
Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups - joecurry
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/24/paul-graham-steps-back-at-yc-but-dont-expect-him-to-launch-a-startup/
======
martythemaniak
I'm very much looking forward to pg's new essays. His pre-YC essays cover a
pretty wide spectrum of topics and they were quite influential on me when I
read them while still in school.

His essays from the last few years are almost exclusively about startups and I
think they're a must-read resource. IMO, they contain pretty much all the
ideas that make up YC and going through the program will mostly reinforce
these ideas in a very effective way, rather than teach some new secret.

There's much to be said about technology and its impact on society, so I hope
we'll see some great new material.

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lazyjones
> _Graham said that, after thousands of founder presentations and pitches, he
> and the YC partners are now able to tell “within minutes” whether a startup
> will pass muster or not._

This I find slightly worrying. It's amazing if it still works (and I've been
wondering how YC was still able to scale), but is the minimum amount of
information that needs to be exchanged between startup and YC in order to get
a good assessment really that small? Or is the quality of selection (due to
scaling issues / less time per applicant) nowdays compensated by the effect of
YC's reputation?

~~~
Ologn
Having interviewed many people over the years (not for an accelerator though),
you can easily tell within ten minutes if someone can not pass muster. I have
never had anyone who stumbled over the first three questions I asked them,
recover on subsequent questions. Nowadays, the only reason I keep interviewing
people who stumble over the first three questions is out of politeness.

As I am usually interviewing people for one position, which they need to
perform well in, it would take more than ten minutes to get to a yes. But
since YC gives sixty or more yeses a batch, and they still win if only a few
of them pan out to be a Dropbox or Reddit, than they can probably afford to
give a yes in the first ten minutes as well. Because who is a superstar is
obvious in the first ten minutes as well. The only question for a superstar
beyond the first ten minutes is if they are a fit or not (for example, would
the obviously motivated and skilled author of Temple OS, who is marked dead
here on HN, be a fit).

~~~
sridharvembu
I have to disagree with the "can easily tell within ten minutes if someone
cannot pass muster" part. Interviewing is hard. We tend to make such snap
judgments but those judgments reflect our own biases.

I have come to believe over the years that interviewing measures interviewing
skills. Test scores measure test taking skills. Success on the job requires
success-on-the-job (to coin a phrase) skills. All those things correlate, but
the correlation coefficient is not super high. In fact, ignoring those
correlations can be an effective strategy to find great people.

~~~
Arnor
Aren't "interviewing skills" essential to founders? Isn't a YC interview
basically a chance to pitch your company and answer probing questions about
your plan? Seems like a pretty fair qualification to me...

~~~
001sky
This is absurdly reductionist.

~~~
pjscott
Assume for a moment that I don't know what you mean by 'reductionist'; why is
it _wrong?_

~~~
001sky
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism[#]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism\[#\])

In other words, you by failing to distinguish scaling phenomena (1->N) with a
gating criteria (0,1), you are making an attribution error concerning the
"essentialness" of your explanatory variable.

For example: co-founders are typically not "interviewed" for the job. But (a)
their selection is essential; and (b) if you can find a co-founder, you can
find any lesser employee.

It could be argued, that having the ability to "recruit" without formal
interview is actually a more essential skill.

------
vineet
The entire video of the interview is here:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA)

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lifeisstillgood
Err, Sam Altman is the only beta tester of a YC-company trying to develop a
better email client?

Anyone got any more details on this? Is this just an inside joke that I don't
get? (Yes I remember the build-better-email-client thing, but actually trying,
and using one beta-tester?)

To be honest I no longer think an email client is the problem. Its the lack of
contact book, integration with all my devices and just generally tying up my
orgnaisation for me - frankly a better email client from now is an AI.

~~~
oskarth
What's so strange about that? Personally I think it's a brilliant strategy.
It's the logical conclusion of having few users love you, and frankly I can't
think of anyone better than Sam Altman to beta test a email app. Once they got
him satisfied and hooked, they can easily go for the other big fish in the SF
startup scene.

I'm sure they appreciate your two sentence dismissal of something you've never
seen and haven't heard more than two sentences about.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I am not dismissing _their_ new email client - I am dismissing the idea that a
new successful email client is about email. I have four mail clients and god
knows how many messaging clients and VoIP in regular use and none of them
manage to do the things I need that are related to messaging other human
beings - synchronising address books, synchronising who I talked to about what
and when, booking appointments between two people without several emails of a
phone call, and generally reminding me what I have forgotten .

I struggle to imagine that there is a single email client that will solve this
- this is an integration problem - multiple devices, multiple slices of my
life.

Executives pay good money, very good money, for PAs to solve these problems.
And I get more and more frustrated by the siloes of data (Skype, iPhones call
log) that actively make it harder for me to get metadata about what I am doing
each day.

so an _email client_ , by my definition of what a single client is, no, does
not seem a good idea. but maybe a cross platform synchronising and intelligent
solution, that might be worth getting excited about

so that's why I asked if anyone knew anymore. Not a dismissal of their app, a
request for more info. And then a strawman of the idea of building a better
email client.

I think building a better mousetrap is an outdated when a jungle is waiting
out there.

------
Osmigo
>You can be surprisingly stupid if you’re sufficiently determined

I think one reason we're wrestling with this smart/stupid/success/fail subject
is that these words paint with broad brushes. It's not just being smart or
stupid, it's what you're smart or stupid about.

For example, I knew an uneducated couple who opened a small clothing store. At
first, they naively sold merchandise for less than they paid for it. They
calculated the markup on belts by adding $4, then adding $3. When I suggested
just adding $7, they got angry and said no, you HAD to add $4 first, or it
wouldn't work. I would have been fired for pressing the issue.

Pretty stupid, eh? Maybe. But they were smart, too, about other things. What
other things? Some people get MBAs at Harvard and still can't figure it out.

I watched that couple expand into a small chain of clothing stores with an
8-figure annual cash flow, and retire as millionaires.

One can only wonder how long they would have lasted in a YC pitch session. My
grandmother used to say, "we're all stupid, we're just stupid about different
things." The same could be said of "smart," and I believe success reflects a
correctness in this rather delicate dichotomy.

~~~
pbreit
I don't quite understand your markup anecdote. Did time pass between the $4
and $3 markups?

~~~
Osmigo
No, sir. That was all at once. I was expected to stand there with a
calculator, add $4 to the wholesale price, then add another $3.

~~~
siwei
Commutativity of addition is not at all an obvious fact and I applaud your
erstwhile employers for holding you to a higher standard of rigor.

~~~
Osmigo
Maybe it's just me, but I find it difficult to conceive of someone to whom,
even after discussion and contemplation, (+4+3)=(+7) is not obvious. I suppose
there are such people wandering the planet, however.

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matryoshka
This is the way to do it: “Start with a small, intense fire.” Those first
customers will make or break you.

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smrtinsert
> Principally, he said, just because someone is intelligent, doesn’t mean they
> can actually run a business and go out and execute.

> “You can be surprisingly stupid if you’re sufficiently determined,” he
> concluded.

Oh that's nice.

Reminds me of the Simpsons episode when some kid accepts homecoming king with
"Thank you for not choosing the popular jock and electing me, your
intellectual superior, as homecoming king".

~~~
soup10
Smart engineer/entrepreneurs #1 mistake is thinking that because they are
competent in their field(or got good grates at an elite school) that somehow
magically translates to competence in business and entrepreneurship. I know
and have met quite a few people that are grinding away at or have made
products which have serious business challenges that they underestimate or are
blind to and predictably fail to overcome. It's kind of sad when you see a
product that has taken a high degree of workmanship/skill/and effort to make,
but which has no market. Or the flip side, which is an insufficiently
differentiated(aka not better enough than what people are already using)
product in highly competitive market.

~~~
matryoshka
You can say the same about artisans who have spent their lives perfecting
their craft but don't know how to get the word out about their creations. So
many labor in obscurity and their pieces are stunning.

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waylandsmithers
The article mentions that he was a lightning rod and whatnot as the face of
YC. I can't help but wonder whether he took a step back to really evaluate
what he was doing with his time after all those blogs ran with the "Paul
Graham is a sexist piece of shit blah blah blah" backlash stories a couple
months ago.

~~~
pg
No, Sam and I had already agreed by then that he'd take over. We just hadn't
announced it yet. I do remember thinking though that this was going to be one
of the things I missed least.

~~~
marktangotango
Ha! One wonders what Sam's thoughts were...

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6thSigma
It's interesting that PG will no longer be reviewing applications. I wonder
who the 10 people he referenced who do review applications are.

~~~
pg
[http://ycombinator.com/people.html](http://ycombinator.com/people.html)

~~~
pchristensen
Is Andrew Mason still involved? He's not on the list.

~~~
TheMakeA
The page only lists full time partners. There are many more part timers.

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cjf4
"PAWWWWWL, I gotta startup that corrects misspelled 'Role Tide' Tattoos.
WATCHU THINK??"

