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Do you personally know Paul Graham or are you basing your belief in him on stories in the media and in his writing? If you haven't met him, how is that any dif

Do you personally know Paul Graham or are you basing your belief in him on stories in the media and in his writing? If you haven't met him, how is that any different than me believing in these media reports? Do you refute any of the reported stories? Do you believe Paul Allen was lying when he said Bill Gates tried to screw him? Do you think all the negative stories about Jobs was just sour grapes over his success? Do you believe there was no sexual harassment at Github? Or that the actions of Uber's executives to this point have all been with the purpose to spread love across humanity? If you can't refute any of the stories other than by saying the media is biased or negative news gets more clicks, then you have your proof that Paul Graham is wrong. Your only argument is that PG knows better than I do without actually refuting my argument that PG only sees what his position allows him to see, the founders being nice to him and around him. Instead of taking PGs argument at face value and just saying I'm wrong, why don't you try to prove his argument correct, or prove my examples are either wrong or outliers. And my point has always been Paul Graham is meeting these people as peers (and so is his wife). These people are going to be nice to him and around him, giving him a false sense of the founders true character. But over time a person's true character will reveal itself or be revealed by stories of those who worked with them. I believe we have enough stories to posit PG is wrong.

philwelch 12y ago
I think we're talking past each other now. > Do you personally know Paul Graham or are you basing your belief in him on stories in the media and in his writing? If you haven't met him, how is that any different than me believing in these media reports? I don't "believe in him". I give him higher credence than I give you because he personally knows hundreds of startup founders and you don't. Carefully reread the end of my last comment if you're unsure where I stand on this. I don't have a strong opinion either way and, aside from the natural human compulsion to have a strong opinion on everything regardless of the evidence at hand or lack thereof, there's no reason for you to have a strong opinion either. > Do you refute any of the reported stories? I don't think they provide enough information for me to make a blanket judgment about another person's character, and even if so, you've mentioned like four founders, which is nowhere near a large enough sample to refute pg. Plus, half of your examples kind of balance each other out: there are lots of stories about Woz being a nice person, and Paul Allen seems to have lacked the barracuda instincts of Gates by all accounts, so if you're going to take the media reports at face value you already have half as many nice founders as mean ones.
- modfodder 12y ago
  I think there are two questions that need to be answered before we can decide whether PG is correct or not. 1. What defines a mean person? How many negative actions does it take before we can decide someone is mean. And how large do the actions need to be. A lot of this depends on how well we know the subject. If a friend acts mean on several occasions I might ignore it or prescribe it to a bad day. If I read about the founder of Uber doing the same thing, maybe I feel the guy is a dick. Of course the more reports and the more we either have to ignore the signs or admit our friend maybe the dick. 2. How many mean founders need to succeed for PG to be wrong? Is one enough or is that an outlier? 10%, 25%, 50% or more? I've listed some of the most successful examples, from several decades. If all these founders are mean, then I'd say that goes a long way to proving PG wrong. And just because these founders had partners that were nice doesn't prove PG correct because it was the mean partner that had the greater success (Jobs v Woz, Gates vs Allen). If the stories out of Github and Uber are true then again we have two recent success stories that show a mean disposition isn't the roadblock to success that PG believes it is. My belief is essentially that start-up founders aren't any different than any other entrepreneur at least in disposition. There will be both mean and nice success stories. I've yet to see anything to refute this, and that includes PG's essay with all his "evidence", his wife's "sixth sense" and your posts.
  - philwelch 12y ago
    I'm just not that interested in either proving or disproving a general statement that I don't have sufficient evidence to adjudicate either way. Plus, how would pg even argue for it? "In YC W13, these ten founders were all total assholes and their startups all failed. These seventeen founders were really nice, and all seem to be doing well today. These four founders are ok but have a mean streak, two of them failed and two are actually doing well. In S13..." See what I mean? It's not the kind of point that lends itself to data-driven arguments with publicly available evidence, and it would have been really boring to read an essay that unfolded that way (and practically impossible for pg to get away with writing it). So what's the rational thing for me to do as a reader? What I did was to say, "I wouldn't know, but I'm curious to see where you're going with this", and it turned out he went somewhere interesting with it. Whereas you just shut your brain down because you could think of a half dozen sensationalized examples of people you've never met and missed out on getting to read an interesting essay (that incidentally also explains why, to name two examples, Bill Gates and the Uber founder are exceptions to pg's rule).

philwelch 12y ago

I think we're talking past each other now. > Do you personally know Paul Graham or are you basing your belief in him on stories in the media and in his writing? If you haven't met him, how is that any different than me believing in these media reports? I don't "believe in him". I give him higher credence than I give you because he personally knows hundreds of startup founders and you don't. Carefully reread the end of my last comment if you're unsure where I stand on this. I don't have a strong opinion either way and, aside from the natural human compulsion to have a strong opinion on everything regardless of the evidence at hand or lack thereof, there's no reason for you to have a strong opinion either. > Do you refute any of the reported stories? I don't think they provide enough information for me to make a blanket judgment about another person's character, and even if so, you've mentioned like four founders, which is nowhere near a large enough sample to refute pg. Plus, half of your examples kind of balance each other out: there are lots of stories about Woz being a nice person, and Paul Allen seems to have lacked the barracuda instincts of Gates by all accounts, so if you're going to take the media reports at face value you already have half as many nice founders as mean ones.

modfodder 12y ago
I think there are two questions that need to be answered before we can decide whether PG is correct or not. 1. What defines a mean person? How many negative actions does it take before we can decide someone is mean. And how large do the actions need to be. A lot of this depends on how well we know the subject. If a friend acts mean on several occasions I might ignore it or prescribe it to a bad day. If I read about the founder of Uber doing the same thing, maybe I feel the guy is a dick. Of course the more reports and the more we either have to ignore the signs or admit our friend maybe the dick. 2. How many mean founders need to succeed for PG to be wrong? Is one enough or is that an outlier? 10%, 25%, 50% or more? I've listed some of the most successful examples, from several decades. If all these founders are mean, then I'd say that goes a long way to proving PG wrong. And just because these founders had partners that were nice doesn't prove PG correct because it was the mean partner that had the greater success (Jobs v Woz, Gates vs Allen). If the stories out of Github and Uber are true then again we have two recent success stories that show a mean disposition isn't the roadblock to success that PG believes it is. My belief is essentially that start-up founders aren't any different than any other entrepreneur at least in disposition. There will be both mean and nice success stories. I've yet to see anything to refute this, and that includes PG's essay with all his "evidence", his wife's "sixth sense" and your posts.
- philwelch 12y ago
  I'm just not that interested in either proving or disproving a general statement that I don't have sufficient evidence to adjudicate either way. Plus, how would pg even argue for it? "In YC W13, these ten founders were all total assholes and their startups all failed. These seventeen founders were really nice, and all seem to be doing well today. These four founders are ok but have a mean streak, two of them failed and two are actually doing well. In S13..." See what I mean? It's not the kind of point that lends itself to data-driven arguments with publicly available evidence, and it would have been really boring to read an essay that unfolded that way (and practically impossible for pg to get away with writing it). So what's the rational thing for me to do as a reader? What I did was to say, "I wouldn't know, but I'm curious to see where you're going with this", and it turned out he went somewhere interesting with it. Whereas you just shut your brain down because you could think of a half dozen sensationalized examples of people you've never met and missed out on getting to read an interesting essay (that incidentally also explains why, to name two examples, Bill Gates and the Uber founder are exceptions to pg's rule).