

Y Combinator - prakash
http://adam.blog.heroku.com/past/2008/3/26/y_combinator/

======
gruseom
_they pop out thinking, talking, and building companies in a way that is
remarkably similar to the way that PG would_

Hmm. I'm all in favor of what YC is doing, but this makes me decidedly uneasy.

Groups with a charismatic leader have a tendency to devolve into personality
cults. In my experience, to avoid this requires conscious, ongoing effort on
the part of the leader (and enough of the followers) to stay aware of such
tendencies and counteract them. First and foremost that means staying aware of
these tendencies in oneself.

I don't mean to be harsh on the author of the post. I don't think he was being
cultish, just enthusiastic, and that's good. But the risk is a very real one.
It would be wise to alloy that enthusiasm with something else.

~~~
pg
It makes me uneasy too. Boy, did I cringe reading those bits.

One thing that will protect us against YC getting cultish is that the
qualities you'd want in a cult follower and a startup founder are exactly
opposite. To succeed, startup founders have to be very determined and
independent-minded. And since we want the startups we fund to succeed, those
are the people we try to find.

Basically, we're looking for more Sam Altmans, and Sam Altman is no one's
follower.

~~~
ivankirigin
Give credit where it is due. You're an excellent salesman. Working on pitches
for Demo Day helps the startups express clearly what they're working on. But,
to the ear accustomed to your style, you can literally hear PG talking in
other presentations.

That isn't cultish. That is taking good advice. YC is largely about giving
good advice and putting people together.

This is _nothing_ like the cultish following your essays and sometimes this
community gets.

Remember the drama around the applications on this site last time? People took
that way to seriously. And each of your essays spawns dozens of comments
equivalent to "zomg, smartest thing evar".

But these two negative facets of this community don't actually make it into
the YC program. That means you're choosing well, I suppose.

I firmly believe the #1 reason YC is good is the quality of the other founders
and the alumni founders network.

------
alabut
When you put it like that, PG sounds like John Galt.

~~~
as
Closer to the truth than you realize. The writings of both Paul Graham and Ayn
Rand are successful because they clearly articulate what a large preexisting
minority is already vaguely thinking, so the writing ends up becoming a
rallying point for kindred minds to find each other. You can see what a
powerful force this is in Rand's case, as it made her successful despite her
atrocious fiction.

I was reading a thread in an Objectivist forum once where someone had posted a
link to an online Myers-Briggs personality test. Out of 16 types, 90% of the
members were the same one: INTJ. Personality is the major determinate of
philosophy. I know I enjoy reading PG's essays because it's like reading an
older, more experienced version of myself.

~~~
alabut
"Closer to the truth than you realize."

Apparently so - I wrote the initial comment based on my loose recollection of
reading the book a few years ago. Looking up the big speech the Galt character
gives in Atlas Shrugged, it's amazing how much of it relates. This paragraph
in particular reads like it could have been pg's battle cry against soul-
sucking faceless corporations that demand all of your creativity and trust
none of your judgement:

"While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men of justice, of
independence, of reason, of wealth, of self-esteem — I beat you to it, I
reached them first. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and
the nature of that moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently
generous to grasp. I showed them the way to live by another morality — mine.
It is mine that they chose to follow."

[http://compuball.com/Inquisition/AynRand/galtspeech_pmark_br...](http://compuball.com/Inquisition/AynRand/galtspeech_pmark_broken.htm)

For the less literary-minded, Fight Club has also been inspiration for a few
of my friends in a similar way.

~~~
davidw
I think the John Galt speech is only something that Steve Yegge could have
penned, if the length is anything to go by.

~~~
alabut
The link I put up is an aggregation of the various speeches, starting with the
first big one. The page doesn't do a very good job of clearly dividing between
them, just with super subtle references to page numbers in the margins.

~~~
davidw
(It's a joke. I read the book, and the Galt speech goes on and on and on, like
some of Yegge's writing)

------
serhei
<http://www.rubinghscience.org/memetics/dawkinsmemes.html>

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hooande
I posted a lengthy comment on the site. Summary: YC people rock, I can't wait
to join you.

------
andreyf
What would YC be like if only YC founders (and "famous people") can
comment/vote, or their votes count as 10x of everyone else?

