin in my browser ... I wish there really was a "grammar checker" as opposed to a spell checker. That would be great, but such a thing doesn't exist yet. It would be much more complicated than a spell checker -- there are so many rules and exceptions to rules. In fact, thinking about it, I suspect it's not even possible. But I would like to write a small, substitute grammar checker with very limited abilities. It would do trivial things like catch misuses of "less" when "fewer" is meant: Less apples -> fewer apples. But even that would be complicated -- there are edge cases and exceptions. Oh well. :)
        biot 14y ago
        Please tell me you're joking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_checker#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_checker#History Grammar checkers are far from perfect, but they've been around in various forms for around 40 years.
- majormajor 14y ago
  Well, if nobody had used their search engine they wouldn't be able to sell those little ads—part of how they "figured it out" (which seems awfully hand-wavy of an explanation coming from a VC) was by having the best search engine. And also, as the post pointed out, other people had seen it. They just couldn't make it work as well as Google did. About leaving school for a while to work: can't you go back if you have to? This isn't like sports, where going pro costs you your college sports eligibility. I took a couple of semesters off for a far less impressive reason, and there weren't any repercussions.
- rhizome 14y ago
  They were wrong because they were ahistorical. It's like saying 2+2=1 because the equation equals "1, plus some other numbers."
prostoalex 14y ago
> got the idea for Pay Per Click advertising from Overture and Adsense from Applied Semantics Going on pedantic streak here, but Overture's and Google's implementations differ substantially with Google implementing the second auction model and ranking ad's CTR, while Overture did a simple price-based ranking. Google's innovation was generating more revenue on ads that paid less but were clicked more. On Applied Semantics - deciding the desired path of development, and then either buying the product or building it in-house is part of "figuring stuff out". They didn't randomly buy Applied Semantics, and then discovered those guys had some AdSense-like technology, Applied Semantics was acquired precisely because of that.
rdl 14y ago
Assuming it was YC, why not just give your cofounder's mom a copy of one of the magazines where YC was on the cover. (Inc., Vanity Fair, etc.)
- tomasien 14y ago
  It wasn't YC. It was the most commonly featured in the "YC or this new up and coming fund/accelerator" argument, if you can extrapolate from that. I don't feel comfortable saying the name because ultimately they convinced us to pivot, or to say it another way, rejected us and it feels weird and name-droppy to say "yeah, had three talks with this big accelerator" when you got rejected.
  - rdl 14y ago
    Assuming it's the one on the top floor of my office building in MV, I wouldn't call them "large" yet, despite the name -- which is independent of quality or value-add of course. They're also quite new. And KPCB has a huge partnership, a lot of whom are unrelated to tech (cleantech, green, energy, etc.) Anyone who retired a few years ago probably only knows Idealab!, maybe YC, maybe Tech Stars -- anyone from outside of tech probably only knows Idealab! and maybe YC. (I think that one is also even less well known outside the Bay Area within the US, although fairly well known in the specific foreign markets he goes after, like Mexico, Chile, and Asia. But I would hardly expect someone in Denver, NYC, Austin, etc. to have heard of them, but rather YC and the local Tech Stars franchise.)

pbreit 14y ago

I'm not sure how what the KPCB person said was wrong (here it is again: "they figured out how to sell those little ads better than anyone had ever sold them before")(not "they invented pay per click"). And if your accelerator was any other than YC, I, too, would probably suggest staying in school for the year.

tomasien 14y ago
Google didn't win because they monetized the best, they didn't. The got the biggest following that nobody could steal because they became and remained THE BEST search engine ever. They then took innovations from other companies to monetize their search engine as a pure search engine, something that the larger search engines, especially Yahoo!, hadn't been able to do because they weren't particularly good search engines. While not every accelerator program is a good one, this one has proven to be extremely beneficial to its startups, with a near 100% full raise rate after the program and perhaps the best value added in terms of resources and mentors of any accelerator including YC. I will submit that perhaps I didn't do a good job explaining those two things in my post, so I hope that clears it up. There is no argument that YC is the only accelerator worth doing that matches up with the numbers (although there are MANY not worth doing) and the argument that Google won because it sold ads better than its competitors, who's ideas on selling ads they either stole or bought is ludicrous when matched up to the facts.
tcgv 14y ago
Google won because they were able to provide much more meaningful results then its competitors, thanks to the PageRank algorithm[1]. When you have the most efficient SE, it is easy to 'monetize' without risking losing your users. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
- lutusp 14y ago
  > it is easy to 'monetize' without risking loosing your users. http://www.ericpinder.com/html/lose.html http://www.ericpinder.com/html/lose.html
  - tcgv 14y ago
    Thanks for correcting my grammar. I'm actually not a native english speaker, and I'm not writing from home where I have a grammar checker plugin in my browser... so that's my excuse ;)
    - lutusp 14y ago
      > I'm not writing from home where I have a grammar checker plugin in my browser ... I wish there really was a "grammar checker" as opposed to a spell checker. That would be great, but such a thing doesn't exist yet. It would be much more complicated than a spell checker -- there are so many rules and exceptions to rules. In fact, thinking about it, I suspect it's not even possible. But I would like to write a small, substitute grammar checker with very limited abilities. It would do trivial things like catch misuses of "less" when "fewer" is meant: Less apples -> fewer apples. But even that would be complicated -- there are edge cases and exceptions. Oh well. :)
      - biot 14y ago
        Please tell me you're joking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_checker#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_checker#History Grammar checkers are far from perfect, but they've been around in various forms for around 40 years.
majormajor 14y ago
Well, if nobody had used their search engine they wouldn't be able to sell those little ads—part of how they "figured it out" (which seems awfully hand-wavy of an explanation coming from a VC) was by having the best search engine. And also, as the post pointed out, other people had seen it. They just couldn't make it work as well as Google did. About leaving school for a while to work: can't you go back if you have to? This isn't like sports, where going pro costs you your college sports eligibility. I took a couple of semesters off for a far less impressive reason, and there weren't any repercussions.
rhizome 14y ago
They were wrong because they were ahistorical. It's like saying 2+2=1 because the equation equals "1, plus some other numbers."

prostoalex 14y ago

> got the idea for Pay Per Click advertising from Overture and Adsense from Applied Semantics Going on pedantic streak here, but Overture's and Google's implementations differ substantially with Google implementing the second auction model and ranking ad's CTR, while Overture did a simple price-based ranking. Google's innovation was generating more revenue on ads that paid less but were clicked more. On Applied Semantics - deciding the desired path of development, and then either buying the product or building it in-house is part of "figuring stuff out". They didn't randomly buy Applied Semantics, and then discovered those guys had some AdSense-like technology, Applied Semantics was acquired precisely because of that.

rdl 14y ago

Assuming it was YC, why not just give your cofounder's mom a copy of one of the magazines where YC was on the cover. (Inc., Vanity Fair, etc.)

tomasien 14y ago
It wasn't YC. It was the most commonly featured in the "YC or this new up and coming fund/accelerator" argument, if you can extrapolate from that. I don't feel comfortable saying the name because ultimately they convinced us to pivot, or to say it another way, rejected us and it feels weird and name-droppy to say "yeah, had three talks with this big accelerator" when you got rejected.
- rdl 14y ago
  Assuming it's the one on the top floor of my office building in MV, I wouldn't call them "large" yet, despite the name -- which is independent of quality or value-add of course. They're also quite new. And KPCB has a huge partnership, a lot of whom are unrelated to tech (cleantech, green, energy, etc.) Anyone who retired a few years ago probably only knows Idealab!, maybe YC, maybe Tech Stars -- anyone from outside of tech probably only knows Idealab! and maybe YC. (I think that one is also even less well known outside the Bay Area within the US, although fairly well known in the specific foreign markets he goes after, like Mexico, Chile, and Asia. But I would hardly expect someone in Denver, NYC, Austin, etc. to have heard of them, but rather YC and the local Tech Stars franchise.)