5 ms·

> In this case the most common misunderstanding seems to be not to realize that present day big companies were once small. You could have pre-empted that by re

by pak 13y ago

> In this case the most common misunderstanding seems to be not to realize that present day big companies were once small. You could have pre-empted that by reminding readers that once companies reach a certain size they don't have to rely on making something great to grow bigger, but that if you look back at the earliest history of those companies, you'll find most did. (emphasis mine) It's hard to call it a misunderstanding when the title of the post starts boldly with "The Only" and the first paragraph starts with "All companies". The premise of there being some universal rule for growth is absurd and requires only a few counterexamples, of which there are certainly many to consider (this page now contains dozens), to be demonstrably false. By reinterpreting the author's argument with a requalification of most, you've already reached a much more sane argument. But you know as well as I do that this post would never frontpage if it had been called "The Best Way to Get Huge" or "The Way Most Companies Become Huge". Edit: Or maybe it would have anyway? Sam Altman is a partner at YC [1] and I can't help but wonder if such content gets a boost to frontpage no matter what. After all, people have shown that penalties are applied to a hidden list of phrases and domains which boots them off the frontpage [2], so the same principle might be applied in reverse to certain things. For example, the controversy penalty might be removed for certain domains. I'm sorry, but after reading [2] my faith in the scoring system here is at an all-time low. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman [2]: http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...

larrys 13y ago
With all due respect to Sam I have no idea what qualifies Sam to even be opining on this subject without a bit more of a circumspect attitude. If he was a professor of business or had a long standing knowledge of business that would be one thing. The word "most" would certainly be better but even that goes a bit to far with a subject as large as "business" and "companies".
- ekanes 13y ago
  To be blunt, people who've done consistently well in the startup world run circles around "professors of business".
  - PakG1 13y ago
    This is probably true at the averages, but at the topside of the scale for both populations, I wonder if it still applies. Do the Peter Druckers and Clayton M Christensens of the world really not know more than the Steve Jobs and Bill Campbell types? I choose those names rather than Bill Gates or Larry Page because those guys have done multiple companies, which seems to be an important criteria for doing "consistently well". I find it difficult to believe that such prolific thinkers as Drucker or Christensen would get circles run around themselves. For the bottom of both populations, I'd even venture to guess that the professors of business are more knowledgeable than the startup founders. Come on, you've met some pretty bad startup founders, and you know it. Although I suppose it also depends on how one defines the criteria because it's always easy to cull the population to suit one's conclusions.
    - cousin_it 13y ago
      > those guys have done multiple companies, which seems to be an important criteria for doing "consistently well" That's an interesting question. It depends on the size of the population, I guess. If we acknowledge that a minority of people can start a successful company by chance, why don't we acknowledge that an even smaller minority can do it multiple times, also by chance?
- nostrademons 13y ago
  He's founded a company. It was talent-acquired, but that's more than most professors of business ever achieve. Aside from the specific situation - I'm kinda curious what HN readers think "qualifies" a person to give advice. My girlfriend's doing an MBA. I read her coursework sometimes. Some of it is useful with the appropriate grain of salt applied, but I find that blog postings from people who have actually run businesses (or listening to Larry, Urs, Amit, Milo, Andy etc. at Google-internal presentations and trying hard to read between the lines) are far more informative. There is the theory and there is the reality when it comes to running businesses, and most of the theory is bunk.
  - larrys 13y ago
    I agree with what you are saying. I went to Wharton but I also have started and run two businesses not including things during high school and college. I am referring to specifically statements that Sam made which would have been something that someone who was either practicing for a longer time or had knowledge of business history would know about more than Sam. That was my point. I am well aware of "book" knowledge. And theory. My dad used to joke about that all the time when I was at Wharton. (I was in the entrepreneurship program.)
- argumentum 13y ago
  Sam is precisely one of the few people whose opinion I would never want to miss on the subject of how to grow "huge". Loopt was in the original YC batch, and so he has had a bird's eye view of hundreds of startups, most of which have or will fail to grow huge .. but also a few that will succeed. That's nearly 10 years of seeing things very few others (in the world) will get the chance to see. Plenty of other very impressive business people, including the likes of pg, peter thiel etc lend a careful ear to what Sam has to say .. so, with all due respect, I think you'd be a fool to disregard his thoughts.
- adamzerner 13y ago
  That is a DH1 argument. Anyone is "qualified" to talk about anything. Idea: A social news aggregator that scores people on the disagreement hierarchy, and penalizes people who score poorly by not letting them comment and post (or at least gives a lower weight to their comments and posts) (not trying to single you out larrys, just throwing it out there because I think it's a valuable idea)
  - steveklabnik 13y ago
    Slashdot had/has a qualifier attached to up and downvotes.
- pg 13y ago
  Sam understands startups better than almost anyone else I know. I defer to him on many topics. E.g. if any YC startup has a difficult fundraising problem, I give them my opinion but then send them to Sam for the last word.
  - larrys 13y ago
    I am not questioning that Sam knows about startups. But Sam made an all inclusive statement regarding business and not just startups and startups that would be (I'm guessing) the type that YC would fund. I would send someone to Sam for that as well. In the comments on this thread (in response to me) I am being taken to task over suggesting that he is not a business school professor (who has studied many types of businesses over many years) or an experience businessman (who has observed businesses over many years). Consequently his knowledge of business is almost certainly limited to what he has seen since college (mid 00's) and in a particular niche in the business world. Which was my point. His statement didn't reflect the niche that he knows about. And as you pointed out he didn't use any qualifiers or footnotes. As far as business school professors I am quite aware of the limitations and the idea of "that who can do those who can't teach". (And exception might be someone like Steve Blank who I have worked with in the past.) As an example I was sent a document to review by a business school professor that had already been distributed to students and found several obviously inaccurate statement about a subject that I know more than the professor does simply because I have been involved in the subject since 1996. And I work with it every single day. When the professor heard my comments they invited me to speak to the class.
jacques_chester 13y ago
Universal qualifiers aren't absurd for headlines pitched at HN. They seem to work as intended.
- 001sky 13y ago
  'Best' vs 'Only' should be a title-fight deathmatch
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    Why "Best" is Best How "Only" Got Me To the Front Page of HN
pg 13y ago
The most accurate version of the title would be something like "The Only Way You Can Grow Huge." There may be occasional edge cases where companies start out big. I'm hesitant even to offer an example, because there are so few, but perhaps Fannie Mae. But these edge cases don't matter to the readers this essay is aimed at, because they can't replicate them. (And incidentally, there are no upward boosts for comments or stories, and even the penalties Ken described in that post are much simpler than he thinks. E.g. there is only a single penalty for lightweight domains, not a range of penalties chosen by us.)

by pak 13y ago

larrys 13y ago

With all due respect to Sam I have no idea what qualifies Sam to even be opining on this subject without a bit more of a circumspect attitude. If he was a professor of business or had a long standing knowledge of business that would be one thing. The word "most" would certainly be better but even that goes a bit to far with a subject as large as "business" and "companies".

ekanes 13y ago
To be blunt, people who've done consistently well in the startup world run circles around "professors of business".
- PakG1 13y ago
  This is probably true at the averages, but at the topside of the scale for both populations, I wonder if it still applies. Do the Peter Druckers and Clayton M Christensens of the world really not know more than the Steve Jobs and Bill Campbell types? I choose those names rather than Bill Gates or Larry Page because those guys have done multiple companies, which seems to be an important criteria for doing "consistently well". I find it difficult to believe that such prolific thinkers as Drucker or Christensen would get circles run around themselves. For the bottom of both populations, I'd even venture to guess that the professors of business are more knowledgeable than the startup founders. Come on, you've met some pretty bad startup founders, and you know it. Although I suppose it also depends on how one defines the criteria because it's always easy to cull the population to suit one's conclusions.
  - cousin_it 13y ago
    > those guys have done multiple companies, which seems to be an important criteria for doing "consistently well" That's an interesting question. It depends on the size of the population, I guess. If we acknowledge that a minority of people can start a successful company by chance, why don't we acknowledge that an even smaller minority can do it multiple times, also by chance?
nostrademons 13y ago
He's founded a company. It was talent-acquired, but that's more than most professors of business ever achieve. Aside from the specific situation - I'm kinda curious what HN readers think "qualifies" a person to give advice. My girlfriend's doing an MBA. I read her coursework sometimes. Some of it is useful with the appropriate grain of salt applied, but I find that blog postings from people who have actually run businesses (or listening to Larry, Urs, Amit, Milo, Andy etc. at Google-internal presentations and trying hard to read between the lines) are far more informative. There is the theory and there is the reality when it comes to running businesses, and most of the theory is bunk.
- larrys 13y ago
  I agree with what you are saying. I went to Wharton but I also have started and run two businesses not including things during high school and college. I am referring to specifically statements that Sam made which would have been something that someone who was either practicing for a longer time or had knowledge of business history would know about more than Sam. That was my point. I am well aware of "book" knowledge. And theory. My dad used to joke about that all the time when I was at Wharton. (I was in the entrepreneurship program.)
argumentum 13y ago
Sam is precisely one of the few people whose opinion I would never want to miss on the subject of how to grow "huge". Loopt was in the original YC batch, and so he has had a bird's eye view of hundreds of startups, most of which have or will fail to grow huge .. but also a few that will succeed. That's nearly 10 years of seeing things very few others (in the world) will get the chance to see. Plenty of other very impressive business people, including the likes of pg, peter thiel etc lend a careful ear to what Sam has to say .. so, with all due respect, I think you'd be a fool to disregard his thoughts.
adamzerner 13y ago
That is a DH1 argument. Anyone is "qualified" to talk about anything. Idea: A social news aggregator that scores people on the disagreement hierarchy, and penalizes people who score poorly by not letting them comment and post (or at least gives a lower weight to their comments and posts) (not trying to single you out larrys, just throwing it out there because I think it's a valuable idea)
- steveklabnik 13y ago
  Slashdot had/has a qualifier attached to up and downvotes.
pg 13y ago
Sam understands startups better than almost anyone else I know. I defer to him on many topics. E.g. if any YC startup has a difficult fundraising problem, I give them my opinion but then send them to Sam for the last word.
- larrys 13y ago
  I am not questioning that Sam knows about startups. But Sam made an all inclusive statement regarding business and not just startups and startups that would be (I'm guessing) the type that YC would fund. I would send someone to Sam for that as well. In the comments on this thread (in response to me) I am being taken to task over suggesting that he is not a business school professor (who has studied many types of businesses over many years) or an experience businessman (who has observed businesses over many years). Consequently his knowledge of business is almost certainly limited to what he has seen since college (mid 00's) and in a particular niche in the business world. Which was my point. His statement didn't reflect the niche that he knows about. And as you pointed out he didn't use any qualifiers or footnotes. As far as business school professors I am quite aware of the limitations and the idea of "that who can do those who can't teach". (And exception might be someone like Steve Blank who I have worked with in the past.) As an example I was sent a document to review by a business school professor that had already been distributed to students and found several obviously inaccurate statement about a subject that I know more than the professor does simply because I have been involved in the subject since 1996. And I work with it every single day. When the professor heard my comments they invited me to speak to the class.

jacques_chester 13y ago

Universal qualifiers aren't absurd for headlines pitched at HN. They seem to work as intended.

001sky 13y ago
'Best' vs 'Only' should be a title-fight deathmatch
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  Why "Best" is Best How "Only" Got Me To the Front Page of HN

pg 13y ago

The most accurate version of the title would be something like "The Only Way You Can Grow Huge." There may be occasional edge cases where companies start out big. I'm hesitant even to offer an example, because there are so few, but perhaps Fannie Mae. But these edge cases don't matter to the readers this essay is aimed at, because they can't replicate them. (And incidentally, there are no upward boosts for comments or stories, and even the penalties Ken described in that post are much simpler than he thinks. E.g. there is only a single penalty for lightweight domains, not a range of penalties chosen by us.)