In the article, they did not specify if the funding cut is a result of re-structuring direct-indirect cost ratio (essentially no research cut but the administration cut only), or the fund granted to a fewer researchers. If they actually receive less money for the same current researches, there is no need to accept fewer students.
This is huge cut (saving about 4 billion USD a year). I wonder how it is going to affect the quality of research outcomes. It might actually improve research if it reduces the amount of time researchers spend on administrative duties directly because there are less administrations.
I see things done by DOGE are getting noticed. I vaguely remember that DOGE will be decommissioned around 2026 independence day I believe? I have no confidence in judging what the outcome might be at this point, so I will wait till the last day of DOGE.
Because for some people, this is not a scientific peer-reviewed discussion, but rather typical conversation normal people have over dinner table with gut feelings and limited information. Just assume that "I believe", "in my opinion", "AFAIK" are implied for statements like above.
Is it proven method? If so, insurance should cover it so you don't have to pay subscription fees out of your pocket. If not, don't bother. There are thousands of services like this, and I have not heard any one of them that worked for the vast majority of people with ADHD.
Yes, ADHD coaching has been studied and outcomes have been proven. Experts like Russell Barkley also recommend it. The challenge isn't coaching as a modality, but rather the sparseness in quality across the whole coaching field since it's not a protected term. At Shimmer, our coaches are vetted, trained, and supervised, and practice evidence-based methodologies that have been designed in partnership with our clinical partners.
We also track outcomes.
- 83% of Shimmer ADHD coaching members self report better ability to manage their symptoms after 6 weeks.
- Shimmer members improve their BDEFS scores (Executive Functioning Skills) by 12% over a 3 month coaching period.
- Shimmer members reduce their BFIS scores (Life impairment across key life domains) by 17% over a 3 month coaching period.
ADHD coaching is as proven as regular life coaching - not at all. It's done by people who want that therapist money without having to bother with getting a degree or being a practitioner in a regulated industry. The ADHD coaching space is particularly predatory in my experience.
The first thing that pops out on Google search of NixOS is "Declarative builds and deployments." What exactly is NixOS different from other distros, such as Ubuntu?
NixOS separates packages. If the package foo contains a file /usr/bin/foo, NixOS installs it in /nix/store/67c25d7ad7b2b64c67c25d7ad7b2b64c-foo/usr/bin/foo. In order to make this separation work, Nix must sometimes rewrite binaries so that all references in the binary to /usr/bin/foo becomes references to /nix/store/67c25d7ad7b2b64c67c25d7ad7b2b64c-foo/usr/bin/foo.
The advantage of this approach is that it gives more control to the distro maintainers and the admins of the computer, taking that control away from the "upstream" maintainers of the software being packaged. For example the software being packaged cannot just call the library bar because bar is not at /usr/lib/bar.so like it is in most Linux distros -- it is at /nix/store/17813e8b97b84e0317813e8b97b84e03-bar/usr/lib/bar.so, but of course the software does not know that unless the person creating the Nix package (the packager) arranges for the software to know it (again sometimes by doing a search-and-replace on binaries).
If the upstream maintainer of foo thinks foo should link to version 6 of library bar, but you think it should link to version 5, NixOS makes it easier for you to arrange for foo to link to version 5 than most distros do (even if version 6 of bar is needed by other packages you have installed which you need to use at the same times as your using foo).
Note that if this separation of packages imposed by NixOS has any beneficial security properties, it is merely security through obscurity because there is nothing preventing a binary from covertly searching through the directory listing of /nix/store/ for the name of the library it wants to call. Nevertheless it turns out the be useful to seize some control away from upstream in this way even if technically upstream could seize the control back if it were willing to complicate the software to do so.
People, including the creator of Nix and NixOS (Dolstra), will tell you that NixOS's main advantage is "declarativeness" (which in the past Dolstra called "purity") or the fact that the compilation / building process is deterministic. I believe both positions (NixOS's advantage is declarativeness and the advantage is deterministic builds) are wrong. Specifically, I believe that although deterministic builds are useful, the separation of packages I described is much more useful to most users and prospective users of NixOS.
Another way to summarize it is that NixOS package maintainers routinely modify the software they are packaging to use less "ambient authority".
If other distros allow pip-installing into the system, that could be considered a bug or at least an anti-feature, because it's almost always a bad idea: it can clash with distro-managed Python packages, it will break on Python upgrades, and sooner or later you will run into version conflicts (a.k.a. DLL Hell). Recent versions of pip refuse to install into the system by default, for all of these reasons.
It's better to instead pip-install Python packages into virtual environments, recent Pythons havr `venv` built in for this purpose. For user-scoped or system-scoped utilities, `pipx` can manage dedicated virtual environments and symlink them into the search path.
Nix purists would say that you should use flakes to declare all the dependencies for each project, and reference all Python dependencies as Nix packages there. Nix effectively tries to replace every package manager in existence, so all Python, Ruby, Emacs, etc. dependency trees are duplicated in Nix.
I think this is insane. Not only will many packages be missing from Nix, you will also have to wait for the upstream changes to actually propagate to Nix repositories. This all assumes, of course, that there are no packaging issues or incompatibilities in this repackaging.
This is one of the ways that Nix sometimes just gets in your way. I've been using Nix(OS) for several years now, and this still bothers me.
Instead of doing this, For Python specifically I would suggest installing pyenv, which Nix packages. Then enter a nix-shell with a derivation thingie[1,2], and install Python as usual with pyenv. Then you can use any Python version, and with pyenv-virtualenv (which Nix _doesn't_ package...), you can use venvs as you're used to. Sure, you don't get the benefits of the declarative approach and isolation as with "the Nix way", and you may run into other issues, but at least it's a workflow well known to Python devs. Hope it helps!
The right way is to compose the base Python package with the libraries you want. For example, this gives you an ephemeral environment with the latest python3 plus NumPy:
In case of Python, you can also go for a simpler option that avoids composing Python with its packages, but that gives worse isolation:
nix-shell -p python3 python3Packages.numpy
If other packages were present in that ephemeral environment, aside from python3, they could see NumPy in a global directory. That's why the first option is preferable, as it offers better isolation. In Nix, some languages only let you use libraries with something like the first option. See the Nix user wiki for further information: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Python.
I'm new as well - it's good to remember that NixOS, nix-shell, and the programming language of Nix are all separate. You can start with your current distro to learn nix-shell first.
I still have no idea how it all works but it seemed prudent for me to at least try.
The correct answer, whatever distro, is to either use the system package manager or use python's venvs. Mixing multiple package managers in a given area of the filesystem is a recipe for breakage.
The problem with this approach is that the private universities still get benefits of federal funding through student aids and research grants. If no federal money was used for the undergraduate students, I would have no problem with this. Private university can do whatever they want with their admission as long as no public money is spent on the admission process and the admitted students.
The funding and grants mostly benefit the students and researchers though.
The bigger problem is their endowments and tax exempt status. The amount of wealth going through top universities is insane, with schools like Stanford and Harvard becoming appendages to giant hedge funds.
I don't care how the money is spent as long as it is their money. But the federal funding is not; it is tax payer's money. Tax money should be allocated based on decision made by the congress, which is the will of the people in the country. but to me it looks like the tax money the private universities get is spent on their terms, not the citizen.
- Our tax dollars fund government-run schools that cost an $26k per student per year. Fewer than half the students at those schools meet or exceed grade standards for Math and English.
- Parents who choose to send their children to non-government-run schools get no vouchers: we pay taxes to fund government employees, and then use what's left to pay for the schools our children need.
I'm not from San Francisco, I don't have a horse in this race, I was just looking over the link that you posted and it doesn't seem to support what you're saying at all
- The link you posted doesn't talk about public schools at all, only private school tuition.
- This 2024 census.gov report[1] says that San Francisco public schools cost $23,654 per student
- According to graph on the link that you posted only 12% of private schools in San Francisco charge < $25000 annual tuition
- According to the article from the link you posted religious schools make up 48% of private schools in California, so mathematically, at least 3/4 religious schools charge more in annual tuition than a year of public school costs (according to census.gov)
- According to the article from the link you posted, religious schools offer special lower rates for families who belong to the parish, meaning the "cost per student" is even higher than tuition
> The link you posted doesn't talk about public schools at all, only private school tuition.
Yes, that was to show the cost of religious schools which is the type GP was talking about. I did not provide a source for the $26k cost of public schools.
> According to graph on the link that you posted only 12%
> of private schools in San Francisco charge < $25000
> annual tuition
Yes, the charts on the bottom half of that graph show tuition for parochial (religious) schools, which was GP's topic. Ignore the top half (non-religious) as it's not relevant to this discussion.
The median sticker price for parochial schools in San Francisco is:
Grades K-12: $10.9k
Grade 3: $10.4k
Grade 8: $10.9k
Grade 12: $27.0k
All of the above are calculated by weighting each school equally, as I don't have access to per-school per-grade student counts. Feel free to recalculate these. They're based solely on the data the SF Chronicle intern collected.
> This 2024 census.gov report[1] says that San Francisco
> public schools cost $23,654 per student
Well, that 2024 report is based on old data from 2022. That's two years old! Let's look at more recent data.
That's $27k per student per year, which is more than it was the last time I looked!
> According to the article from the link you posted,
> religious schools offer special lower rates for families
> who belong to the parish, meaning the "cost per student"
> is even higher than tuition
I don't have extensive data to back this up, but from anecdotes I've heard it's swings and roundabouts. Some families pay more than sticker price, and others pay less.
Yeah you're right, sorry for making you write that all out, I should have stopped after "I'm not from San Francisco and don't have a horse in this race"
No worries. You took the time to think and dig a little, so I don't mind being more specific. Anyway, whatever questions/doubts you had/have, I'm sure you aren't/weren't alone :)
Are those other schools half the cost because they exclude anyone with disabilities or poor upbringings and just cream off the easy students?
If so then you are enthusiastically cheering for kids to be thrown on the scrapheap to save you a few bucks. And using religion as a cover for it, which only makes it worse.
No. They're half the cost because they don't spend half their money paying for a central bureaucracy. They spend almost all their money on buildings and teachers.
1). You can lead a horse to books, but you cant make it think.
2). This statistic is meaningless unless without data about the inputs and outputs. I assume that that student populations are vastly different.
3). That's your choice. In Ohio, I get to fund religious education, which I am vehemently opposed to doing.
Have you considered that, perhaps if you and like-minded parents didn't remove their students from the public education system, perhaps the test scores would be higher?
Have you considered that, perhaps if you and like-minded parents didn't remove their students from the public education system, perhaps the test scores would be higher?
I didn't 'remove' my child from the public education system.
Government schools in my area are not an attractive option. I spoke with the principal of one of the top 3 most popular elementary government schools (measured by ratio of applicants to kindergarten spots). She made it clear that, if my son were to attend that school:
- my son would never be allowed to skip a grade
- under no circumstances would a teacher in grade X teach material normally covered in grade X+1
My son is in 3rd grade, doing math with the 4th grade class, and studying 5th grade math at home.
If he were at a government-run school, he would be in 2nd grade, and spend math lessons at school covering material he mastered 2 years ago.
In Ohio, I get to fund religious education, which I am vehemently opposed to doing.
In San Francisco, I get to fund an inefficient bureaucracy set up to benefit adult employees, which I am vehemently opposed to doing.
SFUSD has 1 adult employee for every 3.5 students. A minority of those adults are classroom teachers. Average class sizes are not 3.5, or 7, or even 14.
Meanwhile I bet those schools are exempt from standardized tests because they know the students (most) would flunk them. That’s the way it works here in Texas, there is no oversight or feedback that home schooled or private school kids actually meet any kind of standards at all. Now the governor wants the same type of vouchers and he was -heavily- “inspired” by money from charter school/religious school owning billionaires.
The feedback is provided by the market mechanism. Private schools and charter schools that don't do a good job would fail to retain and attract students, and shut down.
For government-run schools, most of the students have little or no choice. Standardized tests (like SBAC) show poor results in California (most kids fail to meet grade level standards in the test), but parents have little ability to change how school districts are run.
To add, a lot of universities will reimburse education/administrative/maintenance fees on top of research contracts, so about 30% of the money they get for research actually doesn’t go towards research. While this is old, there was a 1988 event where a Stanford administrator bought a yacht from research funds.
> The funding and grants mostly benefit the students and researchers though.
The question is, which students and researchers should benefit from it? It's not like that money wouldn't be used for education; it would just go to more meritocratic institutions, and their students and researchers.
Why would you want to leverage federal programs that were set aside for certain purposes like research and student assistance to also manipulate college programs?
It is sort of like you want to place colleges on similar to a terrorist list where no funding can reach them unless they get in line with the western world.
The word "manipulate" is dysphemism for "audit" in my opinion. As I commented below, I don't care how the money is spent as long as it is THEIR money. The federal funding is tax payer's money, and it should be spent according to the will of the people in this country. If the tax money was spent to favor your family members because you are an alumni, I am sure other people would have problems with it.
If you want colleges to behave in a certain manner, the word manipulate is correct.
Federal funding goes to institutions that uphold the federal Govt, not those that oppose it. The federal govt works in the interest of what its representatives seek. Those representatives are enforced by a variety of constituents including corporations, NGOs, non profits, and individuals.
You believe that taxpayers should say where the money goes. In such cases, it only goes back into the taxpayers pockets.
I am not sure where the line lies. If you fund a program that is not run by the government, say 100 billion dollars, should the government not "manipulate" how the program runs? I believe there should be some sort of accountability. To my knowledge the government spends over 7 billion dollars on Pell grants, and if the government has little to no say in whom it should be awarded to, it makes no sense to me. If the University decides to accept less qualified students through legacy admission and give the money to them, it should be challenged I believe.
add: come to think of it, I guess private university can just not accept financial aids from the government and keep their own admission policy if they have enough money to subsidize students who need financial aids. Whether you like it or not, federal money comes with (or should come with) strings attached (or manipulation in your words)
Manipulation and accountability are two different words. Manipulation is when you take an existing program, provide the students who go there with an aid package, and then condition the program to change because you are providing its students with a benefit. That’s not accountability.
Pell grants are not given to universities. They are given to students, who choose the university. The student has a say where the student goes and where the pell grant goes. Pell grants are responsibilities of the student.
The only workaround is to blacklist the university to ever be chosen by the student, because the govt will not allow the student to get aid. That’s akin to a terrorist list.
Pell grants are given to the students, but in order to become a student you first have to be accepted to a University. If no universities accepted you because of unfair admission policy, effectively the universities transferred the money from you to someone who got in unfairly (maybe you can argue that there is going to be at least one university that will accept you, but that is a different story). I am just simply advocating fair admission policy that is in agreement with the spirit of the citizens who are effectively providing such funds. Tuition money, a huge part of it, comes from the government (I reject the semantic argument that university gets student money, not the government money if the money was not directly given to them, such as "Pell grants are not given to universities"), and we have a say in how it should be given. We can definitely contest the legacy admission or even affirmative action if the university accepts government money one way or the other. Pell grants ( tell me if I am wrong ) already has other restrictions on how it could be spent and whom it should be given to. We can definitely add one more restriction (i.e., give it to students who got in fairly).
To me, you are advocating (tell me if I am mistaken) that university can have any admission policy (including unfair policy) they want (free from requests of the government) even if federal money is provided to them (indirectly of course) as a result of such admission policy. I disagree with this. If you're advocating to grant total freedom to university with regards to admission policy and get rid of federal support for all schools, then I am in agreement with you.
Universities have forever been able to selectively choose students. Private universities choose students based on the criteria their board members and trustees create or accept. And that is a right of a university (if it is responsible for their successful graduation and if it is responsible for their success after their career is in motion) that they only accept candidates who have a chance of graduating and succeeding in career.
The student applies to a university. The university accepts the student and sends a tuition bill. The bill is financed by the student via assistance from the federal government. At no point does the University have a direct connection to the federal government in this scenario. The federal govt can only force the student (not the university) to choose where the student attends.
> I reject the semantic argument that university gets student money, not the government money if the money was not directly given to them
This is the reality of the trade agreement. No way to force a rule down anyone's throat without another agreement for a trade in place. You are only rejecting how legal frameworks are. You are not rejecting an argument.
Pell grant restrictions and eligibilities are placed on the student. Not the university.
This might be due to my lack of comprehension, but your argument seems less focused and sometimes veers into broader concerns about government interference and semantic or technical arguments, making it somewhat less compelling in the specific context of legacy admissions and funding oversight for me. I don't think I can gain some new insights from further discussion, but if I ask this one last time (you do not have to answer), what is your stance on legacy admission ( I don't think you expressed your opinions on this ) with regards to government funding the students who attend schools with such admission policy? I can only assume your position, and for that let me quote my previous comments: "To me, you are advocating (tell me if I am mistaken) that university can have any admission policy (including unfair policy) they want (free from government oversight) even if federal money is provided to them (indirectly of course) as a result of such admission policy. I disagree with this. If you're advocating to grant total freedom to university with regards to admission policy and get rid of federal support for all schools, then I am in agreement with you."
BTW Pell grants have restrictions on school as well (many vocational institutions do not adhere to such restrictions, so they are not qualified to accept Pell grant money). The below are examples of such requirements:
Accreditation - Schools must be accredited by a recognized accrediting agency.
Compliance with Federal Guidelines - Schools must comply with federal regulations concerning how they manage and disburse student aid, including ensuring that funds are used properly and that students maintain satisfactory academic progress.
Non-discrimination - Schools must adhere to federal anti-discrimination laws <= this might be further strengthened to incorporate legacy admission as well.
Reporting Requirements - Schools must regularly report data to the Department of Education about their students, including Pell Grant recipients, and meet financial responsibility standards.
Misuse of Funds - Schools found to be misusing federal funds or engaging in fraudulent practices can lose eligibility to participate in federal student aid programs.
If a school does not adhere to such requirements, students cannot even find the school on FAFSA application to select. I remember one instance where school was delisted from FAFSA application (University of Phoenix I believe because they did not comply with federal regulations).
On average I guess alumni contribute more through donation than they receive through the financial aids. I don't know the numbers on this topic, so please pardon my ignorance.
Alumni of the university contribute in more than one way. But most importantly, they are considered an important network factor in getting the student adjusted and proud of where the student goes. Universities market their name as a good place to study. And children of alumni are the prime markets for them to get prospective students from.
Every time federal loan guarantees and grants increase, so do higher education prices. Drastically cutting back on those loan guarantees and grants should lead to a drastic cut to higher education costs.
> Private university can do whatever they want with their admission as long as no public money...
We must distinguish "student loan guarantees" (or vouchers) from direct funding, otherwise there will never be such a thing as a "private school", only public schools masquerading as private.
I would very much like to get rid of federal funding for schools, and allow private student loan with the possibility of purging the borrowed money through bankruptcy procedures. I am not sure if such proposal is realistic.
Solution, don't lend money. Sell education in exchange for a promise to pay x% of salary for y years. Students won't go unemployed just to avoid paying it back and it aligns incentives. If colleges want to make lots of money, they will have to make sure their students get good jobs upon graduation.
About a year ago (I believe), Sam Altman touted his mission to promote safe AI with claims that he has no equity in OpenAI and was never interested in getting any. Look where we are now, well played Sam.
Does that amount to making a false forward-looking financial statement? (Specifically his claim that he wasn’t interested in getting equity in the future.)
This claim he made was likely helpful in ensuring the OpenAI team’s willingness to bring him back after he was temporarily ousted by the board last year for alleged governance issues. (Basically: “don’t worry about me guys, I’m in this for the mission, not personal enrichment”)
Since his claim likely helped him get re-hired, he can’t claim it was immaterial.
I really hope someone from the SEC scrutinizes him someday. The Singularity is too important to let it be run by someone with questionable ethics.
My unprofessional take: The SEC is concerned primarily with protecting investors. If anything, changing to a normal for-profit structure and removing the cap on returns would be viewed as more investor/market-friendly than their current structure, which is partly to blame for what unfolded last year.
I can confirm this is the only way I win at monopoly. My strategy for A$$hole is more devious and involves going from ass to president with a similar strategy to my monopoly strategy then making no one want to play again as president. As a great man, Charles Wopr, once said: the only winning move is not to play.
Stripe was founded when Sam Altman was 25. Loopt, Sam's first company, was founded when Sam was 20, and was Sam's mechanism for meeting Paul Graham, so this story is pretty obviously wrong at some level.
There is a reason middle aged PG got smitten by a teenage Sam and gave him a 4% stake in stripe for like 10k , and the went around telling everyone who would listen that "he knew within 3 mins that sam is next bill gates."
Weridly this is the second time this has been repeated in this thread, but Sam wasn't even a teenager anymore when he met PG the first time (but would have just turned 20), and was 25 when Stripe was founded, so your story is obviously wrong.
> Sam wasn't even a teenager anymore when he met PG the first time (but would have just turned 20),
20 yr age gap in a relationship is still frowned upon in our society unfortunately.
Also I guess you were tracking sam's legal age closer than Sam himself because he mentioned that he was a teenager when he met PG in an interview. SV is creepier than anyone could ever imagine.
I was going based on Wikipedia. Sam was 20 when his YC batch started, and also would have already been 20 for the YC interview. But it was close -- a few months, so it wouldn't surprise me if that gets elided in a dramatic retelling.
I'm not sure how it's relevant that you worked in a donut shop? Surely you're aware that isn't the peak of over-achievement at the age of 20? God, watch the Olympics if you want to see a bunch of very determined young people. Or go to an Open Source conference. Or, as it were, YC. Sam was only slightly younger than normal there. Some 20 year olds have accomplished a lot.
You seem to really want to create a villain out of the situation, which is kind of weird. Mentors and investors are usually older, and 20 years isn't rare. That's hardly Silicon Valley specific.
You also repeated the false thing about him getting a stake in Stripe as a teenager again. Again, Stripe came into existence when Sam was 25. There's just no version of that story that works. I don't know about Sam's Stripe investment, but at that point he was already around YC a lot, even though Loopt was still going. He probably just got in with other angel investors. But at that point he was in his mid-20s and running a Sequoia-backed company, so that's not especially weird.
(There's genuine stuff to be critical of in the trajectory of OpenAI, but this seems like a really weird spot to latch onto.)
> Sam was 20 when his YC batch started, and also would have already been 20 for the YC interview.
PG:
"Sam Altman, the co-founder of Loopt, had just finished his sophomore year when we funded them, and Loopt is probably the most promising of all the startups we've funded so far. But Sam Altman is a very unusual guy. Within about three minutes of meeting him, I remember thinking 'Ah, so this is what Bill Gates must have been like when he was 19.'"
Are you being sarcastic by comparing sam with olympians?
What exactly did Sam accomplish when he met PG to declared as "bill gates" or to get 50 million for his startup within 15 minutes of meeting PG ?
He was practicing being "Michael jordan of listening" ( another PG quote) since he was 5 like olympians ?
You're really just making shit up here. He didn't get $50 million for his startup within 15 minutes of meeting Paul Graham. YC's deal back then was for about $15k per startup for 7%. Loopt didn't even over its several years raise $50 million -- it was around $30 million, and that happened over a space of several rounds over several years.
I was in YC a few batches later and met Paul Graham and Sam in that era. I remember walking around San Fracisco with Sam and him telling me about Loopt. He was a few years younger than me (I was 29, he was 24), and I remember being impressed by him.
And it's possible that Sam listed his age at 19 on his YC application, and that's what PG was going on. He would have probably still been 19 when he filled out the application. Again, this isn't hard to verify -- his birthday is on Wikipedia, and he was in the summer batch of 2005. Interviews are about a month before the batch starts. But there's not really a lot of my point that hinges on if it was a month before or a month after his birthday when they met. More my point was that the stuff about him investing in Stripe as a teenager because PG "gave" it to him is completely bogus.
It really seems like you have an axe to grind here, and I'm not completely sure why. Again, I think some of the stuff that's happened later in OpenAI is worthy of criticism, but that doesn't mean you have to reinterpret everything that happened before that through some bogyman lens.
> It really seems like you have an axe to grind here, and I'm not completely sure why.
Yea because ppl getting unfair leg up because they were chosen as the "next bill gates" by a SV white male because they look like them is merely an "axe to grind".
You still haven't answered why you think he is like an olympian when he met PG other than "He is impressive because he is impressive".
I feel like i am in some kind of weirdo land here with totally ridiculous boasts about someone that no one can name an actual accomplishment
> like an olympian
> michaal jordan of listening
> bill gates at 19
> his brain will be cloned by 2029
You guys need to send this to HBO for next Silicon Valley season.
I wasn't comparing Sam to an Olympian; I was comparing you to one. Just because you were working in a donut shop at that age doesn't mean that that's the benchmark for achievement. Some people go to the Olympics. I honestly don't know enough about Sam's achievements before then to know if he'd done impressive things.
The whole "white man" thing is also a complete straw man. The other two YC-founders-turned YC CEOs of that era were Michael Seibel and Garry Tan, neither of whom are white.
It sounds like what you're offended by is the whole YC process -- that there are quick interviews that (back then) translated to small amounts of funding -- that literally the decision was made in a single interview. But that wasn't anything specific to Sam; that's how it worked for everyone. You can find that stupid if you want to, but then might I suggest this is an odd forum to hang out on if you find that to be offensive?
> I was comparing you to one. Just because you were working in a donut shop at that age doesn't mean that that's the benchmark for achievement. Some people go to the Olympics. I honestly don't know enough about Sam's achievements before then to know if he'd done impressive things.
Exactly. I was comparing myself to him when i mentioned that I worked at a donut shop. At that age I ( and many others) were indistinguishable from him. I went to an ivy league too btw.
Your olympian thing is absurd here because a teenager destined to be an olympian is indeed very distinguishable from his/her peers very easily, ppl can tell why this person is special.
You keep saying Sam was special ( next bill gates) but fail to tell me why. I asked you multiple times too , but instead you keep attacking me instead for not accepting circular "he is impressive because he is impressive" .
> But that wasn't anything specific to Sam; that's how it worked for everyone.
I just told you but you keep ignoring. Did PG mention anyone else was bill gates or Michael Jordan to his VC friends and publicly in interviews. (Ironic, given Michael Jordan is one the most impressive athletes that came from no where ). Or continuously give him leg up despite failed ventures ( loopt or whatever). I cannot think of anyone else who failed upwards like Sam because he had PG to back him with ridiculous and vacuous pumping of Sam's so called genius.
Honestly: it's not worth my time to keep arguing with you. You've not taken any accountability for the several demonstrably false claims you've made here.
I didnot make a "claim" I merely quoted PG and Sam about the age when they met.
You seem to obsessed about him being in early 20s, not sure why thats relevant here or why its so important to you. You should tell that PG to go issue a correction and "take responsibility" about misquoting Sam's age if thats so important to you. I don't have creepy obsession with teenager's ages.
Oh yea you would rather run way and feel smug about some pedantic age thing than substantiate why you think same was "impressive" when he met 20s.
To be fair both of them probably didn't imagine Stripe would be the one today. You can apply the same logic for any successful companies, like the guy who gave up 10% of Apple for some changes.
There is a difference between not imagining it will be valued at 100B and not imagining it will be 1B+ or a 100M exit.
It is quite likely they knew the latter as relatively low risk expected outcome .
Even at 100M exit, which by valley standards (even in 2010s) is not a lot, 1-2% (after further rounds of dilution) would have yielded 1-2M return . A 200x return for very little downside i.e. a gift .
There is a reason why there is FOMO and little due diligence for really hot startups amongst VCs , most times it is about access to the round which is difficult rather than risk of returns, we only read about the spectacular failures like FTX . We don’t hear about the Stripe, AirBnb, or Figma, OpenAI or spaceX funding rounds .
