
Two teens cold called Sam Altman and became the youngest founders to join YC - rmason
https://mic.com/articles/183384/these-2-teens-cold-called-sam-altman-and-became-the-youngest-founders-ever-accepted-to-y-combinator#.S2dmImRfT
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tellurius
"But since they’ve gotten settled, Ghodsi and Stokic live pretty low-key
lives. Their combined four parents rotate visits, and the two boys rarely
leave the house. “We all live upstairs, then we go into the basement every day
to work,” Stokic said.

And their work schedule is punishing. “On a typical day, we wake up, get
dressed, do email (my morning ritual is to get to inbox zero), answer work
requests, eat, work, then go to bed,” Ghodsi said. “Sometimes we might have
dinner with someone or go to a YC event, but we’re not in San Francisco to
socialize. We want to take advantage of this time to focus everything on the
business. We don’t have a personal life.”

We’re not in San Francisco to socialize. We don’t have a personal life.”

The pair have made friends — mostly other YC founders 10 to 20 years their
senior. They both said that there’s a lot of camaraderie within their class
and that it’s helpful to talk to others who can relate to the stress of
building a business, no matter what age they are.

Ghodsi said being so young has given them somewhat of a competitive edge.

“A lot of younger people reach out to us and want to work with us,” Ghodsi
said. “We have a whole network of young devs and designers [who] want to work
with us and will do it for much cheaper than grown-ups doing that job. We had
someone do our site that cost a 20th of what it would cost normally, for
instance, because the guy was only 14 years old. A lot of teens feel like
they’re not being taken seriously, so when they see what we’re doing they want
to be part of it.”"

This sounds exactly like peak YC. I'm going to short Paul Graham tonight.

Two 14-year-olds make themselves and other tweens subservient to Samuel Altman
in pursuit of success by building a browser extension 24/7 that is supposed to
supersede Salesforce? And they're not even adults, so they legally can't even
own anything? Does anybody catch a whiff of, I don't know, child slavery?

Yeah, woo, kids! You managed to underpay someone 20x because they're just 14
and offered themselves right up to you! That's sustainable and will teach you
about properly paying your workers.

What could realistically be next? Toddlers working grueling hours "hustling"
in a factory assembling batteries for Elon?

Does nobody else see this as out of control?

Incidentally, I usually only see articles like this when there's a serious
problem with what's being described.

~~~
dctoedt
> * Does anybody catch a whiff of, I don't know, child slavery?*

No more so than when other, equally-driven teens focus on, say, basketball or
chess or music or figure-skating.

~~~
SimonPStevens
Difference is a driven teenager focusing on basketball doesn't have other
teenagers stitching new basketballs and trainers for them on the cheap for 18
hours a day.

(Not saying I agree with the GP here, it's clearly not actual slavery, but
it's got a bit of a bad smell to it. I'd want to be cautious about it, that it
doesn't get out of control in the wrong way. There are probably child labour
laws that apply, and that's not the kind of area I would want to see
'disrupted' in a typical startup style.)

~~~
vanattab
"Difference is a driven teenager focusing on basketball doesn't have other
teenagers stitching new basketballs and trainers for them on the cheap for 18
hours a day."

You sure about that? I have never been in a factory that makes basketballs but
I have seen the workers who make basketball shoes.

