
Paul Graham spills: Why some companies get his cash and others don't - rhartsock
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219377
======
ccc3
_Knowing the business. If we ask a bunch of questions and they have the
answers at their fingertips because they understand the domain really well,
that's a good sign._

An old boss of mine is a design judge for a student engineering competition.
Often times he will ask a team for a specific piece of information about their
project, only to have the team pull out a giant binder and start shuffling
through looking for the answer. At this point he tells them "If I ask you to
tell me your girlfriends phone number and you pull out your phone book and
start searching for it, you're probably not in love"

I think the same sentiment applies here

~~~
corin_
I love the comparison, but I would imagine that due to mobile phones and
contact lists, it's quite possible to be in love without knowing any phone
numbers.

Personally I know the numbers of the (at a guess) 20 people I call most often,
but I always assumed that, in 2011, I'm the exception not the rule.

Not particularly relevant, his point stands either way, just interested to
know if other people on HN still find themselves memorising phone numbers.

~~~
Jebdm
The only numbers I know are the ones that haven't changed since before I was a
teenager (basically just my parents' numbers and 911), my own Google Voice
number, and Bing 411. That's partially because I can always look up numbers in
my contacts, on Facebook, or online, and partially because I make phone calls
less than once a week.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I don't bother remembering a phone number, unless calling that number will
result in the person on the other end bailing me out of jail.

So far, 100% success rate.

~~~
lanstein
wrt being bailed out of jail?

------
iqster
"But if you start discarding determination, you very quickly get an
ineffectual and perpetual grad student.": Love this line!

~~~
pg
There are a few transcription errors in this. What I actually said was
"ineffectual perpetual grad student."

~~~
Shamiq
I don't understand the difference between the version with and the version
without "and" other than pedantic correctness of the quotation itself.

 _EDIT:Fixed typos._

~~~
klochner
"pedantic", not to be pedantic

~~~
Shamiq
Fixed. Thanks.

------
6ren
It's nice and concise.

> If you imagine someone with 100 percent determination and 100 percent
> intelligence, you can discard a lot of intelligence before they stop
> succeeding.

How much? What percentage lobotomy are we talking about?

I totally agree btw: provided you are focussed on meeting a need ("make
something _people want_ "), and are willing to iterate trial-and-error (that's
the determination part), massive intelligence isn't required: the inside of
your software doesn't need to be great; and it doesn't need to implemen some
fundamentally new technology; it's what it _does_ that counts.

> Or when Google started, there were eight to 10 successful established search
> engines already...

I read a great interview (maybe a co-founder of tripod...?) who went through
the evolution of search engines over a decade, each time saying that it was
too late to enter the field, and playfully finishing with "[of course, now
with google, it really is too late]". I've searched and searched for this but
can't find it - anyone recognize it?

~~~
rfzabick
> I read a great interview (maybe a co-founder of tripod...?) who went through
> the evolution of search engines over a decade, each time saying that it was
> too late to enter the field, and playfully finishing with "[of course, now
> with google, it really is too late]". I've searched and searched for this
> but can't find it - anyone recognize it?

Well, I guess it's not too late to enter the search field, then.

------
zbruhnke
Interesting article that I think most of the people who apply to YC already
understand (Hopefully)

As someone who does not have a co-founder and has now applied for the second
time I have decided I am moving to the bay area in June whether I get into YC
or not and I am either going to find a co-founder to continue with or go to
work at another startup while retaining my rights to the work on this project
until I meet some more interesting people interested in working long hours for
low pay and having lots of fun while doing it.

I cant imagine my life any other way but in a culture where I am creating
every day, life is just not the same for me otherwise and working a 9 to 5
like my parents did when i was growing up has never been an option as far as I
am concerned.

~~~
blhack
What are you working on right now, Zach?

Why not start living the crazy-startup-founder lifestyle today? That's what
I'm trying to do. [1]The time I spend at my current job is like sleeping to
me. It's time during a 24 hour period that I just plain will not get back. I
have to do it or I will die.

But the hours I spend not sleeping are hours that I spend reading, and
hacking, and writing, and more reading, and more hacking.

As much as I'd prefer the weather (and the availability of coffee) in the Bay
Area to the weather in Phoenix, I can't make the move happen right now, so I'm
just doing the "crazy hours" thing anyway :)

[1]: I just want to clarify that I don't mean I'm slacking off at my job, if
anything, being in "work" mode 100% of the time, as well as having a passion
for learning new stuff has _benefited_ my employer. When I say "sleeping", I
just mean something that I don't have a choice about doing.

~~~
zbruhnke
I am working on my current startup idea, right now it is simply a side
project. I work for myself as it is so sleep is certainly a commodity in my
life. I am hacking just about all day every day and enjoying the heck out of
it.

unfortunately I am in Louisiana and with a shortage of hackers to network with
here moving to the bay area just seems to make sense for my work as well as my
sanity :)

~~~
zbruhnke
unfortunately no ... no hackerspace, no local coders to speak of really
(probably less than 20 programming jobs in out city of 250,000 people)

most of those are older married guys to boot. I started early and honestly had
no idea you could even make a living doing this so i just did it for fun and
kind of accidentally built something people wanted.

Basically now that I have done that and I realize what is possible as a hacker
and in business I plan on repeating, hopefully on a larger scale

~~~
zbruhnke
What I was referring to was a company I have already sold.

It just happens to be what made me realize you could make a living writing
software.

Unfortunately I am still under an NDA with the first exit so all I can really
say is that it was mostly sharepoint plugins in the legal industry. What I
work on now is completely at my discretion and I only do what I like, most of
what I do these days is for fun and for the experience.

I have done some work lately for political campaigns and businesses(custom
robo-calling apps, calendaring systems for a group of sleep clinics, a product
and inventory management system for a manufacturing company etc) but thats
just how I make money to pay the day by day bills, my projects are things I am
passionate about and love to do, I guess I feel like moving to the bay area
would help me get away from the stuff im doing now since I will know less
people and I think it would force me to build something I truly WANT to work
on instead of constantly accepting projects because there is good money in it
and the people know me.

------
VaedaStrike
To be concise is more indicative of mastery rather than proficiency. You can
understand something very well and be able to navigate your way through your
own domain of expertise at whim. But if you can do that AND also communicate
your domain to those for whom your domain is horribly foreign then you've
demonstrated that you've not merely mastered the domain but that you have a
grasp on a more foundational framework that translates to virtually limitless
perspectives.

Proficiency is to navigate your world, Mastery is to successfully guide a
complete alien through that world and have them see it, even if just dimmly,
with the eyes of a native.

~~~
Jebdm
I don't think that what you're calling mastery and proficiency are matters of
degree like you seem to be expressing. Ability to communicate can be
completely separate from understanding, because (particularly if you're of
above-average intelligence) most people don't understand things the same way
that you do.

~~~
VaedaStrike
I don't think that the underlying inherent knowledge that accompanies the
capacity to successfully transmit understanding can be set apart from a more
complete understanding.

For example if you can produce any number of outcomes in a single language but
lack the capacity to do the same things in another language there's a level of
abstraction that you simply have not witnessed which itself gives greater
dimension to the fundamental capacities that are being exercised.

If all you know is English, even if you speak it very very very well you can
go your whole life missing out on seeing language itself rather than just a
one dimensional perspective on a single language. You can have all the parts
held in theory but until you can see equivalents in another language in action
you lack understanding of English.

The mere capacity to communicate something real demands an empathy that speaks
to experience on a higher level. If you can't, in some degree of abundance,
find analogous material from which you can more clearly communicate your realm
of knowledge to the uninitiated then it says something about the true depth of
your knowledge.

Just as you can't get real depth perception without a plurality of vistas
neither can you truly see what you're doing unless you have experience, and
thereby the capacity for empathy and making links with that empathy, from far
outside of your field of focus.

------
shawndumas
Printable Link: <http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/printthis/219377.html>

------
rch
True: "If you really understand something, you can say it in the fewest words,
instead of thrashing about."

~~~
Jebdm
Not necessarily. My friend and cofounder is one of the smartest people I know,
but even when he talks about things I know he is an expert at (as demonstrated
by his skill), he's often a bit verbose.

Personally, I can generate concise statements (and I'm good at it when I try),
but the first couple of times I verbalize an idea I'm usually somewhat
verbose. I make an explicit effort to figure out a concise way to say things
once I've noticed that I'll probably be expressing the same idea again (and
when I write). Perhaps other people become significantly more concise over
time without effort, but I'd estimate my baseline compression rate is only
something like 10% (whereas when I explicitly compress I can often get 30% or
better).

I think the difference is that some people think very verbally and linearly,
whereas I tend to think more visually and abstractly. A lot of the time, I
have to translate the ideas in my head from these somewhat amorphous concepts
or visual ideas into English (or German, or code, or whatever).

~~~
btam
What you're missing is that PG says "can." When you're in a ten-minute
interview that could change your life forever, you're going to be concise when
possible.

That being said, I don't believe that one's 'natural' verbosity has any
correlation with intelligence. Minds aren't that simple.

~~~
Jebdm
Sure; in the particular context of a ten minute interview, you'll have
prepared and it ought to be relatively easy to be concise most of the time.
But if they throw you a curveball, then I don't think it ought to reflect
negatively on you if you're a bit verbose (though it might reflect negatively
on you that you didn't anticipate whatever the question was).

I replied because the quote was taken out of context, and I don't think that
the idea applies in the general case.

------
VaedaStrike
To put it concisely :)

A demonstration of empathy that translates to real communication with the
particular lay person you are engaging with regard to your domain of expertise
shows mastery rather than mere proficiency.

~~~
grncdr
Agreed, the important part about being concise is not that you can boil down a
complex idea into a short statement, but that you can give the questioner the
information relevant to them. When there is too much relevant information to
be concise, that is in itself a relevant (and concise) answer, the art is
giving the questioner just enough information to ask another question.

Personally I find doing that sort of thing _extremely_ difficult, and doing it
in real-time as part of a verbal conversation orders of magnitude more so.

------
Ruudjah
> What do you look for? Determination. When we started, we thought we were
> looking for smart people, but it turned out that intelligence was not as
> important as we expected. If you imagine someone with 100 percent
> determination and 100 percent intelligence, you can discard a lot of
> intelligence before they stop succeeding. But if you start discarding
> determination, you very quickly get an ineffectual and perpetual grad
> student.

This is awesome.

------
gerner
a great related article at Wired:
[http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/what-is-success-
tr...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/what-is-success-true-grit/)
what PG calls determination I think Wired (quoting Angela Duckworth) calls
"grit"

~~~
gerner
and the survey measuring how gritty you are is here:
[http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/17-item%2520Grit%2...](http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/17-item%2520Grit%2520and%2520Ambition.040709.pdf)

~~~
kenjackson
Clicked it, it didn't work, gave up, moved on.

~~~
gerner
sorry, here's the page that holds three surveys:
<http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/gritscale.htm>

------
kchronis
When an entrepreneur is determined and passionate they will find a way to
succeed. Without both of those, the "intelligent" individual will just move on
to another idea or company.

------
joelrunyon
Great line & sentiment --> "And you can see where that line is? Well, this is
why we pick based on founders."

------
RobMcCullough
Tried to read but I am distracted by all the clutter!

------
clistctrl
As a stupid, but determined person this gives me hope :D

~~~
rokhayakebe
Well you need to be a bit stupid to want to start a business. You would be
considered stupid if someone told you you have a 5% chance at every kissing
this girl, yet you decide to spend the next 3 years of your life pursuing her
and her only. This is exactly what we do.

~~~
cperciva
_You would be considered stupid if someone told you you have a 5% chance at
every kissing this girl, yet you decide to spend the next 3 years of your life
pursuing her and her only._

If that girl is worth more than 20x as much to you as any other girl, a 5%
chance is worth it.

~~~
jacoblyles
Most people have some risk aversion. For example, few people would trade $10
million for a 10% chance at $100 million.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Interesting. I am assuming you would. Can you briefly explain your reasoning?

~~~
marvin
Unless you really, really need 100 million, no reasoning will make that a good
bet. The expected value is 10 million, and since that's what you're putting at
stake, you have nothing to gain. Whereas the utility value of a guaranteed 10
million, assuming you're not very rich already, is huge. It's more than an
average lifetime of hard work.

------
jacoblyles
Old news.

