Paul Graham spills: Why some companies get his cash and others don't | Hacker News Reader

Paul Graham spills: Why some companies get his cash and others don't

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186 pointsrhartsock122 comments

Knowing the business. If we ask a bunch of questions and they have the answers at their fingertips because they understand the domain really well, that's a good sign.

An old boss of mine is a design judge for a student engineering competition. Often times he will ask a team for a specific piece of information about their project, only to have the team pull out a giant binder and start shuffling through looking for the answer. At this point he tells them "If I ask you to tell me your girlfriends phone number and you pull out your phone book and start searching for it, you're probably not in love"

I think the same sentiment applies here

I love the comparison, but I would imagine that due to mobile phones and contact lists, it's quite possible to be in love without knowing any phone numbers.

Personally I know the numbers of the (at a guess) 20 people I call most often, but I always assumed that, in 2011, I'm the exception not the rule.

Not particularly relevant, his point stands either way, just interested to know if other people on HN still find themselves memorising phone numbers.

The only numbers I know are the ones that haven't changed since before I was a teenager (basically just my parents' numbers and 911), my own Google Voice number, and Bing 411. That's partially because I can always look up numbers in my contacts, on Facebook, or online, and partially because I make phone calls less than once a week.

I don't bother remembering a phone number, unless calling that number will result in the person on the other end bailing me out of jail.

So far, 100% success rate.

wrt being bailed out of jail?

in 2011 we do not know phone numbers anymore, but those braincells now store passwords.

I don't directly remember any new numbers, but I know how the DTMF sequence for the number is supposed to sound when dialed. I could always work back from that to get a human-readable phone number if I needed it.

Like Jebdm, the only numbers I really know are those that haven't changed in a few decades and my own cell number. But I also prefer face to face conversation over telephone, so I'm only likely to call you if I can't find you. (And then I'm more likely to just text or e-mail....)

Are you joking or did you used to be a phreaker? That is hardcore! +1

No joke, though I'm not an old phone phreak (sorta...). It's just like remembering music - every number sings its own 10 note song.

At least it was until my cellphone stopped playing back DTMFs for stored numbers. SIP and quiet dialing have almost killed the music.

Use address then.

Ironically the opposite for me. I can tell you my father's mobile and home numbers, but not his address (I know the post code but not the flat number...), despite visiting him 2-3 times a month.

I can also tell you my grandmother's number, but not her address. Again, I'll visit her maybe twice as often as I'll call her (not that many times in a year, she lives 60 miles ago).

I'm a landmark person. I don't know the address of where I work, I just know what the places I need to turn at look like.

I got a new phone number three weeks ago and I still haven't memorized my own phone number.

Perhaps an undervalued skill is determining the amount of accuracy necessary? When asked on the spot like that, you may be better off giving an education guess than shuffling through a giant binder.

Sometimes I'll see somebody being asked a question which I know they know the answer to but they'll misinterpret the motivation behind it and the desired answer. This makes me wonder, is it a situational thing or some kind of cultural/language barrier?

I also notice that solid hackers get along really well together because they can anticipate how the other person thinks and know what they want to know (or already know/don't care about). Hacker types seem to be much more culture-biased than the average person, so when you introduce somebody from the other end of the spectrum you get a huge rift.

I suppose that 10 minutes is enough time to notice if this rift exists.

I'm totally like that. Many times people will ask me questions (oddly, this only happens in interview-type situations) when I will just entirely space out on the motivation. I just can't understand what they want and the question either seems too vague or too obvious. I don't know if it's me or them, but it happens.

When I was in graduate school taking my qualifying examination, I stood in front of my 5 advisors answering their questions one by one about my dissertation project (pre-defense). The first time I failed. They questioned me for 2 hours on every detail of my project and grew impatient every time I gave them a hand-wavy answer. The second time I passed. The questioning lasted 15 minutes. I had spent the previous 3 months since the first failure reading every single book on my domain atleast twice. I was also angered (as were they) the first time when they asked simple questions and the answer just didn't bubble to the top of my memory. I think the second time around, they were almost freaked out by my eagerness.

How do you prepare for this? How do you practice answering these questions? I feel like I can never know enough about the business.

So I would ask, for any of you who have pitched to investors / YC, how do you go about preparing and practicing?

(full disclosure: haven't pitched to investors/YC)

Just talking about your product with colleagues, mentors, friends, etc. can help you get prepared. Most likely they will ask you questions and it can be like a mock "interview".

That's the whole point it's not about "preparing and practicing" for the pitch/investors. You'll never "know enough". Instead if you're passionate about the domain and somewhat intelligent then you should know everything the investors know and a hell of a lot more. The investors should have a fraction of the knowledge and experience that you have and thus should be practically incapable of asking you a question you don't know the answer to.

If you can't answer the question then you're either not particularly passionate, or you're not very smart - either way you're not worth investing in.

I don't know if that's true. Some ideas anyone can have a cursory knowledge of your domain, and can identify corner cases you may not have considered. That's mostly the stuff I'm concerned about. I'm curious what kind of corner cases people can ask questions about.

Then you tell them you don't know and you walk them through an educated guess. They just want to know that you understand your supposed area of expertise.

Same way the best engineers "prepare" for a job interview - by largely ignoring it. Instead of studying Java certification books they hack in Python, C, and Haskell and read about interesting algorithms in their spare time. When it's time for a job interview, all they have to do is show up.

If you talk to one of your target customers and one startup founder in a similar field a day, in three months you will have spoken to ~180 people that are intimately related to your business. You'll know more about your domain than you ever wanted to, and when the YC interview comes, there is nothing to prepare for.

I find this statement at odds with this one:

The very best startup ideas, the ones that are the biggest successes, tend to be the ideas that you don't know are even going to work.

Knowing a domain and being able to predict success in it are two very different things.

EDIT: A better example. Before Ford released the F-150, it seemed to be a solution in search of a problem. It was somewhere between the F-100 and F-250 and none of the pre-market reviewers really seemed to like it. Ford released it anyway. The F-150 went on to become the most popular variant of the best selling truck series for 34 years.

That's an interesting example, but it's not from a startup. Ignoring that, it could still hardly be considered an idea Ford wouldn't know if it would work at all, because they already had success with similar ideas.

It's not from a startup but there's an interesting parallel. It's as if Ford had a $10/month plan and a $25/month plan. They didn't see a need for a $15/month plan but they created one anyways and it took off.

The thinking behind its success is likely similar: the highest tier of service often acts as a decoy for the one you really want them to pick... the second highest plan. It gives customers a reason to reject the "luxury" option and settle instead for the middle of the pack option which is only slightly more expensive than the cheap option, allowing them to feel like they made the sensible choice.

And how do you relate this back to the biggest startup successes like google or facebook?

I'm not sure it directly relates as Google and Facebook don't generally have the "choose from the following plans" kind of revenue model.

Like most one liners, that's not very fair. I don't even know my own phone number. Why would I? I consider it bad interface that I have to ever even hear this kind of technical detail at all. I know my number and every other number by the name of the person or place I want to call.

Likewise, are you sure the people are looking in their document because they don't know? Maybe they answered this question at some previous time in a really concise and elegant way and want to reuse it? Maybe they have a page in their that visually illustrates the answer?

"But if you start discarding determination, you very quickly get an ineffectual and perpetual grad student.": Love this line!

There are a few transcription errors in this. What I actually said was "ineffectual perpetual grad student."

That is something I've always agreed with. I have respect for someone that goes from undergrad to doctorate, but I certainly have no admiration for them.

I don't think this is what he meant. After all, PG does have a PhD. I think he's referring to those multiple-masters degrees grad students, or the 10+ year grad student and still no PhD...

That is very true. I guess I should have explained myself.

During my years in college, a lot of grad and doctorate students would come in and try to help undergrads with their studies, projects, research, senior design projects etc.. What I came to realize is that you can't take what they say too seriously especially when you're aspiring to create something out of the ordinary. For me they weigh too heavily on research, research, research and if you can't validate every single thing you do, then don't do it. I don't agree with that, if you have an idea and think it'll work, do it, and if you execute it properly you will have some degree of success. For me that's the attitude that most of them had. Don't get me wrong, they were extremely intelligent but were too constrained by exact academic procedure and a lot of them had no experience in the real world, let alone the startup world. They would shoot down ideas and make you do ridiculous things for projects, that to me, made no sense and took away time from working on your product. I am not saying those things have no place, but at least from my experience, they weren't terribly interesting people, they were institutionalized by the academic system and didn’t really understand what you were trying to do.

When I say I have no admiration, I don't want to label every PHD that way. They are brilliant people. But for me when you do 4 years as an undergrad, go straight to your Masters in the same school and then to your Doctorate in the same school without anything in between, that doesn't require a lot of determination and resourcefulness. It's a lot easier and less risky to do that than create a startup around a crazy idea and potentially crash and burn. Then again, it might just have been my school.

Actually I'm sure most people that have PhDs will tell you that finishing a dissertation requires a large amount of determination, bordering on obsessiveness.

I sort of addressed this in my above comment. Success in academic research, like success in startups, is more dependent on determination than intelligence.

...and a healthy dose of luck!

I'm finishing up my PhD this year (haven't set a defense day yet, but I'm aiming for June at this point), and finishing a dissertation requires piles of determination.

What I came to realize is that you can't take what they say too seriously especially when you're aspiring to create something out of the ordinary.

I can't comment on your personal experience with grad students (I use grad to mean both Masters and PhD students), but I can say that just like people everywhere else, there is a wide variety of interests and abilities. Just like with job applicants, it's easy to see a sample biased by the "bad" ones. The sampling problem is even worse for grad students, the ones lacking in drive, creativity, or intelligence tend to stick around their programs longer [1]. The only other comment that I'll add is, depending on the program, there probably isn't much incentive to work with undergrads in the capacity you are talking about. So the determined/driven/focused grad students will not do it very much. You may have been steered towards projects because it was closer to what they work on, or would explore a question that they had personal interest in.

do 4 years as an undergrad, go straight to your Masters in the same school and then to your Doctorate in the same school

This is a warning sign. Staying at the same school for undergrad and grad school is called academic inbreeding. If it's a rarity, it's probably a special case that you can ignore (maybe that student was just particularly awesome). If it's common, the program may not be trying hard enough in admissions or perhaps something worse.

In my program, there are many students (including me) that did not go straight through undergrad to grad school.

tl;dr Just like everywhere else, the awesome people move through grad school quickly and the less awesome people tend to stick around. It's more likely that you were encountering the less awesome people.

[1] That's not to say that sticking around a PhD program for more than 5 years is an indication that a person lacks drive, creativity or intelligence. Life happens. Babies, sickness, bad breaks etc..

I don't understand the difference between the version with and the version without "and" other than pedantic correctness of the quotation itself.

EDIT:Fixed typos.

"pedantic", not to be pedantic

And than, not then, to be pedantic.

Fixed. Thanks.

Quotes are not supposed to be paraphrased.

Real people tend not to speak in grammatically correct sentences during conversations. Journalists tend to add words like "and" in quotations where the verbatim quote is not grammatically correct, but the meaning is clear.

Then it's not a quote.

You may not think so, but it's how most "quotes" you read in newspapers and magazines work.

Who reads newspapers or magazines anymore... certainly not me. I expect a quote to be exactly what was said... if someone is correcting the speaker then it's not a quote but a paraphrase. I don't care what the journalist calls it, it's not a quote to me if it isn't exactly what was said.

Have you ever tried to transcribe anything? It's crazy how much garbage comes out with the actual words that form the sentences. Many amazing writers (not to mention linguists) have made their careers developing new written languages to attempt to get a little closer to capturing it, but capturing it is both impossible and an exercise in art, not a sane journalistic practice.

In formal writing, the inserted word or phrase is supposed to be enclosed in square brackets to indicate that it is not the original source speaking: "he wanted to go to [the] circus".

The slightly more obnoxious "sic" can be used when you want to leave the grammatical error in, indicating that the error is in the original source: "he wanted to go to circus [sic]".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic

A good journalist will adapt their own language to make the unmodified quote fit in where possible. Being misquoted is a sign of sloppy journalism.

"Being misquoted" usually implies that the semantic meaning of what was written is different from what was said. It does not usually mean articles and transitive words were added.

Well I think there is a major difference, you can be a perpetual grad student but get good stuff done. Usually you end up as a post doc for a while but never get a real prof position for whatever political reason. I know a lot of good grad student that are in school after almost a decade (in grad school).

So the ineffectual part is a major difference.

There also people like me, sticking around universities for a while, using public funds to code cool projects that wouldn't happen anywhere else because it's not something that would be commercializable. I wouldn't call myself ineffectual ;)

I believe gparent was pointing out that the phrase "ineffectual and perpetual grad student", nuance aside, literally means the same thing as "ineffectual perpetual grad student".

In my mind inserting the 'and' separates the 'ineffectual' and 'perpetual' so it appears the person being described could be a perpetual grad student as an independent idea -- but maybe they just love school life, so it's not really anything negative. Leaving the 'and' out, however, implies to me the person is probably a perpetual grad student because of being ineffectual.

Exactly what I'm thinking. If you remove the and there are two interpretations ( blame english for this). both ineffectual and perpetual or just perpetual or just ineffectual.

Yes, unfortunately no language is an optimum form of communication, so we rely on other cues (often body language when available) to try to determine what an author/speaker really means to convey. Word choice does play a role in that, which is why I think pg (or anybody) would prefer to be quoted correctly :)

I don't think there is a semantic difference, since I would probably transcribe what pg said he said as "ineffectual, perpetual grad student." Note the comma, which implies an "and" relationship between adjectives.

The difference is that you use the "and" only in the case where the last adjective plus the noun are not already a common phrase and thus act as a de facto noun. E.g. "unhealthy and fast food" seems awkward compared to "unhealthy fast food" because "fast food" is a common phrase.

(I never thought about this question till you asked. I just knew I never would have said something so awkward.)

This discussion reminds of the Oxford comma style/grammar debates. Similar situation too: whether to use a comma before the and/or/nor of the last item in a 3+ list. For example: "morning, noon, and night" vs "morning, noon and night".

Offtopic:

I never thought about this until I read your comment and think I would have always chosen "morning, noon and night" as the correct version, but now that I've thought about it, I like "morning, noon, and night" better because I've found the other variant clumsy in certain situations. Sure, those situations are probably signs of badly constructed sentences (eg, nested lists or lists as an aside[1]), but still! The difference is that if I have a list "a,b and c" which is itself followed by a comma "(a,b and c),d" - to me, it looks like "a,(b and c),d" - but if there is a comma before the "and" it doesn't: "(a,b,and c), d" - the "and" now implies that c is the last item of the list, making the nesting obvious.

Just something that popped into my mind just now.

[1] Example: "I find lists which are followed by a comma, such as morning, noon and night, look awkward" vs "I find lists which are followed by a comma, such as morning, noon, and night, look awkward" - the first one reads as if "noon and night" is one item in the list, the second one as two (with night as the final item).

semi-related: do you ever get tired of interviews that amount to "So what do you look for in a company?" "Well we look at the founders, more than the idea."? I'm always impressed at how genial you are in answering the world's most predictable questions in these interviews with big business outlets.

interviews = press = applications.

It's part of the job.. everyone gets sick of their job sometimes but pg seems to like his job in general.

Surely, but if a journalist does even the slightest bit of homework on his past interviews they could very easily upgrade to something like "I know you've said you focus on the team rather than the idea when selecting applicants..." and go on to ask something more substantive or insightful - or not.

They could even follow up with something like "how do you know" or "were there some specific failures that lead to this policy" and then they could at least have a conversation. As it stands, I could do a comparable interview using b-roll.

> if a journalist does even the slightest bit of homework

Well there's your problem.

Journalists need to get their 200 words and get out and on to the next job. There isn't enough time to study the subject of an interview. And often the assignment is at very short notice. "Jim, today you're interviewing Paul Graham. Jill, you're talking to Larry Ellison."

That could be a good way but I guess it may the case of a journalist thinking about his audience; she wanted to put the "we look at the founder" mantra down in the interview piece because there may be still many people who have not heard that super punchline!

No, I don't mind. Actually I suspect most people never get bored of explaining something they're interested in. E.g. imagine asking a model train enthusiast or butterfly collector about their hobby. You'd probably get bored before they would.

It's nice and concise.

> If you imagine someone with 100 percent determination and 100 percent intelligence, you can discard a lot of intelligence before they stop succeeding.

How much? What percentage lobotomy are we talking about?

I totally agree btw: provided you are focussed on meeting a need ("make something people want"), and are willing to iterate trial-and-error (that's the determination part), massive intelligence isn't required: the inside of your software doesn't need to be great; and it doesn't need to implemen some fundamentally new technology; it's what it does that counts.

> Or when Google started, there were eight to 10 successful established search engines already...

I read a great interview (maybe a co-founder of tripod...?) who went through the evolution of search engines over a decade, each time saying that it was too late to enter the field, and playfully finishing with "[of course, now with google, it really is too late]". I've searched and searched for this but can't find it - anyone recognize it?

> I read a great interview (maybe a co-founder of tripod...?) who went through the evolution of search engines over a decade, each time saying that it was too late to enter the field, and playfully finishing with "[of course, now with google, it really is too late]". I've searched and searched for this but can't find it - anyone recognize it?

Well, I guess it's not too late to enter the search field, then.

Interesting article that I think most of the people who apply to YC already understand (Hopefully)

As someone who does not have a co-founder and has now applied for the second time I have decided I am moving to the bay area in June whether I get into YC or not and I am either going to find a co-founder to continue with or go to work at another startup while retaining my rights to the work on this project until I meet some more interesting people interested in working long hours for low pay and having lots of fun while doing it.

I cant imagine my life any other way but in a culture where I am creating every day, life is just not the same for me otherwise and working a 9 to 5 like my parents did when i was growing up has never been an option as far as I am concerned.

It was never an option for me either, but now that I have it, im sort of stuck until my after work life catches up to make the same as my work life.

What are you working on right now, Zach?

Why not start living the crazy-startup-founder lifestyle today? That's what I'm trying to do. [1]The time I spend at my current job is like sleeping to me. It's time during a 24 hour period that I just plain will not get back. I have to do it or I will die.

But the hours I spend not sleeping are hours that I spend reading, and hacking, and writing, and more reading, and more hacking.

As much as I'd prefer the weather (and the availability of coffee) in the Bay Area to the weather in Phoenix, I can't make the move happen right now, so I'm just doing the "crazy hours" thing anyway :)

[1]: I just want to clarify that I don't mean I'm slacking off at my job, if anything, being in "work" mode 100% of the time, as well as having a passion for learning new stuff has benefited my employer. When I say "sleeping", I just mean something that I don't have a choice about doing.

I am working on my current startup idea, right now it is simply a side project. I work for myself as it is so sleep is certainly a commodity in my life. I am hacking just about all day every day and enjoying the heck out of it.

unfortunately I am in Louisiana and with a shortage of hackers to network with here moving to the bay area just seems to make sense for my work as well as my sanity :)

Do you have a hackerspace? Or any local meetup groups of coders? Is there a University nearby?

I'm partially talking to myself here (so please excuse me), but I don't think "The Bay" is that magical.

I was born and raised in the Bay Area and here's what is magical: incredible weather, unbelievably diverse set of cultures, one of the world's most beautiful cities, easy access to beaches, mountains, Monterey/Carmel, active lifestyle of residents, open minded communities, world class universities, unbridled enthusiasm for tech and startup culture, tons of success around you which acts as a great motivator. The not so magical part - after slaving away for a few years, bouncing from startup to startup, you come to the realization that being employee number seven at the next Google is kind of like winning the lottery. You're approaching 30 (or a bit past it), are getting ready to settle down and start a family and need job stability and health insurance - so you go get a stuffy corporate job with Apple or Cisco or HP or Oracle or EA or Netflix or Google or Salesforce or ... you get the point. But then you notice something; while you may not be wealthy beyond your wildest dreams, the magic is still there for you and your family to enjoy - and, although you are now an upstanding member of society with real mortgage payments, you wouldn't trade your hacker startup years for anything.

unfortunately no ... no hackerspace, no local coders to speak of really (probably less than 20 programming jobs in out city of 250,000 people)

most of those are older married guys to boot. I started early and honestly had no idea you could even make a living doing this so i just did it for fun and kind of accidentally built something people wanted.

Basically now that I have done that and I realize what is possible as a hacker and in business I plan on repeating, hopefully on a larger scale

>unfortunately no ... no hackerspace, no local coders to speak of really

Out of curiosity, what was it? If you're already making money, then disregard everything I said, move to the bay.

What I was referring to was a company I have already sold.

It just happens to be what made me realize you could make a living writing software.

Unfortunately I am still under an NDA with the first exit so all I can really say is that it was mostly sharepoint plugins in the legal industry. What I work on now is completely at my discretion and I only do what I like, most of what I do these days is for fun and for the experience.

I have done some work lately for political campaigns and businesses(custom robo-calling apps, calendaring systems for a group of sleep clinics, a product and inventory management system for a manufacturing company etc) but thats just how I make money to pay the day by day bills, my projects are things I am passionate about and love to do, I guess I feel like moving to the bay area would help me get away from the stuff im doing now since I will know less people and I think it would force me to build something I truly WANT to work on instead of constantly accepting projects because there is good money in it and the people know me.

>I cant imagine my life any other way but in a culture where I am creating every day, life is just not the same for me otherwise and working a 9 to 5 like my parents did when i was growing up has never been an option as far as I am concerned.

I'm with you on this one.

To be concise is more indicative of mastery rather than proficiency. You can understand something very well and be able to navigate your way through your own domain of expertise at whim. But if you can do that AND also communicate your domain to those for whom your domain is horribly foreign then you've demonstrated that you've not merely mastered the domain but that you have a grasp on a more foundational framework that translates to virtually limitless perspectives.

Proficiency is to navigate your world, Mastery is to successfully guide a complete alien through that world and have them see it, even if just dimmly, with the eyes of a native.

I don't think that what you're calling mastery and proficiency are matters of degree like you seem to be expressing. Ability to communicate can be completely separate from understanding, because (particularly if you're of above-average intelligence) most people don't understand things the same way that you do.

I don't think that the underlying inherent knowledge that accompanies the capacity to successfully transmit understanding can be set apart from a more complete understanding.

For example if you can produce any number of outcomes in a single language but lack the capacity to do the same things in another language there's a level of abstraction that you simply have not witnessed which itself gives greater dimension to the fundamental capacities that are being exercised.

If all you know is English, even if you speak it very very very well you can go your whole life missing out on seeing language itself rather than just a one dimensional perspective on a single language. You can have all the parts held in theory but until you can see equivalents in another language in action you lack understanding of English.

The mere capacity to communicate something real demands an empathy that speaks to experience on a higher level. If you can't, in some degree of abundance, find analogous material from which you can more clearly communicate your realm of knowledge to the uninitiated then it says something about the true depth of your knowledge.

Just as you can't get real depth perception without a plurality of vistas neither can you truly see what you're doing unless you have experience, and thereby the capacity for empathy and making links with that empathy, from far outside of your field of focus.

"then you've demonstrated that you've not merely mastered the domain but that you have a grasp on a more foundational framework that translates to virtually limitless perspectives"

I should have phrased that "not merely grasped" instead of "not merely mastered"

I really like what you've said here. However I'd like to suggest that you've narrowed Mastery quite a bit, The way I see it, proficiency can come with with the ability to guide an alien through the world you understand, but mastery might exist as your very own specific understanding (which when measured against another's mastery might not even be in the same range of comparison ). I might try even argue your point differently, maybe your proficiency represents the ability for you to compare to another person's proficiency in a common subject, which allows you to achieve conciseness when discussing the subject. And your mastery is merely a completely individual experience. Just thinking out loud here. Again well said.

Printable Link: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/printthis/219377.html

True: "If you really understand something, you can say it in the fewest words, instead of thrashing about."

Not necessarily. My friend and cofounder is one of the smartest people I know, but even when he talks about things I know he is an expert at (as demonstrated by his skill), he's often a bit verbose.

Personally, I can generate concise statements (and I'm good at it when I try), but the first couple of times I verbalize an idea I'm usually somewhat verbose. I make an explicit effort to figure out a concise way to say things once I've noticed that I'll probably be expressing the same idea again (and when I write). Perhaps other people become significantly more concise over time without effort, but I'd estimate my baseline compression rate is only something like 10% (whereas when I explicitly compress I can often get 30% or better).

I think the difference is that some people think very verbally and linearly, whereas I tend to think more visually and abstractly. A lot of the time, I have to translate the ideas in my head from these somewhat amorphous concepts or visual ideas into English (or German, or code, or whatever).

I think what you're referring to is synthesis, which I consider an important aspect of understanding. One might be an expert only through knowing, another precursor to understanding (see, expert Visual Basic programmer).

My girlfriend might take this opportunity to point out I much I like to ramble on sometimes. shrugs

The thing is, I tend to think about the sorts of things which are complex enough that you can't trivially describe them in a linear format. Imagine that somebody asked you to tell them about programming. Programming is such a huge and complex topic that there really isn't an effective way to begin explaining it without putting significant forethought into how to explain it, even if you're an expert programmer. So, unless you've put thought into how to explain and teach it, if someone randomly asks you, you're probably going to fumble and be verbose. (This is one of the reasons many professors are bad at teaching.)

Of course, in the context of the article, somebody interviewing with investors probably should have thought out in advance about the sorts of things the investors would want to know and ask about, so they shouldn't be fumbling too much.

This is true, and teaching is hard because of this, but I think there is a "correct" way of handling it. Think about the kind of background the questioner has, what they already know, what they don't know, and what they want to know. Phrase your answer on that level.

Doing this in a few seconds time requires both intimiate knowledge of the subject at hand, and the ability to intuit a person's world-view as it relates to that subject. If I know nothing about the person asking the question, then I ask them questions so I can figure out what kind of an answer is appropriate.

I don't know, if someone randomly asks me to tell them about programming, I'd reply that it's the ability to make the computer do what I want it to do by speaking a language it understands. That'd shut most people up while giving them a basic understanding.

I was assuming that they were asking you to teach them to program, or at least give them a comprehensive survey of the field. What you said is the obvious short answer for people who are just asking to be polite or to get an idea of what you do.

Ah, well of course, teaching them how is another matter entirely.

Let's assume I have just said 'I do X for company Y'. Your next response might be along the lines of a) What languages/tools do you use?, b) What's a peptide?, c) Did you watch Daniel Hillis' Ted talk?, or d) I just published a phylogenetic pruning algorithm on arxiv, you should check it out.

Seems to me that there is a lot to be learned through conversation, even when neither party is doing any teaching.

What you're missing is that PG says "can." When you're in a ten-minute interview that could change your life forever, you're going to be concise when possible.

That being said, I don't believe that one's 'natural' verbosity has any correlation with intelligence. Minds aren't that simple.

Sure; in the particular context of a ten minute interview, you'll have prepared and it ought to be relatively easy to be concise most of the time. But if they throw you a curveball, then I don't think it ought to reflect negatively on you if you're a bit verbose (though it might reflect negatively on you that you didn't anticipate whatever the question was).

I replied because the quote was taken out of context, and I don't think that the idea applies in the general case.

I think this is true, but I don't think it's the whole story.

What I see is that the best entrepreneurs understand that it's ok to leave 70% of the potential value on the table in order to have a business that's more explainable to investors and customers.

I think that's a particularly salient point for most intelligent/dedicated people to understand; if you're intelligent, you've got to remember that most people have a harder time understanding things than you, and if you're dedicated to your idea, you've got to remember that most people don't care about your idea as much as you do.

I would add that I think the Y Combinator application process forces you to leave most of the potential value of your idea on the table (assuming your idea has a moderate or high level of complexity). Since they're more interested in founders, this is probably a wise choice.

Not necessary - by using this rule you might miss a lot of truly brilliant people (I know a couple of them: they just mumble about things and you understand what they were saying only after you see their design and code). This again tries to equate somebody being able to express something using English (in other words, being a good communicator) and ability to really understand the nature and working of a very complex system or idea.

But each startup must have at least one founder which has this capability.

To put it concisely :)

A demonstration of empathy that translates to real communication with the particular lay person you are engaging with regard to your domain of expertise shows mastery rather than mere proficiency.

Agreed, the important part about being concise is not that you can boil down a complex idea into a short statement, but that you can give the questioner the information relevant to them. When there is too much relevant information to be concise, that is in itself a relevant (and concise) answer, the art is giving the questioner just enough information to ask another question.

Personally I find doing that sort of thing _extremely_ difficult, and doing it in real-time as part of a verbal conversation orders of magnitude more so.

> What do you look for? Determination. When we started, we thought we were looking for smart people, but it turned out that intelligence was not as important as we expected. If you imagine someone with 100 percent determination and 100 percent intelligence, you can discard a lot of intelligence before they stop succeeding. But if you start discarding determination, you very quickly get an ineffectual and perpetual grad student.

This is awesome.

a great related article at Wired: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/what-is-success-tr... what PG calls determination I think Wired (quoting Angela Duckworth) calls "grit"

and the survey measuring how gritty you are is here: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/17-item%2520Grit%2...

Clicked it, it didn't work, gave up, moved on.

sorry, here's the page that holds three surveys: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/gritscale.htm

Well played

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/12-item%20Grit%20S...

When an entrepreneur is determined and passionate they will find a way to succeed. Without both of those, the "intelligent" individual will just move on to another idea or company.

Great line & sentiment --> "And you can see where that line is? Well, this is why we pick based on founders."

Tried to read but I am distracted by all the clutter!

As a stupid, but determined person this gives me hope :D

Well you need to be a bit stupid to want to start a business. You would be considered stupid if someone told you you have a 5% chance at every kissing this girl, yet you decide to spend the next 3 years of your life pursuing her and her only. This is exactly what we do.

You would be considered stupid if someone told you you have a 5% chance at every kissing this girl, yet you decide to spend the next 3 years of your life pursuing her and her only.

If that girl is worth more than 20x as much to you as any other girl, a 5% chance is worth it.

Most people have some risk aversion. For example, few people would trade $10 million for a 10% chance at $100 million.

Interesting. I am assuming you would. Can you briefly explain your reasoning?

Unless you really, really need 100 million, no reasoning will make that a good bet. The expected value is 10 million, and since that's what you're putting at stake, you have nothing to gain. Whereas the utility value of a guaranteed 10 million, assuming you're not very rich already, is huge. It's more than an average lifetime of hard work.

True, but it's probably not a good idea to tell your girlfriend that.

If determination could increase your chance, then you may be better going for $100 million. Otherwise take $10m.

I think like you, but I know it is still irrational.

That's true assuming a linear or convex utility function. Most people have concave risk functions, so they would rather spend their time with the girl who's 5x better than the average girl, but have a 50% shot with.

Progress in life often comes through a healthy dose of foolishness.

Old news.

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