Actually there's a fundamental incompatibility between cults and startups. Cult followers tend to be people who want someone to tell them what to do. There are a lot of people like that, but they're the opposite of the kind of people who make good startup founders. What you want
in a startup founder is the sort of tenacious independent mindedness
that makes you start a new search engine in 1998, when everyone else
thinks it's too late.
If the startups we funded were run by the kind of people who'd feel
at home in a cult, they'd get creamed as soon as they hit the real world, and our returns would be terrible. A regular company could
tend toward the cultish and succeed (some technology companies show signs of it), but a venture firm couldn't be, because its startups would lose in the market.
"tenacious independent mindedness that makes you start a new search engine in 1998"
or even 2008, ie Cuill. I suppose it's all about feeling you can do something better and believing in yourself enough to prove the doubters and incumbents wrong, at the same time attracting like-minded folks into the fold.
I'd like to point out that I've never been entirely the type to put in insane work hours. To be fair, I've probably always worked more than the average person, but my particular peak efficiency (as I've been able to see while using RescueTime) comes when I work for bursts and then rest.
All of that being said, ever since I've been a founder (and especially during YC), I've noticed my work time shooting off the charts compared to how I used to work for other companies. I know why this is for me: it's simply because I know that every minute I'm not working is a minute that I'm subtracting from the company's success timeline. People talk about compressing your career into the span of 4 years as a founder, and yeah that's really what's going on. The reason is because if you don't work on your startup, there literally is nobody else that will. And for me, it feels like I'm costing myself money when I'm not working, and that takes a while for people like me to figure out how to balance. I have found that it gets easier after you've reached a more stable 1.0 of your product, but it's always a challenge.
I must say, though, that the idea that YC is a cult is pretty ridiculous.
As far as I can tell, how hard people work has little correlation with whether they have follower-type personalities. It does, however, have quite a high correlation with working on a startup. So my guess is the cause is that they're working on a startup.
"Even during Viaweb I still slept 8 hours a night (roughly 3-11). The most productive people rarely have more than 6 hours or so of really concentrated work per day, except in emergencies. If you can ensure you get that every day, you don't need to economize on sleep..." -- by pg 358 days ago
YC doesn't dictate how many hours you work. They aren't project managers or pointy haired bosses. They're investors.
Your biggest mistake is taking the blog entry of one startup out of 100 or so that they've funded and assuming that what they do is typical and/or directed by YC.
I wish it were selection bias. Unfortunately, every time I hear about a YC company they seem to brag about the hours they work.
Are there numbers about this? A survey of average hours worked in YC startups (ideally separating code / biz time) would be helpful to give people a realistic idea of what they're signing up for when they apply.
No it wouldn't, because again, YC doesn't dictate the hours. You're signing up for whatever you want to sign up for. It's not as if you punch a time card and PG looks at them.
People work so hard because they want to do well on demo day. Other than that one day, I don't know of any way to pitch to all of the top investors in the industry at once. You'd be a fool to not try to maximize your productivity with that in mind.
This isn't a YC thing. This is a startup thing. Startups work a lot of hours, it's the nature of the beast. By being as accusatory as you've been, you've highlighted your inexperience with startups in general.
- People are put in physically or emotionally distressing situations;
- Their problems are reduced to one simple explanation, which is repeatedly emphasized;
- They receive unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic; [sic]
- They get a new identity based on the group;
- They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives, and the mainstream
culture) and their access to information is severely controlled.
To the extent that YC fits this definition, so does any intense and ambitious collaboration. Take the Manhattan Project, the Apollo missions, and some parts of the Human Genome Project -- they all fit criteria 1, 2, 4, and the first part of 5 to a much greater extent than YC ever does.
So it looks like we have a broken test function. (Though perhaps it's just missing a type-check -- maybe it's only supposed to be applied to religions.)
These criteria fit almost anything that requires dedication.
Anything from starting a family to funding a company to joining a professional sports team.
(except maybe "They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives, and the mainstream culture) and their access to information is severely controlled." but I don't see how startups are isolated and have their access to information controlled.)
I have a family member who was one of the top 10 important people on the Human Genome Project during its heyday and am curious as to what part of that project you think fits those criteria.
I think the gentleman was generically referring to a project becoming a driving goal. People who are absolutely dedicated to something do get sucked in during the crunch time. For instance, people doing drama shows (part-time) by tech-week both actors and crew are spending 12+ hours a day on set (1), have the show's problems eclipse their other problems (2), and share a group identity (actors in play X) (4).
This isn't cult behavior, but it passes that test. The difference is that it's temporary behavior. You might work 60-80 hours a week for the first few months, and then you're back to semi-normal schedules except during crunch times. No doubt if you asked this family member, they'd have stories of these crunch times where they had to burn the midnight oil for a good bit.
Come on now, let's not go overboard here and compare YC to the Manhattan Project or Apollo missions. Doing a start-up is hard work, but we're talking about a slightly different scale here.
Why do you think starting a company is less demanding than being a member of the Manhattan Project or Apollo teams?
"Scale" is exactly the right word -- Apollo didn't happen because one person worked more insanely hard than anyone else had worked in the history of the universe. It was a large project with a lot of people (and a lot of science). Yes, a lot of them worked hard. But please, measure effort on a human scale. It doesn't matter whether you're starting a company or developing a new technology for space travel -- if you're pouring your whole life into it, the same psychological conditions can apply.
Except, in Apollo people died/can die. They didn't work 18 hours a day because you make mistakes at that point. If your "web application" fails, no one really bats an eye. But if you start killing people - it is a bit different. Please don't compare these toy companies that get created, which barely have a business model much less a purpose, to one of the greatest achievements of all time just because you sit in front of your computer for long hours.
Missing the point. This is not about how important your project is to "society" or how much risk there is of other people dying. This is about what goes on inside your head.
When your brain decides how fast to make your heart pump, or how fast to breathe, or how tense to make your muscles -- it can't tell the difference between flying to the moon and building an ajax alarm clock. All it knows are what your emotional hot-spots are, the parts of you that matter to you... you are entirely capable of inflating the significance of whatever project you're working on just as large as the significance of Apollo to one of its engineers.
Likewise, it's just as easy for the Apollo engineer to say "I was just doing my job" as it is for me to say "Holy shit I'm responsible for my baby nephew's livelihood because his dad is a partner in this startup"...
Other people may not bat an eye when your web app fails, but you sure will.
That is a rather silly criterion. All engineers build things that can kill people if they go wrong. That's what engineers do.
You think that social software can't be used to kill people? Do you know the number of people (mostly women) who are murdered each year by stalkers, most of whom are former lovers or spouses? Do you want to bet that none of those stalkers have used, say, Google to help locate their victims?
Do you think that having your identity stolen and your bank account drained can't lead directly to your death? What, do you live in a country where health insurance is guaranteed to all citizens? (Oh, wait -- perhaps you do. Never mind.)
"Toy companies"? Interesting choice of phrase. Here's what one minute's Googling found for me: A court case, Estate of Matthew C. Metzgar v. Playskool, Inc:
the plaintiffs' expert, E. Patrick McGuire, reported for the record that in one year studied, 1988, there were eleven deaths due to aspiration of small toys or toy parts by children... the plaintiffs submitted a CPSC estimate reported in the House Congressional Record that in each year from 1980-88, an average of 3,200 small children were treated in hospital emergency rooms for toy related ingestion and aspiration injuries. The CPSC also reported that between 1980 and 1991, 186 children choked on small toys, toy parts, and other children's products.
Frankly, from the viewpoint of danger and death, the space program's engineers are wimps: They do very dangerous things, but they only endanger a handful of people at a time. A toy engineer who specifies the wrong paint can kill hundreds of babies at once. Social software is pretty safe, but if the odds that a Facebook user will be killed because of a Facebook design error are as small as one per 100 million user-years [1], the company stands to lose 1 user per year, because they have 90 million active users.
[1] I have no data, but I doubt the odds are that small. I'd be astonished if Facebook hadn't already been a factor in thousands of suicides, for example. One of the reasons why humans are so incredibly talented at socializing is that it's fraught with peril.
Apollo engineers make a design mistake, it kills people. If you don't like that because it doesn't effect enough people (Sorry I didn't realize that since Facebook serves 100 million people it is more of a feat than going to the moon) lets talk about Boeing. Boeing makes a design mistake, hundreds of people die. That has happened and will continue to happen.
Now you compare that to Facebook - if Facebook or Google goes down, who dies?
And this whole stalker point - wtf does that have to do with anything. Do you think there where no stalkers before the internet? The fact that people misuse something doesn't make it the engineers fault. If I designed kitchen knives and it is used to kill someone is it my fault? Hell no. But if I design a hatch door that doesn't open because of a design flaw, and people die, that is my fault.
I think the test of the importance of your work is not how much people will be hurt if you screw up, but how much people's lives are improved if you succeed. Some of the most important work is done by people working quietly on mundane problems. Judged by the standard of how much it contributes to people's well-being, Google probably does more for the world than the Apollo missions did.
Ok PG's response seems almost like flamebait. I had to respond and try to voice my disagreement.
I think the test of the importance of your work is not how much people will be hurt if you screw up, but how much people's lives are improved if you succeed.
I notice you leave out the Manhattan Project. Through which nuclear power was discovered. And later those same researchers discovered Quantum Electrodynamics... which will likely be the next hardware solution for computer science.
Judged by the standard of how much it contributes to people's well-being, Google probably does more for the world than the Apollo missions did.
As for Apollo versus Google - come on. Search (PageRank) & improved web mail (GMail) versus safe commercial air travel, radio and satellite communication, safe structures, better roads, GPS, etc. Maybe there weren't advancements to Computer Science. But, there were major advancements in civil, construction, electrical and mechanical engineering.
The program spurred advances in many areas of technology peripheral to rocketry and manned spaceflight. These include major contributions in the fields of avionics, telecommunications, and computers. The program sparked interest in many fields of engineering, including pioneering work using statistical methods to study the reliability of complex systems made from component parts. The physical facilities and machines which were necessary components of the manned spaceflight program remain as landmarks of civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program
Separately the Apollo program had a cultural impact on the students and engineers of the time and even today. I know I am inspired by what the program did with such limited technology.
Some of the most important work is done by people working quietly on mundane problems.
For some reason, this excellent comment reminds me of my visit to the sewers of Paris (they've got a museum down there!)
There's a quote from Napoleon in which he proclaimed that the redesign of the Parisian sewer system (which was commissioned during his reign) was one of the most important things he ever did. It's surprisingly hard to argue with that.
I know plenty of Boeing engineers and my impression is that they don't feel that way. Several engineers will be jointly designing that hatch door you mention, and they know there will be plenty of careful review by other engineers of everything they do before their thoughts become matter.
Although they are not software engineers or scientists, but they adopt open source attitudes long before open source movement in software industry! The process of peer review is exactly what software teams have to learn from those disciplines.
I have no idea. This whole conversation seems like a big tangent, and perhaps I'm having a bit too much fun following it off into infinity. Shame on me.
Anyway:
Yes, Boeing has a more difficult task than many startup founders. Of course, there are also more engineers at Boeing, and they've been working on the problem for a much longer time.
Yes, it would be possible for a Google or Facebook design error to get someone killed. Leaks of personal or financial information are potentially deadly. Bad information can be deadly.
No, I can't give you a specific example of a design error (as opposed to a user error) that killed a Google or Facebook user. That's partly because Google and Facebook engineers -- like Boeing engineers, and most engineers worthy of the name -- take their work seriously and don't make many consequential mistakes. But mostly it's because our standards are looser, and reasonably so: The internet is a twelve-year-old invention, and when planes were twelve years old people crashed and burned all the time. They were experimental, and nobody expected anything different.
Standards will change. We're hearing stories of users who followed a Google map off a road and are now suing Google for damages. Right now those stories serve as hilarious examples of lawsuit-happy, stupid people, but perhaps in fifty years middle-class people will expect digital maps to be perfectly accurate, just as today they expect to have clean water and lead-free plumbing, and to always be able to reach an operator by dialing 911 on their cell phone.
Finally, I don't think this sentence is correct, in general:
The fact that people misuse something doesn't make it the engineers fault.
The problem is that there's no bright, shining line. Your kitchen knife example is far to one side of the line: Because kitchen knives are a very well-established technology, most knife accidents are caused by people misusing the product. On the other side of the line is, say, food that's been sweetened with ethylene glycol. That's pretty obviously a design error. And in between is a huge grey area, in which most software falls. Is Boeing responsible when a confused pilot pulls the wrong lever and fails to lower the landing wheels? [1] Is the guy who built the buggy online spreadsheet responsible when the civil engineer uses it to design a bridge that falls down? Well, that's why we have courts -- and why your startup needs to have a lawyer.
[1] I do know that planes used to have a little wheel-shaped lever to guard against this very problem. Maybe they still do. I forget where I learned that -- was it from Donald Norman?
My comment just pointed out that the definition of a cult used in the blog post falls down badly when applied to famous successful projects (which we can presumably agree were not cults), and is therefore either being misused or broken.
Hardly. Did you try following the link in the post? The link text says "textbook definition of a cult," but it's just a link to the Wikipedia article. This list is one of several that appear in the article, and judging from the multiple citations it is an amalgam created from several different sources.
The way he "compared" them was to say the list of criterion applies to both of them, and that it clearly shouldn't apply to the other things. What's wrong with that?
This is probably the best thread for this question, what is with all these pc, lg, pd (two letter, pg lookalike)usernames? Are you trying to be like him? Or hoping that a not-so-attentive user will read you and or vote you up because of that nickname? There seem to be way more than I see elsewhere, so I don't think abbreviating based on the first and last names is the only explanation.
Perhaps (s)he likes to self-identify as politically correct? There can be many, many explanations for the handles people choose. Be careful that you don't find yourself trying to make sense of a Rorschach Inkblot...
Are you saying that the person doing this has no conscious access to his or her own latent reasons? Or that this is just a random pattern like a Rorschach? I don't think it is a random pattern. There are far too many xx usernames here, relative to the other online communities I am a part of.
I'm saying that trying to surmise what someone is thinking from their choice of a two-character handle is like interpreting a Rorschach, which is not the same thing as saying that the characters themselves are randomly generated.
Not only is it fun reading a scathing criticism, (and I think he went too far in some ways and not far enough in others) the really funny part is watching the target audience digest (or rather, regurgitate) it.
There is a strange similarity between YC and a cult. You guys quote PG all the time like he's the next Buddha or something. YC is looked at as the only way towards making your startup happen. Sometimes around application time the posts get really out there as far as hero worship -- and Paul's said so himself.
Having said that, there's a LOT of dissension here as well. Lots of folks that have nothing to do with YC and just think Paul's a nice, regular schmuck like the rest of us. I know I'm here because of the crowd -- and by that I mean the larger startup crowd, not necessarily the YC bunch. This is the first board I've been on that has a long-running discussion about how single-arrow voting sucks, for one thing, or the role of contrarian comments in a healthy community.
So yeah, he's got a bit of a point. But it's mostly overblown, and I wouldn't worry about it. If you're 22 years old and don't have somebody to look up to? Then I'd start worrying.
I think the article is a troll, but I don't think you can fault him for the way he interpreted that sentence. You said you've been working 18 hours a day, and then you implied that the only time you took off was to watch a movie now and then.
So, what exactly is the norm? What we hear from blog entries and the like is that you're all working from the time you get up to the time you fall asleep clutching your laptops.
"A cult is a group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea or thing and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control (e.g. isolation from former friends and family, debilitation, use of special methods to heighten suggestibility and subservience, powerful group pressures, information management, suspension of individuality or critical judgment, promotion of total dependency on the group and fear of [consequences of] leaving it, etc) designed to advance the goals of the group's leaders to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community."
I think that a mother using reverse psychology to motivate her child to do her homework is "ethically manipulative." I think a national leader using lies to lead his country into war is unethically manipulative. I don't yet have a formula for it though.
Well, that's why there is no formula! It's a sticky wicket. In the case of the mother and child, in most cases, the mother is correct in thinking it's "for their own good." Also, in that case, there's good reason to believe that the child doesn't know what's best.
So don't try to put any formula in my mouth. I explicitly said I had none!
(It's like porn: "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.")
Well, I guess I meant that any formula you come up with around that statment suffers from revisionist history, and a very subjective view of what is really good. I was objecting to the formula you hadn't pinned down based on the output.
Most people would say that George W Bush deceived us into invading Iraq. Had he found a few nukes lying around, would that still have been unethical? A lot of people who think his actions were unethical now would probably not if the results were different, even though nothing was known at the time he did it.
If George W. knew that there were nukes lying around Iraq and used deception to motivate the US to go to war to get them, then I'd say that would be better than the current situation, but I'm still not sure it would be ethical. However, it looks like he knew there weren't nukes or any sort of WMDs there.
In the case of the mom, the prospects for long term harm are minimal and the potential for long term benefit are pretty good. In the case of taking a country to war, there's always a whole lot of potential for long term harm.
Well, the norm is clearly working very hard for two and a half months before demo day. But most people realize that working past a certain number is counterproductive. I don't know exactly what that number is, but it's below 18 per day for sure. I'd say we probably worked 70-80 hour weeks.
Yeah. I'm not a participant, but I'll be applying in the future, and from the descriptions I've heard from people that's really not what the program is all about.
I'm a college student, so when I apply it will probably be for one of the summer rounds. While I'm fine with abandoning college for a bit to work on something if it picks up steam, I don't want to miss a semester actually beginning the project. Or does that not make sense with YC?
I already feel like a newbie, though. I haven't the faintest idea what Goya is.
It doesn't really make sense with startups in general. You can't tell much after the two months or so before you have to decide on going back to school. You're lucky to just launch something by then, let alone iterate, let usage define your future, seek funding, etc. I'd be more inclined to just finish school and then do it.
Its extremely delicious tropical fruit juice in flavors like Mango and Peach that has a heavenly mouthfeel and drinks way too fast. "Fruit juice" alludes to like welches or something similar.
Ah, gotcha. I don't know. On the one hand, I feel like applying and really seeing where this idea of mine can go. On the other, I'm not certain if it's the best idea, to want to test my concepts out so early. But four years' wait right now seems like pretty awfully long.
I feel like a very large number of startup founders that ended up successful probably would not have seen much evidence that that would happen within two or three months.
I can, yeah. I would be completely willing to do that, too.
At the same time, I still wouldn't want to miss my first two semesters. And I don't think there's much of a loss to be had waiting an extra few months.
I don't think it's as bad as it might seem. I'd rather have this
on the frontpage than lolcats or accident pictures. In fact, I
think some of the people who upvote or submit things like this do
it as a way of keeping News.YC good. They don't want the site to
degenerate into an intellectual monoculture. That doesn't mean
they necessarily agree with everything it says.
Back in the 1960s, the Communists used to get so many votes in
French elections that some people in the US worried the country
would align with Russia. But as Laurence Wylie pointed out in
Village in the Vaucluse (great book btw), most of the voters
didn't actually agree with the Communists' policies. They were
just voting for them because they worried that the dominant party
was getting too powerful. Really they were voting for diversity.
I haven't quite figured out how to articulate what's wrong with this kind of thing, but it's somewhat similar to Fox news -- they're not simply useless, they're corrosive.
I'm still trying to think of a better explanation. Disagreement is fine and good, but this kind of thing is something else. The 37signals posts do a good job of presenting an alternate perspective, but in a way that is generally positive and helpful.
I'd like to see you explain yourself better, Paul.
How can free speech corrode anything? Is it like when you tell a kid there's no Santa Claus, then you've hurt his innocence with your cynicism?
It sounds like you've got your thumb on a very specific feeling, and I'd be interested to hear about it, but heck if I can figure out where you're going.
I'm a big free speech guy, and I love a good kick in the butt from time to time, so I liked it for that reason. WE always want to judge our position against our critics, right? If not we're just living in a echo-room. But that's just me.
Free speech is not a type of speech. It's a policy about speech.
So the question reduces to "How can speech be corrosive?" Corrosive is not a very precise word, but I can guess what Paul means: he means when people are deliberately intellectually dishonest, as for example Fox News seems to be. When someone (a) deliberately misrepresents what an opponent is saying (b) as if he were attacking something that is a hot button for the audience, and then (c) replies with rousing platitudes.
Free speech as a policy has consistently been interpreted as political speech, that is, speech about what or what not we should be doing. It this sense of speech as a voice of opposition calling for change in the status quo that I meant.
Sorry to make so many jumps, but it wouldn't have occurred to me to use the term in any other way -- obviously I'm not talking about speech one does not have to pay for. Or speech that is unconstrained.
There's a fine difference between honestly describing what you believe to be the other person's views, exaggerating the other person's views in order to show how his/her argument fails at the extremes, and purposely mis-stating the other person's views simply to mock them without giving them a fair chance at explanation.
We do all three of these all of the time in normal arguments, btw.
I just couldn't equate the blog to the TV channel reference. I'm not going to defend Fox News, mainly because I don't think they need defending. I'm unaware of anything that seems "wrong" about them, save for the fact they seem to bug the heck out of more progressive people. But it seemed like two different genres, and two completely different animals.
There's an interesting question in there about blogs in general, and the tendency in media for consumers to prefer people who rant and rave, as I notice many of the later evening cable news entertainment shows doing. (Note the separation of news, news commentary, and news entertainment) I wonder why this type of "corrosive" media attracts so many viewers? Is there a large group of people, for instance, that really want to hear YC misrepresented and trashed? I don't believe that. I believe the article in question only exaggerated a bit to show where the site could be headed. If not, there's nothing stopping us from using his piece for that purpose.
It just always raises my hairs when somebody says something to the effect of "stop that man! He's saying something dangerous!" or the like. I'm just curious. EDIT: Paul did not use the word "dangerous." he only implied that this article was in some different category of bad speech beyond LOLCats.
I'm in favor of free speech as a legal concept, but that doesn't mean that I want to listen to and promote everything. There is some content that will actually make you dumber. Most tv news is in this category, actually. I'll try to come up with a better explanation though.
I support the legal concept because it makes sense both for politics and me personally. Something about how do you know you're wrong unless you listen to those you disagree with? After all, can't be right all of the time. [Insert clever J.S. Mill comment here]
I think trying to resist the monoculture is a mistake.
Your stated aim for the constituency of the news.yc community is "the 10,000 best hackers and nobody else". If you achieved that aim, you'd have a monoculture. It would be a slightly different monoculture than the current one and less in your image, but a monoculture nonetheless. If it's even possible to move away from monoculture without moving toward Digg, I don't think it's worth the risk of trying.
It could be that in order to get the 10,000 best hackers, he has to resist the monoculture.
Good hackers usually get that way because they're curious and like to learn new things. It gets boring when the same few dozen people submit the same thousand articles.
I'm talking about a monoculture of values, not of abilities or interests. "Curious and like to learn new things" is one aspect of the monoculture that I'm referring to. It's a relatively uncommon attribute.
The result might be the opposite of what those well-intentioned people want. If the alternative view is obviously lame and impotent, it only reinforces the mainstream. This is a well-known trick in politics. When Michael Moore argued for gun control in Bowling for Columbine, he let the other side be represented--by Charlton Heston, a particularly dull and inarticulate man.
You will probably agree that there are far more compelling objections to the ethos of Hacker News than this article.
Sorry, but all your comment does is pretty much confirm the article. Dismissing criticism as "trolling" is exactly what a cult member would do.
Even invalid criticism warrants a proper rebuttal, if at the least to educate those leveling the criticism as to their errors. The fact that it has risen to top stop this morning only serves to illustrate that there are many things about the YC process that people don't particularly enjoy.
Why those things are either a) misunderstood or b) essential to the process is the way to properly comment on the article.
EDIT: Wow, look at the downmods! So much for discussion being valued!
I made some comments about this, YC is slowly but surely going down the reddit way. Unfortunate, since there are so many smart folks that make insightful submissions and comments.
I think the only reason it hasn't been killed is that "silencing critical voices" would be added to the list of offenses. That doesn't bother me at all though. That's just not a good reason to avoid killing a weak troll post.
This guy is presumptuous, ill informed and appears to have a thing for blanket statements.
Hi, I'm currently in YC for the summer. Although I certainly don't speak for everyone in YC, I think I'm somewhat more qualified than the author who has never been in the program and who apparently receives his information from blog posts and hearsay.
Most of his assertions apply to startups or any intense forms of collaboration (as PC noted) in general. Although we work a significant amount of hours, it's not as if we never get out. I've gotten to know many of the other cofounders very well outside of YC. Additionally, is it really work if you enjoy what you're doing? I rather work 60-80 hours per week on something I like that challenges me, than 40 hours per week on something I'm disinterested in. As for the pure speculative, link-baiting stuff:
"Young, impressionable and inexperienced entrepreneurs are willing to sacrifice their health, happiness and creativity while pursuing wealth."
This is the second company I've started. It's my business partner's second as well. Many of the founders in YC have worked at startups or run their own businesses before.
Happiness/Creativity? I went from working a 9-7 office job I wasn't interested in to working on my dream project.
Health? Due to increased schedule flexibility, I've actually been able to exercise more and eat better. I've lost a good 5 lbs.
"They receive unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic..."
You should have been at my team's first meeting; it was like this, but the opposite. Informal founder feedback sessions have been similar. The carebear environment the author described wouldn't work anyway - the VCs would destroy us.
"They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives, and the mainstream culture) and their access to information is severely controlled."
Isolation? My parents just visited this past weekend. I still keep in touch with all of my friends even if many of them wear the hat of beta tester. If anything, I've been able to keep in _better_ touch with my friends because they're all curious about what I'm working on. Talking about a startup is a lot more fun than talking about a 9-5 or 9-7 for that matter.
Without YC I'd still be at my same old job trying to work on our startup on the side. This is not only difficult to do, but very slow as well. YC essentially moved everything up a year or two and allowed us to work on what we love while being surrounded with a bunch of brilliant people to bounce ideas off of and anxious investors to present to. What more could two cofounders originally from Ohio ask for?
You know, one of the common characteristics of people who have been brainwashed (by a cult or otherwise) is that they absolutely do not believe that they have been brainwashed, and will fight that suggestion with all their strength, coming up with never-ending explanations for why they haven't been brainwashed at all!
OTOH, if you were brainwashed into believing another group was brainwashed, you will fight any suggestion the other group was not brainwashed and come up with an unending stream of reasons to believe they were.
Even more twisted: what if you were brainwashed into thinking that people who have been brainwashed don't believe they've been brainwashed? Would you be able to tell whether you've been brainwashed yourself or whether it's the rest of the world that's brainwashed?
The world would be a strange place... but very clean.
> "They receive unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic..." You should have been at my team's first meeting; it was like this, but the opposite. Informal founder feedback sessions have been similar. The carebear environment the author described wouldn't work anyway - the VCs would destroy us.
Actually most accounts of actual cult experiences describe a never-ending cycle of harsh criticism intended to break down the followers sense of self, followed by love from the charismatic leader.
So, to an extent you're validating what Daniel is saying.
Any elite group is going to have some cultlike qualities. The real hard part comes when you are attempting to determine if you are benefiting from the emotional programming you are receiving, and if not when you should leave.
I really doubt that YCombinator is a cult, if it were you'd see the leadership ordering founders to give up their own projects and work on projects the leadership favours and ratcheting up the share of equity demanded, and generally see people getting taken advantage of. And if it were seriously going wrong you'd see ostracism and megalomania.
If you can't come up with any good ideas, lower your standards for what you consider "good". The #1 reason people can't come up with good ideas is that they're afraid to try.
If you love what you do and are good at it, programming is only somewhat more mentally exhausting than playing computer games all day (and I do relatively complicated stuff: algorithms and numerical math in C++ and ML - don't ask about details, I like my relative anonymity).
The "burnout" happens when there is no reward in sight, or worse: you work hard for many months, produce good results, then your PHB shits on them for political reasons (so you wouldn't get too stuck up), or is just too stupid to appreciate your work.
I'm not a web programmer, and I tend to be very skeptical of much of what PG writes (especially the last few years), but I think independent enterprise is the way to go for the more gifted and hard-working people.
- People are put in physically or emotionally distressing situations;
- Their problems are reduced to one simple explanation, which is repeatedly emphasized;
- They receive unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic; [sic]
- They get a new identity based on the group;
- They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives, and the mainstream
culture) and their access to information is severely controlled.
You mean just like doing a PhD or building a company or heck, being a geek about anything in life. A baseball fan who can recite stats about everything and everyone for the past 100 years is, by this definition, part of a cult.
First there was "All YC startups produce unoriginal second-rate stuff" (unfortunately, I don't have the link handy). Now there's this. It is impressive how YC-hate is evolving.
Obviously the guy is trolling, but a useful question does emerge: Are people taking pg's advice without critically evaluating it? If they do not then all is fine and dandy but if they do, the guy has a point (albeit poorly presented).
Just because many, many people take pg's advice doesn't mean they aren't evaluating it. We only hear about the ones that come to the opposite conclusion (that he's wrong).
The best definition of a cult that I've heard was from some guy on NPR (no clue who, I was driving and came in mid-program)... he said, quite simply, that a cult is any organization who's ulterior motive is to have sex with minors. I'm sure there are counter-examples, but I think it fits pretty well.
I sometime doubt why I've been living my life most of time by ignoring mainstream culture, being isolated from my relatives, with a few really good friends far below Dunbar's number that will help each other without questions, working 60 to 80 hours on non leisure stuffs, and living in the opposite side of the earth to my birth place since I was 15.
I even joined a quasi-cult organization once to see how does it work. It has been a quarter of century and I love it. Because I do what I want to hack in my life and I learn from PG that beside that I also need to figure how to make something that people want! And I still have some chance to know some very attractive females and keeping myself fit.
At least I feel much better now because I know I can survive under inhuman conditions so I just need to persist till I get my share of glory. Of course I may die tomorrow but I didn't live a life that feel pressure from peers, pointing hair boss and failed marriages.
It's responses like these that at the very least do very little to disprove the author's point.
Of course YC is not a cult and PG is not a cult leader, but some people here do seem to treat them as such. Some of the questions asked here (like the "Is 40 years too old to start a startup" one alluded to in the original article) and some of the material posted here (like the ramblings of the poor college kid who thought being glued to a computer for 80 hours a week was a fulfilling existence) indicate that PG's message "running a startup is one of the most rewarding things you can do in your life" gets distorted in some people's minds to "running a startup is the only thing in your life that's worthwhile to do".
The irony, of course, is that PG himself, in his writings, demonstrates an interest in a lot of other things besides web start ups. It's not only PG who seems to have an unusually broad world view, however. The same holds true for a large number of the people who post here.
Unfortunately, a small number of people such as yourself seem to overlook that and reduce the message (if there is such a thing, which I doubt) to something ridiculous. The author definitely has a point there.
Did I say I glue myself 60 to 80 hours in front of computers for 25 years? I included my time thinking over ideas as work, reading books as work, congregation in cult as work. I even analyse strategic consequences of my friends relationship problems as logic and psychology exercises in work. It is really inhuman conditions because my mind has to run all the time to challenge itself without paycheck.
I see a big difference is most people thinking work/learning as slavery to the employers/teacher. So leisure time is classified as the time to avoid their work/learning. While you are working for yourself, everything you do in your life is work and learning.
But you are right that I don't care what the author said and have no intent to disprove what he wrote. I just enjoy my own way of living.
1. Young and inexperienced? That's the point. This is how you gain experience. Impressionable? Another word for "quick learners".
2. Sacrificing happiness? Not if it feels good to work on something you believe in.
3. Sacrificing creativity? Since when is it not creative to create a new business?
4. "18 hour days for two straight months" -- from the point of view of "hard work," big deal. Good stress makes you stronger. You're alive all 18 hours anyway -- if you believe in what you are doing, and you take care of yourself along the way, then all that effort can actually add to your energy levels.
5. But the key line is "if you take care of yourself." The effects of sleep deprivation (and eating shit for food) are real. If think and act as though you're invincible, you really can burn out, and that is <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=69097">a hellish experience</a>.
I guess maybe I'd be more concerned about this accusation if YC wasn't one of the smaller players in the space. Simply put, people will go and make bad and self-harming decisions all the time (god knows I've done it), it's a constant. If YC is an unhealthy environment–and I see no evidence that it is, but perhaps the kool-aid is in my brain–then it's a relatively small one.
I mean, most people here realize they don't need ycomb, right? It's one of many ways to get some initial funding, but it's certainly not the only way or even the normal way. It's more of a publicity stunt for a new startup than a real viable path to large-scale funding (if funding is what you need).
It's more of a publicity stunt for a new startup than a real viable path to large-scale funding
Of the 80 startups prior to the current cycle (who haven't had Demo Day yet), I believe 14 have raised series A rounds so far. Probably the same number again could have if they wanted to, but either didn't want to raise that much money, or got acquired first.
It's not just for the money, I agree. But the money is surely a part of it. Imagine if they gave you the same chance to "change the world", but said, we'll keep 90% of your equity.
I don't understand how the desire to "solve the money problem" and get to the point where money is not that essential is supposedly on some higher moral plane. It's like you're saying, "Hey, we're not greedy. We just want enough money so that we don't ever have to worry about money anymore, that's all." How does that differentiate you from the rest of the money-grubbers? Do you think that greedy people have a different goal?
I'd like to solve the money problem as well, but unless I use my money for unselfish purposes I'm not going to pretend that I have higher ideals than others who are seeking for money.
IMHO (based on my reading, and based on my observations of a certain organization where I went to college), the distinguishing feature of a cult is the exploitation of unanimous peer pressure (cf. the Asch conformity experiment) to make everyone follow one charismatic dictator.
E.g. you give all your money to The Guru because that's what a loyal follower of The Guru does, and all the people you hang out with are loyal followers of The Guru. All the people you hang out with are loyal followers of The Guru because they love you so much and they have so many things for you to do together and go on all these lovely weekend retreats where you are told that if you hang out with someone who's not a loyal follower of The Guru then it would be very bad for your karma.
The unanimity and the single leadership make cults different in kind, and not just different in degree, from other kinds of organized goal-seeking human groups. And I really don't see how the cult model, seen in this way, applies to YC.
With over 22000 karma points, (~5000 more than nickb) you could construe that Paul Graham is the cult leader of this board, whereby his words are not just approved, they are also a guide.
If you start disagreeing with PG in a large way, those that like him will scrutinize you and take aim as they may feel they are also being questioned. So there is a slight cultish behaviour going on with this board and maybe with its larger YCombinator fund context, but not intently by PG, he's an investor for the most part.
YCombinator as a 'startup scene' is not a cult because no harm is being done, and the absorption of minds is for the most part very beneficial. Cult leaders, I think take advantage of their own charisma to defray free choice in their environment for their own benefit. All in all, Ycombinator has a culture but is not a cult.
The notion "build something people want" I think is an ideology and ideologies are at the foundations of many cults, but cults generally have spiritual or religious overtones.
"5. They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives, and the mainstream culture) and their access to information is severely controlled."
Yet on Hacker News, the recruiting grounds of said cult, this post (information contrary to the teaching of said cult) has ascended to the top?
The solution is to apply the YC principles that fit for you and still live your life and to not get overly caught up in the message and let it block out outside reasoning.
Speaking of the news.yc community and not of the founders, what if the perception of cultism keeps the quality of postings here from deteriorating rapidly? Most of the level-headed ones here do not buy into that percept and vote and comment independently and intelligently. The inevitable band of pg worshipers do amplify the noise, but could that be the cost of keeping the unaffiliated, median slashdotter away?
You can't assume that you always have a cylinder or a cube to fit into the mold. Heck, you may end up with an icosidigon and have only a triangle to try to shove it into.
As amazing as the Y Combinator idea may sound to some, you also have to have a healthy sense of skepticism and apply it appropriately to every situation and oppourtunity that comes your way. Make it work for you, not you for it.
"We've got to stop dumping the used ones and zeros into the oceans! It's melting the ice caps!"
Really, it's the ones. It's a well known fact ones have more energy than zeros. We should right now start dumping more zeros to cool down the oceans. If we do it quickly enough, we may stop global warming. We should also switch to other binary architectures as x86 code has a one-to-zero ratio that exceeds 1.
"...Talk of "magic" swimsuits obscures the incredibly hard work swimmers such as Russell, a second-year pharmacology major, actually put in. Before I went to university it would be 20 hours a week, weights and swimming. When I went to Indiana [his first school] my training stepped up to 30 hours of weights, swimming and dry land, though that is really excessive for me. Now it’s about 18 hours..."
If the startups we funded were run by the kind of people who'd feel at home in a cult, they'd get creamed as soon as they hit the real world, and our returns would be terrible. A regular company could tend toward the cultish and succeed (some technology companies show signs of it), but a venture firm couldn't be, because its startups would lose in the market.