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A few points, some already cited here: * Survivor bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_bias) is yielding a

by rexreed 14y ago

A few points, some already cited here: * Survivor bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_bias) is yielding a self-selection in the positive results. I'm sure there are plenty of stupid ideas that went nowhere. Probably as much as "Great" ideas that went nowhere. So, I think saying that his opinion that something was stupid is a counter-indicator of its degree of success doesn't have much merit. * Second, an idea or early prototype has little correlation to its inevitable success or failure. As is often said, execution is everything. The idea is necessary, but not sufficient to guarantee a market success, as defined differently by different markets. * Third, while he decries his stance as calling something "stupid" as an arrogant position, this article itself comes across as arrogant -- in effect he's positioning himself near the beginning of these companies' inception and being in the position of being asked his opinion in a taste-maker fashion. I suspect in reality, he was one of many people that were exposed to this idea and his opinion was mostly irrelevant in their efforts to pursue the idea. It can be interpreted as very Forrest Gump to position ones self at the crux of so many eventual market successes when in reality that is not the case. I'd like to understand the context of these meetings. I've certainly been at the early-stages of many ideas, but no one asked for, or cared about, my opinions. In which case, saying that they were stupid ideas was an opinion offered only to myself. And I probably did indeed think they were stupid at the time. Was I arrogant? No. But then I don't claim that anyone cared about my opinion. * Finally, I call your attention to Pinterest's actual success path (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinterest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinterest and http://www.famousbloggers.net/history-pinterest.html http://www.famousbloggers.net/history-pinterest.html). They iterated and "failed" for 2 years before becoming an "overnight success". I dare say that perhaps at the time of the meeting, Pinterest's idea and execution were probably stupid, and it took time and relentless iteration to make it a success. In fact, "Silbermann said he personally wrote to the site's first 5,000 users offering his personal phone number and even meeting with some of its users." Which goes to show just how many people's opinions he solicited in the process of building to its current level of success.

nostromo 14y ago
It's a bit uncharitable to call "I thought Pinterest and Vine were dumb" arrogance.
- rexreed 14y ago
  Indeed, I am sure that it was (is?) a mainstream opinion. Perhaps less so in the majority, but not in the extreme.
- hobs 14y ago
  Yeah, I still think pintrest and vine are dumb, its just they have a lot of users. Just because you think something is dumb doesn't mean it isnt a viable business model. People sell virtual rubies to people building ruby houses all day every day, and that is dumb.
  - ekianjo 14y ago
    I had the same comment below. Does popularity make up for it being stupid in the first place? So, because someone can get rich, does it mean his idea was right? Well, maybe in a business sense, the idea was not wrong if you could gather enough fools to back you up, but that does not make it less of a stupid idea.
    - nemothekid 14y ago
      How does one define a stupid or smart idea? Do I have to chip away at world hunger for my idea to be smart? Or do I have make a billion dollars for my idea to smart? The production of the iPhone has contributed to the suicide of a lot of people. Is the iPhone a stupid idea? On what scale of success does an idea have to achieve? If Groupon only made a select few rich at the expense of others, was a smart idea on the founders part, or not? Does the founder really care, or does he regret it? Given all these factors, its clear you can't have an objectively stupid or smart idea. I think the only right questions you can ask are "How are you going to execute on it?" and decide whether or not the founder is stupid or not. I'm not sure there are many people on the planet who can, given the idea for Instagram, sell it for a billion dollars. At the end of the day all you really have is your confidence in an idea, and confidence in the founder's ability to execute on it. Knowing whether or not an idea is stupid really requires a sort of omnipotence on your part. Was it the right time? Instagram would be a stupid idea in 1995. Did the founder execute well enough? Was the market too small? There are too many variables that go into deciding whether an idea is "stupid" or not.
cmstoken 14y ago
Not sure about your third point. It seems like he's genuinely echoing a point that's been made many times before: that good ideas can sound stupid at first. http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html I don't think he's trying to show any superiority by telling us the details of how his conversations went about.
- rexreed 14y ago
  But I'm not sure about the merit of the position that expressing a strong opinion early on is a form of arrogance. If 90% of the time stupid ideas (as well as good ideas) simply don't pan out, then perhaps one can say that an opinion that something is "stupid" is not only unarrogant, but accurate. Then again, my point is that calling something stupid or smart really is largely irrelevant because the odds of success / failure are the same for ideas that are equally stupid and great. I'd like to see a post on the arrogance of calling something Great when it truly is not. That sort of hubris exists in equal quantities in the VC world. I agree that one should give all ideas the possibility of success. But it's just human nature to judge things as stupid or smart. And as the animals that we are, our opinions largely don't matter in the grand scheme of the universe. Arrogant or not.
smalter 14y ago
The article isn't about Dustin being right or wrong, it's about the regrettable way he treated a fellow enterprising young person who was trying to start something. It's really easy to dismiss and poke holes in peoples' ideas. The funny thing is that you usually walk away from that feeling pretty smart and full of yourself because you're mostly right. Then you find out that you called it all wrong. And if you're introspective, you'll realize that you weren't just wrong in your thinking in the moment, you'll remember that you are actually a flawed, small person who knows very very little. Early on, when I knew even less than I know now, I had a conversation with a guy named Gary Chou who then worked at USV. He's a model for me on how to treat a green person starting out. He didn't seem to be trying to answer the question, "does this suck?" or "can this be a $100M ARR business?" When we talked about what I was working on, he really sought to find out what was interesting about it, how people were using it, and what it could mean and become.
- laureny 14y ago
  > It's really easy to dismiss and poke holes in peoples' ideas. The funny thing is that you usually walk away from that feeling pretty smart and full of yourself because you're mostly right. Realistically, skepticism is the only rational response, considering the odds of a startup succeeding. If you're at a roulette table, your friend plays number 32 and he asks you "Do you think 32 is coming out?", you should feel neither smug nor bad for saying "I doubt it": it's simple statistics.
  - nandemo 14y ago
    Saying "I doubt this startup will succeed" is reasonable, but that's not the same as saying that a startup idea is stupid. More importantly, startup returns aren't like roulette returns. Say we hold a friendly roulette game where the house doesn't take a cut (to simplify). If you bet $1 on every number you win nothing. On the other hand, if you're an angel investor and you bet on 100 startups, you win as long as a couple of startups hit big. Being wrong 95% of the time can really pay off. Of course, what is rational depends on your goals. Some people get nothing even if they "believed" in an early startup. For example, it's possible OP wasn't a potential investor and as such wouldn't have gained much by holding a different belief about Pinterest anyway. Also, some stock analysts and tech journalists get away with making bad predictions, as they manage to point out only their good ones.
w1ntermute 14y ago
Is Pinterest even a profitable business? I recall that their site said they were still "figuring out" their revenue model. I can't be the only one that finds this appalling.
- neilk 14y ago
  They've built a community that is obsessed with showcasing their lifestyle through their tastes and gazing longingly at consumer products. I think they have a few options. I don't really approve of it, but recipe porn is less harmless than other ways to spend time on the internet.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    > They've built a community that is obsessed with showcasing their lifestyle through their tastes and gazing longingly at consumer products. I think they have a few options. It's exactly this sort of thinking that is the problem these days. They don't just "have a few options." If it were so easy, they would've done it by now. But it clearly isn't.
  - sokoloff 14y ago
    I'm assuming you mean "less harmful"?
nandemo 14y ago
> I think saying that his opinion that something was stupid is a counter-indicator of its degree of success doesn't have much merit. I don't think that's what's Curtis is saying at all. He's just saying that it's better not to call startups ideas stupid prematurely, because we can't really tell. That said, I think you make good points.

by rexreed 14y ago

nostromo 14y ago

It's a bit uncharitable to call "I thought Pinterest and Vine were dumb" arrogance.

rexreed 14y ago
Indeed, I am sure that it was (is?) a mainstream opinion. Perhaps less so in the majority, but not in the extreme.
hobs 14y ago
Yeah, I still think pintrest and vine are dumb, its just they have a lot of users. Just because you think something is dumb doesn't mean it isnt a viable business model. People sell virtual rubies to people building ruby houses all day every day, and that is dumb.
- ekianjo 14y ago
  I had the same comment below. Does popularity make up for it being stupid in the first place? So, because someone can get rich, does it mean his idea was right? Well, maybe in a business sense, the idea was not wrong if you could gather enough fools to back you up, but that does not make it less of a stupid idea.
  - nemothekid 14y ago
    How does one define a stupid or smart idea? Do I have to chip away at world hunger for my idea to be smart? Or do I have make a billion dollars for my idea to smart? The production of the iPhone has contributed to the suicide of a lot of people. Is the iPhone a stupid idea? On what scale of success does an idea have to achieve? If Groupon only made a select few rich at the expense of others, was a smart idea on the founders part, or not? Does the founder really care, or does he regret it? Given all these factors, its clear you can't have an objectively stupid or smart idea. I think the only right questions you can ask are "How are you going to execute on it?" and decide whether or not the founder is stupid or not. I'm not sure there are many people on the planet who can, given the idea for Instagram, sell it for a billion dollars. At the end of the day all you really have is your confidence in an idea, and confidence in the founder's ability to execute on it. Knowing whether or not an idea is stupid really requires a sort of omnipotence on your part. Was it the right time? Instagram would be a stupid idea in 1995. Did the founder execute well enough? Was the market too small? There are too many variables that go into deciding whether an idea is "stupid" or not.

cmstoken 14y ago

Not sure about your third point. It seems like he's genuinely echoing a point that's been made many times before: that good ideas can sound stupid at first. http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html I don't think he's trying to show any superiority by telling us the details of how his conversations went about.

rexreed 14y ago
But I'm not sure about the merit of the position that expressing a strong opinion early on is a form of arrogance. If 90% of the time stupid ideas (as well as good ideas) simply don't pan out, then perhaps one can say that an opinion that something is "stupid" is not only unarrogant, but accurate. Then again, my point is that calling something stupid or smart really is largely irrelevant because the odds of success / failure are the same for ideas that are equally stupid and great. I'd like to see a post on the arrogance of calling something Great when it truly is not. That sort of hubris exists in equal quantities in the VC world. I agree that one should give all ideas the possibility of success. But it's just human nature to judge things as stupid or smart. And as the animals that we are, our opinions largely don't matter in the grand scheme of the universe. Arrogant or not.

smalter 14y ago

The article isn't about Dustin being right or wrong, it's about the regrettable way he treated a fellow enterprising young person who was trying to start something. It's really easy to dismiss and poke holes in peoples' ideas. The funny thing is that you usually walk away from that feeling pretty smart and full of yourself because you're mostly right. Then you find out that you called it all wrong. And if you're introspective, you'll realize that you weren't just wrong in your thinking in the moment, you'll remember that you are actually a flawed, small person who knows very very little. Early on, when I knew even less than I know now, I had a conversation with a guy named Gary Chou who then worked at USV. He's a model for me on how to treat a green person starting out. He didn't seem to be trying to answer the question, "does this suck?" or "can this be a $100M ARR business?" When we talked about what I was working on, he really sought to find out what was interesting about it, how people were using it, and what it could mean and become.

laureny 14y ago
> It's really easy to dismiss and poke holes in peoples' ideas. The funny thing is that you usually walk away from that feeling pretty smart and full of yourself because you're mostly right. Realistically, skepticism is the only rational response, considering the odds of a startup succeeding. If you're at a roulette table, your friend plays number 32 and he asks you "Do you think 32 is coming out?", you should feel neither smug nor bad for saying "I doubt it": it's simple statistics.
- nandemo 14y ago
  Saying "I doubt this startup will succeed" is reasonable, but that's not the same as saying that a startup idea is stupid. More importantly, startup returns aren't like roulette returns. Say we hold a friendly roulette game where the house doesn't take a cut (to simplify). If you bet $1 on every number you win nothing. On the other hand, if you're an angel investor and you bet on 100 startups, you win as long as a couple of startups hit big. Being wrong 95% of the time can really pay off. Of course, what is rational depends on your goals. Some people get nothing even if they "believed" in an early startup. For example, it's possible OP wasn't a potential investor and as such wouldn't have gained much by holding a different belief about Pinterest anyway. Also, some stock analysts and tech journalists get away with making bad predictions, as they manage to point out only their good ones.

w1ntermute 14y ago

Is Pinterest even a profitable business? I recall that their site said they were still "figuring out" their revenue model. I can't be the only one that finds this appalling.

neilk 14y ago
They've built a community that is obsessed with showcasing their lifestyle through their tastes and gazing longingly at consumer products. I think they have a few options. I don't really approve of it, but recipe porn is less harmless than other ways to spend time on the internet.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > They've built a community that is obsessed with showcasing their lifestyle through their tastes and gazing longingly at consumer products. I think they have a few options. It's exactly this sort of thinking that is the problem these days. They don't just "have a few options." If it were so easy, they would've done it by now. But it clearly isn't.
- sokoloff 14y ago
  I'm assuming you mean "less harmful"?

nandemo 14y ago

> I think saying that his opinion that something was stupid is a counter-indicator of its degree of success doesn't have much merit. I don't think that's what's Curtis is saying at all. He's just saying that it's better not to call startups ideas stupid prematurely, because we can't really tell. That said, I think you make good points.