garry

16 ms·

61.
by garry 7y ago
There are lots of startups that aren't doing it right. The best thing someone working at one of those startups can do is probably quit and go someplace else. I think systemically one thing we need to do is help people make better decis
62.
by garry 7y ago
I wrote that other article and agree with what the original author here has written. Startups need to do a lot more to a/ solve the real problems of their customers and users, and b/ treat their employees and ecosystem better.
63.
by garry 7y ago
I was a software engineer who learned to start a company right off the pages of the site you're looking at right now, Hacker News. It was here where I learned to start a startup. I later worked for Y Combinator as a partner helping fou
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by garry 7y ago
I often encourage founders to be more generous with equity for recruits and early employee refresh grants. Care and feeding of the org also involves being thankful to the people who build the value.
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by garry 7y ago
This is a great reminder. I was impressed by the recent documentary "General Magic" by how much smart people seem to congregate around new ideas. The old Mac team was the same one trying to create the smartphone 10 years before it
66.
by garry 7y ago
I grew up poor as the child of refugee immigrants. I was food insecure. My dad was an alcoholic. Being obsessed with computers was literally the thing that changed my life. That's just my experience, YMMV.
67.
by garry 7y ago
Hm, is it truly totally non-generalizable? There are a lot of people who are very capable for whom the real risk is not taking risk at all. I meet them regularly. It's not the norm, but just because it applies to a set of the very skil
68.
by garry 7y ago
You're right, they don't. It's my hope that more people do, though.
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by garry 7y ago
I threw it in at the end but honestly your point is valid. I should have expanded that part and will do so in the future.
70.
by garry 7y ago
You're absolutely right — I annualized net revenue which I interpreted as "net" but certainly is not profit. I've corrected this and will put a note about it. I'm sorry for the mistake. I'll do better next time
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by garry 7y ago
We usually encourage folks to give at least 10% of the equity to the first 10 employees. That's what Stripe did and it worked well. That number is going up over time, so I can report at least a little bit of improvement, though certain
72.
by garry 7y ago
I appreciate this, and am trying to take this to heart. But it is also possible to survive. And if you do that, you don't merely survive, you thrive— that's what product market fit looks like. I've been lucky to see it dozen
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by garry 7y ago
I started in 2006, here, just like you, reading Hacker News. I spent most of my day writing code. I learned on this site how to build things for other people, ship and release them, and yes, eventually build a company. I learned I wasn&#x27
74.
by garry 7y ago
It was insane that I got to meet Peter Thiel at that point in his career. One of the subtle things is that he wasn't the demigod he is today. He was a very well respected founder who had a great exit. You're right to point out it&
75.
by garry 7y ago
Sorry, I made this post for YouTube originally, and didn't expect it to show up on HN. :-)
76.
by garry 7y ago
This is a good reminder and I agree with this. By the end of the video my point is: Try to make stuff for other people, and a smaller place generally lets you do that. That is the true reward.
77.
by garry 7y ago
I started here on Hacker News as a software engineer. I learned that I could build software for others, ship it and release it. I did end up taking the venture path, and now help others on that path. The key here is that magic can be create
78.
by garry 7y ago
Just trying to get better. Not too harsh at all. Thanks again.
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by garry 7y ago
I started learning about startups only after I started reading Hacker News in 2006. I was an engineer for most of my career up until then. Reading Paul Graham's essays changed my life, and it changed the life of thousands of people I&#
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by garry 7y ago
This is a problem, no doubt.
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by garry 7y ago
If you spend enough time in tech, you meet a lot of people who have this kind of story. It's ridiculous, but not that rare.
82.
by garry 7y ago
Maybe more poker than a lottery. A lot of luck, but there's still a little bit of skill in there. I appreciate the feedback though. I know this is just one voice of many, but it's also what I experienced. I think it's up to t
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by garry 7y ago
Yeah, at the end of the post I tried to reference this: You probably shouldn't work at a startup for the money per se. The real value is short cycles with users and being able to make decisions and ship. This is also cautionary for sta
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by garry 7y ago
This gives me a good idea for a video: How and when to quit. To be frank I also quit Palantir far earlier than maybe I should have. A story for another day. Thank you for the feedback though, I do appreciate it.
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by garry 7y ago
I'll try to make a longer post about this. It's hard to get it right in 5 minutes of video.
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by garry 7y ago
Apologies for the clickbait— I'm trying to build a YouTube following and having some collaborations drop this week. Just trying to make it work on that platform. The values and what is acceptable on different social networks is so diff
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by garry 7y ago
Thanks for the note! I appreciate the feedback. These things are crazy rare. I didn't do a good job of explaining then how weird this experience was. In the moment it felt like any other startup. Peter was great and well known but not
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by garry 7y ago
It's pretty bewildering to me too. The point is I said no, and it was the wrong decision. I ended up starting a company and later becoming a VC.
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by garry 7y ago
Oh I agree— big tech is fantastically lucrative! I wouldn't dissuade people from spending some time there. Separately I also agree that there's a big problem of credentialism in software engineering. We meet lots of amazing softwa
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by garry 7y ago
I guess what I wanted to say was that if you are capable of building great software, you should join the .01%, because that was my experience. I started as a reader of Hacker News just out of college, and it taught me a lot. Many of the fou

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