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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

I think the biggest trap for developers is that they put all their eggs in one basket. Whereas, of course VCs like Graham wisely spread their money.

Imho, we as a community should put more weight on that aspect, and we should stimulate also the failures of Silicon Valley to come forward with their stories to prevent bias. For example, we've heard some stories of people making truckloads of money on app-stores, but do we really have any bearing on what the average capable developer makes? If we don't want to end up as disillusioned gold-diggers, we should really get that kind of data out.

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PG may have become an investor and most newcomers may have forgotten this but before YC he was himself a hacker who started a company and became successful.

Now years later, after having started a company through YC and then becoming a YC partner and now seeing this same kind of magic happen over and over again with hacker founders, I can't help but attest to the fact that his worldview has proven to be valuable.

The disillusioned worldview justifies lying on the floor. The essay's worldview prods you to get up.

> PG may have become an investor and most newcomers may have forgotten this but before YC he was himself a hacker who started a company and became successful.

Yes, that is certainly laudable, but he may be suffering from survivor bias.

Doesn't sound like suffering to me

I find it fascinating that people interpret his essays as elitist or "meritocratic" (in a dirty sense) when his basic message is optimistic: you, too, can start a startup. The whole self-serving thing, too. How does it make life better for him if more people who shouldn't start startups try? YC just gets more bad applications.

> I think the biggest trap for developers is that they put all their eggs in one basket.

But it's a big basket. It's expected that you're going to need to try a dozen different variations of the same idea before something sticks.

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