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Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

I wasn't angry. I was resigned. That's why I phrased what I said the way I did. After so many cycles of doing YC, I know a certain percentage of the startups in each batch are doomed. Some people just aren't meant to start startups, but there's no way for them to know that for sure without trying it.

So when a startup seems determined to stay on the wrong path, I won't keep fighting them forever. Eventually I give up. And occasionally when I do I tell them so, because sometimes that wakes them up.

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One of the most influential points in my graduate school was when I worked really really hard, and failed to get a result. My advisor gave me this piercing look that without words said firmly, "I'm not angry at you, I'm just disappointed". That woke me up and got me on the right path.

...so what did you change, if your problem wasn't failure to work hard?

technical approaches, mostly, learning not to reinvent the wheel so much, transitioning more towards using well-established techniques in the lab instead of going for broke on a risky project. I think a lot of figuring yourself out is knowing how to properly assess risk (while not becoming risk averse to the point of paralysis), hedge against failure, grab the low hanging fruit, and communicate the above to others.

+1, this is the kind of thing that changes the way you think when you find out.

Sometimes you don't need to be the genious inventing every single part of something to build something great, but we emotionally think we need to, because we often look up to people that did that as it looks too damn hard and wonderful.

Although I learned a LOT in grad school (and in postdoc #1, and in postdoc #2), I will have to say that choice basically ruined any chance I have at getting a faculty position in academia. If you can't join 'em, beat 'em ==> I'm starting my own research institute.

Lots of lessons in life have to be experienced, they can't be taught.

> "... know a certain percentage of the startups in each batch are doomed. Some people just aren't meant to start startups, but there's no way for them to know that for sure without trying it."

People are much stronger and amazing than that.

It's important not to forget that all people have unlimited potential, because we are all the same. However, one factor that cannot be measured, is passion. Passion can come from one or any number of factors - and passion can make the impossible possible.

To that extent, I'd encourage comment readers to grasp that idea you love so greatly, and grasp it with all your heart... for off that cliff lies a river where you can pan for gold.

The other driver's cars were not designed for high altitude nose dives into water. The car designers did not care enough to pay that much attention to detail to handle that dive.

However, for the passionate who can make the finest car, there in that river lies the gold.

Did I time-warp into a Tony Robbins seminar, here?

People have unlimited potential?

We are all the same?

The impossible is possible?

There is a fine line separating rational optimism from potentially dangerous delusion, and your post crosses it.

Stick to science and knowledge. Our potential is finite, we all have very real differences (biological and otherwise), and "the impossible is possible" is an obvious contradiction that renders both terms meaningless, so you're really saying nothing at all.

you toke the words out of my hands :D +1

Wow, you're like the anti-me.

People (with a few exceptions, usually the result of excellent breeding, education or culture) are much weaker and worse than that.

It's important not to forget that all people have limited potential, though some are much more limited than others.

Do you know Plato had a name for the man who was ruled by passion? Every man has to place some principle on the throne of his heart. The true aristocratic man, the philosopher-king, is ruled by wisdom. The timocrat, leader of a warrior state, is ruled by honour.

Going further done the list, the oligarch is ruled by desire for wealth - which at least gives him the motivation to work hard, if nothing else. The democratic man is ruled by freedom, and his life therefore involves being blown around his own whims.

But the lowest of all is the man ruled by passion - the tryant. People here should read The Republic (or knowing HN readers, skim the Wikipedia article describing the 5 different types of polis): he describes modern culture (including Occupy Wall St) pretty well, which just shows that human nature hasn't changed.

too late, but can you quote the exact passage in the Republic? this really sounds cool, that I really don't want to find out if the wikipedia guy and the philosopher phd that came up top on the google and you are the same person.

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