Every time I read something Paul writes, or articles like this one, all I can think of is: privilege.
All this stuff about “do things you love” and “work as though you’ll never die”, or how they were successful because they thought so differently...
What they did differently is they had a ton of money before they started it, and they decided to make a fun club for themselves. It’s a club for smart people of a certain bent, and the number one thing that made it work was that they established that brand (as the in-nerds) and had enough money to pull it off.
The brand says you have to be really smart and nerdy, and willing to sacrifice money to prove you’re worth being in. People who can sacrifice a lot of time and money? Generally well connected, well educated, well off nerds like them. Of course it’s successful. By being the first to get that brand they set up a self-selecting system that brought them those people. Simple as that. And it only works in tech because not many other industries will gravitate towards a brand of (nerdy * altruistic).
Sam is the epitome of smart kids club. He hasn’t really ever done anything impressive (in public, that I’ve seen) but he certainly talks the nerd talk. In every speech, interview and article I’ve read of his I come away thinking 98% of his success is just literally that he nerd-speaks so well and always makes sure to mention mental models or reference some paradigm, and always makes sure to triple-counterfactual himself. But when I look at what he’s actually saying, it’s never interesting. Like this article. I think it’s fundamentally not getting why YC worked, but because it’s so altruistic sounding and has a few counterfactuals, he gets a pass.
It’s the first mover brand, exclusivity, required sacrifice, the club-like aspect that made it filter for already-going-to-be-successful people that made it work.
Take Mozart or even composers coming from poverty like Beethoven or Brahms. They were all privileged in various ways, either from being born in a musical family that recognized the prodigy early on (Mozart and Beethoven -- a poor musical family for Beethoven), and I mean extraordinarily early. I think the greater shame would be if we did not appreciate their prodigy. That people have different potential for different things is an inherent consequence of human diversity. As long as individuals are significantly different both culturally as well as physically/mentally (and as long as variation is as unpredictable as it is -- which is probably inherent), we'll need to discover and give opportunity to the right individuals to lead or create what they have to create. I think diversity (and its limitation -- which also allows understanding each other and our internal worlds) is one of the most interesting traits of the human condition.
I certainly would prefer we had a wide ranging system for detecting potential and providing exceptional conditions for the development of certain people (I don't know if this could be called privilege or not), less sensitive of their initial economic condition, class, or place of birth.
That's true for some reasonable definitions of "privilege" but not others.
Originally-originally, "privilege" meant being subject to some special dispensation that e.g. exempted you from laws that applied to everyone else. (Latin: "private law".) The term then broadened to apply to other sorts of advantages held by individuals and groups, and indeed earlier uses of it are concerned only with unusual advantages enjoyed by (say) the upper classes. But these days it's commonly used to mean any substantial unearned advantage that people have as a result of belonging to one group rather than another.
And by that definition, a kind of privilege absolutely can be widely distributed.
For instance, it is widely and plausibly held that being male confers substantial advantages in life -- that people take men more seriously, are more inclined to promote men to senior positions, tend to give credit to men rather than women for projects in which both are involved, etc.
(In, let's say, Western Europe and North America.)
Some people disagree with that, saying that maybe it was so 30 years ago but that that sort of sexist discrimination has basically gone away now. Some of those people go further and say that actually now it's being female that confers unearned advantages.
I'm pretty sure that almost everyone would agree that at least one of the following two propositions is true: (1) 30 years ago, being male conferred substantial unearned advantages in life. (2) Now, being female confers substantial unearned advantages in life.
Either way, we've got an example of a widely-distributed characteristic that confers substantial advantages for reasons other than merit.
I agree! Disregarding that technically everyone can't be privileged -- taking it in the sense each individual should have the opportunity to develop as much as his potential. Things are of course never so simple, as there are limited resources, we can't always tell what their potentials (esp. of children) are, some potentials add more value to society, and sometimes the individuals don't even want to develop their potential!
This should be a primary goal of education. Then it becomes very personal, exciting, ready to bring out the best in ourselves.
Privilige is a lot like talent (i suppose talent is a type of privilige).
Yes it is needed to succeed, and yes it is unfairly distributed. However, people think that's all that is needed to succeed at a high level, where really that is about 5% of what is needed. The other 95% is a lot of hard work and self improvement. Which is hard. I know i personally probably don't have the self control to work hard enough to truly make it big.
For some reason humans seem to fixate on the part of the equation we cannot control, even though its the part that probably matters the least.
There are enormous numbers, in absolute terms, that are reasonably privileged in the modern world. Millions. But only a tiny number of those people go on to found a billion dollar company, or become one of the greatest composers in world history.
It's unequivocally true that privilege plays an important role, and that we should strive to give everyone that same level of opportunity. But the people that succeed at the level of PG or Mozart are clearly working harder, and/or are more innately talented than their equally privileged peers.
> But only a tiny number of those people go on to found a billion dollar company, or become one of the greatest composers in world history.
That aren't the only things that qualify as "succeed" though, are they? Most of those that are privileged succeed. They may not turn $10mm into $10bn, but they'll likely see it turn into $20mm.
I agree generally that the money & connections you start out with aren't all, but 5%? No, certainly not. We'd see many rich people fall into poverty if that was the case.
> But the people that succeed at the level of PG or Mozart are clearly working harder, and/or are more innately talented than their equally privileged peers.
That I agree with, completely. Hard work is a multiplier. But working three times as hard with $1000 won't get you close to just working normally with $10,000,000.
But the article wasnt about people who achieve modest success and (very) comfortable life styles. It was about what it takes to truly make it above and beyond.
> re 10 million to 20 million
It would be interesting to see actual stats on that. Doubling your money over 20 years isn't super hard. However rich people are people too with vices and whatnot. I wonder what percent of those rich people blow their money on blackjack (etc) instead.
> What they did differently is they had a ton of money before they started it, and they decided to make a fun club for themselves.
I don't get the impression that they had a "ton" of money when they started. Sure, they were wealthy, but no more than, say, a successful doctor or lawyer. Certainly mere peanuts compared to the institutional venture capital funds that existed at the time. "Who would win? Name brand VC firms with hundreds of millions of dollars and all the right connections, or some guy who founded a mildly successful startup who now paints and writes essays for nerds?"
> The brand says you have to be really smart and nerdy, and willing to sacrifice money to prove you’re worth being in. People who can sacrifice a lot of time and money? Generally well connected, well educated, well off nerds like them. Of course it’s successful. By being the first to get that brand they set up a self-selecting system that brought them those people. Simple as that. And it only works in tech because not many other industries will gravitate towards a brand of (nerdy * altruistic).
It's always easy to say this in retrospect, but don't you find it a bit odd that you are essentially declaring that this absolutely massive pile of money and influence was just lying there untouched for 50+ years and no one noticed it until, IIRC, some kid at MIT asked pg why, if startups were so cool, he wasn't funding any?
even if 10% went to them.. this is 1998.. it is a lot of money back back then (more than 99% of people will make in their life time) and is a lot of money now.
I covered that in my comment with the “and” clause. I don’t deny they were radically successful at making a club. That’s my point, their success was in making an elite social group, not in any special VC strategy. The only way to replicate their success (if that’s what you define success as) would be to somehow supersede their reputation as the most desirable club.
> That’s my point, their success was in making an elite social group, not in any special VC strategy. The only way to replicate their success (if that’s what you define success as) would be to somehow supersede their reputation as the most desirable club.
The reason their particular club became elite is that they developed a reputation for helping people to succeed. And they developed that reputation by doing it, repeatedly. That is what I would call a successful VC strategy.
You may not remember what VC was like at that time. $50k for 50% was the expected seed round for a 4-person new grad team with about a year under their belt in Boston. I remember thinking the YC deal was crazy good crazy early. Anybody remember what it was? I recall something like $25k for 10% in the first batch. This was enough for poverty rent and ramen for 4 people for 1 year. The only problem I had with this was that he wanted all founders to quit their job before even applying, and then getting in was tough odds.
In my opinion, "privilege" is a little bit of an occlusive term used to paper over the complex idea of socioeconomic class and the ways that it has historically been passed down. I think it's popular because it provides a way for people who think of a world that should be (or worse, used to be) a meritocracy that isn't in a way that is only one step away from that -- it's privilege that keeps us from our meritocracy!
But it's not. There's class. There's caste. There's a lot of things that have to do with where in society's proto-aristocratic ranking system almost every person is born into. A lot of societies have managed to make large parts of this more uniform than others (an achievement which I would like to see more of).
For the vast majority of societies over the vast majority of history, class ossifies into caste in all kinds of ways. So when I read what folks term "privilege" it just makes me think it's talking about folks who have engineered a new caste and a new class. And isn't it always the case that the "old money" which pejoratively calls a new class "new money" was once given such a name by the previous holders of "old money?" And so perhaps we really are saying the same thing here because I couldn't agree more with your final statement:
"It’s the first mover brand, exclusivity, required sacrifice, the club-like aspect that made it filter for already-going-to-be-successful people that made it work."
All this stuff about “do things you love” and “work as though you’ll never die”, or how they were successful because they thought so differently...
What they did differently is they had a ton of money before they started it, and they decided to make a fun club for themselves. It’s a club for smart people of a certain bent, and the number one thing that made it work was that they established that brand (as the in-nerds) and had enough money to pull it off.
The brand says you have to be really smart and nerdy, and willing to sacrifice money to prove you’re worth being in. People who can sacrifice a lot of time and money? Generally well connected, well educated, well off nerds like them. Of course it’s successful. By being the first to get that brand they set up a self-selecting system that brought them those people. Simple as that. And it only works in tech because not many other industries will gravitate towards a brand of (nerdy * altruistic).
Sam is the epitome of smart kids club. He hasn’t really ever done anything impressive (in public, that I’ve seen) but he certainly talks the nerd talk. In every speech, interview and article I’ve read of his I come away thinking 98% of his success is just literally that he nerd-speaks so well and always makes sure to mention mental models or reference some paradigm, and always makes sure to triple-counterfactual himself. But when I look at what he’s actually saying, it’s never interesting. Like this article. I think it’s fundamentally not getting why YC worked, but because it’s so altruistic sounding and has a few counterfactuals, he gets a pass.
It’s the first mover brand, exclusivity, required sacrifice, the club-like aspect that made it filter for already-going-to-be-successful people that made it work.