4 ms·

After First Succeeding, Young Tycoons Try, Try Again

42 points by wyday 19y ago

eusman 19y ago
"After a certain point, money is meaningless. It ceases to be the goal. The game is what counts." Aristotle Onassis
altay 19y ago
Here's a great NerdTV interview of Max Levchin: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/guests/#l http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/guests/#l He did the interview on no sleep, so he's kind of loopy. But that makes it even better. Nothing inspires entrepreneurial solidarity like a cracked-out hacker slurring his speech after an all-nighter.
jamiequint 19y ago
this article implicitly raises very interesting questions about motivations and work/life balance. Dedication is one thing but at what point does it become unhealthy? Where is the line between making your company all it can be and is that neccessarily opposed to the success of personal relationships. Do you think you can have it both ways?
- imsteve 19y ago
  Trick question. If you stay as healthy and have as good relationships when you're starting a startup as not then "you're doing it wrong." Or you're just unhealthy and antisocial to start with. Tradeoffs...
  - jamiequint 19y ago
    Sure there are always tradeoffs, basically you are trading your time (a limited resource) so necessarily other things will suffer. But where do you draw the line, how do you find the balance?
    - staunch 19y ago
      You face reality and narrow your priorities down to the very few things that really matter to you. Then you work hard on them and hope things work out okay. That's as far as I've figured it out anyway ;-) The idea of balance seems pretty academic to me. Maybe it makes sense in the long-term, but if you mean splitting your time equally at all times I think that's the path towards doing an equally bad job at everything.
      - aswanson 19y ago
        The idea of balance as a virtue always annoyed me. What great things are achieved in equilibrium? There should always be favoring, desiring, striving. They can balance me in my coffin.
      - akkartik 19y ago
        I agree. The right way to find balance is to focus on one thing, to be hugely imbalanced in your pursuit of it, and then to leave it when the time is right. If you follow a routine in what you eat, and eat the same set of foods all the time, you risk exaggerating small imbalances over time, with implications for your health. To avoid this you can either spend a lot of time thinking about what you eat (with implications for balance in other areas), or you just change it up and chase some variety every now and then. Try new things. Listen to your body when it tells you it's had too much of this or that. With 'listen to your body' this thread connects up with this one where DanielBMarkham talks about introspection: http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/17541151 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/17541151 (Context: http://hystry.com/newsyc/follow/?http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=73433 http://hystry.com/newsyc/follow/?http://news.ycombinator.com...)
DanielBMarkham 19y ago
None of my business, but this guy needs to take a spritz. I know it's fun being wonderboy and all, but once you do that 2 or 3 times very well, either you graduate into something tougher and better or you're just like a stupid little dog chasing a fake rabbit around a racetrack. If I were him, I'd see if I could train a dozen startups at once, like YC. If that sounds too easy, try 20, or 40. I guess as a software architect I'm always looking for that next higher level of generalization. Once you do it a few times -- time to move on. If startups are mostly luck, then this guy sounds like a habitual gambler. If they are mostly skill, then he's stuck in a rut. Either way, I hope he's not doing the same thing ten years from now. That'd be sad.
- wyday 19y ago
  Has "spritz" taken on a new slang meaning? From what I remember (as does the dictionary) it means carbonated water. > once you do that 2 or 3 times very well, either you graduate into something tougher and better or you're just like a stupid little dog chasing a fake rabbit around a racetrack Does this apply just to the tech industry? Or would you say that artists, architects, and novelists should move on to a new profession once they produce a few good works? Maybe J.K. Rowling should have stopped after the 3rd Harry Potter book. She was already a popular and financial success by then.
  - asdflkj 19y ago
    I think he is talking about not a "new profession", but new achievements within your profession. Good artists, architects and novelists constantly strive for that. But startups is not a profession. It's a way to get from "zero" to "financially set for life". If your "profession" is business, then after making millions, you should aim for billions, and another web startup isn't a good way to get there. If you are trying to make something people want, then you can make a much bigger difference without trying to make a profit. Wikipedia and Ubuntu (and YC, for that matter) are good examples of that. If you're trying to be on the cutting edge of tech, research is better than startups. By the way, J.K. Rowling is not a good author, so it's a bad example.
    - 19y ago
daniel-cussen 19y ago
From a biological standpoint, an animal is genetically designed to only do things that make it a successful animal (with lots of surviving babies). This can include certain amounts of sleeping and socializing. Happiness is a positive reinforcement for doing the right things (like eating and sleeping). Though humans are more complex and different, it may not be too far-fetched to say that everything we do is work, in some form or another. If Max Levchin might not be happy doing anything else, that makes a lot of sense.
- Mistone 19y ago
  a couple things I get from Max's story, one that has certainly been told repeatedly but is none the less quite amazing: 1) at 22 - he was not trying to be the CEO - he was hacking away at someone else's startup. 2) He was lucky enough to hit it huge with PayPal - but the result they achieved was a direct result of that 18 hours a day mentality and tenacity. 3) Age 29 or 30 is no time to be retired, lecturing, or enjoying long winey lunches at Boulevard - this is the classic "go out and get it phase of your life" 4) Starting a startup with 100 million in your bank account makes it much easier but is no guarantee of market success. 5) And for all of those winter 2008 YC applicants that didn't get the call (myself included) - the greatest startups in the valley did it without YC - so can you
Agathos 19y ago
I feel like I've read this article before. That would be at least once last year, and a few times in the 90s.
- wyday 19y ago
  One reason may be that it's in a series of articles in the NYTimes called "Age of Riches": http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/series/age_of_riches/index.html http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/series/age_of_ri...
altay 19y ago
Does anyone have any idea how Max could top PayPal with Slide? Flickr -- that other photo-sharing site -- sold for, what, around $30 million? Paypal sold for $1.54 billion.
- maurycy 19y ago
  Inflation!
- falsestprophet 19y ago
  It looks like he only owned 2.3% of PayPal, so he 'only' made $34 million dollars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Levchin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Levchin
  - augustus 19y ago
    Yeah, you are right. I think his $34 million stake was in eBay so it grew overtime. That's my guess.

42 points by wyday 19y ago

"After a certain point, money is meaningless. It ceases to be the goal. The game is what counts." Aristotle Onassis

altay 19y ago

Here's a great NerdTV interview of Max Levchin: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/guests/#l http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/guests/#l He did the interview on no sleep, so he's kind of loopy. But that makes it even better. Nothing inspires entrepreneurial solidarity like a cracked-out hacker slurring his speech after an all-nighter.

jamiequint 19y ago

this article implicitly raises very interesting questions about motivations and work/life balance. Dedication is one thing but at what point does it become unhealthy? Where is the line between making your company all it can be and is that neccessarily opposed to the success of personal relationships. Do you think you can have it both ways?

imsteve 19y ago
Trick question. If you stay as healthy and have as good relationships when you're starting a startup as not then "you're doing it wrong." Or you're just unhealthy and antisocial to start with. Tradeoffs...
- jamiequint 19y ago
  Sure there are always tradeoffs, basically you are trading your time (a limited resource) so necessarily other things will suffer. But where do you draw the line, how do you find the balance?
  - staunch 19y ago
    You face reality and narrow your priorities down to the very few things that really matter to you. Then you work hard on them and hope things work out okay. That's as far as I've figured it out anyway ;-) The idea of balance seems pretty academic to me. Maybe it makes sense in the long-term, but if you mean splitting your time equally at all times I think that's the path towards doing an equally bad job at everything.
    - aswanson 19y ago
      The idea of balance as a virtue always annoyed me. What great things are achieved in equilibrium? There should always be favoring, desiring, striving. They can balance me in my coffin.
    - akkartik 19y ago
      I agree. The right way to find balance is to focus on one thing, to be hugely imbalanced in your pursuit of it, and then to leave it when the time is right. If you follow a routine in what you eat, and eat the same set of foods all the time, you risk exaggerating small imbalances over time, with implications for your health. To avoid this you can either spend a lot of time thinking about what you eat (with implications for balance in other areas), or you just change it up and chase some variety every now and then. Try new things. Listen to your body when it tells you it's had too much of this or that. With 'listen to your body' this thread connects up with this one where DanielBMarkham talks about introspection: http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/17541151 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/17541151 (Context: http://hystry.com/newsyc/follow/?http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=73433 http://hystry.com/newsyc/follow/?http://news.ycombinator.com...)

DanielBMarkham 19y ago

None of my business, but this guy needs to take a spritz. I know it's fun being wonderboy and all, but once you do that 2 or 3 times very well, either you graduate into something tougher and better or you're just like a stupid little dog chasing a fake rabbit around a racetrack. If I were him, I'd see if I could train a dozen startups at once, like YC. If that sounds too easy, try 20, or 40. I guess as a software architect I'm always looking for that next higher level of generalization. Once you do it a few times -- time to move on. If startups are mostly luck, then this guy sounds like a habitual gambler. If they are mostly skill, then he's stuck in a rut. Either way, I hope he's not doing the same thing ten years from now. That'd be sad.

wyday 19y ago
Has "spritz" taken on a new slang meaning? From what I remember (as does the dictionary) it means carbonated water. > once you do that 2 or 3 times very well, either you graduate into something tougher and better or you're just like a stupid little dog chasing a fake rabbit around a racetrack Does this apply just to the tech industry? Or would you say that artists, architects, and novelists should move on to a new profession once they produce a few good works? Maybe J.K. Rowling should have stopped after the 3rd Harry Potter book. She was already a popular and financial success by then.
- asdflkj 19y ago
  I think he is talking about not a "new profession", but new achievements within your profession. Good artists, architects and novelists constantly strive for that. But startups is not a profession. It's a way to get from "zero" to "financially set for life". If your "profession" is business, then after making millions, you should aim for billions, and another web startup isn't a good way to get there. If you are trying to make something people want, then you can make a much bigger difference without trying to make a profit. Wikipedia and Ubuntu (and YC, for that matter) are good examples of that. If you're trying to be on the cutting edge of tech, research is better than startups. By the way, J.K. Rowling is not a good author, so it's a bad example.
  - 19y ago

daniel-cussen 19y ago

From a biological standpoint, an animal is genetically designed to only do things that make it a successful animal (with lots of surviving babies). This can include certain amounts of sleeping and socializing. Happiness is a positive reinforcement for doing the right things (like eating and sleeping). Though humans are more complex and different, it may not be too far-fetched to say that everything we do is work, in some form or another. If Max Levchin might not be happy doing anything else, that makes a lot of sense.

Mistone 19y ago
a couple things I get from Max's story, one that has certainly been told repeatedly but is none the less quite amazing: 1) at 22 - he was not trying to be the CEO - he was hacking away at someone else's startup. 2) He was lucky enough to hit it huge with PayPal - but the result they achieved was a direct result of that 18 hours a day mentality and tenacity. 3) Age 29 or 30 is no time to be retired, lecturing, or enjoying long winey lunches at Boulevard - this is the classic "go out and get it phase of your life" 4) Starting a startup with 100 million in your bank account makes it much easier but is no guarantee of market success. 5) And for all of those winter 2008 YC applicants that didn't get the call (myself included) - the greatest startups in the valley did it without YC - so can you

Agathos 19y ago

I feel like I've read this article before. That would be at least once last year, and a few times in the 90s.

wyday 19y ago
One reason may be that it's in a series of articles in the NYTimes called "Age of Riches": http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/series/age_of_riches/index.html http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/series/age_of_ri...

altay 19y ago

Does anyone have any idea how Max could top PayPal with Slide? Flickr -- that other photo-sharing site -- sold for, what, around $30 million? Paypal sold for $1.54 billion.

maurycy 19y ago
Inflation!
falsestprophet 19y ago
It looks like he only owned 2.3% of PayPal, so he 'only' made $34 million dollars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Levchin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Levchin
- augustus 19y ago
  Yeah, you are right. I think his $34 million stake was in eBay so it grew overtime. That's my guess.