I suppose what has happened to my HN account (artificially high latency, aka "slowbanning", and personal penalties in comment placement, aka "rankbanning") proves this. If you actually challenge VC-istan (as opposed to Graham-esque incremental improvements) on its moral fundamentals, you've gone too far.
More generally, creativity (in particular, I'll focus on social humor) has a status effect. Let's put social status on a scale from -1.0 to 1.0. Below 0.0, you're an at-risk member who may be expelled from the group. At 1.0, you're an unquestioned god-king of it (most groups' leaders are 0.5 to 0.7).
When you're above +0.4, you can't really use humor (which I'm taking to be a microcosm of creativity) except of a stunted kind, because most good humor is partisan or offensive, and not "presidential" or "leader-like". That, I would argue, applies to creative expression in general.
Below 0.0, you're a disliked member of the group and your ideas (or humor) will be rejected just because they come from you and are therefore taken to be unskilled displays and desperate attempts to improve status. Between 0.0 and +0.2, your jokes might be well-received, but it's not worth the risk, because you don't have much status capital to spend. This leaves a narrow range of the status spectrum-- 0.2 to 0.4-- in which humor (/creativity) can bring improvement. However, people at +0.3 to +0.4 aren't high enough to end up climbing corporate ladders-- you need +0.6 to +0.7 to play that game, and you need to achieve that status reliably (at each level of the executive hierarchy)-- and doubling down on humor typecasts you as "the funny guy", which isn't the image you want and limits you at the +0.4 ceiling.
The problem isn't really that people individually dislike creativity. It's that social groups become increasingly anti-intellectual and focused on self-preservation (which requires excluding the "different") as they get bigger.
People challenge venture capital all the time on HN to apparent ill effect. I'm certainly no VC champion. Not only that, but I've repeatedly annoyed Paul Graham, talked down YC, complained about the moderation on HN, and suggested conflicts of interest.
You very consistently manage to mine personal conflicts out of threads and stories that have no apparent connection to you or your beliefs. It's a worrisome habit, in the "I almost worry about criticizing you because I'd feel bad if it turned out that you were actually ill" sense. Broken record: I really think you need to relax and let some of this stuff go, or, at least, if you're totally dedicated to the idea of promoting your vision of the evils of startup culture, find a more coherent way to do it. Perhaps your ideas would be better carried in long-form essays.
You're being ridiculous. You're making this about me, and I am frankly not a very interesting topic to 99+ percent of the readers here.
It's not that I am especially important; however, my encounter with HN moderation has shown one of the mechanisms by which VC-istan protects its reputation. That is all. By observing those mechanisms, we can possibly make inferences about its health. If what is said on Hacker News actually matters to VC-istan, then it's not a very robust system.
I really think this should be the end of the conversation. Leave the inane personal attacks out of it.
You're not making things less worrisome by strenuously arguing that there's nothing personal about a comment that starts with "I suppose what has happened to my HN account...", and then going on to suggest that your "encounter with HN moderation" shows a "mechanisms by which VC-istan protects its reputation". The reality is that VC-istan, whatever that is, probably does not give a shit about you or me.
You are not being persecuted.
It is reasonable to be worried about what your comments, taken as a whole, imply about where you're coming from. It's totally possible that I'm wrong and you're just very shrill (you'd think that as a fellow shrill person I'd have a radar for that). But it is not crazy to ask the question. Are you OK?
"VC-istan" doesn't give a shit about you or me, correct. This is not some paranoid Conspiracy (capital-C) theory.
Those capital-C conspiracy theories are like gods in that they are excuses to look no further. (Why does "the Illuminati" conspire toward evil? Because they're evil! It's a devil archetype.) They almost never exist, and don't hold together for long. The reality is that people act according to their own interests. If we can figure out what those interests are, we can learn things. You learn the most if you assume that conspiracies and weird personal vendettas, prima facie, don't exist.
Paul Graham, for example, probably doesn't care about either of us either. However, he does have a need to appease VC-istan (which is not quite a conspiracy, but has shown aggressively and illegally collusive behavior in the past). If he wants access to the best talent, he needs to be able to place. The fact that someone is pressuring him or one of his moderators to suppress the ideas of someone fairly powerless tells us something-- that VC-istan believes its reputation (the asset that enables it to get top talent cheaply) is in peril.
I suspect it's the opposite, and that venture capitalists are a lot more worried about having to appease Paul Graham than the other way around, because of YC's position in the deal flow. I have anecdotal evidence that strongly corroborates that assertion, but you'll just have to take my word for it.
Given the notion that Paul Graham is not in fact worried about people on HN offending the delicate sensitivities of VC firm partners, your entire argument falls apart, and nothing you've experienced on HN has anything to do with you being a thorn in the side of any "-stan", potential or otherwise.
Incidentally, your continued and ritualized use of the term "VC-istan" harms your arguments, because it's a term that can mean whatever you want it to in any given situation. Is YC part of "VC-istan"? Who knows! It depends on where you want to be in an debate. Anyone who's been on more than a couple message board debates sees that problem coming and discounts your credibility to price that risk in.
It's one thing to use a term like "VC-istan" (I prefer "startuplandia"; Maciej Ceglowski seems to like "flounders") as a way of poking fun at startup culture. But that's not how you use the term. You write as if "VC-istan" is something real.
You didn't answer my question, by the way. I'm easy to find privately if you're not comfortable answering here. Or talk to anyone else. Just make sure you're talking to someone if you need to be.
Venture capitalists do not fear Paul Graham. He may be the godfather of Y Combinator, but people at Sequoia are involved in far bigger deals all the time.
None of these people "fear" any of these people, but if you correct for the words I actually used, I stand by my previous assertion and believe you're simply wrong. It's pretty straightforward to work out what YC has that VCs need, and how little VCs have that YC needs.
Once again, we're having this pointless conversation because you argued upthread that Paul Graham is so terrified of venture capitalists that he represses you on Hacker News to appease them, so angry are they at your mean comments about them.
It's pretty straightforward to work out what YC has that VCs need, and how little VCs have that YC needs.Once again, we're having this pointless conversation because you argued upthread that Paul Graham is so terrified of venture capitalists that he represses you on Hacker News to appease them, so angry are they at your mean comments about them.
If Y Combinator can't place, it stops being the destination incubator with its pick of emerging startups. It loses the top talent and the brand. Yes, VCs would rather get along with Paul Graham than not, but the real power is with the VCs. If they stop funding YC startups and YC can't place, then it becomes just another crappy incubator.
Paul Graham needs the VCs a lot more than they need him. YC's only advantage is that it seems to get a disproportionate share of highly talented founders. However, VCs don't need more talent-- there's an ocean of untapped talent out there-- but everyone in VC-istan needs funding to play. Money is the scarce resource, not talent.
I respect what Paul Graham has achieved, or at least that he has achieved it. I prefer revolution over incremental improvement, but PG has succeeded on his own terms. However, don't kid yourself. If the VCs stop placing YC startups, he and Y Combinator are nothing in the Valley. If the leading VCs tell him to put the kibosh on inconvenient truths, he has no other choice.
Considering the amount you talk about it, you really don't seem to understand this business. Do you think a VC is going to refuse to fund a YC company that they otherwise think is promising enough to fund, in order to teach me a lesson? They'd just be handing the deal to another firm. Unless you believe the coalition of VCs who want to suppress whatever crackpot "truth" you're talking about = the entire VC business, which would be an amazing organizational feat considering how many there are and how much some of them dislike others.
I think that the leading figures of VC-istan would deny funding to settle a political score, yes. It happens in big companies, and VC-istan is the first postmodern corporation, and just a new form of the same old thing.
People stop good ideas and back bad ones for political reasons all the time, and VCs are known for the same behavior (probably no more than big-company high officers, but neither no less). People care more about their individual careers and status than about the bottom line of some organization that might kick out a bonus, and that's a big part of why companies don't "act rationally". The people in them are out for themselves because, honestly, who wouldn't be? Selflessness leads nowhere.
You argue that VC collusion would be "an amazing organizational feat considering how many there are and how much some of them dislike others", but there is, in fact, a lot of co-funding, social-proof-oriented decision making, and collusion. Think of how 90+ percent of funding decisions are based on who else is funding the round, or who made the introduction. It's a "who you know", good-ole-boy network, business in the extreme and you're delusional if you think it's still the meritocracy it might have been 15 years ago. The fact that some VCs dislike each other doesn't prevent that collusive culture from existing, just as high-ranking executives in a more traditional company can dislike each other intensely but that doesn't stop the firm from operating.
[ETA 1.5h: also, if you want to prove me wrong and show that you don't answer to VC-istan, you have the option of removing the slowban and rankban.]
This is a conspiracy theory. As it confronts evidence that might contradict it, it mutates, steadily choosing paths that are less falsifiable. It essentially posits the existence of a "Venture Capital Illuminati" in which organizations that compete with each other and are united solely by a shared general business model have teamed up, among other reasons to oppress (no exaggeration) Michael O. Church, because his ideas are too dangerous to them.
I agree though that Michael is taking it a little too far. What's true now, has been, and always will be is that money is king -- all other things, all connections, all politics come second. If YC has a startup in its class that they legitimately think is the next Google, they will fight like animals to get in on it.
I like your contributions here and follow your blog. I think this particular post is being downvoted because it seems a bit out of place and not your usual intelligent response to an article or comment.
I suppose what has happened to my HN account (artificially high latency, aka "slowbanning", and personal penalties in comment placement, aka "rankbanning") proves this. If you actually challenge VC-istan (as opposed to Graham-esque incremental improvements) on its moral fundamentals, you've gone too far.
Are you sure it's not just your presentation that does that?
Also keep in mind that morality of systems is complex. Just because bad outcomes can be traced back to $FOO, does not mean that not-$FOO would result in less bad outcomes and so does not mean that $FOO is wrong or immoral.
Some VC-istan companies having asshole managers who react poorly to conceited employees, does not necessarily mean that all of VC-istan shares bad management philosophies. It doesn't even mean that that one company has bad management policies, it could be that anything else (or anything else they've tried) results in more asshole managers or other worse problems.
The problem isn't really that people individually dislike creativity. It's that social groups become increasingly anti-intellectual and focused on self-preservation (which requires excluding the "different") as they get bigger.
How can a group best maximize the well-being of its members?
Suppose interesting new ideas from a group member are nomally distributed, with a mean that varies by the member's skill/intelligence (approximated by status), a standard deviation that varies by the member's creativity, and are adopted by other group members based on some combination of status and approximate value.
Whether you personally get better ideas (and can help the group more) by rolling the dice yourself vs collecting the best ideas from others (and vs spending your time implementing ideas from a single cheap/fast source), depends on how many others there are and how relatively skilled/intelligent you are. As the number of creative people increases, the value of your being creative decreases. As the group size increases, the percentage of the group that needs to be creative decreases (the absolute number of creative members should still increase).
Mistrusting new ideas is not necessarily anti-intellectual. Mistrusting complex ideas because they're complex would be anti-intellectual. Wanting to see a larger sample size so you have a better approximation of someone's cool new idea isn't.
More generally, creativity (in particular, I'll focus on social humor) has a status effect. Let's put social status on a scale from -1.0 to 1.0. Below 0.0, you're an at-risk member who may be expelled from the group. At 1.0, you're an unquestioned god-king of it (most groups' leaders are 0.5 to 0.7).
When you're above +0.4, you can't really use humor (which I'm taking to be a microcosm of creativity) except of a stunted kind, because most good humor is partisan or offensive, and not "presidential" or "leader-like". That, I would argue, applies to creative expression in general.
Below 0.0, you're a disliked member of the group and your ideas (or humor) will be rejected just because they come from you and are therefore taken to be unskilled displays and desperate attempts to improve status. Between 0.0 and +0.2, your jokes might be well-received, but it's not worth the risk, because you don't have much status capital to spend. This leaves a narrow range of the status spectrum-- 0.2 to 0.4-- in which humor (/creativity) can bring improvement. However, people at +0.3 to +0.4 aren't high enough to end up climbing corporate ladders-- you need +0.6 to +0.7 to play that game, and you need to achieve that status reliably (at each level of the executive hierarchy)-- and doubling down on humor typecasts you as "the funny guy", which isn't the image you want and limits you at the +0.4 ceiling.
The problem isn't really that people individually dislike creativity. It's that social groups become increasingly anti-intellectual and focused on self-preservation (which requires excluding the "different") as they get bigger.