YC is a cult
danielharan.com
danielharan.com
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.
You've written about the need for working long hours, but aren't Michael Parkatti and Mike Marrone taking it a bit too far?
If people working insanely long hours is actually mythology, that actually hurts YC: sane people will avoid applying in the first place.
If the long hours is really true, then people aren't being productive, also hurting YC.
Either way, call me a troll but this is something YC should be making clear.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.)
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.
"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.
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:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=3rd&#...
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.
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.
That responsibility is the difference.
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 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.
[EDIT: Some details and another quote]
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?
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.
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.
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.)
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.
Clearly he does not know many actual participants. Working 18 hour days for two months is not the norm.
Come on in and drink the Kool-Aid. Or, more accurately, the Goya.
I already feel like a newbie, though. I haven't the faintest idea what Goya is.
And it's fruit juice.
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.
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 think it's safe to say that this guy took it a bit out of context.
I interpreted the statement literally too.
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult#Definition_according_to_se...
"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."
For and exhaustive list, see here: http://rickross.com/sg_alpha.html
This is no laughing matter. People's lives are ruined by cults, and even if taken away from a cult, their effects linger.
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.")
Most people get highly offended if you suggest that their political stances are nothing more than a series of gut reactions.
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.
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.
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 thought your comment was a more appropriate response, to be honest.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
You will probably agree that there are far more compelling objections to the ethos of Hacker News than this article.
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?
Want to work independently in some capacity or another on a programming project but I don't really seem to be brimming with ideas.
Any particular ways you utilize to be inspired for project ideas?
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.
</tongue-in-cheek>
The world would be a strange place... but very clean.
ragerageragerage
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.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=tough-choices-how-making
(No matter how fun the act of decision making is)
- 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.
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).
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.
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 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).
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.
Well, its all good.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
I'm certain I read that somewhere.
http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/08summer/olympics.asp
"...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..."