troughway

Whenever I read statements like these I am torn because it's difficult to decide whether to cast it aside as "feel good rhetoric, but rhetoric nonetheless" or take it as it is. Do I simply gather the facts and make up my own truth of things, or do I listen to someone pen something like this up where there are so many self-admitted contradictions that you cannot help but wonder if these people are intentionally ruining social order, if they are just that ignorant of their actions.

Well I guess it was only a matter of time before people started making posts proclaiming that pg’s lack of conformism is problematic.

The thing I like about this post is that it isn’t dependant on VC backed ventures. It’s good, sane advice regardless.

Not to trout a cliche around since plenty of HN has heard of this already, but David Sinclair’s book Lifespan talks about caloric reduction. Nothing crazy, skipping a meal here and there.

Running isn’t the only way to get cardio in. Tabata/HIIT, while making you feel like you’re on the verge of dying, are wonderful and most important safe for your knee joints. Long distance running will wear your meniscus out.

So for everyone here who says they don’t like to run - that’s fine, get on the stairmaster or pick up a kettlebell or medicine ball and do some swings and tosses and side movements. Running will seem like a walk in the park by comparison.

Is this Active Focus?

To be fair this is another article/essay in a very, very long string of his that can be filed under some kind of a "Fundamentals of Business" type category. If you talk to owners, they will inevitably say the same things he's saying, sometimes verbatim. But these owners wouldn't speak in direct words either, because "speaking to customers/users" is too context dependent to get into in an HN comment. There's too much nuance to bash the person over the head with it when writing this sort of an essay.

That's mostly what tipped me off to not take his words at face value but to interpret them through his lens as a VC and someone who is trying to communicate business ideas (ideals?) to people who, I would at least hope, aspire to create a business of their own. Whether it's a million or a billion, it doesn't matter. Nearly everything he talks about applies to "lifestyle businesses," which is I think partly why YC offers some small bit of money to get the ball rolling rather than go gung-ho and throw massive amounts of money at people. I don't know if this has changed, I don't think it has. Obviously it doesn't hurt to get a leg-up from the counsellors and whatnot that YC provides through their alumni program.

I am not sure if he's spoken about it but I wouldn't doubt that one of his philosophies is that a diverse number of businesses can grow to a reasonable revenue (where the founders are happy and working away at it) with a bit of money to start with, and that way YC doesn't have to spend a fortune early on and everyone walks away happy even if YC doesn't turn a sizable profit. Some kind of a threshold where YC feels anything above that means they're pissing money in the wind and their ROI isn't any better, but at the same time they're helping the founders as best as they can.

So you have to take the times he talks about being Ramen Profitable and talks about building a Billion Dollar Business and find the underlying threads tying it all together.

pg can't tell you exactly what, how, when, where, why you should be doing the thing you need to be doing to build a business. His words sound like platitudes most of the time to me personally, which is why I take the side of "the people who need this the most won't take it, and vice versa", because the person who started a business and is profitable didn't have anyone like pg telling them this sort of stuff. Would someone read his words before starting anything and be inspired to? Perhaps, but it's a long journey and counting on such flimsy motivation to keep you going is to me silly.

For some, certain things might be common sense. For others, not so much. Plenty of founders, even those with serious business experience, still have it ingrained in them that "if you build it, they will come", and they neglect every other aspect of business. Yes, I'm talking primarily about engineering types. This essay is to remind you to focus on the users, and the rest will follow.

Aside: I'm grateful for the Startup School library. I think it's a great resource. It's got a nice mix of obvious and non-obvious advice in there. When people disparage pg's writing, they should take a moment and see what his company has built for people who wish to create a business before declaring him out of touch.

For those too lazy to hunt, SAFE stands for

Saturn

Azure App Service

Fable

Elmish

Slightly off topic but it’s good to see that F# is finally getting some proper web love.