PG at Launch [video] | Hacker News Reader

PG at Launch [video]

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116 pointsjdorfman33 comments

Great part: "Who knows better? These random people chattering on forums - I won't mention any names [obviously Hacker News]? Or Zuckerberg himself who knows all the numbers and is actually betting his money. [WhatsApp] must be worth $19 billion if Zuckerberg was willing to pay $19 billion for it, cause he's no idiot."

Reply to below: I wouldn't nitpick the fact that he says WhatsApp "must" be worth $19B. This is an interview, not anything logically formal. The main point is that Zuckerberg is actually putting money on the line and has personally seen all of WhatsApp's numbers. Compare this to the peanut gallery on HN.

seems a great logical fallacy to reference betting, which is what is happening, in a sentence about how the decision was definitely right.

I think thats the big mistake right there. You need to take into account that his actions are backed by knowledge that we do not have. So in order to say that his decision is wrong is the same as saying that "no knowledge he may posses can make his actions correct" which is a rather bold claim.

Remember when AOL was worth $100 billion? And one of the buyers was the inventor of satellite TV?

Zuck may well be right, but it's not ipso fscto. He just made an acquisition bigger than anything ever done by Steve Jobs, Bill Gates etc. Or Warren Buffet for that matter.

Small correction, Warren Buffet spent over $34billion on BNSF

Or Skype for that matter (what eBay bought it for, and what they sold it to Microsoft for).

In comparison, NeXT which became the foundation for almost everything Apple has done since 1997 cost about $650M if I remember correctly.

I find it interesting, in this case at least, PG appears to be talking against the wisdom of crowds.

Now I'm not sure if he is correct in this instance, but it's probably a good idea to keep mindful of both sides. Sometimes a small elite can be better positioned to make the call, and other times it's the crowd.

Regarding the WhatsApp deal, perhaps Mark knows better than the tech community, given the large information asymmetry at play. However the reverse could also be true too, especially in companies with visionary leaders. IOW, one could question how much 'towing the line' happens at FB, given a leader with a large ego footprint.

Looking back, Microsoft missed the internet boat in the beginning (allowing Netscape to dominate), and as a result needed to play catchup. But, I'd wager Bill Gates's own limitations of judgement and inward focus on Microsoft, was a large contributor to this blunder.

"we used to have more faith in brains". The context here was Jason Calacanis was asking PG what signals if any, had changed over the course of time, when selecting teams.

Perhaps this goes nicely with this New Yorker article[1] summarizing the gap between high-IQ and what I would call instrumental rationality (as opposed to epistemic rationality). Also, it's quite possibly old hat to those who've read 'Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow' and related literature.

Speaking personally, while I'm possibly different to many here on HN, I enjoyed a sort of ruthless pragmatism in my teens and 20's and almost dogmatic focus. These days, I'm falling more into the theory trap, and tend to enjoy the conceptual and theoretical, far more than accumulating operational domain expertise. I do wonder if that's a permanent inclination, or if it turns out to be more cyclic in nature.

[1] "Why smart people are stupid", http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06...

I'm curious, how exactly are the partner silos structured? Are the silos grouped by partner expertise, and startups rotate across silos based on what they want to talk about? Or does each individual silo have a set of partners whose combined expertise cover everything, and startups are assigned to a silo? From 26:30 in the video or so.

Each one has 2 or 3 partners and 20-something startups. The startups do group office hours with those partners, and when they request individual office hours those are the partners they get by default. Startups can also request office hours with any partner if they need some special expertise that only they have. E.g. Geoff knows a lot about music startups, Sam is the expert on fundraising, I'm the one with a knack for thinking of new domain names.

I'm not one of the group partners. I try to meet with all the startups, but obviously not as frequently as the group partners.

Since you won't be in interviews, would you share any domain/naming ideas for our startup? I'll email you our pitch deck if you'd look at it for 30 seconds. :)

I'm sure he'd rather you just apply for the next batch of YC. Applications are open.

http://ycombinator.com/apply.html

In case you missed it, you can watch it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA

It just says "Please stand by." for me.

Edit: Works with Chrome's Incognito Mode. Maybe one of my extensions is interfering.

Sad to hear PG won't be interviewing applicants anymore (though I understand why).

The 10 minutes where he grilled me on my startup idea were some of the most fun I've had, despite me not getting in. I was hoping to get another chance someday.

Care to share what your startup was and what the interview was like? Where you thought you went wrong?

The interview was intense (as many others have reported) with PG asking rapid-fire questions about the app, business model, team, etc.

In the end I was rejected because my app "could be built by a decent developer in a weekend," which in hindsight was 100% correct. That should have been obvious to me since it only took me a few weekends to build the MVP (and I'm a mediocre developer at best), but somehow it wasn't.

I ended up substantially changing my business model as a direct result of my 10 minute YC interview. Still waiting to see if that was the right call, but I have a hunch it was...

Interesting. There's much more to building a business than simply how difficult it is to build the product, so using just that as a reason to reject people seems a bit off. For example, Buffer [1] seems to be doing pretty well and that must have been a comparatively simple app to get off the ground (in terms of MVP). I expect the hard work there is in growing fast enough that you capture most of the market/mindshare (as well as how big that market is).

[1] http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-december-update-2819000-run...

EDIT: IIRC Buffer didn't make it to the interview stage for YC. They carried on anyway.

I was initially surprised for the same reason as you, especially given some of pg's comments about the best ideas looking like "toys" at first.

However, looking back I would have done the same thing in his position. My prototype just looked too simplistic and didn't have a defensible business model (at that time) that VCs would have found compelling.

YC is a business that must generate returns for its owners, and my startup didn't fit the bill. Better luck next time...

Did you have cofounders at that point?

I applied solo, but had two people about to join me as co-founders. That could have been part of it, but wasn't the official stated reason...

Seriously, LAUNCH, no paid ustream?

What is this, an OWS general assembly of anarchists?

OMG pg is as crazy as usual (in a good sense). He is really great!

anyone have a link that works in Germany? God damn GEMA is blocking the video for me :(

US Proxy not working?

What right does GEMA have to block this video? Does it contain some copyrighted music in the background or something?

Really energetic orator, especially compared to the interviewer. Would be great if he guested on a show with energy, like The Daily Show or The Colbert Report.

Listening to Paul talk is refreshing. He's like Feynman in that he's got something clever and fun to say and doesn't dress it up in pretense. I still remember feeling about 10 times better during a commute home once because NPR played an interview of his on startup failure, what could have been a depressing subject. The interviewer asked what sort of people he was looking for. He described them as "fierce nerds", which was both hilarious and dead on.

Jason's a great interviewer, though. He brought up questions people wanted to hear, dug in a few times, and stayed on the sidelines. He can be a lot more energetic if he's the focus and not the interviewer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gbI9pIbpY4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79I4Jf80FHg

Ha! The first talk[1] about Jason pretending to have a copy of the iPad 2 is hilarious. I've never heard that story before, definitely an entertaining couple of minutes.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gbI9pIbpY4

"This video is not available in your country"

Why? Fuck these stupid regional blockages.

anyone willing to disclose who the mobile email company is?

* was expecting a paraglider at launch.

is there a link to the recording?

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