Comment by Imscaredofsama | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Imscaredofsama | Hacker News Reader

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The whole sama thing doesn't compute for me and has negatively impacted my otherwise stellar view of YC.

He dropped out of Stanford, founded Loopt (which raised $30 million and then acqui-sold for $43 -- and I'm sure Sequoia got the bulk of it), was then made a YC partner and finally appointed president. His Wikipedia page says he's made some angel investments in successful companies like AirBNB, but my question is: "With what money?" Maybe he sold some private shares of these companies at some point. There's nothing wrong with that. But again where did the original money come from? Family?

I just don't get it. Please explain to me how dropping out of college and having your only startup fail leads to (a) being handed one of the most prestigious and influential positions in SV and (b) having so much money you can donate $10 million dollars like it's chump change. How does that make any sense in this universe?

pg started YC and deserves all the credit for basically inventing the accelerator archetype. He can do whatever he wants and I guess he thought sama was the best guy for the job. Maybe he is. Heck, I'll even admit that I think he's done a good job so far, although I also think plenty of people would be equally adept at watching a golden goose lay eggs.

I think SV -- and YC especially -- perpetrate a few huge myths which cause people to have unrealistic expectations of their lives and ventures. ("There aren't enough engineers!", for example. Just last week, sama was saying how easy it is to live in SV if you work at Facebook, make a $150k+ salary and got a $75k signing bonus... a situation he was pawning off as "average" but is actually highly above average.) These lofty, then unfulfilled expectations then cause depression in vast amounts of people, both inside the Valley and out.

To me, sama is a colossal SV myth, incarnate. "Look! If you're smart enough, you can rocket to the moon! Even if you drop out of school and your only startup fails!"

I don't understand the full story, apparently, but I just hope people aren't fooled. There is more than meets the eye, here.

This is worth answering.

I made single-digit millions from the Loopt acquisition. Almost all the money I've made has been as an investor. I got lucky in that the first few investments I made in 2009 (very small dollar amounts) were really good, so I was able to raise capital to keep investing at a much larger scale with other peoples' money. I didn't have much liquidity until last year.

Takeaway 1: the easiest, lowest-risk way in the world to make a lot of money is to get fees for investing other peoples' money.

Takeaway 2: if you make money that way I think you should give a lot of it away.

Takeaway 3: FWIW this is a lot of money for me, but it's what I most want to support.

As a side note, I was pointing out that living in SV is becoming possible only if you get a job like that one, and that that's really a problem.

I respect the fact that you took a moment to add some clarity. Obviously you have a good sense for politics -- you know this is something people need to understand.

But hot damn! If you've been so successful people are literally having a hard time believing it's true... that's... that's... I don't even know.

I personally like 'sama and really appreciate his transparency, but this seems like a perfect example of the rich getting richer.

If you haven't noticed the acceleration of YC from the moment Sam took over, I feel like you've not really been paying attention. From scaling up the numbers, to outreach to females and minorities, to the increased transparency, and the YC Fellowship and now this, you really believe you're just watching someone collect golden eggs? Do you realize how hard it is to grow a community? And how easy it is to screw it up? If Paul Graham was Steve Jobs, then Sam Altman is Tim Cook, and more.

The golden goose thing was obviously an exaggeration. I think he's done a good job. And I'm sure the pressure is intense. I definitely couldn't do it.

But the older I've gotten, the more I've realized that life is about opportunities. If you want them, you have to put yourself in the position to get them (as sama did). More importantly, you have to make the best of them (as sama has). But many, many people who don't deserve opportunities get them (inheritance, for example) and many, many people who do deserve them, don't get them. They did all the right things... they simply were never given a shot by bosses, would-be cofounders, investors, etc. (Cue "Lose Yourself".)

A question I've been pondering a lot recently is the power of talent and whether or not it'll eventually rise to the top. How efficient is our society at finding "the best"? I tend to believe that someone as ridiculously talented as, say, Elton John, will always emerge. But then you hear the story of how someone like Matthew McConaughey was discovered (director of Dazed and Confused found him in a bar at 2am and said come to the set tomorrow -- zero acting experience) and you want to slap yourself.

And if you get into the genetic and familial lotteries (how smart you are, how good looking you are, are you black?, etc), then you'll just go completely crazy when you realize how unfair the world is.

In any case, from his answer, it looks like sama is a talented guy who put himself in the right position to succeed and is now an outlier on the normal curve. Good for him. It's gotta be somebody, might as well be him.

Yes, I think most people discount what a huge role luck plays in success.

Marc Andreesen wrote much the same in his career planning guide, 8 years ago:

http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_career_planning_part1.html

Anyway, if you would like any more than baseline success (where baseline success = working really hard to get into a profession with barriers to entry, like lawyer or doctor), you will have to deal with risk and uncertainty. You can't account for life without accounting for luck.

But life is long, and over the long-term, luck has a way of averaging out. And then the big question is how well did you capitalize on the luck you were given? A lot of people put themselves in positions where they have no chance of getting lucky, because they don't like the vulnerability and uncertainty that comes with realizing just how much of their life comes down to luck. That pretty much guarantees that they'll only be exposed to the unlucky events.

I was surprised at the $10 millions number at first, but a quick thought process clear it out for me: it's very easy to see that a few of YC founders will be (or already are) billionaires. Is it really a surprised that the head honcho of YC might be worth in the hundred millions range?

Completely agree. Would love to understand the money here - think it would provide a lot of perspective on how the technology financing community works.

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