Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On? - npguy
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pg
I'm sorry if this is an unsatisfying answer, but if you mean _convincingly_
pitched, I couldn't answer a question like that without disclosing the long-
term plans of startups that would prefer to keep them secret.

If you mean unconvincingly pitched, it would probably be the applications we
get from people who've discovered new power sources that violate the laws of
physics.

~~~
Eliezer
Can you say where the scariest and most ambitious convincing pitch was on the
following scale?

1) We're going to build the next Facebook!

2) We're going to found the next Apple!

3) Our product will create sweeping political change! This will produce a
major economic revolution in at least one country! (Seasteading would be
change on this level if it worked; creating a new country successfully is
around the same level of change as this.)

4) Our product is the next nuclear weapon. You wouldn't want that in the wrong
hands, would you?

5) This is going to be the equivalent of the invention of electricity if it
works out.

6) We're going to make an IQ-enhancing drug and produce basic change in the
human condition.

7) We're going to build serious Drexler-class molecular nanotechnology.

8) We're going to upload a human brain into a computer.

9) We're going to build a recursively self-improving Artificial Intelligence.

10) We think we've figured out how to hack into the computer our universe is
running on.

~~~
ph0rque
Eliezer, I believe you just created the Yudkowsky Ambition scale.

My startup, <http://automicrofarm.com/>, rates between a 3 and a 5, depending
on how successful it becomes, in my opinion.

~~~
Eliezer
Holy schmaloly, that actually _is_ a 3 if it works.

Anyone else got 3 or higher?

~~~
Alex3917
"Anyone else got 3 or higher?"

I have a drug that could massively raise the IQ of the world's population, in
total more than the power of all the world's computers combined. And it costs
only a couple pennies per person per year.

Iodine.

~~~
FF8C69
source please

~~~
vhf
_« According to WHO, in 2007, nearly 2 billion individuals had insufficient
iodine intake, a third being of school age. Iodine deficiency can have serious
consequences, causing abnormal neuronal development, mental retardation,
congenital abnormalities, spontaneous abortion and miscarriage, congenital
hypothyroidism, and infertility. Later in life, intellectual impairment
reduces employment prospects and productivity. »_

[http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673...](http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673608610090/fulltext)

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cperciva
Posting an "Ask PG" at 3 AM Pacific time seems frighteningly ambitious to me.

~~~
arctangent
There is a useful tool to suggest the best times to post a new thread:
<http://hnpickup.appspot.com>

Is anyone aware of something similar which breaks this down by type of thread?

~~~
npguy
I must have used that for my show HN post.

I was wondering why it was almost a dead response, While I have seen good
response for similar show HN posts.

anyways the post is here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4495098>

~~~
scott_s
There's a large random component to what gets to, and stays on, the front
page.

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Eliezer
We never pitched him on the Singularity Institute
(<http://singularity.org/research/>), but I doubt he's ever been seriously
pitched on anything more ambitious than "build a recursively self-improving
Artificial Intelligence with a stable, specifiable goal system so that it can
improve into a superintelligence and do world optimization." If he's been
pitched on anything more frightening than that, I'd really like to know what.

~~~
seiji
Honest question: Does SI actually _do_ anything other than hold conferences
and take donations so smart people don't have to get real jobs?

~~~
decode
A cynic would say that the main activity of SI's Research Fellows is to type
up their Science Fiction and Philosophy musings and upload them as PDFs to
their website. Someone less cynical would say that these musings are
fundamental research in the area of self-replicating AIs that will enable
other people to build said AIs in the future.

I tend to lean toward the cynical interpretation.

~~~
freshhawk
But the appropriate area for fundamental research is in explaining
consciousness and intelligence so that in the future someone trying to build
an AI can actually define what they are trying to build.

That kind of science takes large scale organization and specialization by each
person in a narrow field. It carries enormous organizational costs. It's also
frequently quite a lot of boring work.

Easier to just speculate on a wide area of interesting topics while you wait
for people to do the real work.

Looks like I leaned so far towards the cynical interpretation that I fell over
on it.

------
bfe
"We want to make our own rockets and spaceships from scratch. But that's just
the beginning, to pave the way to settling Mars and making it affordable for
middle-class customers to relocate to Mars." I imagine if Elon Musk had
pitched SpaceX for YC, it would be a strong candidate for this.

~~~
mej10
Yeah, pretty much any of his recent ideas/companies are "frighteningly
ambitious".

I do wonder how YC would handle someone that is as ambitious and skilled as
Musk, but without his financial success. (Un?)Fortunately for them I think
that is a pretty rare combination, so they probably don't have to worry too
much.

~~~
stickfigure
It is a mantra here that there is an _enormous_ amount of timing and luck
involved in creating a successful startup.

I would expect the majority of people with Musk's skill and ambition to lack
his level of financial success. Certainly the percentages will be better than
the general population, but it's not guaranteed or even likely.

~~~
mej10
In my opinion, if people really think timing and luck matter more than skill
and determination, then they shouldn't be doing startups (unless their goals
aren't to create an awesome/important company, but to have fun or something
else).

Timing and luck (from what I have seen) really only seem to matter for things
where it doesn't really require a lot of domain expertise. Of course, those
are what first time entrepreneurs (at least of the Hacker News variety) are
most drawn to, for what should be obvious reasons.

Perhaps it is just due to there being more information about Musk than other
founders, but I haven't heard of any YC founders having the level of technical
skills and abilities that Musk has. He is older than most, though, and has
been at it for a while, so this shouldn't really be surprising.

------
patmcguire
Might not have ever pitched pg, since they're hardware and probably needed a
bigger initial investment than YC does to make sense, but Blue River
Technologies is probably the most ambitious thing I've heard of.

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/10/blue-river-technology-
raise...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/10/blue-river-technology-
raises-3-1-million-to-build-robots-to-replace-chemical-herbicides/)

The original product was a robot that zapped weeds with lasers, they switched
to a superheated oil because it's cheap enough to be practical.

------
femto
I'd like to write a program, which uses Quantum Electrodynamics to simulate an
electron in the presence of a point charge (ie. an hydrogen atom).

Next, I'd like to run two instances, put them in the same space and see if the
simulation spontaneously forms an hydrogen molecule.

I'd then like to add a second electron, and see if the result was an Helium
atom.

Keep adding electrons until the simulation can do 6 and 8 electrons (carbon
and hydrogen).

Now, I'd like to put all three types of simulated atoms (H,C,O) in the same
space and see if the result is organic chemistry. At this point, additional
optimisations might be necessary, maybe along the lines of starting the
simulation by computing simplified models and using those where full accuracy
is not required.

I'd then like to continue building the system up, adding optimisations as
necessary. Keep adding atoms, and seeing if ever more complex molecules
result. Extend to atoms with additional electrons as required (eg. need to add
Nitrogen for DNA bases).

At some point, custom hardware would be required. First GPUs/FPGAs, then
custom silicon, and whatever else is state-of-the-art at the time.

See how far the optimise/extend cycle can be pushed. Amino acids, DNA,
proteins, cells, organs, organisms?

Who knows how far it would get? It might remain an interesting toy, at the 0
level. The closer it is to simulating a human, the closer it is to an 9 or 10
on the "Yudkowsky Ambition Scale". \--- update: spelling

------
chmike
How would one make the difference between _frighteningly ambitious_ , _crazy_
or _stupid_ ?

~~~
MattGrommes
That reminds me of Peter Thiel's Venn diagram of 'Sounds like a bad idea' and
'Is a good idea'. It's a pretty slim area in the middle and the 'Sounds like'
part means it's hard to know until you do it.

------
ig1
Presumably PG can't answer because of confidentiality, but the the most
ambitious one I've heard is a pitch for a company claiming they could build a
trillion dollar company.

(They were working on a cement/concrete replacement that was cleaner and
cheaper)

~~~
MPSimmons
Was that the company that said they could make concrete that extracted carbon
from air?

~~~
ig1
Don't remember the details, Khosla was an investor though.

------
Alex3917
How would you even know? Sometimes the most ambitious ideas don't require more
than a few hundred lines of code. It's often how you want the rest of the
world to use your product that makes it ambitious, not the product itself.

~~~
numeromancer
DFFT FTW!

------
runjake
Was pg ever pitched on Instagram? Because a "picture service that gets sold
for $1B" sounds frighteningly ambitious.

~~~
mikeleeorg
I don't think Instagram set out to be acquired for $1B. That was just a
pleasant after-effect. And here's pg's answer on what he would have done had
he been pitched on Instagram:

 _"Instagram is the one we'd most likely have missed. It all depends when we'd
talked to them. They were a kind of overnight success in traffic. If we'd
talked to them even a day after they launched we would certainly have said
yes. But before that it might have seemed too speculative."_

Source: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4497517>

~~~
001sky
These guys _did_ invest in instagram. But...

 _When we invested in Instagram, it wasn’t actually Instagram. It was a
company called Burbn, and the idea was roughly to build a mobile micro
blogging service. Technologically, it was also different: an HTML 5
application rather than a native app..._

Of course you never know what then happens. Instagram pivots to photos, and
exits at ~$1B. But...

 _As Kevin iterated on Burbn, we made another investment in an excellent
entrepreneur, Dalton Caldwell. Dalton’s company, Mixed Media Labs, initially
built a product called PicPlz. PicPlz aime d to be a mobile photo sharing
service..._

Of course, now Dalton (as app.net) is doing what instagram (then as Burbn) set
out to do - a micro-blogging service.

So, there ya go...the ol' switcheroo ;D

------
tribeofone
Not an idea, but I have to say I was blown away by the first meeting I was in
with a company that said they were trying to exit for $1B.

This pretty much summed up my reaction:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1CEbl9cK3o&t=3m7s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1CEbl9cK3o&t=3m7s)

~~~
bhousel
Wow, what industry? Healthcare? Telecom? Can't think of too many that could
credibly claim a $1B exit.

~~~
hollerith
Huh? I have been assuming that a large fraction of VC-funded startups try for
exits of at least $1 billion. (The more rational ones know they will probably
fail, but that does not prevent their sincerely aiming for that target.)

I am almost certain their investors want them to aim at least that high.

Are you sure you're not confusing billion and trillion?

ADDED. I'm not trying to appear bad-ass or hardcore (and in fact, I've never
been a founder because I judge that I cannot afford that level of risk of
being left with a severely suboptimal monetary reward for my efforts). I am
honestly trying to understand VC-funded startups.

~~~
niklas_a
I had the same reaction as you.

But to answer your question and being a startup founder myself - doing a
startup is just an amazing experience. It's a bit like trying heroin (not that
I've done that, but from what I hear). The highs are extremely high and the
lows are extremely low. Going back to a "normal" job after doing a startup is
like taking methadone.

Sometimes I wish I could think rationally around this (like you) and just take
a normal job again. That would most likely be better for me in every
measurable way (salary, benefits etc) but I'm just having too much fun doing
startups.

~~~
hollerith
Just to clarify: some young men find life (making friends, college, dating,
getting and holding a good job) easy, and for those young men, I do not doubt
that founding a startup _is_ the rational path -- especially if they care as
much about improving the world as they do about themselves. (If you're trying
to improve the world, a 1% chance of making 5 billion dollars is a much more
attractive choice than it is if you care only about yourself and your family
and close friends because your ability to improve the world is approximately
linear in how much money you can spend whereas your ability to stay safe and
happy and to keep your friends and family safe and happy is distinctly sub-
linear in "spending power" once spending power gets above $100,000 a year.)

However, I do not find life easy (nor am I young).

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Wilya
I don't see any way for him to give an answer to this that wouldn't cause
hundreds of people to apply to the next YC with the exact same idea (or with
the same idea with tiny meaningless variations).

Not sure if that would benefit anyone.

~~~
NameNickHN
I'm pretty sure that hundreds of people already are applying with the exact
same idea. PG's answer wouldn't make much difference.

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mcartyem
Also, what is an idea you have been pitched on that seemed bad to you that you
can't tell yet if it's a good idea.

~~~
jtheory
"Most of them" seems to be the likely answer to this one. Including most of
the real winners.

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neurotech1
I'm going to speculate for a bit, and say that some of the "Frighteningly
Ambitious" ideas probably involve hardware or hardware/software combinations.
Kickstarter is full of updates on how getting designs into production is
harder than expected.

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kristofer
a guy who claimed that high speed Internet service could be delivered ove the
magnetic field of AC power lines and into homes. wanted USGovt to mandate it
because it was so amazing and cheap.

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darylteo
Something Something Something Social Network.

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johnrgrace
Now I think I'm going to have to troll some Angel investors I know, shoot for
about 4/5

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mpwh
Why does this post have so many points?

~~~
mbrubeck
That's pretty common when an "Ask PG" post gets an answer from pg. A lot of HN
members are highly interested in pg's thoughts.

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constantin
we can see the websites? Where started your startup?

