
The Ronco Principle - _pius
http://paulgraham.com/ronco.html
======
qeorge
This reminds me of _The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing_ [1], in a funny way
(bear with me).

In pricing, if you have features in common with other vendors then those
features are commodities and basically valueless. But the features you have
that no one else has - those make you priceless.

For example, S3's uptime record makes it a different product than e.g.,
DreamObjects, even though they are API compatible.

Similarly, while VCs are all providing the ultimate commodity product (dumb
money), its the features which no one else has that make investors like Ron
Conway priceless. There's plenty of other VCs, but they are not substitute
products for Ronco.

Finally, the way to find these unique, priceless features is to look for
extremes:

    
    
        - Cloud hosting with not just 99.99% uptime, but 100% uptime
        - Email inboxes with not just a lot of storage, but *unlimited* storage
        - Photos developed not just faster, but *instantly*
        - A VC with not just a great track record of doing the right thing, but a *perfect* record
    

And as a consumer, these are the companies you want to do business with: the
Rackspaces, the Ron Conways, and the Stripes of this world.

[1] If you read one business book this year, make it The Strategy and Tactics
of Pricing. If you don't think a book on pricing can change your life, you
haven't read this book. Protip: get an older edition and save a ton of dough.

~~~
brianbreslin
Qeorge, I also recommend Principles of Pricing by Vohra. I'm taking his class
right now at Kellogg, fascinating stuff.

[http://smile.amazon.com/Principles-Pricing-Analytical-
Rakesh...](http://smile.amazon.com/Principles-Pricing-Analytical-Rakesh-Vohra-
ebook/dp/B00H7WPE6E/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421788333&sr=1-1&keywords=principles+of+pricing)

~~~
qeorge
Thank you so much Brian! I'll start reading it right away.

The class sounds great as well, and I hope you enjoy it. If you find yourself
compelled to share anything in particular, I'd be very interested to hear it.
Maybe you could do a blog post?

------
air
"And yet he's a super nice guy. In fact, nice is not the word. Ronco is good."

So good he supports torture
[http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2014/12/09/ron-conway-
bla...](http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2014/12/09/ron-conway-blasts-sen-
feinsteins-torture-report/)

~~~
simon_
It is uncharitable and silly to believe that a good person could not have
those positions in good faith. You may disagree with it, but "torture is
sometimes permissible" is not an evil opinion held exclusively by evil people.

~~~
guelo
I think the only way it is possible to hold it "in good faith" is to be
unconsciously bigoted. That is, you don't realize you're a bigot, probably
because you haven't examined your underlying beliefs.

To see this most clearly, try to imagine a situation where you would find it
acceptable for an American soldier to be tortured by some foreign power.

~~~
throwawaytime
First, thank you for providing a thought experiment that challenged my own
beliefs on the topic. Something like that is rare.

Given the social climate surrounding the issue, it seemed appropriate to
switch to a throwaway. I'll strive to keep the discussion interesting and
thought-provoking.

I'd like to followup with you and get some insights. Thinking over your
example leads me to conclude, "There is no such thing as what's 'acceptable,'
only what's effective."

Do you feel that's true, or off the mark?

~~~
Devthrowaway80
Torture has been shown repeatedly to not be "effective" \- people will say
literally anything to get it to stop.

~~~
yummyfajitas
This makes it useless for getting a confession to a crime with no
corroborating evidence. However, if you have a method of independently
verifying the information you get, you can get useful information.

Note: I oppose torture, but effectiveness is orthogonal to my opposition.
Something can be effective and still evil.

------
cfontes
Well that is an interesting point of view.

My experience so far( early 30's) has been exactly the opposite, most
people/bosses I've meet that were successful in business were complete
assholes, with several nice people working for them exclusively for the money.

That has in fact made part of my life very miserable because I really don't
expect anything from anybody anymore. If been tricked/robbed/scammed so many
times by people I trusted that my trust is mostly gone for now, and I only
expect bad things from people when I depend on them for something. (If
something good happens it's awesome, but I don't count on it)

Maybe I trust people more than I should have done, maybe it's the place I
live... I don't know.

~~~
davemel37
Don't take this the wrong way, but if everyone you are encountering is
screwing you...you have some hard questions to ask yourself.

My experience has been that when someone "only expects bad things from people
when they depnd on them" it means one of 3 things.

1\. They have a hard time accepting responsibility and taking ownership of
their own problems.

2\. They are running with a really bad crowd, and need to go to the library to
make some new friends.

3\. They project an image that lets people walk all over them.

Everyone has problems that come up in their life, but if you haven't
experienced nice people as being the norm... there is a better that 66% chance
its something YOU ALONE CAN AND MUST CHANGE.

~~~
cfontes
Not taken, but don't get me wrong. I don't mean friends/family/coworkers. I've
got plenty of those that I can and have trusted.

I mean Bosses and people that I've done business with on a you pay me level.
In those cases there was almost nothing I could do besides filling a lawsuit
and spending large amounts of money, time and sanity. I settled with the
understanding that they had the upper hand and I was a fool for trusting my
money/time to them.

One case:

Owner "Shit you are leaving??? Who is going to do XXX? Can't you stay at least
until xxx so we can deliver xxx and save our asses? That is our only client
right now."

Me "Hum... I really need to start next week, but I will do my best"

I stayed for one month more that I needed in contract, my new employer was
pissed but agreed with it. In the end the Owner didn't pay me my leave that
was due and was agreed to be paid and delayed the pay of that last month for
15 days. I had to threaten them with a lawsuit to get that last month payment.

For me that is about people being scumbags.

But valid points nonetheless.

~~~
themodelplumber
That sucks. I thought I was the only guy who had to have those kinds of
experiences. :-)

In my case it was years ago, and since then my situation has improved
dramatically. The things that seemed to help were:

1) Identifying the kinds of people I worked well with in the past and pitching
those kinds of people on projects (I did some of this by learning the Meyers-
Briggs function stack, which unfortunately doesn't have an _axis of evil_ but
is otherwise helpful in finding new clients who are somewhat similar to
clients I liked in the past; ENFPs are a perennial favorite)

2) Identifying non-profits and other less rip-offy types of clients and
showing them how I could help them

3) Saving enough money that I didn't _have_ to work with any given client

4) Establishing firm policies like "You will pay 100% down if X and Y
conditions are not met or do not apply, or if the total is below $N; otherwise
50% down and 50% prior to delivery"

5) Doing background-checking on all new clients, especially if they have fired
one of my kind before (I usually call up the fired guy).

#4 really rides on your reputation, so you may wish to have references on hand
to give to potential clients.

I'm celebrating my ninth year as a solo freelancer in rural California and
things couldn't get much better, so I hope this helps you somehow.

~~~
cfontes
Thanks you. I will think about those points.

------
api
My albeit limited experience suggests to me that there's a U-shaped curve with
super-rich / powerful / "effective" people. One end of the curve is
"pathological sociopath," and the other is "extremely benevolent."

I don't have enough experience to tell you which side is higher than the
other, though the fact that we do not live in some kind of absolute hellhole
suggests that the curve is tipped toward the right (benevolence). Yet I do get
the impression that it's one extreme or another.

The sociopaths do tend to burn themselves out eventually though. There seems
to be some kind of what's effectively karma, which probably comes from
peoples' lies eventually catching up with them. It's overall better to be
benevolent.

~~~
bryanlarsen
If PG is right, then sociopath's will be fairly indistinguishable from nice
people.

True sociopath's don't care about your feelings, either positively or
negatively, they just care about advancing their own agenda.

If the best way to advance their own agenda is by being nice to people, then
that's what they'll do. That's what vegabook got mercilessly downvoted for
saying.

And as PG said, lies are really expensive, so smart sociopaths won't use them.

So maybe Ron Conway is a sociopath. But who cares why he's doing so much good?
What matters are the results, not the inner reasons.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I'd like to see more nuance to the argument.

What does 'nice' actually mean? It's famous for being a low-entropy word.

In fact not everyone agrees that Conway is 'nice', or that everything he does
and says is good:

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/09/eruption-over-sf-housing-
an...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/09/eruption-over-sf-housing-and-google-
breaks-out-at-next-big-thing-conference/)

Or even:

[http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2014/12/09/ron-conway-
twee...](http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2014/12/09/ron-conway-tweets-
support-of-cia-torture)

So it matters whether or not Conway or anyone is a sociopath, because IMO the
only useful definition of 'nice' is an inclusive one. The more inclusive, the
better.

Being a charming marketer while benefiting yourself, your network, and
primarily yourself and your network, doesn't make you nice, it makes you an
exemplary professional.

There _is_ a difference, and it's not a trivial one.

~~~
whiddershins
That Ron Conway SF housing debate clip is so mellow, I mean, only a west coast
millenial could call that an eruption. ;-)

But seriously, I am all for challenging the notion that anyone who defends
torture is "nice." However, if that is an example of Ron Conway angry, he
really is one of the nicest dudes I've ever seen. They are discussing a topic
that matters, and where ideas matter. Regardless of who is right, it is much
more "not nice" to allow flawed thinking to propagate in matters of public
policy, and shouting from the back of the room may be the "nicest" thing a
person could do. An asshole would just snicker to himself and count his money.

------
chollida1
This seems to be the follow up to
[http://paulgraham.com/mean.html](http://paulgraham.com/mean.html) where pg
refines his argument.

I'm glad he did, I felt that his "Mean people fail" essay to be one of his
weaker essays, and judging by the comments it got when it was released so did
pretty much everyone else on hacker news:)

I tend to agree with him that good people get further along in life. In my
industry, finance, I tend to see that the good people do much better than the
assholes, contrary to what hollywood would have you believe:)

I think the reason for this is similar to what pg pointed out, finance is a
very information and relationship driven business, the better caliber of
friendship you cultivate the more people there are who will give you the first
call, or preferential treatment on new issues.

~~~
abstractbill
My gut feeling is that personalities are not fixed, and there are feedback
cycles in action here. For example, I find it believable that the more
successful a person becomes, the less likely they are to feel a bunch of
emotions that might cause them to behave unkindly (e.g. desperation, jealousy,
and so on).

------
gcv
> But if Ron's angry at you, it's because you did something wrong.

An example of Ron Conway being angry at someone (video at the bottom of the
article): [http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/09/eruption-over-sf-housing-
an...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/09/eruption-over-sf-housing-and-google-
breaks-out-at-next-big-thing-conference/)

Disclaimer: I don't know enough about the personalities, politics, finances,
or economics involved to have a substantive opinion on the matter under
discussion.

------
pavpanchekha
This felt similar to me to the academic world. I'm a lowly graduate student,
but one thing I've been consistency surprised by is the way the most senior
people in the field are often the nicest. Sure—there are assholes everywhere.
But when you hear horror stories of a professor mistreating their advisees or
writing horrid reviews or submitting trash papers, they are often the junior
folk. Partly because this behavior doesn't pass muster in the community, and
so people who act this way don't get tenure; partly because senior professors
have tenure and thus less to lose by acting nice; and partly because, just as
I think in the startup world, being nice actually carries large benefits. In
fact, I might argue that recognizing the benefits of niceness—valuing future
rewards, trusting other persons—requires intelligence, so that maybe nicer
people are in fact more intelligent as well.

But maybe that is Berkson's paradox: I'm more likely to hear about mean or
successful researchers, so they appear anti-correlated even if they are in
truth independent.

~~~
calcsam
This is a general principle; the meanest people are, as pg once put it, "the
nervous middle classes" on a status hierarchy:

"Another reason kids persecute nerds is to make themselves feel better. When
you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down. Likewise, in any
social hierarchy, people unsure of their own position will try to emphasize it
by maltreating those they think rank below. I've read that this is why poor
whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks."

"If I remember correctly, the most popular kids don't persecute nerds; they
don't need to stoop to such things. Most of the persecution comes from kids
lower down, the nervous middle classes."

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

~~~
threatofrain
In this case, though, I would object to this idea of bullying being a bad
strategy. I think the general consensus of literature on adolescent bullying
in US and US-like countries, including some not, like Japan and China, is that
bullies are among the most popular people in the school context.

There are also studies showing that bullies experience protective effects
against some psychological issues, such as social anxiety and loneliness.

Also, both bystanders rate bullies as the most popular people, and they also
list them as the most _desirable_ people (victims do too, which is very
unintuitive).

Also very interesting: bullying behaves like a social position, with people
moving in and out as bully one year, but not the next, whereas victimhood is
more stable, like an identity, and may persist from school to school and to
online social contexts.

Here's what I'd like to know. Since I haven't read a shred of literature on
adult workplace bullying, I'm curious to see if _bystanders_ still behave the
same way. Because if they do, that means backstabbing, mudslinging, and office
politicking are still vibrant strategies, because it's bystanders who bring
the rewards of bullying. The people emote to the tyrant emperor their whims
regarding an office gladiator.

------
vegabook
Yes Mr Graham, many people are just "nice". It is weird that you sound so
surprised. Perhaps it would be worth moving out of the money circles.
Unfortunately, in my experience there is a correlation between those who are
genuinely nice, and the people who are wealthy. Afraid to say, the correlation
is negative. Ronco must be very nice indeed.

> _If you can 't tell who to be nice to, you have to be nice to everyone. And
> probably the only people who can manage that are the people who are
> genuinely good._

No, being nice to everyone is not being nice. It's being a liar. Nobody likes
everyone (though there are many kind souls - few in positions of power - who
try hard). The only people who are (superficially) nice to everyone are the
ones who are in it for themselves. And that's not nice.

------
brianlash
Anyone interested in reading more on this topic should check out Adam Grant's
Give and Take.

Incidentally, one of the interesting takeaways from the book is that if you
look at plot of people mapped to career success, you'll find that benevolent
givers dominate -both- ends of the distribution. The theory goes that those
who are in the left tail got there by being too preoccupied with others'
needs, to the exclusion of their own success. Conversely those in the right
tail got to where they are both by helping others and by consistently asking
others to help them. In the latter scenario these folks have harnessed
benevolence as a strategy for career growth, and the collective goodwill "out
there in the ether" nets out to measurable success over the long-run.

~~~
mrschwabe
Excellent summary and thank-you for the book recommendation.

The first chapter is conveniently available as a free PDF from the book's
site.

It seems like something for those people who are grinding away, doing good
work at a great value for their investor/employer/client/customer, but remain
underpaid and undervalued; a sort of self-defeating benevolence.

------
lpolovets
I've heard YC has an internal VC review database (somewhat alluded to in the
2nd footnote). I'm curious, has any consideration been given to making it
public or semi-public? Or at least to publish a list of "The X best-rated
VCs/seed funds/angels" every once in a while to gamify better behavior?

~~~
robg
Exactly my thought. The scatterplot he mentions in Footnote 1 seems uniquely
in their wheelhouse.

~~~
shillster
It is in their wheelhouse, but this information is probably deemed to be part
of the "secret sauce" which would be hard for any "information economy"
company to part with.

~~~
lpolovets
Agreed. That said, I think sharing a "top 50" list would be helpful to the
community + encourage good behavior for investors who want to get on the list,
but at the same time the full list would be even more valuable and would be
proprietary to YC and its alumni.

------
nsxwolf
I thought this was going to be about Ronco, as in Ron Popeil's infomercial
products company.

~~~
stevesearer
I definitely thought pg had written about the slogan, "Just Set It and Forget
It" before clicking through to the post.

------
orionblastar
Let me just state that like people with autism I have a mental illness that
affects the social part of my brain. It makes it hard to make friends as I
lack people and social skills. It gave me an advantage to make me high
functioning enough to learn programming at a young age and work with math and
science better than average.

I am not a mean person, when people get to know me I am nice. But I have few
friends because I lack social and people skills. I cannot seem to emotionally
connect with people and what friends I have are also with a high IQ that I
connect to intellectually.

When I worked, I worked with some mean people. They found high functioning
coworkers of mine and pretended to be their friend and then stabbed them in
the back and forced them to quit because they were competition. They took
credit for their work and then decided to target me next. Calling me a nerd
and geek, making fun of me, bullying and harassing me even with threats of
violence trying to force me to quit. I ended up stressed out and developed a
mental illness and was forced on disability.

Based on Linkedin those mean people who did all of that still have their jobs.
They have social skills and people skills and use it to manipulate people, and
then black-stab them and climb the corporate ladder of success. Until they
make it to management where they can bully and harass people to do their jobs.
All the while keeping their dark side hidden.

If you ever worked for Steve Jobs, you would say he was a jerk, he was abusive
to his engineers to get things done just right. He had anger problems too. But
he had the social skills and people skills to be well liked. There are a lot
of people like Steve Jobs out there.

I'll most likely never work again due to my mental illness, but I am not a
mean person, I don't treat people with disrespect, I don't bully and harass
them. But due to lacking people and social skills, I'll never have enough
friends to become a success.

~~~
puredemo
Sorry about your illness, but I don't understand why it would keep you from
ever working again?

~~~
orionblastar
After 911 there is a medical background check, once a company learns I am
mentally ill I get the rejection letter that says "overqualified" that rejects
me.

I had a hard time trying to find work, with a history of being mentally ill on
the records and my background. Most people hide it and don't see a doctor and
go undiganosed because of the social stigmas of being mentally ill.

I happen to suffer from schizoaffective disorder which is rare less than .05%
of the population has it. It is like bipolar and schizophrenia combined.

When I did have a job as soon as they learned I was mentally ill from my
communications, I was bullied, harassed, and picked on, and then eventually
fired when I had a panic attack from the stress.

I am sure if I found the right company that wouldn't treat me that way or
understand mentally ill people and don't let their employees pick on, bully,
and harass them.

I used to earn $150K/year as a programmer, but now they say that is too much
money to trust to a mentally ill person. In all honesty it was never about the
money, I just loved programming and happened to become good at it in Visual
BASIC and Active Server Pages, which are 13+ years out of date now. But I
still try to keep up and learn.

My wife doesn't want me to relocate, or else I've have worked for Google in
1999, and I might have avoided the stresses I had that made me mentally ill in
2001. So I am sort of stuck in St. Louis MO and what companies there are here
to work that don't like mentally ill people working for them. We tend to drive
up health care costs for their insurance and when they think of disabled
people they think of people in wheelchairs not the mentally ill. They tried to
justify firing be by having a software contractor work $100/hr to do my job
while I was in a hospital claiming that none of my coworkers could operate at
my level of work. This fits the undue hardship clause of the employment law.

I had about three employers do that to me in a row, and my doctor put me on
disability because I couldn't get a stable job.

I was usually hired to debug software to get a company to the next level. I
optimized ADO recordsets, SQL Server tables and stored procedures, optimized
Crystal Reports reports, and fixed broken Visual BASIC code so it wouldn't
crash the machine and it runs faster. I also did web development in Active
Server Pages using VBScript and HTML and CSS and JavaScript.

But like I said, no company wants to hire me now, and if they did it would
only be temporary to use me to get to the next level and then fire me after I
got them there. I feel like a third stage rocket booster.

------
justizin
"Good does not mean being a pushover. I would not want to face an angry Ronco.
But if Ron's angry at you, it's because you did something wrong. Ron is so old
school he's Old Testament. He will smite you in his just wrath, but there's no
malice in it."

... like when smiting everyone who doesn't work in Tech or agree with him in
SF by subverting democracy?

This is an example of where PG has a bias and we part ways.

Keep writing essays about software, and I promise I'll try to learn LISP, PG!
;)

------
nocman
Silly me, I thought this essay was going to be about Ron Popeil
([http://www.ronco.com](http://www.ronco.com)).

Cue the obligatory Weird Al reference:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BX56syrmWQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BX56syrmWQ)

"It slices.."

"It dices..."

"LOOK AT THAT TOMATO!"

"You could even cut a tin can with it, but you wouldn't want to!"

Ah, good childhood memories.

For those who might care but don't know, Lisa Popeil (Ron's half sister) sang
backup vocals on that song. Pretty funny.

With apologies to anyone too young to know about Ronco TV commercials ("Now
how much would you pay????")

:-D

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Me too, I was expecting some kind of Malcolm Gladwell style realization based
on some quirky thing Ron Popeil did in his infomercials!

------
claypoolb
It is no coincidence Ronco is the most coveted Angel in the Valley - he
epitomizes integrity. This value is the most desired aspect an entrepreneur
will strive for in finding early stage investors. We, especially in the early
stages of building our company, need people who will do the right thing.

I remember one example of Ranco's unyielding integrity:
[http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/09/24/angelgate-ron-
conway-...](http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/09/24/angelgate-ron-conway-rips-
despicable-and-embarrassing-investo/)

------
russnewcomer
I wonder if pg's view of top investors as 'good' or, maybe more accurately,
consistently moral has changed since he has gotten to know more of them
personally? Not a charge of corruption or cronyism, but sometimes one has
different standards for friends than for people one doesn't know.

~~~
dsrguru
Conversely, one might not realize that "famous investor X" is actually a
really awesome, caring human until getting to know them in person.

------
noobermin
So, I'm trying to see whether this applies to us in academia, whether the
"nice-but-no-push-over" types are more successful than the sociopaths.
Unfortunately, I can't think of one either in real life or from anecdotes
shared with me.

I think it's different when the system isn't run on money, but pride.

EDIT: Actually, I am able to think of one. It is of worth to note that he is
pretty clever and a natural born talent and was a child prodigy.

------
dropit_sphere
Terrifying thought: what if the causality goes the other way? What if all the
bad are bad because "that's just the way the business works" and "hard
choices"?

------
zeeshanm
I think working hard also helps with luck. Here's a story. This goes back to
the first ever tc discrpt Hackathon. I was a 19-year-old college student then.
I used to go to this NYC resister hackerspace in brooklyn.

So we are doing our hack - a bunch of nyc resistor dudes - it's about 10pm.
Here comes Ron Conway with Michael Arrington - checking out the hacks. They
come to our desk. See the scrapy robot with wires coming out of it. And here
Ron hands over a couple of business cards to our fellow hackers.

I was a total noob back then. I was just like these two guys are checking some
stuff out. Without knowing who they were.

While other investors would be out enjoying their weekend, Ron was out on a
Saturday night meeting hackers. Even after so many big wins he was out in the
trenches to source the next big thing.

------
guelo
This article is dumb because it doesn't explain why Ron Conway is so good.
Maybe this is written for a silicon valley insider audience that knows what he
does that is so great. It feels like pg's writing was more interesting when he
was the outsider taking on the status quo.

~~~
vidarh
Part of it is that he has his fingers in every pie, and a contact list that
contains pretty much "everyone" that matters in tech in SV, and he's not shy
about using it to help connect people to make things happen.

Part of it is that he is very good at coming across as likeable, and charming.
I would hope that is representative of how he is, but I've only met him once,
briefly (as he had a tiny amount invested in a company I was involved with) so
for me I'm going by first impressions and reputation.

Basically he's done favours for a massive amount of people in SV (by pulling
strings and connecting people, and making a massive amount of small-ish
investments) and been nice and charming enough that most of those people, and
many more who know him by reputation, would drop whatever they're doing pretty
much instantly if he called to ask for a favour partly because he comes across
as a nice, likeable guy that you'd like to help out, and partly because they
know by reputation that he's likely to return the favour if/when you need it,
and the odds are it will be well worthwhile for you.

------
personlurking
> If you can't tell who to be nice to, you have to be nice to everyone.

This (more or less) works the opposite way, too. Taking an example I know
about, in Brazil, you can't often tell who is going to try to take advantage
of you (in business) but enough people have tried in your past that you come
to the conclusion that everyone will at least try in the future, and therefore
you act accordingly.

It's really frustrating to have to treat people with your guard up when
signing a contract or talking through specifics during a deal, but you learn
to recognize advantage-takers and even to pretend you are one, too. In doing
so, the other person will recognize they can't pull the wool over your eyes
either, which puts you both on a 'level' playing field.

This isn't just something I've experienced but also something I've been told
by many others in Brazil. There's even a 'law' about it, called Gérson's Law
[1], which essentially states "if there's an opportunity to take advantage, go
for it".

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9rson%27s_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9rson%27s_law)

------
wellboy
I think, even though it's a bit sad, the assumption that mean people won't be
successful, is incorrect.

For the assumption that success is correlated with how kind someone is, there
are just too many examples of previous and current startups/CEOs that are/were
hugely successful. Actually, my impression is that there are very few of
those, who I'd consider genuinely good people that I would really trust.

The thing is, you can be a really good person or you can be an a-hole, you
will enter an industry or create a startup that will fit your personality and
then it just comes down to IQ and persistence of how successful you will
become. This way, a bad/nasty person can create a startup or make money just
as much as a really kind person can. In other words, you can create a huge
startup either way, the valuations would be the same, irrespective if you are
a good person or not.

However, the startups would also be completely different in nature. The nasty
startup would be always fighting, receive bad press and its employees would be
led by fear. The good startup would be awesome, change an entire industry for
the good and its employees don't work for the money, but because they are
inspired by its mission and by its CEO.

Both startups would be huge and probably end up having the same valuation,
just that their nature is different.

For that reason, as a founder you need to ask yourself what kind of founder
you want to be. You can be nasty or you can be kind and awesome. It "doesn't
matter" what side you choose, you will be equally successful either way.

However, you need to understand the implications and if you want to be a
person that makes people worries or the person that inspires people and
creates good in the world.

You can be good or bad, you'll still be successful, however, after you have
built the startup, 10 years after you have sold it even, it's the way of how
you did it that counts.

------
clark800
I must say, Paul Graham is a really good writer. His posts are very eloquent
and convey interesting ideas without extraneous fluff. Too often people credit
famous individuals with talents they don't actually deserve, but in this case
the quality stands independent of the fame.

------
lifeisstillgood
The problem with this as a strategy, and problem is a strong word, is that it
is _insanely_ hard to replicate.

I can happily not steal money or diamonds all day long, I can always not
persuade a founder to sell me his stock for pennies because deep down being
dishonest is not how Mrs Brian raised her children.

But not dishonest is different from _good_. Good is active - not bad is
passive. I know people who have righteous anger on their side - they actually
find dishonesty offensive, something in need of fixing. Conway sounds like
that - someone who goes past not being bad and over to trying to fix a world
gone wrong.

Good is a hard balance - you need to know right from wrong, and believe that
if you confront wrong, the world has your back.

Scary

Like I said, hard strategy to follow.

------
mrschwabe
This Ronco Principal, as Paul describes it, reminds me of a vision for a world
in whereby the contract of a business deal is second to the word of your
partners & colleagues. Where honor, trust and values trump contracts, laws and
lawyers.

Why? Not only is this hypothetical business world a more natural and less
expensive place to do business, but another advantage is that un-invited third
parties can't easily interfere with your deals.

Some might say that defining terms on paper creates a record that can be used
against you.

Shaking hands and trusting in your partners that they will follow through on
their word - that type of deal is more difficult for the state to compromise,
exploit, or create laws against.

------
nickhuh
Interesting thoughts. The basic idea, it seems, is that people help out those
who they like, and people generally like good people. So, it would seem that
the amount a person benefits from being a good person is directly related to
how much they depend upon relationships with other people. In the VC world,
which is massively relationship driven at the moment, I could see how being a
likable person would be extremely beneficial. But perhaps, then, the Ronco
principle isn't that good people succeed, but that likable people succeed.

------
mathattack
I view this in the light of the Prisoner's Dilemma.

In a one player game, it pays to be nasty. It only pays to be nice in an
ongoing game.

Ron Conway seems to have been playing the ongoing game long before increased
transparency made it fashionable, and has reaped the benefits of it. I have
never met him, but he seems to be the one guy people universally acclaim for
support, integrity and doing the right things. It's easy to see why he's Call
#1 for folks seeking an angel, and he's the call who entrepreneurs take.

------
robg
_[1] I 'm not saying that if you sort investors by benevolence you've also
sorted them by returns, but rather that if you do a scatterplot with
benevolence on the x axis and returns on the y, you'd see a clear upward
trend.

[2] Y Combinator in particular, because it aggregates data from so many
startups, has a pretty comprehensive view of investor behavior._

Why can't YC, of all firms, publish this scatterplot? Wouldn't it hold people
accountable in a way that nothing else would?

~~~
philwelch
First, because there's no objective measure of benevolence, and second,
because ranking VC's on a spectrum of benevolence vs. malevolence would strain
the relationship between YC and these VC firms. You get a lot more traction
making general statements like pg does here than you do by calling out
individual firms.

~~~
robg
Asking YC companies to crowdsource benevolence is hardly earth shattering. I'd
be surprised if they don't already. The difference is offering this guide as a
public resource. The risk is that firms could still treat YC companies well
then treat others less well, but as pg notes, this type of duplicity is hardly
worth the trouble.

~~~
philwelch
It just seems like a distraction. YC probably has more important things to do
than becoming the US News and World Report of venture capital.

------
programminggeek
I was really hoping this was about Ronco, Ron Popeli, or something related to
that business. It's too bad because Ronco is an interesting business story in
its own right.

------
thanksgiving
I am amazed it is OK to say "the CIA saved American lives" as opposed to "the
CIA saved lives". Are American lives worth more than non-US citizens' lives?
Would it be permissible for 9/11 to happen if the only people who died were
undocumented immigrants? What a shitty person and what a shitty attitude! I
guess Paul Graham is a shitty person if he associates with shitty people like
Ronco.

------
ecommercematt
"I'm not saying that if you sort investors by benevolence you've also sorted
them by returns, but rather that if you do a scatterplot with benevolence on
the x axis and returns on the y, you'd see a clear upward trend." PG/YC, have
you tested this hypothesis? Precision would be difficult, but a back of the
envelope attempt could be interesting and perhaps reveal unexpected
correlations.

------
cpb
Reminds me of The Evolution of Cooperation, sounds like Ron is a nice strategy
with a solid retaliation response... How is he with forgiveness?

------
zoba
I think the Beatles had this principle down when they sang "And in the end,
the love you take is equal to the love you make." Clearly, they had to make it
fit a lyric, but I think the idea is very similar.

Sometimes when I hear stories of mean people getting ahead I wonder how
accurate the sentiment could be. Its good to see a case where doing good over
time results in success.

------
fubarred
A book about the related, long-term trend of decrease violence explained with
different angels:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature)

(Religious extremists, totalitarian regimes notwithstanding.)

------
MarkMc
The world of business has a reputation for being full of assholes, yet perhaps
the most successful businessman of all is Warren Buffett, who seems like a
genuinely nice guy. It seems that acting with honesty and integrity pays
excellent returns in the long run.

------
ProAm
> "there is a clear trend among them: the most successful investors are also
> the most upstanding."

This is also true in many aspects in life. Good people are rewarded, not
always, but more often than not deserving people are successful and happy.

------
datashovel
I see transparency in markets and governments as a "movement" in the making.
My hunch is the next 10-20 years will be very interesting in this regard.

------
allanjenn
Is being nice a choice? I don't think so, it should be the default. But if I
need money for my startup I would definitely go with the nicest investor.

------
bfe
More generalized, compassion and integrity seem to be in a positive feedback
loop with drivers of technological and economic growth.

------
JTon
TLDR:

The Ronco Principle: In a sufficiently connected and unpredictable world, you
can't seem good without being good.

------
dolzenko
A bit surprised article with so little "content" gets so many upvotes.

------
graycat
> In a sufficiently connected and unpredictable world, you can't seem good
> without being good.

Sometimes might be surprised on this point!

Some people in some relatively small, conservative, apparently highly ethical,
responsible, competent, serious, and hard working communities manage totally
to _pull the wool over the eyes_ of just about everyone else, including the
members of their own families. They can look totally like a sweet, angelic
_church lady_ while, actually, plotting against others and slowly but
effectively sabotaging them.

How? One way is to be a very talented, determined, bright, mentally energetic
actor/actress. The act can take a lot of mental energy to negotiate all the
daily events and situations while keeping the _act_ totally believable while
actually it is totally false.

There's more on such things in the now famous E. Goffman, _The Presentation of
Self in Everyday Life_.

Sorry, PG, there's a fundamental problem here: As in some recent research
(wish I'd kept the reference), already in the crib, the girls are thinking
about people and the boys, things. While the boy is trying to hack the latch
on the crib and install Linux in the toy firetruck on the floor, the girl is
trying to elicit protection and care taking from adults, especially her
father.

"If a girl is smart, she doesn't have to have brains." and can get others,
especially Daddy, to do things for her. A boy might work and work and work,
say, to get his iPhone synchronized with his MacBook while his sister can get
it done with just one frown and one tear, and often don't need the tear.

A girl can be really good at it, by age four have Daddy totally wrapped around
her little finger and manipulated so that he can never tell her no. And, in
later years, she can get much better, much, much better at it.

They can be highly talented and very mentally energetic and seem to be sweet,
darling, adorable, precious angels while they are actually determined,
selfish, even dangerous, masterly manipulators.

Never ask a nerd male to evaluate the real, inner thoughts or intentions of a
masterly female -- he just doesn't have the basic qualifications for the job!

You just learned this lesson here for $0 tuition. I paid full tuition, and you
don't want to do that; trust me this time! Uh, there are no college loans
nearly big enough to cover the tuition I paid.

For Ron Conway, I can't forget his short advice to entrepreneurs in the Sam
Altman course at Stanford last fall -- "bootstrap". Okay, message received
loud and clear!

I do believe that PG can evaluate Ronco; good to know I can take Ronco's
advice seriously!

~~~
darkmighty
I agree about the general position that girls are more socially focused, but
you put a sad and cynical twist to it...

~~~
graycat
Not all girls are as "sad and cynical" as I described.

But the statement I was responding to was

> In a sufficiently connected and unpredictable world, you can't seem good
> without being good.

So, this statement seems to claim to apply broadly. So, I just said
essentially that the statement claims too much, that, for some
counterexamples, there are people with behavior that contradicts the claim,
e.g., some females, say, adults, using some of what they learned as children,
starting even in the crib.

I didn't claim, and don't believe, that the behavior I described, say, that
you are describing, appropriately, as "sad and cynical", is common among
either males or females. But to counter PG's quite broad claim, I just need
some, say, _counterexamples_ ; I've seen too many of them.

More generally, from some of what I saw. in a very "connected world", some of
the complexity of _Presentation of Self in Everyday Life_ can be just
astoundingly involved and complicated -- some very bright, determined people
work really hard at such _presentation_.

I would add, a very "connected world" can lead to more complexity, posturing,
manipulation, difference between reality and _presentation_ , etc. than a less
connected world. E.g., a person from such a more connected world can feel much
better, and act much more like themselves, posture, pretend, and manipulate
less, in a big city where they have some anonymity. _Presentation_ in a
"connected world" can be one heck of a lot of hard mental work!

------
malchow
Love this. Viva Ron Conway!

