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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 someth

by smalter 13y 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 13y 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 13y 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.

by smalter 13y ago

laureny 13y 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 13y 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.