garry

You're absolutely right — I annualized net revenue which I interpreted as "net" but certainly is not profit. I've corrected this and will put a note about it.

I'm sorry for the mistake. I'll do better next time.

We usually encourage folks to give at least 10% of the equity to the first 10 employees. That's what Stripe did and it worked well.

That number is going up over time, so I can report at least a little bit of improvement, though certainly not fast enough.

I appreciate this, and am trying to take this to heart.

But it is also possible to survive. And if you do that, you don't merely survive, you thrive— that's what product market fit looks like. I've been lucky to see it dozen of times first hand, and it's nothing short of magical.

When founders and teams pursue something without product market fit, it's a high cost to pay and a terrible outcome for most everyone. This is also absolutely true.

Startups are not for everyone! I appreciate your feedback and it resonates with me.

I started in 2006, here, just like you, reading Hacker News. I spent most of my day writing code. I learned on this site how to build things for other people, ship and release them, and yes, eventually build a company. I learned I wasn't meant to have a boss.

The only reason I became a VC is that I want to be here to help people who really should be start companies actually figure out that they can! People helped me a lot, more than I deserved.

The world is full of capital, and it's not going to the right people who can solve problems. I would like that to get better, and trying to do that with my own hands.

It was insane that I got to meet Peter Thiel at that point in his career. One of the subtle things is that he wasn't the demigod he is today. He was a very well respected founder who had a great exit. You're right to point out it's a social lottery. Dumb luck is a big part of success.

I will definitely make more content about building your network the right way. I think if you consistently try to spend time with people who make things you think are awesome, the score seems to take care of itself.

Totally agree you shouldn't work at a startup if money is the only consideration.

Sorry, I made this post for YouTube originally, and didn't expect it to show up on HN. :-)

This is a good reminder and I agree with this.

By the end of the video my point is: Try to make stuff for other people, and a smaller place generally lets you do that.

That is the true reward.

I started here on Hacker News as a software engineer. I learned that I could build software for others, ship it and release it. I did end up taking the venture path, and now help others on that path.

The key here is that magic can be created by people, and I'm not that different than a lot of people on this site. I also got very lucky, and I'm thankful for that.

Startups are hard, and most fail, and most startup stock is worthless. But if you read my post, I'm trying to point people to the fact that the deeper lesson is to be able to learn to ship to real customers quickly.

Anyway, I appreciate the feedback. It's shockingly hard to get something that is both nuanced and clickable in video format, but I will keep trying to get better.

Just trying to get better. Not too harsh at all. Thanks again.

I started learning about startups only after I started reading Hacker News in 2006. I was an engineer for most of my career up until then. Reading Paul Graham's essays changed my life, and it changed the life of thousands of people I've met now known for over 10 years, as an alum, a partner at Y Combinator and now an investor.

Guilty, it is self-serving. It's my business. But I also know from direct experience people who can make software are capable of building billions of dollars worth of value.

I funded more than 200 companies worth over $36B now.

And I started just like you, here, reading Hacker News.

This is a problem, no doubt.

If you spend enough time in tech, you meet a lot of people who have this kind of story. It's ridiculous, but not that rare.

Maybe more poker than a lottery. A lot of luck, but there's still a little bit of skill in there.

I appreciate the feedback though. I know this is just one voice of many, but it's also what I experienced. I think it's up to the viewer to decide if my experience is applicable.

I think Paul Buchheit said it best: Advice is merely n=1 experience.

This was my n=1.

Yeah, at the end of the post I tried to reference this: You probably shouldn't work at a startup for the money per se. The real value is short cycles with users and being able to make decisions and ship.

This is also cautionary for startups. You have to be an actually rewarding place to work, otherwise there is literally no reason to work there.

This gives me a good idea for a video: How and when to quit.

To be frank I also quit Palantir far earlier than maybe I should have. A story for another day.

Thank you for the feedback though, I do appreciate it.

I'll try to make a longer post about this. It's hard to get it right in 5 minutes of video.

Apologies for the clickbait— I'm trying to build a YouTube following and having some collaborations drop this week. Just trying to make it work on that platform. The values and what is acceptable on different social networks is so different! I didn't really think it would appear on here, so tuning it for different audiences is hard.

Thanks for the note! I appreciate the feedback.

These things are crazy rare. I didn't do a good job of explaining then how weird this experience was. In the moment it felt like any other startup. Peter was great and well known but not outrageously famous the way he is today.

I also didn't do a good job of doing an intro on this idea that tech startups are taking over all of the economy. There are some things that I just take for granted— I guess in abstraction now there are trillions of dollars of market cap in just tech firms, and this fits with my overall view that software is eating every part of GDP. We see this every day, but it's not well explained in my video/post.

I was making a joke about Google eating all of the world's revenue, but it didn't land. Sorry about that.

Really appreciate the feedback here. You're totally right that it's more directly lucrative and lower risk to work at a big tech co. I just still think people should consider making things for themselves though.

It's pretty bewildering to me too. The point is I said no, and it was the wrong decision. I ended up starting a company and later becoming a VC.

Oh I agree— big tech is fantastically lucrative! I wouldn't dissuade people from spending some time there.

Separately I also agree that there's a big problem of credentialism in software engineering. We meet lots of amazing software engineers who didn't go to the right schools— that's a big reason why I funded Triplebyte.

I guess what I wanted to say was that if you are capable of building great software, you should join the .01%, because that was my experience.

I started as a reader of Hacker News just out of college, and it taught me a lot. Many of the founders we back came through Y Combinator and learned about startups here.

Did you get offered 1% of Apple? I mean, getting offered equity at the start of a thing is what I was trying to talk about.

Well this is why it's important to work on something that you believe in. I think there is a fatalism to think all small companies are going to fail. Individual employees should use their own judgment when thinking about whether a startup will work— they are often more right than not since startups tend to be self-fulfilling prophecy. If lots of smart people like you want to join too, then it actually becomes a lot more likely.

That being said by the numbers most startups fail, and there is no guarantee a startup role will get you a positive outcome vs other alternatives.

This is a misconception. The YC application is actually a great leveler because applications are evaluated by other founders through a community where building things for people is prized over pure credentialism.

VCs in general do have a terrible and unfair bias for Stanford. Frankly I went to Stanford. In 2008 when I did YC and started raising our seed round, VCs asked me why I even did YC because I had a Stanford degree.

I have seen so many people with no traditional background who succeed through the program.

Strange to see people defend the fake parts of startups.

You are right that I can’t speak for the broader YC community but the wrong attitudes that are an epidemic in the startup community are the things that don’t help anyone. When startup founders are scenesters or don’t focus on solving real problems, you get all the terrible behavior you see on the show Silicon Valley, but worse still you see the world harmed. Employees lose their jobs and years of their lives, and suffer the most. Capital is lit aflame.

Your later comment seems to agree with me that impact/value is more important so we do seem to agree at a deeper level. Nice to see you here Breck.

Making something for other people is the highest value prized within the YC founder community. We actually mock people who are scenesters who do it for the fame/social status, and we mock the scammers who build nothing real and get fake valuations.

The fundamental mistake you are making is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Trust me, there are real things that are VC funded too. As a builder myself I would not become a VC and try to help other builders if I didn’t know that at was true at a core deep level and from first hand personal experience.

Hacker News is how I first heard about Y Combinator in 2007. I applied in 2008 and got in. I became a founder. It changed my life. I learned a lot and got to build software for a lot of people.

I later became a partner and saw how powerful it was in society: people from all walks of life and now all over the world coming to create startups that a billion people can use.

That’s pretty cool, for signing on to a website that is basically the same product that it was when I came onto it 12 years ago.

In a lot of ways, my life is devoted trying to help you get to do what I got to do (and hopefully more, because my startup didn’t quite make it).

YC changed my life, and changed the lives of hundreds of founders I know personally.

Looks like it’s that final possibility. Yikes!

Geoff is a role model for me as an investor. He taught me you can be smart, pragmatic while also kind, patient, and thoughtful - he's the definition of growth mindset in startupland and I am over the moon that he is taking over. Really lucky to have worked with him back when I was a partner at YC. Amazing news!