TC50 Backstage: Why PG Was Mean and Which YC Companies Will IPO | Hacker News Reader

TC50 Backstage: Why PG Was Mean and Which YC Companies Will IPO

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67 pointsjasonlbaptiste26 comments

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"If Sam Altman wants to go public, Sam Altman will go public"

...

"If Sam Altman wants to whoop Chuck Norris' ass, Sam Altman will whoop Chuck Norris' ass"

What makes Sam Altman so amazing? What attributes does Sam Altman have that make pg such a fan?

I was annoyed by the reporter's "holding back?" attempt.

We have asked that many times. Paul still doesn't answer, probably because he thinks that signing multiple deals with phone companies speaks for itself.

(I've asked repeatedly why PG focuses on sama rather than Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame, and many interesting arguments have sprung up from my making that comparison, but sadly Paul hasn't joined in.)

In case anyone hasn't seen this yet: http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html

The list has some questionable entries even before you get to #5. At that point it just seems comical. But I could be wrong, of course.

And the discussion thread, in which I ask this question for the first of many times: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=542291

Half a year ago, jeez. It feels much longer ago than that. It's one of those cyclical HN debates that I always feel compelled to say my line in. Kind of like the Metafilter threads where certain users always have to say certain lines.

Yeah, it's a puzzle. But then, of the five entries, I think only one really belongs there. (No prize for guessing which one...)

In the first paragraph I explained the criterion I used to make the list. It's just the 5 founders who've influenced me the most.

Right, I saw that. That's why I didn't just call the list wrong outright. But I do wonder why the founders on that list influenced you more than all the others.

Sam and Mark seem quite similar actually. The reason I talk about Sam more is that I know him so much better.

What sets Sam apart (and Mark as far as I can tell) is great force of character.

Fair enough.

A friend of mine recently hired on to Loopt, and said that Sam was the reason that he signed on to the company.

"Sam's seemed like the kind of guy who could overcome pretty much any obstacle thrown in his path. I wanted to work on a company with a guy like that"

Is Loopt wildly profitable yet? After 4 years seems like it should be raking it in :/

Signing deals is cool, but do they equate to revenue and profit?

Thats a very good point. There is always a huge gap between signing deals/PR and booking revenue, more so when you are dealing with bigger players like operators.

Its unfortunate that nobody here talks about real numbers...

Private companies rarely share all their revenue / profit numbers. It's amusing that lots of HN outsiders speculate and wildly miss on how YC companies are actually doing in real terms.

Amazon took more than 4 years, and nobody is complaining now. Loopt is a success now, and will be very successful in the future, and it is very impressive considering Sam started it when he was an undergrad.

"Y Combinator's been huge and encouraging a lot of young entrepreneurs and guiding them and mentoring them, but that's a knock I hear about you guys a lot, is that there aren't really big ideas that come out of it, it's more just kind of web apps---"

"You know, the problem is that you read your own columns."

The interviewer was kind of annoying in general, and "the problem is that you read your own columns" was pretty good (how long have you been saving that one for, PG? ;)...but there is a little something to that knock.

Edit: Also, the transcript sort of implied a harsh, conclusive interruption from PG, which would've been awesome. The video is much friendlier in tone. :|

Doesn't it go like this?: You're starting a company on $15-20K, so you need to get a usable app out within a few months - to get some users loving you - to raise money to go after a bigger market with a 'grander app. You could simply not ship anything, go after that bigger market first... but then in addition to seeing fewer, more substantial first apps from YC companies after much longer incubations, you'd see YC's success rate plummet.

Nobody's ultimate game plan is the cute web app. Thats just how you get through round one to connect with a real market and real users and iterate from there, with additional funding.

In other words: complaining about a bunch of small web apps coming out of a summer incubator and then not exploding into massive companies is equivalent to complaining about a bunch of startups failing under any other model. Most do. Thats just how it is. In the case of YC, failure means you probably ship something, then fail to go much past there. Which is better than not shipping anything, or spending a year on something nobody wants before you ever ship.

A high failure rate is valid criticism, but judging from how many YC companies get follow-on funding, I'd say the model works just fine. It will take a long time to find out.

My question for PG is this: How long until you find out if the early YC classes are winning or losing investments? How many cells out in your excel is that day?

pg was mean? Makes me wonder if she was watching the same show as me.

I found pg to be WAY more thoughtful compared to other judges who seemed to be more in "quiz" mode("How will you solve chicken egg problem?") or "nice" mode. pg's tone was more like "I wonder if you can do blabla with this. hmm." That is also how he communicates with his own startups.

Completely agree.

What I would give for 5 minutes of questions from PG about our startup! Maybe that's something he could auction off for charity? Bidding on office hours!

Ideally, the presenters should have ready answers for most of the questions that were posed after the presentations ..wasn't there a selection process per se? it was odd that many presenters were not prepared for answering market size/distribution etc questions

In which talk was pg being mean? Was it for that sports ticket predictor? He asked the question I was thinking - if I were trying to decide how much I wanted to pay for this thing, I need to know what its overall value proposition is to me.

Apparently his faux pas was asking serious business questions at a dog and pony show.

You know that really is a sweet face at 3:28.

Not what I was expecting. PG doing some mid-interview facial exercise?

This is SarahLacy writing. Isn't she the same who screwed up a public interview with Zuckerberg trying to hit on him?

No. This is not intended to be Ad-Hominem. I am just curious. Is she the one.

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