PG seems worried that tweets saying you have to be rich to do a startup will discourage non-rich folks from trying a startup.
This doesn’t give those folks much credit. It implies that a few tweets will have a bigger impact on their decision-making than their own detailed understanding of the constraints and anxieties of their own lives.
I don’t think PG is in a good position to understand those constraints and anxieties. And he is somewhat incentivized not to, since YC benefits from having more startups to choose from. But YC does not experience significant downside on the startups that they reject or which fail. Unlike: the founders of those failed startups.
I wish that more people had discouraged non-rich me from launching a startup! I was young and had not yet had time to develop a detailed understanding of the constraints of my life. I had been bathed in pro-entrepreneurship messages throughout my upbringing, and genuinely believed that technical chops and the kind of classical-conservative, small-business-focused money management advice I'd been given were going to be enough to build a successful company. I was wildly wrong about that, and I had no idea how far out of my depth I was. I had no safety net and I got badly hurt. It took years to recover.
> I don’t think PG is in a good position to understand those constraints and anxieties. And he is somewhat incentivized not to, since YC benefits from having more startups to choose from. But YC does not experience significant downside on the startups that they reject or which fail. Unlike: the founders of those failed startups.
Exactly. And I have been avoiding saying this but keep in mind that from what I remember PG got the idea for YC when he was 'walking through Harvard Yard with Jessica'.
All VC's are like this by the way. Even though they know there is a great chance that many ideas they fund will not work they still push the investments because it's not their mess to cleanup. That said there is actually probably more downside for employees. After all a founder with a big startup failure has been marked as someone 'in the mix' and can usually parlay that to other opportunities. Look at even Sam Altman and what happened after Loopt.
Nicely said. It is an irrational economic decision for a non-rich to begin a startup. Even if memes could change their decision it would make matters worse for them, not better.
I'm not an expert on the subject but according to "science", the reason that woman do not go to engineering fields in the US is a byproduct of their environment not a difference in their genetics.
If I got it right, Robert Sapolsky claims that the way to make more woman into tech is to make young girls believe that they can do tech. They already have the cognitive capacity.
In this same sense, PG might be hitting the nail in the head: The reason poor people don't do startups is because they believe they can't; and that it is a white privilege.
If they believe they can't, they will not try. If they don't try, the probability that they succeed is exactly %0. Re-enforcing the myth and further convincing poor people not to try.
The only way out is to convince them otherwise and see what the real odds are.
Robert Sapolsky also claims that we need to change our speech and views (ie: remove "negativity") in order to level the playing field. PG is doing the same. He thinks that other ideas need to be censored as it is important to maximalize the propaganda.
That's a dangerous thinking as it touches on freedom of speech. One might wonder if you can level the social "cognitive" field while also preserving freedom of speech. Educating people is the only way I guess.
They won't try because the consequences for them could be disastrous. It's not even about how much money is in your bank account, though that obviously helps. It's more about how stable and reliable your support structure is. Without that the consequences of failure can be devastating.
I think it's dangerous to encourage people to gamble their lives on a low probability outcome if they don't have a strong network of friends and family to fall back on. If you have that, then go for it, but don't pretend that anybody can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do what you did (I'm using the royal you here). That attitude is what the criticism is aimed at.
This doesn’t give those folks much credit. It implies that a few tweets will have a bigger impact on their decision-making than their own detailed understanding of the constraints and anxieties of their own lives.
I don’t think PG is in a good position to understand those constraints and anxieties. And he is somewhat incentivized not to, since YC benefits from having more startups to choose from. But YC does not experience significant downside on the startups that they reject or which fail. Unlike: the founders of those failed startups.