Hacker News Reader

Comment by qshaman | Hacker News Reader

He is an investor on this “crazy new idea” , I don’t believe him, he is just hustling his audience and trying to create hype about a product that is neither new nor competitive. People like Guido van Rossum , James Gosling , Bjarne Stroustrup , just to mention a few, have contributed way more to the field and have earned the respect of millions , you don’t see them hyping crappy startups for a few bucks (billions* ) . I do respect the founders , and understand the have worked hard on this project , I just don’t think that just working hard on something makes it good , or whatever Paul Graham says is something I should accept as truth.

View on HN

> he is just hustling his audience

And doing an extremely effective job of it. Getting readers to feel something is the whole game. Paul and Suhail know the default reaction to this idea is “well that’s dumb”. Encouraging and exploiting heated conversation around that is a smart move.

yeah, good point. The saddest part is, I'm confident that people will buy into that "crazy idea" and before you know it, they have a 4B valuation. VCs always win, even when they loose.

In today's startup and VC ecosystem, they've already won. They don't have to ever become profitable, they just need to get money from their friends and connections, forever.

I don't recall who said this (if anyone does, please do share!), but it goes something like this: if you reach Series F, it means exactly what you think it means. Well, not anymore. It won't be long until we'll exhaust the alphabet for funding series names, and we'll go two letters.

And this is not even a critique of PG. It's just what the VC and startup ecosystem seems to have become. If anything, YC does seem to be a sort of counterbalance to this trend.

Sooo... it seems like you've got it all figured out. But from the bitterness in your voice, it doesn't seem to be the case.

I remember being at a similar point in my life - the success of other people seemed so different from mine that the game definitely felt like it was rigged. And of course it was rigged to some extent given the human nature, but there truly is a way to take advantage of the parts of the game that are a more of a level playing field than anything we've ever experienced since the dawn of humanity. And the first step towards getting there is to be less bitter and more inquisitive. If you think you got the VC industry all figured out but you can't get it to work in your favor, then clearly there's a mismatch in your thinking.

This is such an uncharitable read that I think it’s doing you a disservice.

I recommend imagining “what frame of mind or perspective would PG need to have to honestly believe what he’s saying?”

All of the people you mention are examples of the sort of folks the article mentions - domain experts with a "crazy new idea".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com