Paul Graham, it’s time to put your money where your mouth is

He's missing a subtlety in the essay. Even if the eventual vision is ambitious, don't tackle it head-on. Start with something that looks like a toy.

"Don't try to construct the future like a building, because your current blueprint is almost certainly mistaken."

I think there's some selection bias going on here. Companies which aim to do frighteningly ambitious things are less likely to launch, and most of us only ever hear about the YC companies which launch.

Just based on counting noses it's clear that there's a bunch of YC companies every year which vanish without a trace; I'm sure many of them were failed runs at frighteningly ambitious ideas.

Something that bothers me about HN is a sort of a tactical assault on the front page between articles. The title is semi-inflammatory and stirs some controversy but the article doesn't feel researched. This article is no exception. It feels more like a post to garner publicity by loudly going against a more mainstream opinion. Perhaps if the author offered any analysis I might not feel so offended. Even a list of all the start ups funded last year and their topics would offer more insight.

On the contrary, I think YC and PG have put their money where their mouth is.

Search: Greplin

Email: eTacts (sort of), Taskforce (emails => todo list), Xobni

Movies / Music: Earbits

Publishing: Hyperink

These are just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are more. Does the author want an entire class to be new search engines?

This was one of the top stories a few minutes ago and suddenly it's on the second page. That's a shame, because it needs to be addressed.

Dear startups,

If you want to do something very innovative, don't apply to YC with it. YC is a three month program designed to make companies; it is not a research program. On the application, you will have to describe what you're working on in three sentences. That's not a design flaw; they're looking for things that can be described in a few sentences.

There have been exceptions -- people that went through the program who were (and are) working on hard problems -- but if you look at the numbers, they are clearly the exception.

YC is great. I'm glad it exists. But understand what it is, not what you want it to be.

This seems exactly backwards.

I took that essay as a call for more people to please start applying to YC with really big ideas so they can fund more of them.

I have my criticisms (or concerns to be more charitable) with PG and the YC model, but I don't think this is fair. In addition to people who have pointed out the survivorship / selection bias, as well as the number of companies YC has funded that are aiming very high, there's also the issue of YC only being able to fund what people apply for.

Though I guess they could convince people to drop a good idea for a pie-in-the-sky idea, but I think what happens more often is that they get them to drop a mediocre idea for a better one.

But anyway, YC gets like 2k apps per cycle, but most of those are going to be for non-devastatingly-ambitious ideas, and then the ones that are have to have great teams behind them. If you don't see very many coming out of YC, it might be because there weren't that many to start with.

It seems this argument is based on a misunderstanding of Paul Graham's essay.

> that the biggest opportunities for revolution often sound like the craziest ideas at first. Graham points out the flawed reasoning in investors’ so often shying away from projects trying to pull off these sorts of major revolutions, but Y Combinator itself mostly gravitates toward startups making relatively small, iterative progress on existing idea spaces

Graham is pointing out how frightening these startup ideas are because they are existing markets ripe for some innovation. Eg. search, universities, compilers.

geez, what is up with this spate of snide/cynical posts about PG and/or YC? it's not necessary the content. I mean, I love almost all of what PG says in his essays, but there are at times genuine questions and doubts (e.g., I've heard schlep as a verb more than a noun). Sometimes, these questions of a larger, fundamental discussion (e.g., copyrights & property). questioning is fine, and is necessary in order to attain greater understanding.

what I'm getting annoyed at is the tone I'm sensing -- it's sometimes downright sneering. i know it's been brought up very recently as well, and PG has said it's been happening gradually as the site has grown. i've read the essay on trolls, but this seems like it's something different. jealousy is also something that increases as a function of success, and when jealousy crosses a threshold, it morphs into resentment. just sayin'...

To Graham's point about the things we do that will appear ridiculous to future generations, I believe travel is one of the most obvious. Think about this- people pay three times the normal ticket price to fly "first class" and have a seat that is not uncomfortable to sit in for more than an hour, a drink that is served in a glass, and a meal. People are subjected to long lines, security screenings, and an archaic, drawn-out search for the cheapest tickets. And even with all this, the airlines are still losing!

I personally think it is a double edge sword, very few people are pursuing truly large ideas because the odds of finding funding to even get started just are not there and some ideas require funding to even get off the ground. As someone who pursued a very large scale idea, I know all too well that investors just don't seem to be interested in efforts that require large amounts of upfront work and infrastructure before they can even launch. I think Amazon was the last effort of that kind, that has been funded. Ideas like Facebook are more palatable because the infrastructure requirements scales with the company. With search you really are not afforded that luxury, to compete you have big data requirements from day one. Ultimately big data requirements is was what doomed my idea and to this day I have not found many investors that have an appetite for a start-up that has big data requirements from day one. In saying that, my experience is subjective and I am not playing ball in the valley, so take my post for what it is a personal observation.

"Empirically, the way to do really big things seems to be to start with deceptively small things. Want to dominate microcomputer software? Start by writing a Basic interpreter for a machine with a few thousand users. Want to make the universal web site? Start by building a site for Harvard undergrads to stalk one another."

http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html

I think many people are forgetting a key part, if not THE key part, in the selection process for YC companies, and that's the TEAM. The idea is second to the people behind it when PG and company make their selections (and in many cases, YC teams end up going with a totally different idea than what they applied with), at least most of the time.

There is far too much focus on selection bias around ideas in both this article and the comments, when in fact PG is simply putting faith in teams that happen to be passionate about certain ideas (that may or may not fall into his ambitious ideas categories).

Part of the reason for the essay is surely to encourage more ambitious YC applications. Likely no one is more tired of flavor of the day mashups than YC partners who have to wade through them.

"Let me conclude with some tactical advice. If you want to take on a problem as big as the ones I've discussed, don't make a direct frontal attack on it."

I remember somewhere that AirBnB said they wanted to become the best marketplace for trading used goods. That's pretty ambitious, but they're attacking it sideways by letting people rent out rooms first.

I have nothing to do with YC and no reason to defend pg, but I will say that this article clearly misses one of his big points: it's very hard to be successful if your whole goal is to change the world from day 1. Even if it is your secret goal - you are probably going to run out of money before you get the chance to.

Well, to be fair, he does say that you need to take a novel (and niche) angle on doing such a thing (not to say your company doesn’t). To secure the investment on any extremely ambitious idea you would also need to be very effective in person; much more so than someone with a less ambitious, more realistic idea.

I understand what the author's saying and I think (not being as experienced as some on HN) that he's got a bit of a point. But boy, if you're gonna call out a man with metals on his jacket, you better have something to back it up.

Or a least a byline.

HireArt = replace universities.

It's a deceptively focused/small offering to start with but they have the key components required to become a credentialing system outside of the university/college system.

It's easy to look at YC startups and say they aren't pursuing massive visions but the truth is many of them are just starting with some tiny subset of a big problem.

Can we have a rule, like the one about headlines starting with numbers ("12 ways to.."), for headlines starting "Paul Graham"?

Meh. If it was really revolutionary, you would have to spend a few pages explaining what the hell it is, or make people go read research work from 30 years ago to understand it.