
Sam Altman interviewed on CNN Money [video] - staunch
http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/09/technology/innovation/sam-altman-y-combinator/index.html
======
keithwarren
On acceptance of failure...

I am curious how truly different Silicon Valley is versus other areas. While
we give lip service to the idea of failure being OK, the reality is in most
places it is destructive to your long term prospects.

I am from the midwest and around here there is a very cliquey mindset. Hang in
and around the startup communities and you will see the people who claim to be
investors, the people who actually are investors, the people who claim to be
founders/entreprenuers and the people actually doing something. Then there are
the posers, always around trying to be part of the game and gossiping about
every founder, judging every idea and trying to generally be seen as part of
the in-crowd. It is like high school only with serious money involved. I point
all this out to say that this clique mindset gives lip service to the idea of
failure or pivots being OK but in reality - you just blew it. You didn't have
what it takes. You are really no good. Your idea sucked. etc etc etc.

What is worse is that breaking into the funding market is rather difficult
unless you have a success story under your belt. Started a company and exited
(even if a meager acquihire) then you get an instant seat at the table. On the
flip side, if you failed - that failure acts as a noose going forward.

Like I said, I am really curious if SV is truly different or people like to
think it is different and market it as different when in reality it is the
same high school clique show that I see around here.

I hope it is different, I truly do.

~~~
ChuckMcM
There are posers of course, and people with other issues, but in general I've
found folks to be pretty honest. What a lot of people miss though is that it
takes _time_.

There is definitely an inverse power log sort of thing where the number of
people who have gone right from college into startup success is really small,
and the number of people who have gone from school to startup success in 10
years is pretty large.

A typical trajectory seems to be move here working for some current 'big' tech
company. Build a network of the cool people there and figure out where you
eventually want to live, then show your stuff at BigCorp while people who have
been there longer start peeling off. Most people know who are the 'good'
people and who are the not so good people at their previous employment, if
they have you in the 'good' category and they've gone off to do a startup you
find interesting, you can often follow them there. Then get your feet wet in a
startup early employee to exit (death, buyout, what haveyou). During that time
you get known by the VCs in the company and your peers there, perhaps you
recruit people. You prove you can be effective in a small environment. Then
using your connections with investors or other people you've met you go in as
a really early group of already more seasoned people, which ideally has a
solid outcome, and at that point 10 - 12 years have your graduation from
school you are ready to start your own thing. The graphs in this chart [1]
match my experience. People doing a lot of the founding are in their 30's.

Up until you're the founder though, success or failure is rarely on you, its
on the founders. And even then depending on how it failed well that can
actually be a positive if it was shooting for the stars and only making it to
the outskirts of the solar system.

~~~
keithwarren
Your story in the 30s feels about right. I am 34 and just now starting to
really get serious about founding something. I think the experience of working
for 15+ years yet still having the drive to achieve is a pretty good potion
for success. Would love to find some stats that break down startup
success/failure rates with delineation like age of the founder.

------
MechanicalTwerk
Thinking out loud here...I'm sure this will get downvoted. I've never met PG
or Sam - this comes only from videos I've watched online - but it seems not
only the way they speak, but their mannerisms as well, are eerily similar. I
doubt this is because Sam is mimicking PG or vice versa. Some of it I'm sure
is due to the fact that in many videos they're just giving the standard pitch
about YC's mission which is bound to sound similar.

I don't quite know what to make of it. I can hear my Organizational Behavior
professor from college yelling "Group think! Group think!" or some bs like
that but I was never a huge fan of that stuff. It certainly doesn't stand out
as much as people who have picked up Zuck's habits. Ever hear anyone begin the
answer to any question (literally does not matter what the question is or how
it is posed) with "Right, so...". You can be sure their youtube history is
riddled with Zuck interviews.

I know it's not isolated to tech and every industry faces this phenomenon. It
just makes me cringe and I wish it wasn't so prevalent.

~~~
larrys
From my experience people tend to parrot the mannerisms of people that they
emulate and vice versa. Or maybe spend much time around. No time to find
support for this but I'm sure there are numerous studies that say the same.

Paul has a great deal of repect for Sam and Sam for Paul.

Not to mention that people are probably going to be more likely to support
people that _are like them_ in one way or another. I know when I get a phone
call I tend to like people who talk fast, don't mess around with niceties (to
me "how are you doing" is a complete waste of time) and get right to the
point. Others of course don't. [1]

That said I don't know if your point is correct or not but it wouldn't
surprise me if it was.

Starting a sentence with "so" is a crutch that I started to notice people
using several years ago. That's clearly something that they pick up when
surrounded in a community of others doing the same.

[1] A bit of selling is always like modem negotiation. Usually it's a good
idea to parrot the behavior of the person you are trying to sell to. If they
talk slow you talk slow. If they talk fast you talk fast. In general of course
always exceptions.

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staunch
If YC's goal is to find the next Dropbox it makes sense that they fund ~3% of
applicants. If their goal is to get more people starting startups it makes no
sense. So this seems like a case where we should look at what they do, not
what they say.

~~~
timtamboy63
Yeah, that confused me. Sam says he wants to help more people who wouldn't
usually start startups, start startups, and he says that YC is the best way to
do that. I very much doubt that people who aren't determined to start a
startup would get into YC (he says so himself when he states that YC looks for
determined founders).

~~~
edmack
There are two separate parts to this: One is admitting people you deem most
likely to succeed. The second is reaching out, enthusing and supporting people
from a wide range of backgrounds so that they apply and know how to be
successful. This is a good approach, the alternative is positive
discrimination.

------
emiliobumachar
"One of the surprises for me, personally - I would have said a while ago that
I thought intelligence was the most important characteristic of founders, but
I'm now sure that that's wrong, and that determination is the most important
thing."

pg says that a lot:
[http://paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html](http://paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html)

"I now have enough experience with startups to be able to say what the most
important quality is in a startup founder, and it's not what you might think.
The most important quality in a startup founder is determination. Not
intelligence-- determination"

------
w1ntermute
The comments on the CNN Money page almost universally negative, and almost all
based on misunderstandings or sheer ignorance. I wonder how much longer the
tech industry can ignore the inevitable backlash from growing inequality in
this country.

~~~
theorique
As long as the backlash is based on ignorance and misinformation, why is there
a time limit on the ability for the industry to "ignore the haters"?

~~~
w1ntermute
As inequality grows (which it is), people become more irrational in their
hatred. Those who are able to harness machines to increase their own value
will be resented by those who are being replaced by machines.

~~~
melindajb
that's correct. It's not like the mobs that put the aristocracy in the
guillotine in France were logical, rational, or even educated. Not intending
to be dramatic, just an example of how bad it could get.

~~~
theorique
Eek, time to hire a bodyguard and driver and move to a gated community. South
African style.

~~~
melindajb
or you know, fix the problem.

~~~
theorique
Well, sure, but in the meantime ... don't want to face M. Guillotin!

------
determinant
Well, the arguments in the thread so far aside, I thought the reminder that
being determined was important.

When you're sitting around in a room at 3AM in the morning in front of the
glow of a monitor slaving away on code with no paycheck in sight, random
inspirational tidbits on the internet make a difference -- particularly from
people on the side of success. Even with funding, sometimes those 3AM silent
moments can be scary.

------
happy_pen
> "How do we convince that brilliant engineer that has the idea he's really
> passionate about, that can change the world, to start a startup and not go
> work as an engineer at a big company?"

I like the thought behind it, but it seems a liiiitle bit ingenuous to say it
like that because success usually constitutes being acquired later on by the
supposed "big company" and VC's making a lot of money.

~~~
chadwickthebold
Right. I wonder if Silicon Valley types will ever be able to move away from
the faux-altruistic mindset and just acknowledge that they are interested in
making more money than a single person could ever comfortably spend in 10
lifetimes. And that's not a bad thing! And maybe the world becomes a slightly
better place in the process, but there's just such a disconnect right now
between what they say and what they end up doing.

~~~
paulbaumgart
There are two types of altruism:

1\. The desire to perform win-win, wealth-creating transactions.

2\. The desire to redistribute wealth from yourself to people who ascribe
greater utility to that wealth.

I think what you're objecting to is Type 1 Altruists pretending to be Type 2
Altruists. Although I can't fault you for that, keep in mind that both types
of altruism are utility-promoting, and that you can't have Type 2 without Type
1. :)

~~~
001sky
Type (1) 'altruism' has various flavours.

Two oligarchs colluding is one.

Selling out to olligarchs may be another.

Both of these seem to be increasing "perceptions"

Of Silicon Valley's ~morality.

~~~
paulbaumgart
Yeah, "win-win" does not imply "wealth-creating". Negative externalities can
cancel out the wealth creation or even push it into the negative. However, a
lot of people who talk about wanting to "change the world" do genuinely want
to make the world wealthier.

------
adamzerner
These are all things that we know already. Does the fact that it was covered
by CNN Money really make it front page worthy?

~~~
wtmcc
I’m very interested to see how the mainstream press covers something I
understand well. Gives me a input → output pair to train my model of the
press’s lens on the world. It’s also interesting to see how the public reacts
to such a thing.

------
7Figures2Commas
"How do we convince that brilliant engineer that has the idea he's really
passionate about, that can change the world, to start a startup and not go
work as an engineer at a big company?"

Silicon Valley's engineer fetish is inane. Most early-stage web startups
simply need CRUD applications that work at limited scale. Commodity-level web
developers can build these applications.

What is not a commodity, in order of importance:

1\. Domain expertise.

2\. Product development/management.

3\. User experience.

I'm sure lots of people would disagree, but you can test this. Go out and try
to find the following:

1\. Somebody who has worked in an industry for more than 5 years, knows it
inside and out, and has relationships that can be leveraged for sales and
business development.

2\. An experienced product manager.

3\. A proven UI/UX person capable of designing quality experiences around
moderately complex workflows.

4\. A PHP or Rails developer who can build a working application if given a
reasonable spec and design assets.

#4 is not your problem. Most of the time, this person will be the easiest to
locate and cheapest to acquire.

