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Comment by yetanothermonk | Hacker News Reader

It’s so strange the YC comments and some Twitter comments are so focused on the billionaire part. The real part is to deeply understand your users, no? And the focus on YC interviews is reminiscent of media is the massage—-the hubbub places YC as a thing to pass but if you understand your users deeply, you won’t even need YC.

In a way all the YC interview prep stuff is written for the wrong people (for YC, and this is obviously a little wrong) but also the right people (who will chase prestige to read the article about interviewing at YC).

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I felt the same way but pg has since changed the title from "What You Can Learn from How to Ace a YC Interview" to "Billionaires Build" so he obviously wants to emphasize that aspect.

Thanks for the heads up. The old title was also clickbaity but this new title is even more so. I wonder if even HN comment reactions are more towards the title vs the content.

I think there's an inevitable framing effect. There are lots of points I'd agree with if presented in isolation, and indeed PG has written solid essays before on the general topic of how destructive it is to say that business owners can only make money by exploiting others. But it's hard to talk about those things when the article explicitly builds towards a thesis that billionaires are great and all good YC founders should want to be one.

One way I could hear people interpreting your comment--I agree on the framing point by the way, there's also external framing now with a hate-billionaires view--is that the steps to get to the thesis make sense but the thesis is not palatable. I'm not sure you'd agree with that interpretation of your comment; I'd love to hear what the problem is with that interpretation

I actually do agree with that interpretation. My beliefs ultimately imply that there's nothing wrong with being a billionaire, but that's not a conclusion I find palatable so it's not something I'm particularly interested in defending on its own merits.

I'd say it's like writing an argument to decrease penalties for shoplifting and titling it "Don't Punish Thieves". It's not wrong, but it's certainly not a productive way to frame the discussion.

That's interesting and I think I can understand being in that same frame of mind. I wonder, if the implication doesn't match up with what you want the implication to be, how do you break that stalemate?

Here, I guess I'm of the belief that there's nothing wrong with billionaires; the wrong thing is how little there is for a billion people in the world.

It's just a matter of focusing on the motivating principles. I've had lots of good, productive discussions about why "you can get very rich if you make something lots of people want" is a win-win deal for society, or why a system where only the government can finance large projects wouldn't be good. If someone wants to talk about billionaires, I just say that the precise dollar amounts aren't the point.

I don't think the reactions are primarily to the title since the comments were much the same before the title changed.

Great point, you're right

I don't find it clickbaity. Let me explain.

To me, clickbait means that I'm luring you into reading an article by using a catchy title, but the content of the article doesn't exactly match what I expected; or that I use human psychology to trick you into opening a new web page (e.g. "you will never guess what happened next").

I instead find the title refreshingly nice and simple, and reading the article fully matched my expectations. Great "marketing" (the ability to pick a catchy title is good marketing) shouldn't be confused with being clickbaity.

I feel obliged to contextualize "Billionaires Build" on behalf of the unaware.

Marc Andreesen published an essay "It's Time to Build" [0]. He claims that ostensibly, COVID-19 inflicted acute trauma on the U.S. economy. But it merely excaberated the symptoms of a deeper dysfuntion. The root problem is the cultural decay of "a will to build". The solution is to rekindle this norm.

Several have published their own takes [1]. pg must have figured "What you can Learn from How to Ace a YC Interview" conveniently dovetails into the larger debate. Had he written the essay in a vacuum, I suspect he'd have emphasized "sell users what they want". Rather than the grand narrative "civilization is built by founders" which might increase exposure but possibly dilute the original intent.

[0] https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/

[1] https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/06/on-cultures-that...

Yea comments here are completely missing the point. It's far more likely to be successful and build a company / get into YC when you have an insight into specific users and build something they love. That's it.

People who have become billionaires from the companies YC has helped launch have that in common.

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