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The trouble with this thesis is that most people are situationally mean or nice. People like Steve Jobs or Lyndon Johnson were legendary for being charming to

The trouble with this thesis is that most people are situationally mean or nice. People like Steve Jobs or Lyndon Johnson were legendary for being charming to people they needed but abusive to people who were under their thumb. Zuck can be a nice person to many people, but also can be an asshole to people who he thinks are not useful to him and who are wasting his time. It goes the other way too. Paul Graham compares founders to internet trolls. I know someone in real life, who got banned from this forum and real life events due to trolling and hurling insults. That person is quite nice in real life (or, at least he is nice around me). In many cases the troll on the internet is the person who in real life has to always bite their tongue and say the nice thing, trolling on the internet is the one place where they can be the Steve Jobs asshole and not suffer consequences. PG is a millionaire investor. I can readily believe that any founder who cannot shield their mean and ruthless streak from PG, would not be a good founder. Successful people are very adept at knowing when to work the charm, and when to be ruthless, knowing when they have to hold their tongue, and when they can speak their mind without consequences. I'm trying to think of what evidence would convince me that founders were actually less mean than your average high-level person in some other industry. I think you would need to do a series of private interviews with their subordinates and ask questions about how often they get berated or screwed over. I'd also be interested in hearing the experience of anyone who has switched from being mid-level in finance to mid-level in tech. Is there really a difference in "meanness"? PG cites Jessica's experience, but she was switching to a position in tech where she had the position of dominance over the founders, so she always seeing their good side. It has been my experience that the people at the top in tech generally have a ruthless streak. Tech founders and execs are more ruthless/situationally mean than the people at the bottom. The founders have the ability to turn a switch and treat employees as tools, rather than people. This may be necessary if you have to fire people and make other hard decisions. I do not think that this ruthless streak is necessarily a bad thing. "There is also a complementary force at work: if you want to build great things, it helps to be driven by a spirit of benevolence...They may not say so explicitly, but they're usually trying to improve the world." Keep in mind that a desire "to improve world" is a synonym for a "lust for power." The first is a positive way of putting it, the second is a pejorative, but it is the same thing. A neutral phrasing is that founders "desire influence". Founders hold on to their startup rather than selling because they like being in the thick of things, having attention, being able to shape and move a service that millions of people use, and have an impact on tens of millions of people. This desire for influence is not at all incompatible with being an asshole to people who are not useful or who are in the way. "Another reason mean founders lose is that they can't get the best people to work for them." Anyone who is mean all the time will certainly fail. Who are these people though? Most people who are indiscriminately cruel are probably also low IQ (they are not even smart enough to manipulate) and max out at being a sales manager for Dundler-Mifflin. All things being equal, an employee would rather work for a nice boss than a mean boss. But employees also want to work for a winner, and will often accept a boss with a mean streak as a trade-off in order to work for a winner. "Increasingly you win not by fighting to get control of a scarce resource, but by having new ideas and building new things." The "but" should be an "and". The "scarce resources" are market opportunities for capturing a lucrative monopoly with only minimal upfront costs. Based on the underlying state of technology, there are only so many opportunities for a small team of hackers to build simple apps that can gain traction and turn into wildly successful products. Startups also require a large amount of hustling. You have to convince a lot of people to bet on you before there is solid evidence that you have a great product. The amount of hustling, salesmanship, confidence games, self-promotion, "naughtiness", that can be required would make a lot of us hackers feel very uncomfortable. So while there is a selection for makers, there is also a selection for people who have a fair amount of narcissism and who are comfortable pushing ethical boundaries. It might be that YC is particularly good at picking and accelerating startups based on having founders who are great makers rather than great sellers. This really would generate a better class of founder, and would make their startups more ethical and less mean than the typical VC backed startup. If this is the case, then kudos to YC.

jenius 12y ago
> Keep in mind that a desire "to improve world" is a synonym for a "lust for power." The first is a positive way of putting it, the second is a pejorative, but it is the same thing. This is simply not true. Many people see something that is wrong in the world and genuinely want to make it better. I'm not talking about companies like Uber that see how rich people just can't get private car quite conveniently enough and want to make that better, I'm talking about people that see real important problems and injustices and try to improve them, like Watsi for example. I'm sure that there are some people who just want to grab power and influence and call it "trying to improve the world", but there are also people who genuinely want to make the world a better place with no concern for money or power and work tirelessly every day to do so. While sadly these people are usually not well known, they are the real heroes.
- bokonist 12y ago
  Let me clarify slightly - a desire to improve the world on a large scale (like what a startup founder wants, which is what we are talking about) is synonymous with a "lust for power." If a person only wants to improve the world on their own small scale, like picking up after litterers or doing community service, then obviously that is not a lust for power. The definition of power is the ability to actualize ones will. When we approve of what someone is doing, we call use the positive term, "they are trying to change the world." When we disapprove, we say they are on a power-trip. It's the same thing though. Since Watsi is small and their mission is something that virtually everyone agrees with, everyone is unanimous that they are "trying to change the world." But if you look at a larger charity, that has more controversial missions, such as the Gates Foundation, you will see a lot of people of accusing the foundation of being on a power trip, of abusing their privileged position to play God with the lives of the poor and weak. There is a distinction between desiring money versus status versus influence/power. There is also a distinction between being ambitious and having ambition. The ambitious person has a vague sense they want to get ahead or improve the world. The person who has ambition has an actual reality they want to see realized. But there is not a distinction in motivations between the person who wants to change the world versus the person who wants power. The difference in terms comes from the outsider looking on, who will choose the positive or pejorative term based on the consequences of the actions.

jenius 12y ago

> Keep in mind that a desire "to improve world" is a synonym for a "lust for power." The first is a positive way of putting it, the second is a pejorative, but it is the same thing. This is simply not true. Many people see something that is wrong in the world and genuinely want to make it better. I'm not talking about companies like Uber that see how rich people just can't get private car quite conveniently enough and want to make that better, I'm talking about people that see real important problems and injustices and try to improve them, like Watsi for example. I'm sure that there are some people who just want to grab power and influence and call it "trying to improve the world", but there are also people who genuinely want to make the world a better place with no concern for money or power and work tirelessly every day to do so. While sadly these people are usually not well known, they are the real heroes.

bokonist 12y ago
Let me clarify slightly - a desire to improve the world on a large scale (like what a startup founder wants, which is what we are talking about) is synonymous with a "lust for power." If a person only wants to improve the world on their own small scale, like picking up after litterers or doing community service, then obviously that is not a lust for power. The definition of power is the ability to actualize ones will. When we approve of what someone is doing, we call use the positive term, "they are trying to change the world." When we disapprove, we say they are on a power-trip. It's the same thing though. Since Watsi is small and their mission is something that virtually everyone agrees with, everyone is unanimous that they are "trying to change the world." But if you look at a larger charity, that has more controversial missions, such as the Gates Foundation, you will see a lot of people of accusing the foundation of being on a power trip, of abusing their privileged position to play God with the lives of the poor and weak. There is a distinction between desiring money versus status versus influence/power. There is also a distinction between being ambitious and having ambition. The ambitious person has a vague sense they want to get ahead or improve the world. The person who has ambition has an actual reality they want to see realized. But there is not a distinction in motivations between the person who wants to change the world versus the person who wants power. The difference in terms comes from the outsider looking on, who will choose the positive or pejorative term based on the consequences of the actions.