

Ask HN: How many RFSs have been released? - boggles

I read the first two RFSs that pg released but haven't seen any more since then? Are there others? Is there a list somewhere?
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lkozma
I find these lists of "RFSs" and the earlier list of ideas rather
disappointing... I don't think that formulating a problem in such general
terms is really useful and I don't think it works at all to create such a
"framework" for an idea which someone just comes and fills in with the
concrete details. It really reminds me of academic grant applications where
there is some grand vision laid out for 5 years, in which only the details
need to be worked out. However, the details are all that matter, without the
"how to do it" I don't think such ideas add anything valuable.

The line "Ex-Googlers would be particularly well suited to this project" is
again the kind of credential-based test that large organizations and the
government would like. This all starts to sound much less than the startup-
culture that PG talks about in his essays. In this context, using a bit more
informal language than in grant proposals and job adverts is slowly becoming a
bit gimmicky.

~~~
rw
I agree with your point that credentialism is counter to the notion of what
we've been told YC is about. Yet, pg has always said that they want to see
indicators of past performance and success, and working at Google is a pretty
darn good one (usually).

Edit: I am curious about pg's thoughts on the balance between relying on
strong signals from applicants (e.g. being a serial entrepreneur, working at
Google, getting a PhD) to avoid false negatives, versus taking a risk and
accepting teams that may be more likely to fail (false positives).

Regarding the efficacy of the RFSs: they've done the market research for you.
If the proposal can eliminate a few free variables in your analysis, then
you've only got to focus on the ones that remain undetermined. Furthermore,
we've found that having someone pose a well-asked question can be enough to
get us answering that question in a new way, and driven to build what we
envision.

~~~
jacquesm
> pg has always said that they want to see indicators of past performance and
> success,

If you've been successful in the past then that's great but then you are
already part of a very select group of people. Reminds me of the ads for
employees: has to be between 18 and 25, have a degree and at lesat 5 years of
work experience relevant to the field.

YC attracts young folks, willing to move (that means no current large
responsibilities) and willing to neglect their social life for a period in
order to take this chance.

People with a success in their back pockets are not going to intersect in
large numbers with people willing to meet those conditions.

> and working at Google is a pretty darn good one (usually).

Why ?

That only says that you were good enough to get hired by google but it does
not mean at all that you are 'start-up founder material', rather the opposite,
it says that you are the kind of person that seeks large brand name companies
as employers.

That's where the failed 'starter-uppers' go when they've had their shot and
need to recover for a bit, not where you go before you decide that you want to
run your own company.

That's the sort of thing that drives your whole being, pretty hard to mix that
attitude with having a day job, that must mean that you are not very
comfortable in your day job.

The list is a good one though, (I assume we're talking about this one:
<http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html> ), even if some of them are quite
ambitious for a YC funded startup, after all, the (initial) funds are quite
limited, and to get to a working prototype for some of those ideas in such a
short period is stretching things quite far.

~~~
rw
Would you honestly consider working at Google to be ceteris paribus equal to
working at merely a "typical" software company? There _is_ information there.
Refer to what I said about false negatives versus false positives.

~~~
jacquesm
To reverse that, everything else being equal do you really think it matters if
somebody has worked at google on some project vs someone working at say Yahoo,
Microsoft, NASA or any one of a hundred other large operations writing
software ?

I don't buy that. There are plenty of places where you can get excellent
experience relevant to solving some of those problems, not all of them are
'google'. And not all of them are big company efforts either. (though the
samples listed here are).

Google is a 'great' company, but they're definitely not the only game in town
and I find it strange that having worked at google would be a 'pre' compared
to having worked at other places.

It's not like every coder/analyst at google has personal access to the whole
GFS system and can work with it to their hearts content. I figure plenty of
the jobs there are like every other job in industry.

If you're part of the core search team that changes things, but having 'worked
at google' is way too arbitrary a selection criterion.

~~~
rw
So, you're saying that Google, as an employer, is a member of an equivalence
class of other worthwhile employers. And, knowing the name and reputation of
an employer is not enough, we also need to know what the person worked on
while there. I think everyone agrees with that :)

------
ianbishop
The list is located here: <http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html>

There was also a list of startup ideas that YC likes posted earlier which
comes with less description of the final product:
<http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>

~~~
nanijoe
I just checked the site. Doesn't Amazon already do what RFS 2 is suggesting?

~~~
mmt
They are, though in a pretty limited fashion, and chang eis at giant company
speed.

It's also not their core competency, which has always been fulfillment,
despite what they may wish.

