hacklite

What difference would it make if there were extraterrestrial life?

How would an advanced Alien intelligence view human beings, who exploit and slaughter intelligent life around them on a daily basis, including other human beings, and helpless animals who they raise under torturous conditions and then dismember while conscious in order to consume them -- needlessly, as our physiology does not require animal products.

Not to mention the warmongering, as the majority of the U.S. public supported war -- as long as it seemed convenient. No anti-war stance on principle for most U.S. citizens, bogglingly, especially after the lessons of Vietnam.

A lack of human rights or environmental laws in the most populous country on Earth.

Widespread environmental destruction, wiping out forests and ecosystems all over the globe.

I don't think Aliens would be too impressed with humanity in general, including SETI researchers who retire to the cafeteria for a nice plate of murdered intelligent being on a daily basis.

I wouldn't even say building Google was that hard -- wasn't it mostly done by Larry Page to start with?

Examples? There are plenty of incompetent doctors, and that's about as high a bar as there is.

    "Google has a dual-class share structure that gives Larry Page, Sergey
    Brin, and Eric Schmidt de facto total control over the company, and 
    investors certainly haven't avoided Google's stock as a result.

    Yahoo does not have a dual-class share structure, and it's too late to put 
    one into place now.

    If Yahoo did have a dual-class share structure, Yahoo's cofounders would
    have been much better situated to block Microsoft from attempting a 
    takeover.

    You can bet that this is being noticed by the founders of every technology
    company that might go public from here on out."

Theoretically, except you can't force a private company to sell, unlike one that has gone public.

Can't legislate competence.

Feynman resigned from the National Academy of Sciences, "because that was another organization most of whose time was spent in choosing who was illustrious enough to join, to be allowed to join us in our organization [...] The whole thing was rotten because its purpose was mostly to decide who could have this honor [...]"

Well, he tried to resign but they wouldn't let him because they didn't want to lose someone of his stature!

mde, do you have contact info? E-Mail in profiles is only visible to the YC people, not other users.

If you're constantly a beginner, your productivity is not going to be high. That's a given.

I'm not sure why you thought I'd need your psychoanalysis or advice :) We have different neurobiology.

I've dived into new things many times. It's just not exciting to me the way it was when I was younger.

It's almost like they're running PHP.

...or torpedo your insurance. They'll find some way around the anti-genetic-discrimination laws once they calculate how much they can increase profits -- up to and including lobbying to repeal those laws. They aren't set in stone, after all.

> if you have opportunities now, you'll have opportunities in a few years once you graduate.

Sure, but not all opportunities are created equal. Think how different things would be if Gates waited a couple years, or Woz and Jobs, or even the Google guys. Google would have incorporated right around the dot-bust and likely would've tanked because it wouldn't have had those couple years to become established first. If ViaWeb had waited a couple years then instead of selling to Yahoo in 1998 they would have run into the bust as well, making it that much harder to get bought. WebTV would've missed out on two years' worth of being viable back when websites were designed for 640x480. Microsoft would have been a couple years behind and would've missed the IBM deal.

In this industry, a couple of years is a long time and things are constantly moving, so there's always an incredible opportunity cost for waiting.

On the flip side, college will always be there. Woz went back and got his degree after Apple went public.

> I think more people should view entrepreneurship as a career, not as something you do for a few years in your early 20s to make a few quick bucks.

You can do it as long as you want. However, as an oldie, I can tell you that my productivity level was MUCH higher when I was younger. In the 18-22 range, this stuff is EXCITING. You've never DONE it before. Everything motivates you!

I don't think it's an accident Reddit was done by guys that age. It's such a simple site with a boring design that people with massively more experience wouldn't even bother to do something like it. But they started out in Lisp, so it was an adventure! Then they learned Python and rewrote it. New and interesting!

Nothing substitutes for enthusiasm because enthusiasm leads to getting things done. New things are exciting. Youth = inexperience = more things are new and therefore exciting and so you have more enthusiasm. Youth also means higher hormone levels, which means more energy and caring about things more and being irrational by expending irrational amounts of energy on projects that interest you. Lower hormone levels mean indifference or just talking about something but not having the excitement level needed to break your energy-conservation threshold and DO it.

The thinking about start-ups has shifted over the last few years so there is more awareness, and in certain places -- esp. Silicon Valley -- it can actually be a plus even if it folded. In other places, nobody wants to touch you if you've had a failed venture.

Ironically, without a diploma, your best options for getting a job at someone else's company happen to be in the same locations that are best for starting your own company regardless of diploma. Google probably won't hire you but another startup will, because they don't have diplomas, either! They just care if you are smart, and get things done.

Sure, if you throw yourself in the deep end, you may sink to the bottom. However, those who make it out will be better swimmers than those who stay in the kiddie pool, that's all.

> but I think most of those billionaires would have been as successful or even more so if they'd have spent the time to finish school.

Dropping out can be a necessary condition due to timing reasons alone. Gates dropped out of Harvard because he was worried about missing his chance to make it big in the computer industry. There's also the non-trivial issue of losing your most energetic years as a young adult (18-22) by spending them on something other than your life ambition. Not to mention, if you aren't interested in college and force yourself to do it, that may well have such a spirit-crushing/soul-numbing effect that you kill off your own motivation to the point where you lose your drive to DO your own company. It depends on your personality.

I think for the most part, ambition to take over the world as an entrepreneur is incompatible with jumping through anyone else's hoops, including sitting in class and doing what someone else tells you.

So it's not that dropping out makes you a world-changer, but staying in is frustrating to the ambitions of world-changers.

If you look at the Forbes 2007 list of richest Americans who didn't inherit their wealth, you get 1. Gates (college dropout), 3. Adelson (college dropout), 4. Ellison (college dropout), 5 and 6. Brin and Page (grad school dropouts), 7. Kerkorian (8th grade dropout!), 8. Dell (college dropout), 9. Allen (college dropout). Only Warren Buffet at #2 didn't drop out of school at some level, but he was already established in business before he went to college, and only went because his father pressured him into it. He hated it. (I left out the Koches because they inherited Koch Industries.)

The causal effect is that the same thing that drives them to be successful also drove them to drop out.

I presume you're referring to age/gender discrimination.

At least people generally recognize that sexism is wrong. There is a lot less raised consciousness when it comes to ageism.

You start college early, and everyone says you're too young. And then later, ironically, you find when you hit 30 that the thinking has recently shifted when it comes to start-ups, so then you're too old.

Perhaps this list of billionaire dropouts may have some relevance to the topic at hand:

http://www.pennylicious.com/2006/10/09/billionaire-dropouts/

Also listen to Steve Jobs talk about dropping out in his commencement speech:

http://www.google.com/search?q=steve+jobs+commencement

Dropping out is one of the worst things you can do if you want a job, and one of the best things you can do if you want to make sure you won't end up in one. Essentially you throw yourself in the deep end with nothing to "fall back on".

The first two years are typically gen ed and are often not aligned with a student's particular interests. This can make someone feel like it's a waste of time. If they feel that way, then they aren't going to be in a receptive state for learning, even though technically the material is new to them -- it holds no interest.

"If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labour, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Congrats!

Ironically, he got an invite from YC despite being a single founder -- and then turned them down.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=173759

Apparently they will "take a chance" on you as a solo founder if you have an already-established profitable business you've built up over several years to the point where an M&A event is imminent.

Well, "great personality" is perhaps demanding a bit much. But a lot of people have "made it" without hard work. They get by on their looks, or their parents' connections, or ride someone else's coattails. How much work did Paul Allen put in relative to his net worth? Or YouTube's third founder? Or most investors -- their money does the work, which can return disproportionate rewards.

Sure, Steve Jobs was instrumental in starting Apple, but the amount of work he did to get that first hundred million was tiny by comparison. A lot of salespeople hustle and work just as hard -- just in less effective directions. Lots of middle-aged maids from Guatemala work harder.

Not to mention the sheer luck of knowing Woz in the first place. Or the fact that Jobs did it because he was interested in computers at just the right time and place. A lot of people follow their interests but the industry isn't some gigantic wave.

Plus some things come naturally to people and it isn't "hard". Woz designed the Apple II mostly at night while he was working at HP. Hard for him would have been doing all the stuff Jobs did -- like talking to people! Some people not only socialize easily, it's hard for them NOT to socialize.

A lot of the successes just do what they WANT do, they don't "try hard" to make themselves do something. Bill Gates just loved running his own software company. He could have retired years and years ago, but he wasn't in it to make money in order to do something else. He'd rather run Microsoft than sit on a beach sipping umbrella drinks!

I would venture to guess that most well-known successes just did what came naturally. They didn't have to push themselves, in the way that when you're angry you don't have to push yourself to shout. You just feel a certain way and it's hard not to go along with it.

Probably most of the confusion and inertia here is because people know what they don't want to do (work some sucky job for 30 years), but not what they do want to do.

I think the question isn't "what would you do if you ALREADY HAD millions of dollars", but what would you do if you didn't have to worry about being broke. If all the basics were covered, but no luxuries (like having your own swell bachelor pad), and you were free to pursue whatever type of enterprise you wanted.

> A startup as most people use the word means a comparatively small, comparatively young company that is designed to grow very big.

How many YC companies fit this definition? I thought the goal was to make the founders rich, which so far hasn't included growing into a big company.

Amer. Heritage: A business or an undertaking that has recently begun operation: grew from a tiny start-up to a multimillion-dollar corporation.

Note that's just example usage; startup doesn't denote a design to become a big company.