Comment by bgraves | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bgraves | Hacker News Reader

Wow! I've been an avid 'Varker for sometime now and this is very surprising!

I think this is probably more of a talent acquisition than anything:

Just the _highlights_ from http://vark.com/team

* Max Ventilla - former Googler; marketing and monetization

* Nathan Stoll - former Googler; headed Google News for three years

* Fritz Schneider - former Googler; founded and led Google's Firefox and Safe Browsing teams

* Winton Davies - founding member of Yahoo Research Labs and a Principal Research Engineer at Overture, GoTo, and Cadabra.

* Bill MacCartney - former Googler; designed an automated question answering system at Google Research

* Sameer Paranjpye - founded and headed Yahoo’s Grid Computing team, responsible for the Apache Hadoop project

--

Aardvark has also come out with some great research projects in the past few weeks/months. [http://vark.com/aardvarkFinalWWW2010.pdf]

"Back in October, we wrote a research paper entitled 'Anatomy of a Large-Scale Social Search Engine' and submitted it to WWW 2010. We found out last week that it has been accepted, so we wanted to share a preview with you today!

Our paper was inspired by the classic Google paper, 'Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine', in which =>Sergey Brin and Larry Page<= originally describe the algorithms and architecture of Google. This paper was published 12 years ago in the same WWW conference."

There was a time I believed all corporate activities were based only on merit. Anything not completely merit derived would be illegal. That's what we're made to believe with all kinds of anti-descriminition laws (you can't ask age, about kids, etc during interviews for example).

It turns out, everything is friend based. Know rich people? They'll help you get rich too. Have a project you don't want to do inside of Google? Just quit, make it anyway, then they'll re-hire you with a $5M per head bonus.

I'd find it delightful if I were in such a position, but I'm not. Not only am I not, but the more technical side of me doesn't want to play social games to become ingratiated to the decision makers. Deep down, I still believe the world is merit based -- and that's one reason why I'm still a nobody doing nothing going nowhere.

I'd be better off not reading HN most days.

Know rich people? They'll help you get rich too.

I can confirm this. Contrariwise, knowing poor people can help you get poor. Such is life.

You just want to world to recognize you as "having merit" and give you money? You want to be successful, but are unwilling to make any sort of effort?

Create something remarkable and people with money will find you.

I see how it can be read that way.

By "merit," I meant actual accomplishments and not some ethereal quality of a person or group just sitting idle.

I'm glad you chimed in though because you're one of the cases that kind-of fits the model above. From a complete outsider's point of view, it looks like friends giving friends tens of millions of dollars for nebulous reasons.

* Disclaimer: Text is a poor medium of communication and usually comes across more hostile in the reader's eyes than intended. There is much levity here.

What am I a case of?

insider dealing

How so?

I'm not implying that you were engaged in anything shady, but your success with friendfeed, you have to admit, was more than the sum of your technical/marketing talent, having friends in high places has to have come into it somewhere, no?

Not really -- we didn't know the Facebook team all that well. Your argument would make more sense if we had sold to Google, but even then it would be false.

If your point is that people can build future success on top of past success, yes obviously that is true, but there is nothing wrong with that. It means that you need to work at it for a while and not expect people to simply hand you whatever you want because of some imagined "merit".

Edit (because there's not reply link for some reason): Where do you think reputation comes from? You have to start by doing something, and over time if you keep doing things that makes you more valuable.

Well it's not exactly "Create something remarkable and people with money will find you." then. More like 'create something remarkable and have enough reputation or schmoozing ability, and be in the right geograhic area'.

Even the 'remarkable' thing is not entirely true. I don't think facebook or microsoft were remarkable, for example, they just hit the right combination of luck and skill at execution. Google on the other hand, was an example of something remarkable when it first appeared.

I'm tempted to thow out the over-quoted "luck favors the prepapred mind". Yes, Microsoft lucked out when Bill Gates' mom was a boardmember of IBM, but they certainly took full advantage of it, and their many other opportunities - most of which came with having a more accurate understanding of their market than others. What might seem like luck to the inexperienced mind is usually a well executed strategy in line with a superior model.

All in all, though, I think it wise to hold yourself responsible for your accomplishments - both geographic location and your circle of acquaintances is something you have significant control over.

I don't think you can attribute Bill Gates to superior understanding and execution, at 50/100 million or even 500 million, but getting to 100 billion at one point, I don't buy it. Is Bill Gates really that much smarter than the rest of us. The same can be said for most people that's over 10 million I reckon.

"All in all, though, I think it wise to hold yourself responsible for your accomplishments - both geographic location and your circle of acquaintances is something you have significant control over." I agree in spirit, but the reality is different.

Yes. -if you're a white/asian male -born to middle class parents -and you're parents emphasized education -and good nutrition/genes so that you grow to above average height -and that you go to a good college -and can fit in with the right crowd yes, you simply move to silicon valley/manhattan/london and fit right in. IF you're a black man from a poor single parent family in small town mississippi, or the daughter of a farmer from a village in bangladesh, things are much more difficult.

If you really want to make the big bucks, what you really need is a monopoly on the desktop operating system. But the Sherman Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1 and 2, and Clayton Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C. § 25, are real bitches.

That's how Bill Gates made $100B. He had an opportunity to monopolize desktop OS'es and the luck/insight to bet they would one day be worth a lot, and the skills to execute on that opportunity. Yes, that kind of opportunity is very rare, but $1-100M opportunities are not.

That said, I agree with everything else you said - I agree that I'd much more like to live in a world where a black person with a poor single parent in a small town in Mississippi is given the tools to take advantage of the same opportunities as a Kennedy, but we should also accept that although it's something to strive for, and something to take steps towards (affirmative action/universal education/healthcare), there are also aspects which make it impossible. Ironically, one step towards equality is the removal of the meme "I was born <this and that>, so I can never accomplish what Bill Gates did".

Reputation comes from doing remarkable - or even just impressive - things repeatedly over time.

It compounds. The first time you hear that somebody just wrote something cool, you think "oh, that was nifty", and promptly forget about it a day later. The second time you hear it, you think, "Don't I remember hearing his name somewhere?" The third time, you think "Hmm, maybe I should watch out for this guy." By the fourth or fifth time, if you have money you want to invest it in him, and if you don't you want to work with him.

I've met a bunch of rich people, and in my experience, they're all basically the same as normal people. They're impressed by similar things. So think about the people you find impressive, and try to be like them.

I detest the subtle jab at FriendFeed.

Seriously, what are you going to say next? That the world is not fair? Only the 'remarkable' by your standards should see market success? That is wrong to get lucky, to be at the right place and right time?

are you some kind of friendfeed fanboy

it's a fair and legitimate point that it's easier for already famous people to get their company acquired than it is for a nobody

it's naive to thinks it all about remarkable products, or even luck, politics comes into it

What's naive is to think that Mark Zuckerberg would pay $50 million for something unless he actually wanted it that much.

Well theoretically, the low level people on the acquiring team could be bribed by the acquired, as is often the case in governmnet contracts.

edit: and you can 'dazzle' the acquirers with your reputation and nudge things along. Even if that hurts your reputation in the future, you can be making this as a last ditch cash grab. Kind out of taking out a mortgage and fleeing the country - or the 2000 tech boom and the current housing crisis

it's a fair and legitimate point that it's easier for already famous people to get their company acquired than it is for a nobody <-- you are pointing out the obvious. And your point?

It's naive to think that only products remarkable by your standards should see success in the market place.

It's another thing to be jealous of the success of others, because the world is not a zero sum game.

I'm done with this pissing match, I think I already said too much - say whatever you want, but your subtle attack on Friendfeed is malicious and I do not agree.

I didn't make a 'malicious' attack and i'm not jealous, you're overreacting on an emotional level to an intellectual argument

no hard feelings, goodday

Surely that assumes people with money are good at spotting 'worth'...

That problem exists regardless. Who can truly judge "merit"? However, investing has a built-in selective pressure. The people who are good at spotting things that will make money get more money -- the ones that aren't good at it lose money.

Well, making lots of money is an easy indicator...

Otherwise, you make the best bets you can.

Have a project you don't want to do inside of Google? Just quit, make it anyway, then they'll re-hire you with a $5M per head bonus.

Way off base IMO. If it was true, there would be very few ex-googler companies failing. And there would be A LOT more acquisitions by Google.

I have used Vark. And I think this was a SOLID technology acquisition and well worth $50M.

If I was a Vark founder, I'd feel insulted by your post.

Your implying the cost to replicate the technology and gain the same traction would cost Google more then $50m. This is clearly not true, even if you grossly overestimate and assume it takes 20 engineers 6 months each at a salary of $300k each to replicate vark, plus $10m in marketing. It still falls short of $50m.

So is the difference the cost of mostly re-acquiring talent? Talent that you had already ascribed a value to when you employed them through assessing their annual performance?

Your implying the cost to replicate the technology and gain the same traction would cost Google more then $50m.

Not quite. I am implying that Google thinks the risk associated with doing it on their own is not worth the $50m for the acquisition.

It is way more complex than simply about tech and traction. ie. lets say google can build the same thing for $10M. But hey it might take them 2 years. In the same 2 years, a competition(Microsoft) might acquire Vark and turn it into a billion dollar competitor to google.

On the flip side, even if Google can build it for 10M and launch in 6 months, the risk from the other possibility is not worth the 40M in savings.

That's the Microsoft approach to building products, and while they meet all of the "feature check-list" of the product they're cloning, they usually somehow fall sort on execution. There's something a bit ineffable that comes with the people who truly grok the problem being solved and pour their heart and soul into solving it.

There's some truth to what you're saying (I'm afraid), though a lot of it is more general than just "rich people will help you get rich". You'll learn more around smart people and you'll be more likely to be a criminal if your friends pull you into it.

But overall your negativity throws me off a bit. One definitely notices when a company with many ex-Googlers is bought by Google. But if you think that's how the world is, nothing really stops you from joining Google: what were these guys doing before joining Google in the first place?

Networking definitely helps in a lot of situations (to find a job, to make a deal, to get in touch with the right people), but you can do something to arrive at a place where you can easily network with the right people.

I think you're missing the irritation though.

Surely it's like the girl who sleeps with the boss gets a promotion. Sure, if you want a promotion you could sleep with the boss too, but it'd be nice if everything was just fair and done on merit. Not everyone wants to sleep with the boss.

It'd also be nice if there were no wars and if I had a pony.

Sorry, but to me that comes across as whining, and I'm most certainly not from the "rich circles" either.

I agree that it would be nice, and that's the world most parents try create for their kids. Outside of meticulously engineered/supervised social structures, however, I see little reason for a pure meritocricy to arise, if only for the reason that the concept of "merit" doesn't exist outside of our moral models.

And you can certainly get a promotion many ways aside from sleeping with the boss.

I found it became significantly less irritating to me when I realized that decision makers simply suffered from an information problem and weren't specifically out to get me.

Imagine that you have something lots and lots of people want - say, a few hundred million dollars to give away in venture capital. Naturally, since lots of people want it, you're constantly bombarded by requests. After a short period of time, all these requests start to seem the same. Everybody has their startup baby. They all are absolutely certain that it's going to change the world. Most of them have very little experience and nothing in particular to recommend them.

If you're in this situation, what would you do? Every startup looks the same; you don't have enough information to pick one over another. You don't even enough time to begin gathering information to pick one over another.

So you winnow the field by picking ones that stand out for some reason. The easiest way is to pick only the ones that come recommended by friends. After all, you have a limited number of true friends, and they know how busy you are, and so they'll only forward on ventures that they really believe have potential.

The second easiest way is to pick founders whose names you recognize. Or founders whose past projects have names you recognize. There are a limited number of names that you'd recognize, and most of them are not asking you for venture capital, so this is a fairly safe way to narrow down the field.

Other than that, pretty much any way you choose of picking startups will be essentially random. It's like the half-season of House where he was picking his new team and randomly fired half the applicants. You wouldn't think that's fair either, right? Yet how else are you going to determine merit when you have far too many candidates to investigate each one in depth?

Know rich people? They'll help you get rich too.

What you may not realize is that everyone is knowable if you put enough effort into it. If you have no drive and no talent, rich people won't be able to help you. There aren't that many driven and talented people out there, so if you're one of them, and you make an effort to meet rich people, they'll help you too.

I think the problem is that some people (Me included) would rather spend all energy making stuff people want, rather than schmoozing people who might buy you. But I do see your point.

I think it's better to approach this from a different perspective. "Engineering relationships" doesn't work in general - if you approach people because you want something from them, they'll sense it very easily and push back. It's much better to approach people because you genuinely like them and want to learn from them. Many rich people have a ton of knowledge and experience that most of us don't, and it's genuinely interesting to learn from them. It's no good to expect anything, it's much better to try and learn from them just like from anyone else. If you approach it this way, it becomes an activity with very positive connotations, as opposed to schmoozing.

If you spend all your energy making stuff people want, rich people will find you too. The problem is that making stuff people want is really hard, and usually involves going out and finding people that want stuff.

If you have real traction - as in people are already buying from you, without you going out and selling them hard - rich people will be knocking at your door trying to get a piece of the action. But then, if people were already buying from you, why would you need rich people?

"There aren't that many driven and talented people out there"

I beg to differ, if you assume that there are an equal distribution of talented/driven people, then how come there are more millionaires (talented people) in silicon valley than the rest of america, and america more than europe, and europe more than the rest of the world.

More likely is that rich people are cliquey and luckier/lazier/less talented at spotting opportunity/investing than they give themselves credit for (otherwise you'd see a more equal distribution of investment to where the talent is).

Driven people go to SV because it's easier to find other driven people to work with there. PG says this explicitly quite often.

Re-hiring a bunch of ex-employees does not look like a talent acquisition. It looks more like someone was shrewd enough to become buddies with the M&A department the first time around.

Sorry, would you care to elaborate? I'm not really sure what you mean by "the M&A department the first time around". I think the fact that only _some_ of the team members are ex-Googlers is significant.

Additionally, what other business case could their be to purchase such a small, new company. Couldn't Google just have integrated these features into their shiny new Buzz service _last week_ and have overshadowed Vark very quickly?

If you quit a company, do a successful startup, and then get re-acquired by the company you quit in the first place, chances are that you don't want to go back to work for them again. If you did, why did you quit your job in the first place?

It would depend on the events which led up to leaving Google in the first place. I doubt the original team left Google because it wasn't challenging enough or there wasn't enough flexibility, both of which would be reason enough to leave a lesser company to go out on your own. If your logic was accurate, then why would Aardvark have even sold out to Google in the first place?

Possibly these people liked their idea enough and though they could make a lot more going it alone, now they like the idea of Google support in perusing continuing to peruse their idea.

Just a guess really, but what they are doing now make be considerably more exciting than what they were doing at Google previously.

To make a lot more money, for example.

Though in their case, with 4 founders, $6M invested and a $50M exit, it's not "that much" money.

I wouldn't spit on it obviously, but considering some of these guys' former positions at Google, they had probably made a good amount from stocks and such. What I'm trying to say is that it's probably in the same order of magnitude of their worth before that.

this thread of comments is laughably naive.

Do you mind elaborating? You know something I don't, obviously.

Ok, Michael Steele

Seems like a pretty large founding team and a lot of ex-googlers there. I counted 11 senior/founding members on their site.

$50 million sounds like a lot initially but considering the size of the founding team and that they raised 6 million from VCs I don't think any of them would want to retire just yet.

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