
Daniel Gross of Apple leaves to become Y Combinator’s newest partner - dwynings
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/10/daniel-gross-of-apple-leaves-to-become-y-combinators-newest-partner/
======
pw
There does seem to be something interesting about how less successful* YC
alumni now seem to be becoming partners. And, of course, Sam Altman himself is
the ultimate case of this.

And, on the one hand, it certainly makes sense. All of these people have been
through the YC process and used it to achieve a measure of success. Also, the
Drew Houston's of the world are generally available to be partners precisely
because of their success (they have companies to run, after all).

On the other hand, it can seem a little incestuous, and that's certainly
something to guard against given the nature of tech in general. Too often it
seems like organizations become victims of their own success precisely through
this sort of "inbreeding".

*: "less successful" meant very charitably as they're only less successful when compared to i.e. Dropbox and are certainly more successful than most YC founders, let alone all founders.

~~~
PhilWright
I have to say I have been baffled why Sam Altman is held in such high regard
by YC and its community. He co-founded Loopt in the first batch of YC. It was
sold years later for less than the money the investors had put into it. So it
basically failed and lost money. Except for the co-founders, they walk away
with a few million each. Nice pay for at best an average performance.

He then becomes CEO of YC. But YC is already a well established and successful
outfit at that point so there is hardly any risk involved. The chief
requirement is just to not screw up a good thing. So far he has managed to do
that.

Along the way he makes many more millions because as a YC insider he gets to
invest at the earliest stage for the best looking start-ups.

I have nothing against the man and I do not begrudge him his millions but lets
stop thinking he is a genius. He is an average entrepreneur that has had an
amazing slice of luck by being in on YC at its start and making the most of
it. I'm sure he is a smart, hard working and a nice bloke. But he is not a
genius.

~~~
zach
The shortcomings of this noxious but common "prove you're a genius by your
ROI" attitude is exactly why Y Combinator has been as successful as it has
been.

There is no mystery here. PG, JL, TLB and RTM obviously thought highly of many
people when entering YC, even more highly when they got to see them up close,
and even more so as they worked closely with them. They see their value. And
that's why Sam Altman is the CEO of YC.

Believe it or not, the YC partners and leadership are actually better judges
of ability than the market. It could never work otherwise.

~~~
conanbatt
> Believe it or not, the YC partners and leadership are actually better judges
> of ability than the market. It could never work otherwise.

Doesnt match

> It was sold years later for less than the money the investors had put into
> it.

~~~
robotresearcher
No contradiction. YC likes Altman more than the market liked Altman's company.
YC sees more potential than was manifest in that startup.

I have no opinion on his brilliance, just pointing out there's no mismatch.

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tasoeur
Good for him. I personally got to work with Daniel in the past (Apple) and I
must say that it was not a great experience. I know it's never easy for acqui-
hires to get into the company culture and try to make the transition happen
smoothly... but in his case it was more of an attitude and personality clash.
He did get promoted though so I'm sure despite his attitude, he had the good
habit to get stuff done!

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simonsarris
Lately Apple stories on HN all seem to have comment chains that are isomorphic
to this exchange:

Guy 1: Jesus Christ what a red flag at Apple, should we be worried?

Guy 2: Apple makes a superbillion dollars therefore concern is impossible.

It's very weird to see over and over. It's like the way pro-life and pro-
choice people talk past each other in their reasoning.

~~~
audemars
I'm not sure how isomorphic the comments are. Perhaps I'm just not
understanding your meaning correctly. Do you mean to say that the opinion of
Guy 1 and Guy 2 are the same in essence?

------
_1
How much talent is Apple losing today?

~~~
nodesocket
As an Apple shareholder, there have been multiple red flags in the last 6
months, this is yet just another.

\- Missing deadlines of product realeases.

\- Seriously getting product design wrong and missing what users want. See
Apple Watch, See iPhone 7, See MacBook Pro.

\- Tim Cook being passive and an operations guy with no founder vision or
drive.

\- Failure to acquire new and innovate companies, instead doubling down on
"strange" investments such as Didi Chuxing, and Softbank (both 1 billion).

I've been a huge Apple supporter and "fanboy", but the signs are starting to
really add up. Soon enough the finance guys will start to see the patterns as
well and there may be a significant correction.

~~~
icanhackit
> Missing deadlines of product realeases.

Remember the white iPhone 4? Hell, I remember the time during the switch from
PowerPC to Intel meant you couldn't get your hands on an iMac for a month or
two (late 2005).

> [...] missing what users want. See Apple Watch, See iPhone 7, See MacBook
> Pro.

Recently purchased the iPhone 7 after having stuck with a 5S for three years.
I've got to say it's an excellent phone and I don't understand the whingeing.
You get headphones and an adapter in box which works fine with my other
headphones, though I stick with the supplied lightning cable ones. The shallow
depth of field pictures it takes makes me feel like I've got an SLR with a
prime lens in my pocket wherever I go.

I've played with the new MBP and it felt more Star Trek than any touchscreen
laptop I've used. The NVMe storage in it largely negates the need for more
than 16gb RAM.

> Tim Cook being passive and an operations guy with no founder vision or
> drive.

I'd say his passion for user privacy and commentary on his sexuality has shown
him to be someone who cares for peoples rights. A good attitude to have when
you're the CEO of a tech giant.

> doubling down on "strange" investments such as Didi Chuxing, and Softbank
> (both 1 billion).

Softbank completed a $31 Billion purchase of ARM recently. Still thinking
Apple shouldn't have put a $1 billion shoe in the door? If memory serves they
were also the first major distributor of iPhones in Japan when NTT Docomo were
more interested in pushing flip phones.

~~~
nodesocket
> I'd say his passion for user privacy and commentary on his sexuality has
> shown him to be someone who cares for peoples rights.

He's not running for office he running a public company. As a shareholder
those things are not priorities, but to him they are. Thus the problem I have.

~~~
icanhackit
And so you ignored the larger point that he's more than capable of making
smart investments _like Softbank_ who now own ARM, similar to Apple's prior
investment in Imagination Technologies Group who design the GPUs for the
A-series SOCs. Apple was first out the door with a 64-bit ARM chip in a
smartphone - they need this investment to stay at the front of the pack. It
also helps to invest in a company that shuttles more iPhones than any other
distributor in a market as difficult and lucrative as Japan.

Getting back to my comment you quoted -- given the growing concern over user
privacy, being in the position where you can serve both users who care AND
those who don't is a very nice position to be in. His being gay while growing
up in a conservative state no doubt influenced his desire to protect users
privacy. The culture of the company is important if it's to attract new
talent.

------
gargarplex
With all due to respect to the prestige, draw, presumed, current, or pending
wild profitability, power and influence of YCombinator, why isn't anyone here
talking about Eddy Cue? Don't people leave managers, not employers? Is he too
much of an institution at Apple?

I am seriously disappointed by Apple's lack of effort into excellence at this
point. Personal example, I turned my iPhone settings into Swedish to help me
and there are clearly some problems with translation. Another example, not
listening to the needs of the developer community and failing to evolve its
Macbooks into computational powerhouses (maybe they are just hiding a next
generation of élite hardware – going to spin off a not-Macbook, smartly
staunch in the face of fear of cannibalizing their market. Yeah, maybe that's
coming...

Where is the guy who proved a phone could be smaller by tossing it into an
aquarium and drawing attention to the bubbles

Maybe I'm giving too much credit to the ghost of Steve Jobs. I feel like the
problem comes top-down. Without a leader to install the culture of excellence,
the culture degrades into memes of the culture, eventually signifying nothing.
We saw this through the return of Ray Dalio. Maybe Michael Dell will "Make
Dell Great Again" too? I think there's a small opportunity in a line of hats
that say "Make Apple Great Again"

No, but seriously: what's the deal with Eddy Cue?

~~~
astrange
If you don't like your iPhone translation, then file some bugs:
[http://bugreport.apple.com](http://bugreport.apple.com)

~~~
andreyf
I imagine most developers do, but his point stands. Here's the summary from my
latest:

> My two new MacBook Pros came with SIP disabled.

And the one before it:

> I reported a related bug (#19495560) where the FileVault on a brand new
> MacBook does not finish encrypting. I think this is a related bug, where,
> when switching between the tabs on the Security & Privacy pane of the System
> Preferences freezes the screen.

The majority of bugs I've filed are with brand new machines, and that's not
even counting all the UI sloppiness that isn't worth reporting. The machines
are usable, a heck of alot more so than I remember Windows or Linux being, but
the attention to having details right and having things always-work is
absolutely gone.

Just this week, I tried the new AirBuds in the store: connects magically, but
music app stops being able to do audio and needs restarting. Guy trying them
next to me can't get his to pair with his phone at all until he toggles
airplane mode off and on.

Earlier this weekend, needed to restart my phone for live photos to work
(photos was playing the first preview animation, but not the whole one, even
after restarting the app).

A few weeks back, a friend asks me to get the wifi password she typed into her
phone onto her laptop. Easy, right? Just walk her through setting up iCloud
keychain. Nope! Sync simply doesn't happen (yet? who knows!), and there's no
way to force it. Wasn't surprised, but still disappointed.

~~~
tonywastaken
I only see one bug number but four different bugs being described here.
Where's the rest?

------
asdfjaflswjafs
Given his age, how did Daniel Gross break into machine learning? i.e. where
did he learn the theory ? Is he purely self taught?

~~~
ryandrake
What's with the "given his age" part? Is he too young or too old to learn
something?

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
Most accomplished individuals in machine learning have obtained PhDs at one of
the leading academic research institutions. I think the OP was wondering if
Gross took a different route, since he seems on the younger side.

~~~
andreyf
What has he done with machine learning? He sounds like a good coder, but not
really an ML heavy-weight...

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CPLX
I really liked Greplin a lot, it was super useful for its time. I kind of lost
track of it after the Cue transition. Does it still exist? Does that product
category still exist even?

~~~
jaredsohn
When they were acquired there was talk in the press of integrating some of the
technology into Siri and/or the iWatch but I don't know what actually
happened.

------
saycheese
Unclear why the official YC press release is not the primary post for this
event:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13368446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13368446)

------
grandalf
I've met Daniel and Robby and was particularly impressed by Daniel. It's not a
surprise to me that YC chose him for this role.

------
jasonwilk
Congrats Daniel! All the best.

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CptJamesCook
edit: I'm deleting this thread. I don't want to hijack Daniel Gross's hiring
thread with negativity. Sorry.

~~~
emmett
You don't need partners great at scaling profitable companies from 100 to 500
employees.

You need partners who know how to help a company go from two to ten employees
and raise a first round of funding.

I'm a part-time partner, and I run a company with >500 employees, but I
basically draw entirely on my first 2-3 years of experience when giving
advice.

~~~
nickfromseattle
It would be interesting to hear about your experience making this transition,
how you did it and how you would have done it differently knowing what you
know now. Do you have any published content you can point to?

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mandelbulb
> Daniel Gross of Apple

Is this a modern nobility title? xD

------
wineisfine
Just big shots changing chairs.

