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Your answer seems correct. Moritz and Sequoia invested allot of money ($10 millions) over 10 years ago into Green Dot. 'Sequoia Capital owned about 30% of the company during its over $2 billion IPO last year.'[1] Needless to say Sequoia and Moritz have allot of power at Green Dot.

Now if we ask ourselves if Loopt was not a Sequoia company, would Green Dot have paid that much money for Loopt's people and technology. They could of easy got a better deal somewhere else.

However I think Sequoia needed to save face on Loopt. They needed to make sure it had an successful exit. The more successful company's in Sequoia portfolio the more investors are willing to invest in them right?

[1]http://www.quora.com/Green-Dot-company/Why-did-Sequoia-inves...

I don't know why PG is trying to hype this up. I see ycombinator becoming more and more like a old boys network.

If your doing a startup don't get discouraged. The reason you should be doing it in the first place is cause you truely believe in the product and the business and not looking to flip your startup for quick cash.

Thanks for the reply. It would be really cool, when you guys are ready to go public with the product, to post a youtube video of a split screen of your app and gmail; going over killer features that might get people to actually sign up and try it out.

I think many people need to actually see it first and then be motivated enough to play with your public beta. If your want lots of people to try , keep the video as simple as possible.

You can't explain the iPhone with words, to someone who never seen it before. They just wouldn't be interested.

Good Luck.

You talk so abstractly. Can you give some concrete examples of how you would be better than gmail?

In what ways will your service be faster than gmail? How much time will I save?

100% agree with you.

I think Paul Graham and Ycombinator have done some great things for the world. However I do disagree with some of the things that Paul Graham says, and this article is one of points that I disagree with him on.

5. The next Steve Jobs Why does PG seem to think that there has to be the "next" Steve Jobs? Is there some sort of pattern to be recognized from the Apple story, that a startup can emulate and be successful.

Wasn't Apple a large company already, even before Steve Jobs came back to it. Though Apple at that time was in a dire conditions, it wasn't exactly a start up. How come some hardware startup during the 90's, 00's, and this decade, do what Apple has done.

I know people think Apple is constantly inventing something "new" and always needs something "new" for it to survive, but I don't think that is the case. I bet the iPhone wasn't really created in just 2 years, I am sure Apple had been working on it for a long time. A feet that is much more difficult for a start up, to do R&D for a long sustained period and pay the bills with some other product. PG had the following quote.

PG: "well, and I asked him if the people now running the company would be able to keep creating new things the way Apple had under Steve Jobs."

I think Steve Jobs had a particular vision for his products for a long long time. He might have thought about functions of the current iPhone and iPad during the Newton days. Steve might have had 3-4 products that he wanted to create, and thats it. We don't have enough data to interpret, that Steve would of kept pumping out "new" products if he was alive, like the iCar.

Allot of Apples success have been through luck and timing and making the right gamble. Jobs couldn't have put Apple back, without the help of numerous people, and the above mentioned.

I think if PG seriously wants to find the Apple formula in a start up; he may as well start playing the lottery. Eventually with enough time he will find one. But the odds don't look so good.

I am a fan of his writing, but I found this article to be disingenuous at best. Allot the things we use today aren't just formed by start ups, they formed by sole inventors, governments, large corporations, and random hobbyist.

You can change the view of your world to include more items than startups.