Paul Graham is too arrogant

http://livinginfirstlife.wordpress.com/2007/05/14/paul-graham-and-y-combinator-true-lies-and-damn-lies/

by infirstlive • 19 years ago

23 65 19 years ago

livinginfirstlife.wordpress.com

budu3• 19 years ago

I guess the Newsweek article is bringing PG a lot of unwanted attention.

\ "there is no need for a marketing budget when youÂve got Internet word of mouth.Â Of course - build it and they will come right?

In PG's defense I don't think he meant to imply that if you build it they'll come. I think he was emphasising the power of Internet word of mouth for an Internet business as opposed to traditions marketing channels. BTW. It doesn't seem like the above quote was PG's, unless I'm mistaken.

That being said, the author made some valid points. For one, even if the YC hopefully know they gonna accept the offer even before applying, giving them 5 mins to respond, and then suggesting that anyone not responding within that time in unintelligent makes PG come of as arrogant, if not a bully.

Secondly, I don't think PG can be blamed for a YC founder's personal choice to leave his pregnant wife to pursue a startup (this is a far stretch from the true story) and poor dietary choices of YC founders.

npk• 19 years ago

Wow,

This guy's whole blog (not just the article) is based on bashing YC & YC funded companies. There are some valid cons to YC Funding: the funding comes at a low valuation, and it is scary to build a company without a clear path to monetization. But this guy basically repeats this over, and over, and over again. Don't expect any enlightenment. Lame.

Sam_Odio4• 19 years ago

Essay comes off as a poorly written rant. However, there is a sliver of truth there; PG would benefit from a little more humility. So would the whole program, actually. It sometimes has a very "clubby" feel to it - you're either in, or you're not.

Even though this isn't a big issue now, it might benefit them to address it before YC gets a reputation of arrogance. This is especially important, given YC essentially bashes a thousand egos a year. Even if 1% of those guys start blogs like this, that's bad news.

pg4• 19 years ago

Can you give me an example of something YC does that seems clubby, and that we could do differently to cure that?

paul• 19 years ago

The problem is that success makes other people feel bad, and so even neutral statements get interpreted in the worst possible way, and of course it also attracts haters (such as this 'livinginfirstlife' guy), who will repaint everything to look bad.

This was certainly the experience at Google. I don't think that there is necessarily a solution, though it helps to avoid things that could be misinterpreted, even though that also means avoiding some aspects of the truth unfortunately.

brett• 19 years ago

I think you'll have a hard time curbing this sentiment because it's a time constraint issue. At some point you have to be exclusionary and focus on a smaller group.

There is a necessary and clear delineation between who is part of YC and who is not. Naturally, people who are not part of the group are liable to feel left out.

In terms of your treatment of the rest of us however, it strikes me as a real stretch to complain. News.yc is a huge step in terms of general community outreach and so far every time I've contacted someone from YC or a YC startup they've definitely been receptive.

So, while I understand Sam's point, I doubt anything can or should be done about it.

menloparkbum• 19 years ago

I didn't realize you had a five-minute rule. The exploding termsheet is back in style for the worst valley B and C-list VC dinks.

edit: I'm not saying YC are dinks, but that practice in the valley is very popular amongst the investors you want to avoid.

nostrademons8• 19 years ago

Avoid public statements about how great YC is, how much it improves the average outcome for a startup (unless you can back it up with hard numbers), and how people would be stupid not to accept it. People who would be interested in YC already know that. People who wouldn't be aren't going to change their minds because you say so.

I think YC's already doing as much as they realistically can to be inclusive, given their business model. News.YC, the Startup School, and Founders at Work were great steps forwards in that regard. But you're fundamentally limited by time and attention, so there will always be people left out. No need to make them feel even worse about not getting into YC.

davidw3• 19 years ago

Random, semi serious ideas, from someone who doesn't really notice or care if YC is "clubby":

- Sell YC.news t-shirts, or give some sort of 'make something people want' shirts that goes out to 1) random people on the news site, 2) top karma of the month, something like that...

- Open source the mechanical portions of YC. You obviously can't replicate your experience and time for the world to share in, but are there bits and pieces that could be spun out and made into templates to help those who aren't lucky enough to be able to apply/win a spot. Specifically, I'm thinking creation of the company itself, but perhaps there are other things.

Just some random thoughts...

juwo2• 19 years ago

My suggestion?

Paul and Paul, Robert, Jessica (and whoever else): Try to help each of us, here at news.YC - those who arent part of the elite club of YC funded startups.

I dont see any of you helping any of us (those not in the club).

What if NOBODY were to apply to YC - would you have this fame and book sales and NY Times interviews? No.

You owe your institutional success to us. You are standing on our shoulders.

Furthermore, the structure of news.YC is not conducive to the rest of us helping each other. (Nevertheless, I can say I received valuable input from dpapathanasiou, goladus, npk etc., and I tried to provide the same to whoever asked).

You have an elite samurai school with yourself as the master and the rejects hanging from the outside gates trying to peer in.

You can do whatever you want. But if you are disliked, it comes with the territory.

I had an intriguing thought today: we come to resemble those we demonize.

You loathe Bill Gates (in my book, he has reformed into a saint), but his early interviews...

andreyf• 19 years ago

Personally, I would have very much appreciated a one or two-sentence personalized response to my rejected application. It can't be that hard to build that into the system, and although I have a decent guess as to why you didn't choose to fund my partner and I, a boilerplate rejection seemed kind of mean (even thought it was a very humble boilerplate rejection)...

maxklein• 19 years ago

I'll tell you.

You ignore your public. You write technical essays about engineering or social things, but you never address the people you want working with you. You never write a blog entry that makes you (or any of the other founders) like real people who also care about those that are not as clever as the ones you pick.

So we sit out here on the curb and think - ah, the cool kids are in this lovely clubhouse with their mentor making cool stuff and going to become millionares. While we sit out here watching through the window.

All we see now is the business poker face of ycomb. It's no longer Paul giving money to kids to startup, it's a money making entity with a stern - you don't belong here, go away attitude.

That's why there is the minor backlash. You are too busy to talk straight to the normal people, and they resent being left out.

What can you do to change this? Try to be less perfect. Appearing vulnerable makes you human, and it makes people empathize with you. Then they make an effort to understand the why of your decisions.

mattjaynes• 19 years ago

I hate to see these kinds of discussions happening now that YC is taking off in the press. YC puts out a lot of free content and value into the community already. Unfortunately YC does not scale well. And why should it? It was created at the pleasure of the former Viaweb team and JL.

From my limited perspective, the following is what I see as something that may help counter the feeling of exclusion.

In the community of PG followers there seems to be a desire to 'belong' somehow more officially, if nothing more than to make conversations easier. News.YC I think helps quite a bit, but when guys in this niche community have to describe themselves it often comes out like this:

"I really like to read Paul Graham's articles and talk with other guys that like to read his articles."

"I applied for YC and was rejected, but still like to associate with the other YC rejects."

Both of those general statements just sound pretty lame when you try to tell your girlfriend (imaginary or real ;) about this little club of startup guys you're involved in.

Despite it being totally arbitrary other than to just make conversations easier and reduce exclusionary feelings, it might be useful if there were a more defined way to refer to this yc-affiliated-but-not-officially-part-of-community-of -like-minded-startup-guys.

Then those in the community could refer to their involvement in terms that doesn't sound like a fan club and isn't focused on a failed YC application.

Ideas?

ralph2• 19 years ago

As an outsider in the UK who has no intention of applying, I agree that there's a "clubby" feel to YC. However, I don't think that's a bad thing; that's part of the benefit of being in a good beneficial club, just like any society.

Cure it of that and it will be the lesser for it.

brianmckenzie• 19 years ago

I am absolutely baffled as to how anyone could see YC as 'clubby', elitist, or whatever peoples' problem seems to be. Can anyone name another angel or VC firm that is more transparent than YC, or contributes more to the web startup world?

It seems like a number of people on here were staking the entire existence of their startup on YC funding - that's not an entrepreneurial attitude. If you have something worthwhile you'll build and launch it with or without YC.

Don't change a thing, Paul.

euccastro2• 19 years ago

I only see unwarranted 'clubbiness' in the negative spaces- that is, in the supplicant/resented attitude of a minority of the people that didn't make the filter. I'm sure most of you understand that there is no room for all, and that the YCombinator folks are not taking anything from you by making others happy.

It's not like pg is rubbing it in your face either. He even went out of his way to write an it's-not-you-it's-me essay, to prevent applicants from taking the rejection personally.

jason13• 19 years ago

Oh he actually wrote a "it's-not-you-it's-me essay", I actually didn't think he was arrogant, until you mentioned that. If that is true, then he really is arrogant.

Andys• 19 years ago

If YC is doing anything wrong, it is that it is too transparent. Imagine if some of the top Wall St firms were as open about their business dealings. It would redefine the whole meaning of "Clubby".

yubrew• 19 years ago

got link bait?

phil• 19 years ago

angelasimpson3• 19 years ago

The blog is a bit of a rant but there are a lot of valid points. I doubt this is someone who got turned down by Y Combinator though since he/she knows nothing about the application process.

That being said, I think the arrogance is reaching all time highs and Paul Graham needs to get it under control.

Tichy3• 19 years ago

People just don't like to hear the truth, and then they try to avoid listening by just calling it "arrogance". I think PG is just taking some short cuts in his reasoning here and there, and people who can't follow get frustrated by that.

angelasimpson3• 19 years ago

I'm still kind of confused. Y Combinator has just one success - Reddit. Everything else has either failed or is To Be Decided...

kyro• 19 years ago

I'd rather base my opinion of YCombinator on the opinions of those who have actually gone through the program and have an insight and perspective about the program that are much more objective than any outsider's. If there's anyone who'd claim that joining YCombinator is a stupid idea, it'd be those who were actually put through the process.

However, I do have to say, that being rejected from YC and being an outside observer, I do at times feel that YC itself seems to get a bit 'clubby.' One big reason for this feeling comes straight out of pure envy and jealousy for wanting to be a YC member. The other reason deals with the fact that I feel as if the connections/information gained through such a program are ones that no one on the outside has access to. So it's either you're in and you're connected, or you're out and left in the dark.

nostrademons8• 19 years ago

There were a couple YC members at the recent Boston startup meeting (Tsumoki was there, and I think Dropbox, and possibly one other that I didn't catch the name of)..They didn't seem clubby or standoffish at all. Really, they seemed like pretty approachable, frighteningly intelligent, and generally decent guys.

Harj2• 19 years ago

What I find most amusing about this is guy is how he so passionately bashes Y Combinator on his blog, Techcrunch and probably any other form of medium he can get his hands on. Each time he argues how YC is worthless and irrelevant. The problem being that if YC is so irrelevant and pointless - why spend so much of your time and energy writing about it? I know my general approach to things I think are a waste of time is putting them to the side and spending my time on the things that are in my opinion. Since I value my time as a scarce resource I think that's a justified approach.

The logical assumption then is either:

1) "Livingfirstlife" doesn't actually consider YC to be so pointless as presumably if he genuinely believed that to be true, he wouldn't be so generous as to provide a stream of free PR.

2) He doesn't value his time particularly highly, in which case he's not exactly the type of person I'll be asking for startup advice anytime soon.

Perhaps one day he'll learn that childish tantrums aren't the most effective method for convincing people your point of view is correct.

angelasimpson3• 19 years ago

Harj I'm a little confused. If you're someone that YC has invested in, why do you have so much spare time to argue with this guy? His tantrums aren't very childish and I think you're showing your lack of maturity by not presenting any general arguments. You clearly aren't valuing your time very highly either - you're just being hypocritical.

Harj2• 19 years ago

I've posted one techcrunch comment and one comment here disagreeing with him. That's a combined total of about 10 minutes of my time which in my view is justified use of it, as it was time spent defending an organization that has done nothing but provide me with a stream of endless opportunity.

tx2• 19 years ago

I like Paul. He is one of rare cases when an engineer, besides being good at what he does (engineering), on top of that also has business smarts and CAN WRITE. That is very refreshing after all this MBA BS in the mainstream media.

As an investor, however, PS and Co is not a very good fit for vast majority of engineers because... because they give you only what... 5K per founder? That is much less than good engineer's one month salary after-taxes. That limits his investments to trivial weekend projects completed by fresh college grads. It's the investment side of PG, that the blog post is bitching about.

davidw3• 19 years ago

I don't see what the point of complaining is, though. Everyone knows what the terms are, so do your own calculations, and if it's not worth it to you, don't apply.

tx2• 19 years ago

I guess alot of people, including this guy, are openly questioning "validity" of YComb's startups. Since everything they do is so trivial, can their creations be considered "products with value"?

My personal issue with YComb's approach is that they actively (via this site, for instance) promote engineering mediocrity. Remember posts "PG made me drop out of college today!" ? I have seen several of those. Web 2.0 is all about this: cheap&quick high-school level programming project done over a weekend, polluted with google ads with mandatory "blog" attached to it.

To me that is sad, There is nothing "glamorous" about it. My major in school was AI, and our professor used to dream alot about more powerful hardware that was supposed to become a reality soon. Well, it became. And for what? To run 8 Mongrels with some quick&dirty Ruby scripts converting contents of 4 DB tables into nicely looking HTML with roundeed corners? What a waste...

gyro_robo• 19 years ago

I read raves about Yahoo Store long before I ever heard of Viaweb or PG. If a best-of-breed web app used by thousands of businesses is a "crappy start-up", we need more crappy start-ups. I think he forgot an S -- they were Scrappy.

wschroter• 19 years ago

Historically the companies that bragged before they were successful imploded the fastest.

sabat3• 19 years ago

Sour grapes, it sounds like.

"Paul Graham & Co. take equity at an extremely low valuation.

Because the company is not worth very much when it's only days or weeks old. So?

"watch Justin.tv and you'll see a business in free-fall"

Huh? What makes him say that? Justin.tv has been live for a few weeks now. Free-fall?

"The number of visitors required to have an advertising driven site that is profitable and viable as a business is staggering"

So not true. You don't have to think very hard to come up with examples (dooce.com comes immediately to mind), but what I really want to suggest is that the post author read The Long Tail. You do not need a huge, mainstream, "staggering" audience to make good money, even with Google AdSense.

"... says another start-up was sold making it seem like a huge deal that closed. Except it's not. That other start-up is called Kiko and it sold for $258,000 on eBay to Tucows who will surely find it was a waste of their own money."

Tucows thinks otherwise, and seems to have pretty good reasoning. See

http://blog.tucows.com/blog/_archives/2006/9/5/2297315.html

where they say: "What was the value to Tucows of the time and the certainty? ... What was the value of having it be good for sure? Even if we threw it away in six months (not that we plan to do that)? What I can tell you for certain (and you'll be able to hear more details in an upcoming podcast) is that it was more than we paid!"

"Get Duped. You get 5 minutes to decide."

You should decide when you apply. If you don't know by the time you get the phone call, that's your fault, blogga.

"Ruin Your Health."

If your health is ruined by Lean Cuisine, then you would have died in college when you were subsisting on Top Ramen.

"Hurt your Family."

No one is forcing you to leave your pregnant wife. Hell, no one is even encouraging that.

"Become Pinocchio ... You pretend secrecy is important when you need to cover up a bomb or lack of actual interest from an acquirer."

That would be no different than any other company, except that this post's "evidence" that YC does this is scant and misrepresents the facts.

Blogga, PLEASE.

nostrademons8• 19 years ago

Justin.TV's Alexa rankings have been tanking, to the point where ustream.tv has almost overtaken them:

http://alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=justin.tv

Granted, that's just Alexa, and Compete.com still shows justin.tv growing healthily (though ustream's growth rate is higher). But still...were I justin.tv, I'd be concerned.

sabat3• 19 years ago

Ok, fair enough -- but the site is still only a few weeks old, and the way I understand it, watching Justin's life through his hat-cam is not the whole point of the business model. There is more to come.

mhidalgo• 19 years ago

Here is nice article on the reality of advertising as your b-model:

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/03/the_economics_o_3.html

sabat3• 19 years ago

That's an interesting article. And it rebutts the point the blogga was making:

Entitled Three ways to build an online media business to $50m in revenue, the article does the math: At the $1 RPM (CPM/CPA/CPC) level achieved by most general sites, you need 4 billion page views/month. At the $5 RPM level achieved by demographically targeted sites, you need 800 million/month. At the $20 RPM level achieved by highly targeted sites, you need 200 million/month.

That's a high bar. This may be why more entrepreneurs are going for low-investment sites that don't need an exit but provide "lifestyle businesses" for their owners. (More on that another time.)

Who needs $50 million?? I don't. (I, unlike the original article's author, am not a VC.) Hell, gimme $5-6 million total and I'll be delighted.

Then again, there are a lot of untapped, underserved niches. Most of the Web2.0 sites, in my estimation, are nerd-oriented. There is plenty of room to serve more 'mainstream' niches (yes, I see the irony in that phrase).

Prrometheus• 19 years ago

If he gets rich, they won't call it "arrogance". People would call Steve Jobs arrogant (based on his public statements) if he weren't so damn successful.

rwalker• 19 years ago

I posted the following comment in defense of my co-founder Wayne:

Jay,

It is supremely unfair of you to characterize my co-founder as irresponsible, selfish, and ruining his family.

I have never met a man who loves his wife more than Wayne. He and his wife reached a decision together that the best thing for their family and their future was for him to come start a company. Your post makes it sound as if he snuck over the fence in the middle of the night.

It is one thing to attack a business, or even to attack the visible leader of said business. But to slander a good hard working father, husband, and friend is criminal. You owe him a public apology.

Sincerely, Robby Walker

EDIT: it appears he listened - the language has been softened a bit and he apologized.

jamescoops• 19 years ago

this guy killed his credibility by using AliG as an avatar

stuki• 19 years ago

pg, whatever you read into this rant, please don't let it make you go soft and pull your punches in essays, posts, talks or interviews. Most of your audience prefer your straight talk to mealy mouthed, watered down, PC blandspeak, even when you're wrong. And if destitution necessitated scurvy (out of all things......) turns out to be a huge problem amongst your founders, I suspect there are investors out there willing to come to the rescue, even at twice YC's valuations. No questions asked :).

PS: for those who find the IQ test comment arrogant; Paul Graham is just showing off his mastery of Cambridgeian lingo. Back there, saying someone has low IQ is short for saying they disagree with you. Nothing more, nothing less, and absolutely nothing to be all up in arms about.

albertson1• 19 years ago

Stuki and the rest of the YC defenders sound like bigger trolls than anyone else. You argue against arrogance but are arrogant enough to claim things like "Microsoft is dead" and "Paul Graham is God". Grow up.

It sounds like you've watched the Paul Graham late night infomercial "Get Rich in 10 Easy Steps" a few too many times.

nostrademons8• 19 years ago

"Paul Graham is just showing off his mastery of Cambridgeian lingo"

Technically, it's "Canterbridgian". ;-)

leisuresuit• 19 years ago

It's pretty obvious what Paul Grahams goal is. He wants to pay some kids a laughable amount of money to write code for an idea he likes. He then uses his popularity to promote those websites. He basically gets coders for cheap. He's not stupid or anything, it's just he gets the better end of the deal than the kids he gives $5k to.

If you have an idea that paul graham likes, you're better off not taking the money.

Tichy3• 19 years ago

On a side note, what is the problem at Justin.tv, if there is one? The article mentioned that it is in free fall - really?

Justin.tv page seems to not work in Firefox anymore, so I couldn't see any announcements they might have made on their web page.

pg4• 19 years ago

Some comments on this thread were upvoted by several sockpuppet accounts at the same IP addr as infirstlive (including angelasimpson and hotstufff). There was also some sockpuppet downvoting of comments disagreeing with them. Seven of the upvotes on the link itself were from the same source. I've manually fixed the scores in a lot of the cases. Sorry, will add more anti-sockpuppet features in June.

Paul Graham is too arrogant

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