Ask YC: Have you ever ignored Paul Graham?
....and got away with it?
For the first month of Y Combinator, Paul Graham will tear you and your startup apart on a weekly basis (when you meet with him during office hours). If you're doing your job as a founder, though, you are the world expert in your particular field. So there should be times when you are right, and he's wrong, and you know that this is the case because of specific domain knowledge. There may even be times when you try to explain this to him and are unable to communicate it successfully.
However! There are also times when you think you have a problem specific to your startup that is actually a problem most startups have. In this case, PG is the domain expert, and you should probably listen to him.
The hard thing to do, obviously, is to distinguish the two cases. I have some thoughts on that, too, but they basically boil down to "you should appropriately mix cautious thought with bullheaded stubbornness", and you already knew that if you read anything anyone wrote about startups ever.
Edit: Didn't mean to speak for the rest of the founders. Feel free to disagree.
"Argue like you're right; listen like you're wrong."
At one point PG stated that the YC investing rule here was "no single founders unless you're a genius".
Also, I wonder if its not more difficult to judge which single founders will be successful, and easier to judge when it is a small team.
So I think treat this rule as investment advice, but if you're confident of running your own startup, trust yourself rather than PG's advice.
In the words of Sun Tzu, "If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles."
Can I design tarsnap and provide you a CSS template.
That said, if someone sends me a redesigned page, I'll certainly look at it. :-)
I wish more HN startups would realize that. Almost all of the 'review my startup' posts are just a single page with an email signup form you fill out to be notified when the app will be ready.
To be fair, at the beginning it didn't claim to be a website -- it just said "there will be a website here later, meanwhile go read these blog posts about tarsnap".
He mainly sees YC applicants and there may be a selection bias among them. Entirely possible that there is a really great trait among founders that makes them unlikely to apply to YC and likely to succeed without his advice.
That said, dude has been around.
Well normally at YC dinners he goes into his yurt and swallows a lot of peyote, and then he comes out talking in tongues and we all write down what he's saying and try to figure out how to proceed.
Even considering YC companies, who's to say how many would have succeeded anyway? There's no control, so no experiment.
I guess you could look at rejected applicants as a sort of control group (not perfect though)? How many of those have gone on to be a success (I have no idea)?
I co-founded a games studio. Paul doesn't have experience in the games space. The "worst" outcome of a meeting with PG has been that he's given me an important new perspective, even if he isn't able to come up with specific prescriptive advice. His ideas and perspectives are hugely valuable. Not once has he stepped on our toes.
The key here is that startups receive tons of conflicting advice from all angles and discovering how to process this advice is crucial. Paul trusts that founders can decide for themselves whether his advice is, at face-value, good.
By not applying to YC, you're saying that you can bootstrap yourself.
"ignoring the advice of clever, successful people is either plain wrong... or the smartest thing you ever did"
Hero worship aside Mr. Graham is good at what he does; distilling an idea until that potent cocktail is finally derived. This process in itself is something far more important than having an idea in the first place, and in order to truly work with someone like Mr. Graham you need to teach yourself to be ego-less.
It is my ego that says to me; 'no that can't be true at all. He's wrong!' without considering the facts. It's my ego that causes teenage defiance for the sake of defiance. It's quite true that he will be wrong some times, but what is undeniable is the fact that you gain more out of it by simply listening to him.
So, what if he is wrong and you know that you're right? Listen to what he has to say and try to understand why he raised that objection. Perhaps, there's a gem hidden beyond the surface. If something comes up then you've gained something out of it. Otherwise, you can always wait for your turn, reflect, and then grill him on things and try to make him understand your point of view.
This is something really hard to do, but if I was lucky enough to have pg as a mentor, then I think that it would be wiser to work with him. Rather than against him.
Note: I've noticed that this holds true for everybody in virtually any situation, be it Mr. Graham distilling your startup. Or a disagreement with your neighbor next door.
I agree with what you say but perhaps the OP was just trying to start an interesting discussion.
That's a gem right there.