Y Combinator
adam.blog.heroku.com
adam.blog.heroku.com
Hmm. I'm all in favor of what YC is doing, but this makes me decidedly uneasy.
Groups with a charismatic leader have a tendency to devolve into personality cults. In my experience, to avoid this requires conscious, ongoing effort on the part of the leader (and enough of the followers) to stay aware of such tendencies and counteract them. First and foremost that means staying aware of these tendencies in oneself.
I don't mean to be harsh on the author of the post. I don't think he was being cultish, just enthusiastic, and that's good. But the risk is a very real one. It would be wise to alloy that enthusiasm with something else.
One thing that will protect us against YC getting cultish is that the qualities you'd want in a cult follower and a startup founder are exactly opposite. To succeed, startup founders have to be very determined and independent-minded. And since we want the startups we fund to succeed, those are the people we try to find.
Basically, we're looking for more Sam Altmans, and Sam Altman is no one's follower.
That isn't cultish. That is taking good advice. YC is largely about giving good advice and putting people together.
This is nothing like the cultish following your essays and sometimes this community gets.
Remember the drama around the applications on this site last time? People took that way to seriously. And each of your essays spawns dozens of comments equivalent to "zomg, smartest thing evar".
But these two negative facets of this community don't actually make it into the YC program. That means you're choosing well, I suppose.
I firmly believe the #1 reason YC is good is the quality of the other founders and the alumni founders network.
Not meaning any offense, but boy am I glad to hear you say that.
A better approach is for people to realize who's ideas they follow and why.
I was reading a thread in an Objectivist forum once where someone had posted a link to an online Myers-Briggs personality test. Out of 16 types, 90% of the members were the same one: INTJ. Personality is the major determinate of philosophy. I know I enjoy reading PG's essays because it's like reading an older, more experienced version of myself.
Apparently so - I wrote the initial comment based on my loose recollection of reading the book a few years ago. Looking up the big speech the Galt character gives in Atlas Shrugged, it's amazing how much of it relates. This paragraph in particular reads like it could have been pg's battle cry against soul-sucking faceless corporations that demand all of your creativity and trust none of your judgement:
"While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men of justice, of independence, of reason, of wealth, of self-esteem — I beat you to it, I reached them first. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and the nature of that moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently generous to grasp. I showed them the way to live by another morality — mine. It is mine that they chose to follow."
http://compuball.com/Inquisition/AynRand/galtspeech_pmark_br...
For the less literary-minded, Fight Club has also been inspiration for a few of my friends in a similar way.
That's the best description of a role model or mentor I've ever read.
Anyway, I think that it's inevitable that the YC society will take on a life of its own which is oriented with pg's viewpoints. His writings are very charismatic and draw like-minded individuals. Those founders who resonate strongly with the essays and concepts of pg are even more likely to apply for and be accepted to YC.
Fortunately some of the mentioned aspects of the YC culture are independent thinking, self-analysis and critical analysis of others' ideas. Hopefully these attributes will prevent a simple cult of personality from developing. If YC has positive benefits for both the founders and the greater society (via the creation of Things People Want) then inculcating a culture which can accelerate the development of successful startups is an excellent achievement.
YC expands the scope of cool workplaces beyond the Google-like perks that a handful of companies might offer and get people to consider entrepreneurial options as well. And it's not a problem solely for technology companies, even Pixar has this problem - talented people have to leave to get opportunities elsewhere because only a handful of inner circle elite ever get to direct a film:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-pixar12mar12...
Which is ironic because Brad Bird's big break with The Incredibles came from his experience not getting a chance for creative expression with the old traditional animation studios like Disney.
Anyway, it brings up the issue of what I'm going to call superlearning environments. The kind of places that become legendary because of the seemingly unbelievable concentration of talent. For animation, the late-70's Disney training program. For 3D graphics, anywhere Ed Catmull has been. For console games, I'd actually say Virgin Interactive Entertainment, which none of you have heard of.
These kind of environments are hard to discover unless you happen upon them and are blown away by the level of talent involved. But YC is most fascinating to me because it's a continuing (although periodic) experiment in creating one of these environments that's freestanding.
And this kind of environment is exactly what you don't get in a lonely startup. I know this all too well -- it's great to spend time with your co-founders, but I'd always worked with people significantly smarter and wiser than myself and it is absolutely the number one thing I miss.
YC is fascinating to me because it is a conscious attempt to form these environments. Historically, most of the great learning/building groups seem to have come about by accident.