Comment by fermienrico | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fermienrico | Hacker News Reader

I honestly do not gain anything from articles like this. They are so abstract that when it comes down to an actual actionable information - it doesn't apply anymore. It is sort of like reading one of those fluffy "How to become a millionaire" advice books. Nothing of substance comes out of it and they do not work for me.

I recently watched Sam Altman's MIT lecture [1] on Youtube about startup advice for hard tech companies. It was such a waste of time.

Instead, I find it much more informative and educational to read and watch stories about how a specific company was formed. Each story is unique and the just goes to show that each startup has unique challenges. There is so much to learn from these stories and their mistakes. For example, watch the SolidWorks founder presenting at Harvard about their initial marketing/pricing phase [2]. It is absolutely fascinating.

Reading generalized abstract fluff bothers me.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7HyWFJMAxg [2] https://youtu.be/t-EaWM8miHw

All his stuff are fluff pieces, it's like listening to a pitch coach. I have no idea why people see him as an authoritative figure in this space, when all he had was 1 failed start up.

I know it's not his fault per se, but YC has had a horrible track record since he joined, too.

Do you think it would have been any different if pg was in charge? I don't.

I think it's rather that the 'low hanging fruit' are all gone. The whole mood has changed. It's become harder. Notice for example that YC places a lot of importance on growth when evaluating applicants, I think in early stages you could've had practically zero users of your product and they would have considered you -- now, not so much.

Secondly, there hasn't been enough time to see what his track record really is, we'll need a few years to really see.

That's fair. The seed industry itself has been really tough, and that's exacerbated since much of the growth since then has been in China. YC certainly has had a hand in a few of the companies that have done well, but it doesn't look good. I think people are mostly interested in hearing advice from very successful entrepreneurs and investors.

They are just part of the signaling echo chamber now. No gutsy calls. When I started reading HN in 2010, it was all information about early stage tech. PG was saying that founders can lead companies all the way and that founders should have the power.

Now they do... YC is just an average investor now with more scale. The next gutsy call or intuition is simply not there with the current team.

HN is a news site and I enjoy it for that, but the community has been moved to a private network and the current YC team is more focused on looking good than doing anything innovative.

What is the name of the private network?

IDK, all the CEOs of their companies have a separate platform.

It's called BookFace, and is a private social network-style platform for YC alumni.

In some ways they are more gutsy now. Under PG it was mostly people writing some software. Now they have supersonic jets and nuclear fusion. How that works out I don't know.

Also Flexport's good. Think they're under Altman?

The businesses they fund have been interesting (in flexport's case great), but far from gutsy given that they are only putting $150ksh per business.

What I mean by gutsy is having a view that is at least slightly contrarian and then executing on that view. There is nothing contrarian about making power law investments. That is standard for any large seed/angel/A series investor. The ones that don't do that don't make any money.

I don't know much about him.

What I do know is that listening stories directly from the founders is much more authoritative, informative and educational than listening to it from the investor's standpoint. Founders go through the stuff. Of course, investor's have their own stories which can be informative if they talk about specifics, not abstract things.

I just wish there was a way for people to share about their failed startups. Now, THAT would be truly educational. Majority of failed startups disappear without founders sharing their learnings and that knowledge is forever lost.

Because he has had a privileged view of more modern style tech startups than almost anyone else writing about the subject.

I like that he is willing to offer generalized advice, even though that is his job. He has one failure, that's one more failure than most of the people listening to his advice, and counts as experience.

These think pieces are meant to reinforce Altman's image as a tech industry theorist a la pg. It's really just advertising. But he's not nearly as good at it as pg was.

I agree, I don't find much value in these things. I suspect that for a certain audience, however, there is a lot of value (perhaps for people that have rarely been exposed to such concepts).

Our of curiosity: is your real name Enrico Fermi, or are you simply a fan (that would be my guess) and decided to use it as your HN username?

I stay anonymous on HN. Not because I want to hide my personal views, but to ensure I can communicate freely without obstruction and personal liability.

A lot of his talks and writing are like this. Fluffy, hand-wavy; but nothing you can actually do anything with. But that's not what he's good at - he's good at being an airbag. Which, while cynical is not an invaluable lesson what works.

The more and more I read on Altman, the more and more it feels like fluff and snake oil.

Stanford dropout, a major failed startup, pretty much kinda "failed" into the position he is in today.

He doesn't add value at all.

Edit: This was flagged as "a personal attack" apparently.

This is a pretty ridiculous series of statements, especially if you count YC as a mid-stage startup when he joined (which it was).

If you add up all of the successful YC companies since he started leading YC, it's a pretty breathtaking number (the count, the valuations, and the value created). YC was having pretty serious scaling problems when he took the reins-- from my understanding, he resolved those pretty effectively. YC's growth since he's been leading it (in a lot of directions) has been impressive-- full-stop.

That crosses into personal attack, and you can't post like that here. I work with Sam, so normally would intervene less in such a case—but you can't post like that here about anybody. Some rules need enforcing across the board and this is one of the main ones, so please don't do it again.

Edit: it looks like we've warned you repeatedly about making personal attacks in the past. That is the sort of thing we ban accounts for doing repeatedly, so please don't.

How exactly is this a personal attack? It's my observation plus publicly known information. No name calling or any harm mentioned toward him. I believe this content, and others, is empty, fluff, and of little actual value.

We're allowed to disagree with Altman, even on HN.

"He doesn't add value at all" is obviously a personal putdown.

(It's also obviously wrong, since there's no way Sam would be running YC after 4 years if it were true. But we don't moderate people for being wrong, only for breaking the site guidelines. Please (re-)read them at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.)

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