

Transcript: Paul Graham in Conversation with Nathan Blecharczyk - bnjs
http://www.bnjs.co/transcript-paul-graham-in-conversation-with-nathan-blecharczyk

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pitchups
Great interview that reinforced some of PG's ideas that I am familiar with
from his essays. The one that intrigues me the most though is that all really
great ideas look like crazy ideas to begin with. While very counter-intuitive
this seems to be true and is borne out by the data from actually funding
hundreds of startups. [1]

So here is a question for PG. At one point in the interview he says that the
majority of applications that YC gets seem to be terrible ideas.

 _" And so I have seen huge numbers of terrible ideas, you know? No one has
seen more terrible startup ideas in the world, I'm sure."_

If [1] is true, wouldn't that imply that this set of terrible ideas, may in
fact contain a few gems - some really great ideas? In fact, based on the
analysis and data, one could even argue that the magnitude of the effect (how
good the idea is) may be proportional to how bad it sounds in the beginning!
So in selecting startups to fund, how does YC distinguish between terrible
ideas that would actually be terrible, vs terrible ideas that would actually
turn out to be great. Maybe there is no simple way except a gut feeling, or
based on how good the founders are. Or maybe the only way to really find out
is to actually build the product and let the market decide?

[1] [http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html)

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bnjs
It's possible to make the case that there's a difference between crazy ideas
and terrible ideas.

