Office Hours With Paul Graham At TC Disrupt

http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/25/absolute-must-watch-office-hours-with-paul-graham-at-tc-disrupt/

by ssclafani • 15 years ago

278 109 15 years ago

techcrunch.com

ezl• 15 years ago

Wow thats brutal. Poorly organized. Nobody knew to show up.

edanm• 15 years ago

Skip the first few minutes of choosing companies, and go straight to the office hours.

vellum• 15 years ago

Go to 6:20 for the first office hour.

kenjackson6• 15 years ago

Videos at Disrupt aren't showing up. At least not in IE9.

andrest2• 15 years ago

Works in FF and Chrome

kenjackson6• 15 years ago

Yeah, watching in Chrome, but it hangs a lot trying to resume from pause.

david9276• 15 years ago

I was really impressed by this. None of the questions he asked were so surprising, but when I asked myself the same questions, such as which demographic desperately needs you, I was embarrassed at my lack of good answers.

david9276• 15 years ago

P.S. After spending time with some of these questions, we have a new direction and new energy. I used to say, "It would be nice to have a mentor." Now I think it's absolutely critical.

Our startup is Kongoroo (http://kongoroo.com). If anyone wants to be a mentor to us, we would deeply appreciate it. My email is in my profile. Thanks.

kenjackson6• 15 years ago

I tried to play Monster Crossing, but after I picked the game type (addition word problems) the screen flashed between two screens. I couldn't get to the play button because it would move positions too fast. This is in IE9.

greendestiny4• 15 years ago

Cool site, I'll be trying it out with my kids tonight.

andrest2• 15 years ago

A bit off-topic, but I find it interesting how motivated people are to post stuff on HN. It took just under 2 minutes for the person to find the post, 'digest' it and submit it. The video is 50 minutes long.

dpritchett• 15 years ago

I watched it live this morning on Ustream at noon Eastern.

achompas• 15 years ago

It's all about karma here. People have set up scripts to automatically submit blog posts by more highly-regarded members.

waterside812• 15 years ago

It's amazing how good pg is at sizing up startup ideas within minutes (seconds?). I imagine with enough experience many can achieve this, but impressive nonetheless. Not sure if it was the nerves or what, but it seemed like the startups chosen couldn't quite get the "tell me your idea in 1-2 sentences" down pat. Took a while longer to see where they were going.

Fascinating for non-YC folk to see this live.

endergen4• 15 years ago

Investors are similar in general to him in terms of questions, but they don't try to give as much help/suggestions and mulling over of your idea.

natural2193• 15 years ago

The fourth guy (TvTak) didn't seem very interested in Paul's idea, which I thought was magnitudes better than his original idea. The idea of being able to signify that you're watching a show could actually be disruptive.

...so who wants to do it? I'm down.

ericflo• 15 years ago

IntoNow seems pretty successful.

natural2193• 15 years ago

Oh. Good call.

kenjackson6• 15 years ago

How does this technology work? I'd think it would have to have a huge cache of video to make this work.

Update: I checked IntoNow and this is what they say:

"IntoNow, which is based our patented platform SoundPrint, analyzes the ambient audio being generated from your television in three-second increments. The audio is then converted into a “fingerprint”—basically, the show’s unique signature for ID—that is matched on the back-end to our reference set (which covers 130 channels of live broadcasting and has more than five years history). Once we make a match, we return all the metadata associated with that show and episode—things like title, description, cast, and associate links. This all happens in seconds."

So it actually uses the audio, which is much better, although I watch a lot of TV with CC in bed.

endergen4• 15 years ago

Perhaps levering Copyright enforcement programs/databases?

natural2193• 15 years ago

I still don't know how they analyze shows airing for the first time. They could recognize voices, but what if an actor opens in two different TV shows?

damncabbage• 15 years ago

How long until "Landmark Digital Services LLC" come knocking?

http://www.redcode.nl/blog/2010/07/patent-infringement/

endergen4• 15 years ago

They could explain themselves as sort of a Shazam for TV. http://www.shazam.com/music/web/iphone.html

mdolon• 15 years ago

Couldn't you just have the TV show or commercial flash a QR code on the screen, or on the corner of the screen? I've already seen subway ads using QR codes, though I'm not sure how effective they are. The business model sounds solid though - advertisers flash QR codes on screen, users scan it with their app and are entered into contest/sweepstakes. Once contest is over they get a message on the app stating if they've won or not, and informing them of new/upcoming giveaways.

The only hard part would be convincing shows and companies to participate. They have incentive but I imagine they'd want to see numbers in regards to cost vs viewer acquisition, or perhaps loyalty. Pretty interesting stuff..

waterlesscloud2• 15 years ago

Isn't this getglue? It's how my friends are using getglue at least.

Getglue has appeared in my feeds with increasing frequency over the past month. Admittedly, most of my friends are entertainment industry types and so predisposed, but it's been coming up much more often.

dgallagher• 15 years ago

In regards to Flytivity (introduce people to each other at airports):

PG:You don’t know where people are going unless you expect them to tell you all the time. You have to find a subset of people who super-want to talk to one another. Enough to seek out and sign up for something they aren’t using. If I were you i’d stat over. You’ve spent 60 days on this. Plenty of companies start over after 60 days. The very best startups solve problems that founders themselves have. What is the worst problem in my life.

First idea that popped into my head: frequent fliers who like to sleep around and/or cheat on their spouses. If you're always on the go, away from home (for better or worse), an app connecting like-minded people easily might have a viable group of customers. Basically, a mobile/geo version of AdultFriendFinder.com. Want to share a hotel room to fool around in, and save some money by doubling up? Stranded out of town with nothing to do? Etc...

People will go out of their way for sex, including logging into an app and planning ahead. The question is, how big is the customer base, and what are they willing to pay? Do you end up with too many men and not enough women? Perhaps it's different between W4M, M4W, M4M, W4W.

endergen4• 15 years ago

First idea for me was Foursquare that people send out via twitter. You literally get a consistently named location. Do twitter searches on those names. Then @reply them telling them that they should check flytivity.

Mentioning user checkin counts and or active users in the airport would prompt interest. If people are comfortable with creating their own profiles that are publicly available you can then scan to see if someone's in your line of work or interests.

Bonus points if you could create groups so that people coagulate and increase the comfort of meeting people knowing that everyone is a stranger and it buffers you from weirdos as it's more likely some people are normal/interesting/cool.

Just my two cents.

philwelch• 15 years ago

With anything like this, the M4W market is going to overwhelm.

btilly• 15 years ago

Local prostitutes will be all over that.

hugh32• 15 years ago

But the m4m market could be the most lucrative. Look at... that senator whose name I forget. Wouldn't it be much easier to solicit random sex via your phone than try to do it in a cubicle? And heck, it's probably a lot more pleasant for everyone who has to use those cubicles.

Of course in order to make this happen you'd probably need to build a general-purpose "meet people with common interests" app, just to provide some plausible deniability (either to others, or to one's own self). "Oh no, that's not a random gay sex app, I just like to meet other... model railroad enthusiasts..."

One more thing: by the time you've done all this, there's no point in restricting it to airports, is there?

cemregr2• 15 years ago

This app exists and is hugely successful. It works in Airports, Office Buildings, Government Buildings, inside the Court House...

called "GRINDR".

waterside812• 15 years ago

AshleyMadison.com for airports

klbarry• 15 years ago

While I am a very faithful person (not that you're not, but just to be clear), this is shockingly delightful and I think your business sense is top-notch.

nl2• 15 years ago

If you can get women to use it you've got a business there.

You might be able to partner with local hotels and/or restaurants and offer discounts for couples who use the app. But you need to to structure it so the "free meal" voucher thing goes to a woman, but she can only use it if she goes with another person.

It might alienate the M4M market though.

bambax2• 15 years ago

The problem with Flytivity is that Sonar does everything already, much better.

They have solved the chicken-egg problem in a very clever way, by mining the web for info about people you'd like to meet, who are where you are, and who don't necessarily use the service. "Sonar is useful even if no one else is on Sonar".

Presentation by Sonar's founder here: http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/25/arrington-sonar-which-took-...

(I understand that you're talking about a way to use Flytivity for sex, but you could certainly use Sonar in this way too).

jriek• 15 years ago

I'm not sure the protocol for posting here but I'm the founder that was told to "start over". Probably won't but I at least wanted to give a mini-pitch, which I was told not to do on stage.

Flytivity is less like Sonar in that frequent flyers will share their travel itinerary before they travel, through the portal or most likely through TripIt. Flytivity pushes profiles of other business people that they might want to connect with in the airport, at the conference or traveling to that city via email the day before you travel; from there they can see how their connected (via linkedin (1st, 2nd 3rd level) or twitter) as well as other commonalities they might have with someone totally unconnected. You will also be able to initiate direct message right from the email.

Within the app the user can build a trip, check out who they might meet on future trips, see who's in town on a current trip as well as post in the city/conference forum about events.

With 460 million business trips on the books for this year, Flytivity was created with the business class traveler in mind. We know status and upgrades are important. We know you don't want to talk to just anyone, which is why you talk to no one. We also know that one face to face meeting can grow your business or career. We want to help make that happen.

dpapathanasiou• 15 years ago

"We know you don't want to talk to just anyone, which is why you talk to no one. We also know that one face to face meeting can grow your business or career. We want to help make that happen."

If that's the real problem you're trying to solve, it seems sites like LetsLunch.com do a better job of this, partially b/c they don't have to deal with the artificial constraint of having people be in transit somewhere.

suking• 15 years ago

This first guy is brutally bad @ explaining what he does - jfc - learn how to explain wtf you do and stop saying pivot. Nervous much?

citizenkeys• 15 years ago

In regards to Vidappy (and I hope they're listening): These founders seriously need to examine and address the legal issues associated with this idea. If your target clients are big-name companies, particularly if actual candidate skills are less relevant, there are serious Equal Employment Opportunity issues to resolve. This whole idea is a giant class-action lawsuit waiting to happen.

I take this issue very seriously because I just took some MBA classes regarding human resources. At a very basic level, this idea is designed to let potential employers prejudice potential hires. Job candidates are legally protected from this specific idea in the same way they're protected from job application questions like race, age, nationality, and other questions that are not directly job-related. In so many words, if the candidate is qualified for the job, the hiring manager doesn't legally get a choice as to whether he likes the way the candidate looks.

Klinky• 15 years ago

In so many words, if the candidate is qualified for the job, the hiring manager doesn't legally get a choice as to whether he likes the way the candidate looks.

How is the person who was declined for the job even going to know they were discriminated against? Hiring discrimination goes on all the time. I am doubtful that VidAppy makes this any easier for hiring managers to do.

chrisaycock• 15 years ago

The qualifications for these retail jobs are character-based; the employee must present himself well and make the customer feel at ease. Looking like a thug has nothing to do with race or age, but has a lot to do with scaring away the clientele.

benmccann• 15 years ago

By that logic interviewing people in person would put you in jeopardy of violating EEO laws. How does doing an interview over the net instead of in person change anything?

jefowler4th• 15 years ago

@citizenkeys You're making the assumption that the applicant applied for a specific job and/or Company. An employer checking out videos on this site is not the same thing. If that were true, an employer would be required to interview every profile they looked at on Monster and CareerBuilder. I agree with @benmccann, by your logic in-person interviews would violate EEO laws.

kenjackson6• 15 years ago

This was great advertising for pg. He's a great writer and success story, obviously. But he comes across a lot nicer than I thought he was.

jasonkolb• 15 years ago

I'm always impressed with what a genuinely nice guy PG seems to be. I love watching him try to brainstorm with these guys about ways to make their ideas work, even when they resist :P

guynamedloren• 15 years ago

pg comes off as a great guy during interviews and is clearly intelligent based on his success (YC + others) as well as his essays, but I always kind of wondered if he's just gotten really lucky spotting startup talent, or if he's just firing shots in a barrel hoping to hit something.

2 minutes into his first "office hour" and all of my doubts are out the window. pg really does know what he's doing. He asks questions that seem blatantly obvious, yet nobody else seems to be asking them. He doesn't let something go if he wants to know more - he keeps nagging. He understands how markets work and where people spend money, but also has the technological know-how. I am thoroughly impressed, and can't wait to gather his insight for the next 42 minutes of this video.

hugh32• 15 years ago

It seems that the two top "tricky" questions to ask an entrepreneur pitching an idea are:

1. Who is gonna want to use this?

and

2. Yeah, but really, who is gonna want to use this?

A lot of ideas seem pretty half-baked. You sit there in front of a TV, you're not so sure exactly what you're watching, and you suddenly think "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if you could point your iPhone at the TV and find out what you're watching?" And the answer is: yeah, sorta, kinda, occasionally, but multiply the number of people who want such a thing by the frequency with which they want such a thing by the amount they really care and you're looking at a pretty darn low care factor.

I don't care what anyone says about how ideas are cheap and implementation is hard. Good ideas are hard. That narrow Venn diagram overlap between "problems that people really want to solve" and "problems that are actually possible to solve" is really small.

greendestiny4• 15 years ago

Yeah its this set of questions that every entrepreneur has asked themselves and answered. Yet they are questions which are seemingly near impossible to answer honestly when asking oneself.

This entire clip gave me massive flashbacks to sessions with my PhD supervisor. His manner is incredibly similar as well.

mindcrime2• 15 years ago

Yeah, that video does make it clear how good pg is at pointing out important stuff and asking pertinent questions. The only thing that struck me as a little dodgy, was his tendency to ask a question, then cut the other person off before they had barely started answering. I mean, I understand that he wants to cut to the chase in the interest of time, and that some people will ramble if you don't cut them off... but a couple of times that I found myself thinking that the conversation would have flowed more smoothly if he'd let the other person continue an existing train of thought a little further.

But his methods seem to work, so who am I to quibble? :-)

andrewtbham• 15 years ago

i thought the same thing about cutting people off, but in some cases it seemed like he had gotten more information than it seemed initially. for instance, the guy that said he had a shopping platform, but he quickly deduced that he had a penny auction site.

alanning• 15 years ago

I would guess he is also using questions to test/signal expertise. If you really know what you are talking about, no awkward pauses. The 10-years of experience guy with the video application startup...iirc no interruptions.

waterlesscloud2• 15 years ago

I was really impressed watching the video. He's really into and has clearly spent a lot of time thinking deeply about what makes startup ideas work.

At one point in a previous life, I had a chance to get coaching from one of the very top screenwriters in Hollywood on pitching a particular movie idea. That conversation was very much like these office hours, down to the guy's demeanor. But what the writer kept asking us over and over, in several different ways was this "Yeah, but what is it about your idea that's cool enough that people will want to see it?" He kept poking and poking at it. Reminded me of pg in this video a lot.

ptn2• 15 years ago

I too thought that the questions were blatantly obvious, yet wouldn't have asked (some of) them myself. This is an indicator of mastery, to make the difficult seem easy.

mikeleeorg2• 15 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but one takeaway I had from this fascinating segment is:

For investors, your pitch should include the problem you're trying to solve, the people who have this problem, and your solution.

For pg's office hours, you should strip away all that marketing talk and just say what it is in it's most barest technical essentials.

petervandijck3• 15 years ago

Correcting you: I got the impression pg wants to know exactly who will be your customer and what problem you're solving. He asked that again and again. (saying what problem you're solving is not marketing talk)

mikeleeorg2• 15 years ago

Ah, perhaps I should have phrased that better. What I meant to say was:

For pg's office hours, you should strip away all the buzz words and describe your business (customer, market, etc) in words someone outside of this industry would understand.

Basically, I got the feeling he was trying to pare away buzz words.

mceachen• 15 years ago

Exactly!

It took us two office hours to get this! In the beginning of our second, he asked us straight out -- "wait, stop selling me. What's the problem you're trying to solve here?"

Going with six ears helped too -- we'd always debrief after the office hours, and talk about what he said, and none of us had the full picture. The dude talks fast and covers a lot of ground!

-- Devoted PG fan

ptn2• 15 years ago

That's why I thought that a bad answer to pg asking "how did users find you?" is what the guy from the graph db gave him, "because we are the easiest!". Total marketing talk.

dshep• 15 years ago

By FAR the best of the disrupt videos. Thanks Paul for giving us a glimpse behind closed doors.

maxwin• 15 years ago

PG seems like a really smart guy. He was able to point put the pain points with very litter background information. He reminded me something my college professor used to tell me "Always try to surround yourself with someone smarter than you". I wish I know more people as smart as him.

rhizome• 15 years ago

There are about 5 questions that feed into "who is going to pay you?" All of them are pain points for the vast majority of startups (anecdata). Idea + development + customers = Business. I'm not saying PG is a dope or anything, but it has to be apparent that the "customer" chunk is an Achilles heel for just about all dotcom-y biz. The ones who aren't getting funded for being gadget new tech, who aren't going to be bought as a team for implementing a possibly-useful technology, are going to have to figure out who the customer is, and from reading HN it seems most are counting on the first two options.

swah3• 15 years ago

I wish I knew one.

zyfo• 15 years ago

Impressive. I could almost see the bayesian filtering taking place inside pg's head when he went from saying "scrap that idea" to "maybe there's something here" on Flyify, once he realized this honestly was a real problem for the founder and that maybe he just wasn't part of their target demographic. (Not saying it's viable or that pg thought so, but he was open to the fact that it could be).

Not only great at shooting down leaky abstractions, understanding different customers but also at being non-judgemental - a rare combination.

petervandijck3• 15 years ago

I think the founder was fooling himself: being bored waiting for an airplane is a problem, but an app that connects you to people closeby isn't gonna work.

greendestiny4• 15 years ago

I've had some random conversations with people in airports before, it wasn't a particularly life changing experience. I think there is probably an opportunity to provide services for people who are out of town on business better - basically at the moment the social interactions serviced by having a few beers at the hotel bar. I think grubwithus does this pretty well, but there might be other models.

vnorby• 15 years ago

I'd pay anything to sit down for 8 minutes with pg and have him rip through my idea. It's pretty obvious why YC companies have such a big advantage. He knows exactly the right things to say, and he did it in a way that didn't make any of them feel bad, but rather inspired them. Totally atypical for an investor.

iqster• 15 years ago

My pitch for the motorcycle giveaway was that I'd try to trade it with pg for 30 minutes of his advice! Almost thought I had nailed it. Much sadness :'(

marcamillion• 15 years ago

I imagine that the applications for the next batch are going to grow at an even faster clip after the entire interwebs have seen this.

It really is fascinating to see how good PG is at zero-ing on the most essential stuff and asking the tough questions and how genuinely happy (almost excited) he seems when he comes up with a suggestion that the company can use.

Not that I had any doubts about YC before, but it definitely is here to stay.

Edit: I was also surprised at the quality of the startups that he spoke to. I expected wishy-washy 'social media' crap, but these guys seem to be onto something.

extension• 15 years ago

Can anybody see the video right now? I just get a black box and the page takes ~30 seconds to load. If I load the player .swf directly, I get Ooyala's throbber forever.

guptaneil• 15 years ago

Same here, tried in both Safari and Firefox. Briefly got the play button to show up in Firefox, and then the browser crashed...

zackattack5• 15 years ago

Great Video. In my YC application I will be sure to pre-answer these questions: Who in the world needs you the most and... what's special about you?

People will seek out something they desperately need

One mechanism to evaluate opportunity appeal: f(how bad they need you, how fast they move)

prgrmr• 15 years ago

Does anyone by chance have a (the?) list of good questions a founder should ask themselves (similar to what pg asks)? Would be much appreciated.

idoh• 15 years ago

Try reading the yc application and thinking about how it applies to you.

zackattack5• 15 years ago

by the way, this made me think of another idea.

Vacation Discovery....like StumbleUpon, but shows awesome places you can go within a certain budget..

maybe categories "Castles" "East Asia" "Tropical" "Waterfalls" "Jungles" "Deserts"

It would have to be:

1) Very picture-oriented, so you can fantasize and browse (escapism)

2) Able to filter by price easily, and include airfare

Good business model, fun to use, win win win.

zackattack5• 15 years ago

I guess the question is Cost of Customer Acquisition going to be cheaper LTV?

I wonder what the economics of travel commissions are... If you get 5% of whatever it costs to book a vacation... and people are booking $1000 vacations ... that's $50.

And assume that 1% of visitors who visit the site end up using us to book a vacation thats 50 cents a user.

And I think you can target YUPpies on Facebook for around that

Of course, if the product's design is really compelling (crucial), it will be social/viral, people will use it when they're bored.

nl2• 15 years ago

The affiliate market for travel is very active and pays pretty well, BTW.

Commission rates depend on exactly what part of the travel industry you are going for. Hotels pay ~7%, coach holidays pay ~4%, car hire can go as low as 2%.

cemregr2• 15 years ago

This exact thing does exist. Different vacation types, different destinations.. All covered. Gave you hotel and airfare prices. Was quite thorough although was a flash app. Don't remember the name of the site though. Adioso.com?

zackattack5• 15 years ago

Hmm... it's not adioso. If you think about it could you come back to this thread and let me know?

revorad• 15 years ago

YC-funded http://adioso.com already does something like this. Don't know how successful they are.

zackattack5• 15 years ago

It's somewhat different, but I always thought they had a neat idea and product! I love NLP

malyk• 15 years ago

Wanderfly seems to do this pretty well.

http://www.wanderfly.com/

gbog2• 15 years ago

Any other place to see the video? It seems to not work from China even under a VPN.

PakG12• 15 years ago

I watched it fine from China, using strongvpn.com, open VPN. Maybe try again? Possible just was high server load or something?

gbog2• 15 years ago

Watching now, but I have to wait for 10 minutes more every minute...

6ren3• 15 years ago

actual start: 6:20

alagu• 15 years ago

Not sure how much it helped the startups who went on to the stage but it did help a ton for folks who are in initial phase of building a product.

We ask ourselves all those pg questions. Get answers.

6ren3• 15 years ago

Re the TV app: at first I was thinking that is incredibly impressive video recognition technology, but then I realized that just the variation of overall brightness over time would be enough information to select from the channels that are playing at that moment.

6ren3• 15 years ago

The only one with a clear market need was Vidappy, the retail employment one. That addresses a task that people are already trying to get done, but in a better way.

pg's question for finding a market need: "What is the worst problem in my life?"

icandoitbetter• 15 years ago

Are there any similar videos? I could listen to PG coaching for hours.

staunch• 15 years ago

PG: Please do this again at the next Startup School. This is seriously useful stuff.

melvinram• 15 years ago

My notes of stuff I typed while listening to this the second time... mostly verbatim questions by PG:

GRAPH DATABASE

So who uses it?

So it's for ___ ?

Can you give me an example, of all the people in the world, who needs you the most right now? Like what problem needs you the most right now?

Who has trouble with this problem now? Who wants to do ___ that would otherwise have problems with doing ___ ?

Is the ___ (latency) going to be a problem?

Is there anyone who has said yes? Is there anyone who wants to use this software?

Why do they need you? What's special about you?

Are any of these people ready to pay you yet?

So they want to pay you because they need the product this much?

If they want to pay you, are they paying you? You never know if they are serious until you try to get [their money.]

[Money] will really impress investors. It's not so much that they care about the money. They care about money as evidence that people really want what you are building.

Who is going to use your ___ in production first? Cuz you won't really know if it's good until they are using it... good in the sense of helping them out. This is going to be a combination of how desperately they need you and how quickly they make decisions.

Find out who the users to use you first are and figure out the types of problems they are solving and describe yourself as solving those problems.

-----------

VID APPY

How do they ____ (hire people now) now?

Is the problem that ___ (walk-in's don't scale)? (what is the problem with the current alternative.)

So how do you know ___ (what questions to ask)? (the tough part of the new solution that you hope to offer)

It's good for the end user too (people applying too.)

What's hard about what you're trying to do is ___ (establish a marketplace).

Which one is the harder quantity to get? (the retailers or the job applicants?)

Is this thing launched yet?

Maybe the way you get this started is ___ (go to a big retailer and tell them to tell their applicants to go to this url).

---------------

DATA CURIOUS

Who needs it?

How are they going to use it? (On the fly report generation or prepared reports)

What do you think is going to be the most common ____ (query) that people will do?

I worry that this won't have a big enough gravity well to stay up in the top of people's heads. This is the sort of thing people would do occasionally and never come back.

If someone were to come back over and over, what ____ (queries) would they be doing (or running) over and over?

I wonder how many ___ (investors) that into ___ that are going to come back over and over again.

I worry that you're not going to be able to find enough (users who will want to use your solution over and over again.)

-------------------

TV TECH

So how?

Where is that going to be most used? Like if you imagine a year from now and you've launched, you're successful and people are using this a lot... everyone who has a business like that can say the biggest single case of people using this is for ___. So what is going to be the biggest single case of people using this?

You're going to decide what to show when I click on the stuff. (You're making assumptions on what they want when even they might not know what they want.) What if it's wrong?

I would test this on some actual people a lot. See if you can get them to the point where they won't ___ (watch TV) without this. Unless you can make it stick on them, it's not going to stick on other people.

You have the underlying technology to do ___. This doesn't have to be how you use it. There could be other ways to use it besides ___ (this thing that every consumer is clicking on).

-----------------

FLYITIVITY

How do you beat the chicken and egg problem? The way to beat a chicken and egg problem is to find a tiny subset of the market that is small but much more driven than normal.

I don't feel like ___ (airports) is the secret because they don't all want to solve this problem.

You have to find a subset of people really want to ___ ... enough to want to seek out and try this new thing that they are not already using.

What is the worst problem in your life?

If this really honestly is one of the biggest problems in your life than maybe you're not the only one.

-------------------

LUCKY CHIC

What do you do for them once they get to your site?

When a typical user shows up on your site, what do they see and what do they do?

What is the most common thing users do?

What's the biggest driver of traffic?

So far the one that they use is the ___ (penny auction)?

Can you grow while breaking even?

In a given day, how many people use it? Do they return?

What's the growth rate like?

You should figure out, what are you seeing people do or wanting to do among your existing users that you're not really suited for yet or that no one really gives them. Is there anything?

david9276• 15 years ago

Did anyone else get a "nerd giggle" out of the exchange: "graph database," "Cartesian graph?" I guess you can never be too sure, but I still found it funny.

po• 15 years ago

I was surprised and impressed by pg sniffing out the last guy. I felt like there was something shady about how he was describing his company… like it was a 'platform' and too general and he had too many 'users' for what he was describing.

Then Paul jumped right to the "is this a penny auction site?" question and nailed it. I wonder if he hears from people running that angle a lot…

Also, I think from now on when someone describes how many users they have, my next question will be how many active users per day/week/month?

bambax2• 15 years ago

This was super-interesting; watching PG do his thing lets one get familiar with his way of thinking.

What every entrepreneur should do should be to build a "virtual PG" in their head (the way writers pretend to write to one person they actually know, and not in general).

Also, there is great potential for a fascinating reality TV show.

Instead of watching people eating bugs in Guatemala, how captivating would it be to follow a few startups going from nothing to world domination, their doubts, failures and successes, etc., and see how they're coached and what they learn along the way?

I would pay to watch such a show.

parfe• 15 years ago

Why is the penny auction guy ashamed of his site? 100k registrations is pretty good I would think. Is there a reason he can't just focus on profiting on the auctions?

gnufs• 15 years ago

The video file can be downloaded at http://ustream.vo.llnwd.net/pd14/0/1/14/14951/14951420/1_819...

joeyespo• 15 years ago

Awesome.

Although I think Paul should've polled the audience on some of the ideas to see who would be interested. Especially the airport guy. It's not what normally happens during office hours. But hey, why not take advantage of the situation?

swah3• 15 years ago

In which I remember that PG is really good at what he does.

swah3• 15 years ago

So, now I have to ask again: do ideas matter?

Office Hours With Paul Graham At TC Disrupt

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