
Are you building a company, or your credentials? - geofflewis
http://geofflewis.org/2012/03/22/credentials/
======
alaskamiller
Getting into and surviving top notch elite business schools requires a whole
lot of credentials.

The guys and gals that spent their lives accrediting themselves with clubs,
sports, extracurriculars now want to join in on the entrepreneur revolution
David Fincher crafted for them.

To do so they're applying their way of "success" to this new field. Because
that's all they know. And as long as there's money, there'll be support for
these guys. The fervent frothing is a sign of the bubble.

You think brogrammers are bad? Welcome the sharks. We've arrived at the jump
zone. What's the real life equivalent of flooding Hacker News with Perl
articles for 24 hours?

~~~
fleitz
The real life equivalent is selling MBAs study guides or coaching seminars for
their YC application.

Put together an e-book and then buy some ad words, the CPC for a Y combinator
application is currently estimated at 10 cents per click.

Sell the book for $97 with a 30 day money back guarantee if they don't get
accepted.

~~~
localhost3000
you wouldn't believe what many of the students in top-10 MBA programs paid to
"admissions consultants" to get in. we're talking several thousand dollars per
application. you can't go through the process without bumping into 'experts'
and 'consultants' who will make you sick to your stomach. MBA applicants are
an uber-competitive, wealthy population eager to "invest in the future"...in
other words, you're onto something. do it.

------
jonnathanson
I question what the relentless seeker of credentials is trying to achieve. Not
just here, but in general. If life is an infinite set of boxes to be checked,
what's the point of it all?

It seems our society places an unduly large value on achievement, rather than
accomplishment. The point of going to a top school is to say you've gone to a
top school. The point of working at McKinsey or Goldman is to put it on your
resume. The point of being on the board of X is to get onto the board of Y.
And so forth. This is the cold, seldom-questioned bargain of achievement. It
is a paint-by-numbers approach to success, and it certainly guarantees its
devout adherant a substantial degree of material comfort. But at what cost?
And is there an end goal? Or is life simply a contest to see who can build the
most prestigious obituary?

I, for one, hope and trust that YC is able to sniff out the achievers from the
accomplishers, and to select the latter. It is the latter who build great
companies. The former make fantastic lawyers, consultants, and bankers.

~~~
vasco
"Or is life simply a contest to see who can build the most prestigious
obituary?"

Life is what you make of it. If checking boxes doesn't make you happy, don't
do it.

~~~
jonnathanson
_"If checking boxes doesn't make you happy, don't do it."_

What I'm asking is whether checking boxes really makes _anyone_ happy. I mean,
truly happy.

Don't get me wrong; I went through a lengthy box-checking phase that lasted
about 20 years. Checking a given box made me happy only until the next box
appeared on the horizon. The whole thing seemed like a cosmic treadmill.

I think there's something admirable in the sheer work ethic and determination
required to check the top boxes. But at the same time, I wonder whether that
effort couldn't be spent on something more worthwhile -- such as defining
oneself on one's own terms, rather than by a weird chiaroscuro of ideals hit
and missed.

~~~
reinhardt
"The whole thing seemed like a cosmic treadmill."

I'd say it's like a video game. Keep trying to beat the current level and move
to the next one. Why do people play video games? For the challenge and to pass
time. Well, same here. What's the alternative? "Defining oneself on one's own
terms" sounds nice but doesn't mean anything really. I'm not riding the
treadmill myself but I'd take it any time over existential boredom.

~~~
jk4930
Defining oneself has the consequence to set your own goals instead of only
following the goals of others (you might join other people's quests, but
you're now free to not do so without falling into existential boredom). You
switch from external to internal motivation. That means very much.

------
sedev
This seems like a direct callback to PG's "After Credentials" essay (
<http://paulgraham.com/credentials.html> ), in a good way. What I get from
this post is that we might be in the middle of a credentials shift, from the
credentials being good guidelines, to the period where attaining them is an
end in itself, the period where people are gaming the system.

------
alexhaefner
This is common, it's somewhat frustrating, but I've found that my way to deal
with it has been to let others pad their credentials. It's a waste of time for
me to worry about, it would be like worrying about the weather day-to-day when
the issue is really climate change. i.e. this is a cultural problem that
cannot be solved on a micro level.

We really want to build and sell stuff that our team has built, it's not about
my ego, it's not about the self, we just want to build cool things that people
want to use. I have had some very deep conversations with the person I work
with and we relate in the sense that we don't care for this incessant ego-
building that goes on in the world and especially around college. It doesn't
serve you well in a lot of cases to have a large ego. Of course that's an over
simplification, but the egos are rampant at college and I don't want anything
to do with it.

Let them pad their credentials, while you go build something great and don't
give a shit about that.

------
bicknergseng
"I think there is a fundamental difference between going after an initial
idea, then pivoting, vs. jumping into entrepreneurship with no idea at all.
With the meme of “team and execution are everything”, it’s easy to forget that
ideas still matter."

I tend to agree. When I founded a chapter of a fraternity at my college, I had
a really interesting discussion with the alum who helped us and almost all of
the state start our chapters about leadership. Something he said during the
initiation of our first pledge class (Alpha class) that will always stick with
me: even though the Alphas are all great potential leaders, there is such a
fundamental difference between them, the first group of followers who joined a
group because they desired to be leaders, and us (my founders group), who went
out with an idea and created something.

Mr. Lewis's point might have been different, but I think they stream from the
same thing. While there may be people out there who have the capacity to
create given an idea and others who have many ideas but don't end up creating,
the rare combination of the two is what makes an entrepreneur, a true leader.
Everyone else is a follower on some level. I might be totally off base and my
point is tangential, but these are 3pm musings.

I'd love to get feedback on them, and I'm interested to see PG's response to
the article.

~~~
TelmoMenezes
Meanwhile at the first pledge class for the Beta fraternity a speech is being
given on how followers have it best if we really think about it. In a soothing
voice.

------
brd
I think there is a 3rd question that begs to be asked: Are you building
yourself as a skilled professional?

"Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole
working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty
years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four." - Paul Graham
<http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

When Paul Graham wrote that he was talking in the context of wealth but I
think it just as easily applies to skill, knowledge, experience, network, etc.

I think there is a valid argument for frowning upon credential building but
I'd be more curious to hear what HN thinks about this idea of building
yourself? You could say its just as selfish as credential building but at the
same time is it really bad if an accelerator ends up being primarily a talent
generator for future generations of startups?

~~~
geofflewis
Im not frowning on credentialing. The question I have is whether we are
becoming too credential-obsessed in Silicon Valley rather than focusing
entirely on what matters: building companies of consequence.

------
wfrick
From a societal point of view, I'm a bit troubled. It's an encouraging trend
that high talent individuals who would have gone into finance or consulting
are considering startups. Should we really be turning them away? That said, I
certainly understand your hesitations.

~~~
nasmorn
Finance and law are the religion of our time. Those do called high powered
people are not the galileos und copernicus of our time, they are the borgias
or cardinal richelieu. In each case assuming they rise to the top.

------
petercooper
Like in most things, I think there's a healthy "middle way." Solely chasing
credentials all of your life isn't wise, but targeting _well chosen_
credentials is a way to unlock hard-to-open doors. Writing a book for a
mainstream publisher, for example, was once a great way to make a splash in an
industry (less so now, but still).

I think the key is to know, in advance, _why_ you are chasing certain things
and to use those "credentials" on a route to something more fulfilling. For
better or worse, we carry our histories around with us, and if the choice is
between twiddling thumbs and adding another accolade to the collection, it's
tempting. Once something genuine comes along, however, you need to jump on it.

------
exratione
The article makes exactly the right realization: Y Combinator is heading in
the direction of scholasticism. I wrote an article recently on this topic,
which I quote below:

[http://www.exratione.com/2012/01/the-future-of-the-
venture-c...](http://www.exratione.com/2012/01/the-future-of-the-venture-
capital-industry.php)

The present direction of some incubators is towards the concept of schools, in
the older sense of the word. To some eyes present experiments look like an
early stage in the development of a new scholastic institution of practical
business development. With well tuned entry requirements such an entity might
serve as a filter that allows venture investment in all graduates with
comparatively little detailed due diligence, trusting to the quality of the
school (the filter) to raise the expectation value of these blanket
investments. Experiments in this sort of model are already taking place at Y
Combinator, and others will no doubt follow. If they see success, expect to
see more rapid movement towards formalized schools of practical
entrepreneurship, which will orbit established venture funds to act as feeder
mechanisms. You might look on this as a structured, industrial manifestation
of the informal process of apprenticeship and networking that always existed
in the startup community - and either like it or loathe it for exactly that
reason, depending on your tastes.

It is worth remembering that while venture capitalists and organized groups of
angel investors can enter the space of incubators-as-schools from one side,
existing scholastic institutions can just as well enter it from their side. I
can't image that the traditional schools will be any good at this if they do
try, given long-standing academic hostilities towards the business of being in
business, but some of the younger less hidebound institutions might well be
successful. Consider the present University of Phoenix, a future Khan Academy,
and a range of other entities establishing their own early stage venture
funds, or partnering with venture funds to do something new in this space - it
isn't so far fetched an idea.

Note that a more scholastic form of incubator is, to my mind, a very different
concept from what I'll call Vingean Scholastics. This is the vision put
forward by Vernor Vinge in Fast Times at Fairmont High in which building
startups is a part of the curriculum for all young people and at least ramen-
level economic success is necessary for graduation at a high school level.
Building a business, or at the least a short-term economic success, is how the
students pay for school and how the schools earn their keep as businesses
themselves. In that fictional near future, this is all a part of teaching
young adults how to live in a world of constant, enormously rapid change
driven by computational technology, in which the idea of holding down a job
doing roughly the same sort of thing for five years is laughable, and everyone
must know how to be an entrepreneur in order to flow with the pace of change.

But this too will come to pass, I think, with Vingean Scholastic organizations
as another sort of filter to build and channel groups of startup founders -
with, collectively, a positive expectation value on investment - towards
future forms of venture fund.

~~~
hluska
That is well written, congratulations!

Here's a bit of personal disclosure. I did a business degree (marketing major)
from a mediocre institution. Immediately after graduation, I started a
company. It failed miserably, but I learned significantly more about business
killing a company over the course of a year than I learned studying business
in a university. My business degree armed me with a dubious credential, a less
dubious 'network', and ummm, let me check with a recruiter and get back to
you...:)

At first, I thought, "I went to a pretty crappy university, of course I didn't
learn much." But, through conversations with friends (some of whom went to
'elite' business schools), I came to realize that business schools in general
are pretty crappy.

Perhaps this scholastic incubator is the future of business school? If so, it
is a welcome development!

~~~
larrys
I went to one of those elite programs at an Ivy League school. The advantage
you get isn't the education (from my experience and observation). It's being
around other enthusiastic (non slacker) high achievers who worked hard to get
there and want to be there. And connections and all the things others talk
about.

Knowing that you went to the top ranked program not opens many doors (bankers
were impressed when I had to borrow money) but also gives you the confidence
that extends well beyond education.

In a way it's similar to driving up to high school being the quarterback _and_
driving a fancy new car (was not me but I can only imagine). You feel good
about yourself (in your own mind) and that confidence affects others as well.

As far as learning about business and how to run one? I didn't learn that from
the business program. I learned that working during high school and college
and from having a family business and other companies that I worked for.

~~~
donw
Speaking as somebody that graduated from a lower-ranked school, I completely
agree.

I learned a _ton_ from my last failed startup. So much, in fact, that it took
a six-month vacation afterwards to really digest the experience, and I don't
think that I'm boasting when I say that one failed startup, one where you pour
everything into it, is equivalent or better to an MBA.

What I didn't get, and I had to work for, was the credential.

The only people that recognize one of my schools (Waseda) as being anything
special are all in either Japan or China.

So when I go to meet a client or a banker, I don't have the credential card in
my hand, and have to rely on my network, history, and general ability to get
along with pretty much everybody.

While these have gotten me along pretty well, I do regret making the naïve
assumption that schools were about education, rather than about the people you
meet.

------
rjurney
Lets look at this from the other perspective. That of big companies hiring
product teams.

Educating, finding, hiring, training, cultivating and retaining talent is
extremely difficult. Companies recruit at colleges, where students have worked
hard enough on their credentials to gain admittance and even harder getting
good grades and joining clubs and participating in activities. They will
identify a few good candidates. They will recruit these candidates, along with
every other relevant company. Making offer letters, a few will accept. These
will be trained for months, then cultivated for years. Now you've got to get
these people to work together in teams, and some of those teams will work out
and some will not. Most workers will leave in a few years, some even sooner.
Some will grow, advance and go on to become leaders. One will go on to become
the company's CEO. The funnel chart on this system is daunting, going from
millions of students to one CEO.

On the other hand, Y Combinator will take anyone with a convincing video, the
'right look' (see: Moneyball) and attitude, and gung ho fervor. The program
teaches these teammates to work together to build and ship experiments quickly
and get real people using them, and then to adapt to new data to conduct new
experiments. Upon graduation, the teams get more money to continue conducting
experiments as they seek their market. Most are acquired in 'acquihires.'
Buying a working team bypasses the lengthy process outlined above. Huge value
to the acquirer, and contracts/incentives tie the team up for a few years.

Bottom line: these acquihires are profitable for the acquiring companies, the
founders, and Y Combinator. Making the acquihire machine turn does not require
an idea, a cohesive team, or much of anything except the ability to
successfully complete the training Y Combinator provides. Some companies go on
to find a market, the rest get the degree, a bonus and a job.

YC training is boot camp. It is the new Harvard, formed to match post-web
realities.

Or something.

* Not asserting Y Combinator discriminates, but any time 3 people in a room make a decision without a lot of hard data on the candidates' performance at that task... bias must enter. This is one checkpoint in a new system.

~~~
mkramlich
Anything that lets us bypass bullshit, makework and proxies-for-things-we-want
and instead go directly for substance, realwork, and the-things-we-want, is a
good thing and should be done much more of. Also, instead of a "student"
throwing $50k at an institution in order to "learn" and gain credentials I'd
much rather that the student be paid $50k by an institution and learn and gain
a better sort of credentials: building things rather than passing tests.
Though I don't agree with exactly how he did it, I suspect this philosophy is
similar to the one behind Peter Thiel's recent "20 Under 20" anti-
scholarships.

And yes, ideally it's better to be acqui-hired than hired. For a software
engineer with the right talent mix it's the difference between being paid
$300k for 3 years work (which is nothing to sneeze at, certainly, but you
can't retire with it), vs being paid $3-30m+ -- if the upside scenario
happens, of course. And these aren't even mutually exclusive choices.

~~~
rjurney
Kind of funny that an acquihire entitles you to housing in the Bay Area, isn't
it? For a few hundred grand, you can get a house in an outlying area.

------
harri127
I agree that the purpose of what you are trying to achieve is important. Some
people just care only about the status of getting into an accelerator program
but I think the real value lies in building something that has an impact and
changes the way we live our life. The problem with people just wanting "the
credentials" is like the people who want to just get into a school for its
name but don't really care about the value it can provide for them. When
people begin to realize that the credentials are just an added value to all
that the program provides they will come to the realization that working on an
idea that makes an impact for the right reason is far more important than
those credentials.

------
jreposa
Taking advantage of the system is what humans do; as much it can be despised.
I hope the people that are in it for the wrong reasons get weeded out. With
all the experience that pg and the team have, it can't be too hard, right?

------
jsfeit81
Well put. The one thing I'd add, that isn't immediately stated in this
article, is the importance of MISSION as part of the entrepreneurial process.
Product is key, of course, as are opportunity and the skills to capture it.
But there are going to be crap days in the entrepreneurial process, and as was
stated in the article, the product may pivot. The mission, however -- the
passion -- will be the key to reaching all the tomorrows en route to success.
Great post!

------
someone_welsh
credentials....

"If you like this post, please upvote it on hacker news"

~~~
xarien
I thought that was a bit ironic and funny as well. However, with that said, I
did up vote it as I believe it's a great point of view and well written.

------
Sarah-Jane
People with those kinds of janky priorities aren't going to make anything
that's meaningful.

------
aristus
Credentialing is an (unavoidable?) product of scaling up angel funding. On the
other hand starting my startup, convincing friends to join it, getting to the
interview stage at YC and losing a nontrivial amount of my friends money on a
stupid idea did make me a more mature person. Your friend might just learn a
few things by accident.

------
zerostar07
That font is unreadable

~~~
geofflewis
Fixed now.

~~~
jasonkester
Are you sure? I still see a page full of ugly pixelated courier-esque font,
with 3px-wide "i" characters distracting from being able to read anything.
(Chrome/XP)

Please, bloggers of the world. If you don't understand fonts or how to
correctly embed fonts into a web page in a way that looks good cross-platform
and not just on your machine, just use web-safe fonts.

