
PG at Launch [video] - jdorfman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA#t=57s
======
argonaut
Great part: "Who knows better? These random people chattering on forums - I
won't mention any names [obviously Hacker News]? Or Zuckerberg himself who
knows all the numbers and is actually betting his money. [WhatsApp] must be
worth $19 billion if Zuckerberg was willing to pay $19 billion for it, cause
he's no idiot."

Reply to below: I wouldn't nitpick the fact that he says WhatsApp "must" be
worth $19B. This is an interview, not anything logically formal. The main
point is that Zuckerberg is actually putting money on the line and has
personally seen all of WhatsApp's numbers. Compare this to the peanut gallery
on HN.

~~~
drumdance
Remember when AOL was worth $100 billion? And one of the buyers was the
inventor of satellite TV?

Zuck may well be right, but it's not ipso fscto. He just made an acquisition
bigger than anything ever done by Steve Jobs, Bill Gates etc. Or Warren Buffet
for that matter.

~~~
charlesma
Small correction, Warren Buffet spent over $34billion on BNSF

------
wamatt
_" we used to have more faith in brains"._ The context here was Jason
Calacanis was asking PG what signals if any, had changed over the course of
time, when selecting teams.

Perhaps this goes nicely with this New Yorker article[1] summarizing the gap
between high-IQ and what I would call instrumental rationality (as opposed to
epistemic rationality). Also, it's quite possibly old hat to those who've read
'Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow' and related literature.

Speaking personally, while I'm possibly different to many here on HN, I
enjoyed a sort of ruthless pragmatism in my teens and 20's and almost dogmatic
focus. These days, I'm falling more into the theory trap, and tend to enjoy
the conceptual and theoretical, far more than accumulating operational domain
expertise. I do wonder if that's a permanent inclination, or if it turns out
to be more cyclic in nature.

 _[1] "Why smart people are stupid",
[http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-
cortex/2012/06...](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-
cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html) _

------
YuriNiyazov
I'm curious, how exactly are the partner silos structured? Are the silos
grouped by partner expertise, and startups rotate across silos based on what
they want to talk about? Or does each individual silo have a set of partners
whose combined expertise cover everything, and startups are assigned to a
silo? From 26:30 in the video or so.

~~~
pg
Each one has 2 or 3 partners and 20-something startups. The startups do group
office hours with those partners, and when they request individual office
hours those are the partners they get by default. Startups can also request
office hours with any partner if they need some special expertise that only
they have. E.g. Geoff knows a lot about music startups, Sam is the expert on
fundraising, I'm the one with a knack for thinking of new domain names.

I'm not one of the group partners. I try to meet with all the startups, but
obviously not as frequently as the group partners.

~~~
LukeWalsh
Since you won't be in interviews, would you share any domain/naming ideas for
our startup? I'll email you our pitch deck if you'd look at it for 30 seconds.
:)

~~~
amirmc
I'm sure he'd rather you just apply for the next batch of YC. Applications are
open.

[http://ycombinator.com/apply.html](http://ycombinator.com/apply.html)

------
RealGeek
In case you missed it, you can watch it at
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA)

~~~
dewey
It just says "Please stand by." for me.

Edit: Works with Chrome's Incognito Mode. Maybe one of my extensions is
interfering.

------
tchock23
Sad to hear PG won't be interviewing applicants anymore (though I understand
why).

The 10 minutes where he grilled me on my startup idea were some of the most
fun I've had, despite me not getting in. I was hoping to get another chance
someday.

~~~
joshmlewis
Care to share what your startup was and what the interview was like? Where you
thought you went wrong?

~~~
tchock23
The interview was intense (as many others have reported) with PG asking rapid-
fire questions about the app, business model, team, etc.

In the end I was rejected because my app "could be built by a decent developer
in a weekend," which in hindsight was 100% correct. That should have been
obvious to me since it only took me a few weekends to build the MVP (and I'm a
mediocre developer at best), but somehow it wasn't.

I ended up substantially changing my business model as a direct result of my
10 minute YC interview. Still waiting to see if that was the right call, but I
have a hunch it was...

~~~
amirmc
Interesting. There's much more to building a business than simply how
difficult it is to build the product, so using just that as a reason to reject
people seems a bit off. For example, Buffer [1] seems to be doing pretty well
and that must have been a comparatively simple app to get off the ground (in
terms of MVP). I expect the hard work there is in growing fast enough that you
capture most of the market/mindshare (as well as how big that market is).

[1] [http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-december-
update-2819000-run...](http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-december-
update-2819000-run-rate-1249000-users/)

EDIT: IIRC Buffer didn't make it to the interview stage for YC. They carried
on anyway.

~~~
tchock23
I was initially surprised for the same reason as you, especially given some of
pg's comments about the best ideas looking like "toys" at first.

However, looking back I would have done the same thing in his position. My
prototype just looked too simplistic and didn't have a defensible business
model (at that time) that VCs would have found compelling.

YC is a business that must generate returns for its owners, and my startup
didn't fit the bill. Better luck next time...

~~~
joshmlewis
Did you have cofounders at that point?

~~~
tchock23
I applied solo, but had two people about to join me as co-founders. That could
have been part of it, but wasn't the official stated reason...

------
justizin
Seriously, LAUNCH, no paid ustream?

What is this, an OWS general assembly of anarchists?

------
ar7hur
OMG pg is as crazy as usual (in a good sense). He is really great!

------
hauget
anyone have a link that works in Germany? God damn GEMA is blocking the video
for me :(

~~~
jey
What right does GEMA have to block this video? Does it contain some
copyrighted music in the background or something?

------
_zen
Really energetic orator, especially compared to the interviewer. Would be
great if he guested on a show with energy, like The Daily Show or The Colbert
Report.

~~~
nswanberg
Listening to Paul talk is refreshing. He's like Feynman in that he's got
something clever and fun to say and doesn't dress it up in pretense. I still
remember feeling about 10 times better during a commute home once because NPR
played an interview of his on startup failure, what could have been a
depressing subject. The interviewer asked what sort of people he was looking
for. He described them as "fierce nerds", which was both hilarious and dead
on.

Jason's a great interviewer, though. He brought up questions people wanted to
hear, dug in a few times, and stayed on the sidelines. He can be a lot more
energetic if he's the focus and not the interviewer:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gbI9pIbpY4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gbI9pIbpY4)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79I4Jf80FHg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79I4Jf80FHg)

~~~
eieio
Ha! The first talk[1] about Jason pretending to have a copy of the iPad 2 is
hilarious. I've never heard that story before, definitely an entertaining
couple of minutes.

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gbI9pIbpY4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gbI9pIbpY4)

------
Udo
"This video is not available in your country"

Why? Fuck these stupid regional blockages.

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presty
anyone willing to disclose who the mobile email company is?

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relet
__* was expecting a paraglider at launch.

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coolswan
is there a link to the recording?

