“Out of the Crisis” Podcast
startuplessonslearned.com
startuplessonslearned.com
https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous...
Bob has been on top of the crisis from the very beginning and has a lot of interesting insight
And without knowing anything about the guests - what is say, Sam Altman, doing right now that is qualifies him in your view? In other words, why should someone listen to him?
A podcast made to monetize an emergency, clearly.
Sam has invested in a metric ton of COVID relief efforts and startups. I think we'd all be better off if more people followed his example in this respect.
I don’t say any of this to praise Sam (he doesn’t need it) but rather to explain why I thought his interview was interesting.
He has done well for himself but he seems more than willing to make quips well outside of his knowledge base. Specifically I'm thinking of some off the cuff tweets regarding personal healthcare that seemed to be pretty far off base.
Maybe that was a one off thing but I recall some others even regarding personal finance that seemed questionable.
Same reason we ask Peter Thiel or Elon Musk their thoughts on AI or politics.
Cuban is a one-hit-wonder that sold a domain (and a dream) to Yahoo at the height of the dot com bubble.
They don't seem particularly comparable.
Edit: to respond to the comments below, no I'm not saying he's not successful, or that he's not smart. I'm only saying in tech and startup circles, he's no Thiel or Musk.
It's just sports, but winning a title isn't nothing, and if you've followed his sports career, he was big into advanced stats decently early and the Mavs are as good as anyone at finding diamonds in the rough.
There's obviously Dirk and Doncic, but they were also really close on getting Giannis. That shows some kind of insight. Not to mention, small ball dominates the league today, but the Don Nelson Mavs were doing that in 2003.
I know it is just sports, but sports are some of the most competitive domains in the world, with the ability to innovate, which he has done. I don't think HN's preference for tech should just ignore what he's accomplished.
Don't forget, PG and YC are only what they are because Viaweb was purchased in the same wave as Broadcast. Neither of those companies matter today.
The Kardashians are in reality tv shows. They are not building rockets.
If you want to look for the leaders there, Gwynne Shotwell & Tom Mueller is who should be on your radar.
Thinking someone has expertise in X therefore they are good source for analysis on Y is the logical fallacy I linked to above.
Contrary to what silicon valley believes, there is no such thing as being "smart" in a general sense. You can be capable in certain things, maybe you are faster to learn in others.
That doesn't mean any founder with a billion $ exit should be asked about public policy.
He's wetting his feet, it seems, for some political aspirations.
I mean, hit TV show + billionaire + massive ego + mis-informed? opinion on everything ==> presidential material, right?
Kind of tired of seeing his face and hearing his voice, but somehow I suspect we'll see more and more of it.
He's been almost as publicly known for 20 years and certainly winning the title in 2011 gave him more prestige.
He'd make a decent candidate though. He's a Democrat (I guess he could run as a Republican, too) from the South with a bigger built-in fanbase than anyone else mentioned in this comment thread. He's run his organization for a long time with advanced stats, so he's no dinosaur. He's Jewish (if that matters, but it's nice having more diversity). Seemingly very healthy and relatively young, and no existing political career so he can cast himself as a ... maverick.
He's made a number of missteps, but he's also pretty good at turning those to his advantage. He's a minor god here in Dallas. If we're in an era where popularity/money is what wins elections, I feel like you could do much worse than him, and I'd trust him way way more than Trump and feel like he'd have the potential for lots more interesting change than Biden.
It must be difficult to get honest advice as a billionaire, because these guys seem to be quite uninformed about how unpopular they actually turn out to be in the political arena.
You're completely correct about both of those guys, but Bloomberg showed an incredibly lack of charisma in his run and Schultz is known, but I really think yall are underrating how popular Cuban is for common people.
The ESPN demographic is a lot bigger than the HN techie demographic.
> On June 12, 2011, the Mavericks defeated the Heat to win the NBA Finals.
It seems to me that the most effective trait in a politician is strategic decision-making, capability of applying abstract thinking to different situations (which comes particularly handy during crises), and figuring out how to get the right people together and get them to cooperate.
All of these also strike me as traits in executives and effective managers, which is likely why we tend to organically gravitate towards them in politics.
Whether Cuban can be regarded as an effective executive is debatable, I have no opinion on that.
Executives are judged on results - which are heavily influenced by circumstances that can be entirely outside the executive's control.
The exact same can be said for most politicians as well.
Sure. He has invested into hundreds of businesses of every size spanning two decades. He has intimate experience with the operations of small and large size businesses of most every type, along with their operating requirements in all regards.
A huge part of the recovery is getting small, medium, large businesses all back to functioning properly. From his perch, he sees a lot of what's going on at multiple levels. He is one of the couple hundred prominent business persons selected for Trump's recovery advisory council.
He knows his stuff and he keeps close tabs on all of his investments (and the broader economic environment), which is remarkable given the expanded scope of his activities. I've done business with Mark in the past and can vouch for all of this personally. People often have wide-ranging responses to him based on his outsized personality, however he is very sharp, he's a smart guy and understands business at a high level of competency. People that dig on him by saying he's just a lucky dotcom billionaire, don't actually know him.
edit: so let's hear your retort, downvote brigade.
I'm probably one of the only people in this thread qualified to speak to the actual question the parent posed, as I have years of experience being in business with Cuban. I know how he operates and how he deals with businesses. Everybody else here is talking out of their ass.
I have no idea about his previous tweets and I'm not sure I care.
Much like the lifestyle type 'careers section' on a lot of company sites ;)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2019/11/04/s...
This is an example of him arguing with a MD. Cuban takes an issue with the doctor stating that consumer driven health care from non medical professionals is responsible for overuse of antibiotics. Cuban gets heated and dismisses the doctor as a quack when the doctor makes a completely legitimate point.
Mark Cuban, like all successful people in life, is great at providing a loud opinion on everything and especially with areas that aren't his expertise.
That sounds like there are no medical professionals involved, but aren't medical professionals prescribing the antibiotics?
Also, its name is almost certainly designed to confuse consumers by sounding similar to "Z-Pak", aka azithromycin, which is an antibiotic.
I'm not sure why we should expect doctors to be experts on the market forces behind antibiotic use, and there's plenty of reason to be skeptical of that specific doctor's motives.
Ah, yes,here we go, 200+ people: https://www.axios.com/white-house-reopen-america-task-fore-8...
(Which means it's a no-op. No group of 200 people is able to move at any kind of speed)
The list consists of CEOs of many companies from different states and senators. Since each state is impacted differently and some are in better/worse situation than others, every company's opinion matters. There are also CEOs/business people from different venues like restaurants, NBA, NFL, UFC, Disney and other parks, bars etc. I think 200 might be too low. 200 divided by 50 states is around 4 per state.
And people are calling out Cuban as being a one hit wonder. Altman doesn't even have that, Path was an abject failure. He's just been appointed to his roost by the SV overlords.
Ok, no disrespect to Sam Altman, but come on.
My wife works in biotech in SV and has never heard of him.
This is in the HN guidelines btw: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Also no idea why you aren't responding to the GP instead. My post is within the the guidelines, even if you choose to disagree with its point.
You're right that the GP comment was also bad and that I could have replied there also.
I also appreciate Eric's polite clarification in this thread, but as of now the original text remains on his site. It's a legitimate point of discussion for reasons that others in this thread have explained.
Altman has zero training in immunology and is riding the coattails of their work with this kind of phony PR.
Leading the tech industry to pivot to work on covid though? Maybe - I could buy that. If hes been working with tech companies to join the effort.
1. Sam is a leader in SV 2. Sam has done a lot to invest/donate in biotech and nonprofits working on COVID 3. Many biotech companies have pivoted to COVID
The error was mine, not his. Thanks for the feedback.
By the way, I love your book! It's what made me think maybe making a little side business selling computers wasn't so impossible when I was in high school.