#paul graham y combinator

[iamadarshbadri]

Notes on Paul Graham’s Writings About Writing

If you are someone looking for advice on writing, you rarely point to a computer geek turned entrepreneur for advice. In this essay, I take that plunge. Today, I want to discuss about Paul Graham. Prominently, his writing—and the advice he gives us on how we write and ought to write. Paul is a prominent figure in the tech world. He is known for his startup accelerator firm, Y Combinator, which…

[collapsedsquid]

Noted entrepreneur Paul Graham recently published an essay detailing the differences between “manager mode” and “founder mode” — claiming with regard to the latter that “business schools don’t know it exists.” In his essay, Graham recounted an experience he had listening to Airbnb founder Brian Chesky speak at a conference held by Graham’s startup accelerator Y Combinator. “As Airbnb grew, well-meaning people advised [Chesky] that he had to run the company in a certain way for it to scale,”Graham recounted. “Their advice could be optimistically summarized as ‘hire good people and give them room to do their jobs.’ He followed this advice and the results were disastrous.”

[...]

Graham argues that startup founders have been “gaslit”by two groups of people:“VCs who haven’t been founders themselves [who] don’t know how founders should run companies” and C-suite level executives who “as a class, include some of the most skillful liars in the world.”

Founder mode also known as "lowtax mode"

[dailyanarchistposts]

I wanted to share some thoughts I’ve been having recently about the idea of a “Universal Basic Income” or UBI that has become an important topic of discussion in the US recently.

This January, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist firm called Y Combinator issued a “Request for Research” to explore the idea of a guaranteed income. [1] In the proposal, the firm requests applications from researchers interested in examining what happens when you give a set of people a basic income for a five-year period. The underlying assumption is that they want to know if people will blow free money on heroin, basically.

Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator and its “philosopher king” according to the Awl, summarized his interest in the problem of income inequality in an essay called “Economic Inequality”: “when I hear people saying that economic inequality is bad and should be eliminated, I feel rather like a wild animal overhearing a conversation between hunters.” [2] After facing criticism for saying this, Graham removed this language in an updated version of the text. [3] The essay is a gripping read. Graham begins by acknowledging himself as a “manufacturer of income inequality” and “an expert on how to increase income inequality.” Graham strikes me as an important, articulate figure explaining how contemporary robber barons in the early 21st century understand the capitalist system.

So UBI is an idea that’s floating around and it’s no surprise that it’s coming from an economic sector, venture capitalists, who make money by investing in companies which are exploring ways to eliminate jobs on an enormous scale. The idea is emerging at the outset of what bourgeois economists are calling “Industry 4.0.” [5] This fourth industrial revolution (after mechanization, water/steam power; mass production, the assembly line, and electricity, and computers and automation) will involve cyber-physical systems, the “Internet of things” and cloud computing, according to its contemporary prophets. But in addition to the enormous profits capitalists hope to make from this transformation in the foundations of the contemporary economy, they are also recognizing the political problems it might produce, in particular the very real possibility of substantial increases in unemployment as new technology enables companies to eliminate jobs once previously considered untouchable.

Truck driving is an important example of how this transformation might take place. Auto companies, as I’m sure everyone knows, are actively pursuing partnerships with Silicon Valley in order to bring computers into cars. In spite of all evidence of the problems of global warming from carbon-based fuel consumption, these companies are actively pursuing self-driving cars. [6][7][8][9]

The problem with this technology, which relates to truck driving, is that driverless technology is actually extremely expensive. Recently, a company called Otto launched with a view toward migrating the technology for driverless cars to trucks. In an interview I heard on the radio, one of its founders noted the expense associated with driverless technology, something like $50,000. For a consumer vehicle, such technology would effectively more than double the cost of a car. But for a semi-truck, that might only add an additional 33% to a truck that would otherwise cost $150,000 or so. The article cites the public health risk that trucks pose — they account for 5.6 percent of miles driven while causing 9.5 percent of the country’s accidents. The article also notes that driverless technology could allow drivers to nap, allowing the trucks to stop less frequently. But the article also notes that there are over 4 million trucks on the road, transporting over 70 percent of the country’s cargo. Let’s face it: there is a real chance that some ambitious trucking companies will seek to eliminate jobs by implementing this technology. Even that modification — sleeping and never stopping — would eliminate jobs. Initially developed as a palliative to long, lone commutes by individual workers, driverless technology can be almost seamlessly converted into an engine of massive job loss. [10][11]

So what is at stake with a Universal Basic Income is that capitalists are recognizing the potential to automate through “Industry 4.0” and want to pursue it. But they also recognize the enormous social dislocations automation on this scale would unleash. And, as Graham says, they would like to not be hunted in the streets and eaten.

The left, as ever, is divided into thousands of competing camps on this issue. One Jacobin article distinguishes between a “livable basic income” (LBI) and a “non-livable basic income” (NLBI), arguing that a UBI would need to be established on a level “high enough to eliminate the need to work for a wage.” [12] I’m not convinced by this, and it also seems, in the context of this article, to support the Jacobin’s interest in reviving not so much a basic income but full employment. The Endnotes collective has criticized this approach as the “primary contradiction” of the labor movement, that is, “that the generalization of one form of domination was seen as the key to overcoming all domination.” [13] Or, more pithily, “Everyone is being proletarianized, and so, to achieve communism, we must proletarianize everyone!”

This approach, Endnotes claims, understands the factory “as the foundation of socialism, not as the material embodiment of abstract domination.” Endnotes demurs on providing strategic guidelines, however, and that vacuum ends up being filled by thinkers like Nick Snick and Alex Williams, authors of Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work and the #Accelerate manifesto. The latter argues for unleashing “latent productive forces” in technology that a capitalism economic system holds in check. [14] The manifesto suggests that technology has no politics, basically, and the authors want to explore its expansion as a way of creating an alternative to capitalism. I’m not entirely convinced, however, that this technological accelerationism won’t ultimately result in a Matrix-style scenario in which the working class basically functions as batteries fueling a “clean” or environmental future for a few capitalists.

Anyway, I hope this provides some basis for future discussion on another important aspect of contemporary transformations in capitalism, alongside our discussion of the emerging “green” economy.

Footnotes

[1] blog.ycombinator.com

[2] theawl.com

[3] paulgraham.com ; paulgraham.com

[5] en.wikipedia.org

[6] www.freep.com

[7] fortune.com

[8] www.seattletimes.com

[9] www.brookings.edu

[10] www.cnbc.com

[11] medium.com

[12] www.jacobinmag.com

[13] endnotes.org.uk

[14] criticallegalthinking.com

[azspot]

And that might be Altman’s real skill — beguiling people that don't really build things with his instinctual ability to tell them exactly what they want to hear, to get in exactly the room he needs to be in at exactly the right time to connect exactly the right people, all without ever having to actually do anything or create anything. Despite the fact that his location-based social network Loopt failed to gain any traction (or build any meaningful product, it seems), it allowed him to get in the door at Y Combinator and dazzle Paul Graham, who, for reasons unknown, became convinced that Altman was the future, and in turn helped Altman get in on huge venture deals in companies like Stripe and Airbnb.

Silicon Valley's False Prophet

[levysoft]

Se lo vedi da lontano non sembra niente di che: una spirale sovraimpressa ad un immagine di un villaggio. Con un semplice filtro Photoshop si fa senza problemi. Ma poi se provate ad ingrandire l'immagine si vede che è tutto un gioco di orientamento dei tetti, dei palazzi, di ombre e di nuvole. Una cosa che avrebbe potuto fare pure un essere umano, ma fa sempre impressione.

Nella giornata di domenica, un utente di Reddit noto come “Ugleh” ha condiviso un’immagine straordinaria generata dall’IA: un villaggio medievale a forma di spirale. Questa creazione ha rapidamente catturato l’attenzione dei social media grazie alle sue straordinarie qualità geometriche. I post successivi hanno raccolto ancor più consensi, compreso un post su X con oltre 145.000 mi piace. Ugleh ha realizzato queste immagini sfruttando Stable Diffusion, una tecnologia IA avanzata, e una tecnica di guida denominata ControlNet.

La reazione online a quest’opera d’arte generata dall’IA è stata variegata, oscillando tra meraviglia, ammirazione e rispetto per l’innovazione nell’ambito dell’arte generativa basata sull’IA. Un utente ha scritto: “Non ho mai visto immagini di questo genere. È qualcosa di completamente nuovo nell’arte.” Allo stesso modo, l’artista AI Kali Yuga ha commentato: “Sinceramente, ho visto molta arte generata dall’IA, sono in questo campo da molto tempo, e questa è una delle opere più straordinarie che abbia mai visto. Hai fatto un lavoro eccezionale.”

Un commento particolarmente significativo è giunto da Paul Graham, co-fondatore di Y-Combinator e noto commentatore tech sui social media, che ha affermato: “Questo è stato il punto in cui l’arte generata dall’IA ha superato il Test di Turing per me.” Pur facendo riferimento al Test di Turing in senso figurato, Graham ha chiaramente espresso la sua impressione verso questa creazione.

Naturalmente, non tutti sono rimasti impressionati, con alcuni utenti che hanno cercato di analizzare in modo critico gli elementi compositivi del villaggio a spirale generato dall’IA. Un graphic designer, di nome Trent, ha osservato: “È bello, ma ci sono molte decisioni che un essere umano non prenderebbe. Molte delle ombre non sono corrette e posizionare i camini proprio sopra le finestre non ha senso. Ingrandendo l’immagine, si possono notare anche i tipici modelli di rumore associati all’arte generata dall’IA.”

La tecnica utilizzata da Ugleh per creare quest’opera d’arte si basa su Stable Diffusion e ControlNet. In precedenza, si erano già viste opere con una tecnica simile, la quale utilizzava il modello di sintesi di immagini IA Stable Diffusion e ControlNet, per creare QR code che rappresentassero lavori inediti raffiguranti personaggi di manga e fumetti occidentali. Tuttavia, in questo caso, Ugleh ha adottato la stessa rete neurale ottimizzata per la creazione di QR code geometrici e l’ha applicata a immagini semplici di spirali e pattern a scacchi.

Nonostante l’immensa attenzione e le numerose offerte per trasformare quest’opera d’arte in NFT, Ugleh ha scelto di mantenere un profilo basso, affermando di non voler trarre profitto dalle sue creazioni e di voler evitare interviste ufficiali. Ha dichiarato di essere semplicemente un appassionato di tecnologia, e IA, che si è divertito a sperimentare..

Infine, nonostante l’opera d’arte sia straordinaria e totalmente inedita, la legge sul copyright negli Stati Uniti suggerisce che le opere digitali di Ugleh, potrebbero non soddisfare gli standard necessari per ricevere protezione del copyright, potendo, quindi, risultare di pubblico dominio.

(via L’IA ha generato un tipo di arte mai visto prima, il villaggio a spirale)

[richardsondavis]

Why is the "learn to code" meme considered so offensive?

It’s classist. It’s the modern version of “let them eat cake” aimed at large swaths of people who have been left unable to economically provide for themselves due to technology in a country that provides next to nothing by the way of any real social safety net after 40+ years of sustained neoliberal attacks and increasingly punitive means-testing on what remains of the miserly, inadequate Great Society safety nets for the jobless/unemployable poor we very briefly had from 1968 to 1980.

It’s ableist. Not only does it dismiss the fact that most older poor and working class people who didn’t grow up with any exposure and access to this technology CAN’T just “learn to code” (as if it’s just so easy), at least not without a LOT of help and obtuse learning support, and dismissive of well enough to be able to get any of the entry level coding jobs which overwhelmingly go to rich young computer wiz kids who are autodidacts that seemingly grew up learning coding by osmosis, it’s extremely insulting to anyone with a learning disability when they need to be able to economically survive today and while they try to sort out their lives. Which wo just can’t do it and never will be able to no matter how hard they try. It’s being deliberately erected and maintained by the opportunity-hoarding upper-middle class to keep as many poor underprivileged people out of tech (and other professional white-collar middle class jobs) as possible so that they (and their kids) don’t have to compete against poor people for any of the good jobs that remain in post-Welfare Reform and post-NAFTA America.

It deliberately ignores real barriers to entry to tech jobs that women, minorities, older workers, the disabled, and the poor continue to face - despite all the lip service and empty promises about “diversity” and “inclusion.” Barriers, I might add, that were and are deliberately erected and maintained by the opportunity-hoarding upper-middle class to keep as many poor underprivileged people out of tech (and other professional white-collar middle class jobs) as possible so that they (and their kids) don’t have to compete against poor people for any of the good jobs that remain in post-Welfare Reform and post-NAFTA America.

“Learn to code” is survivorship bias at its worst

Saying “learn to code” also promotes survivorship bias with the same callousness exhibited by Paul Graham (founder of Y-Combinator) whose recent faux pas on Twitter caused an uproar. Graham said that anyone can bootstrap a startup and succeed economically, pointing to Airbnb as an example - which was NOT founded by three poor underprivileged youths unable to pay their rent as Graham claimed, but three upper-middle class white male Ivy League college graduates who were struggling to pay rent in one of the most expensive neighborhoods of San Francisco, which is the most expensive, gentrified coastal city in North America. Huge difference.

Learning to code is VERY hard and near-impossible for older people aged 50+ who grew up on the losing side of the Digital Divide that didn’t have the opportunity to learn any computer skills while young and who weren’t exposed to computers or even Nintendo and Atari video games (remember Pong?) unless if they were from households in the upper-middle class - the top 10–20% - and could afford those expensive toys, because there were no affordable personal home computers or Internet access available to them when they were young.

Remember, the bottom 80% of Americans - which is the overwhelming majority of the US population - weren’t even able to afford a bottom end clearance-sale special PC until 20 years after the home computer was invented and the Internet was launched. Many economically ravaged regions between the coasts still do not have high-speed Internet access today in 2019 because the infrastructure for it was never installed in those places by the telecom companies.

In areas that have been economically devastated like Erie, PA where I live - which is 100 miles away from the nearest tech meetup groups - those who could finally manage to scrape together the money to afford a bottom-end computer only had access to dial-up Internet until 2008 after Verizon DSL and Time Warner Cable (now Spectrum) cable Internet infrastructures were finally installed. But many outlying regions of Erie County still lack it and are still on dial-up and landline phones. (Yes, really!)

Even though some older people without any prior computer skills or college educations have managed to overcome tremendous obstacles in order to learn how to code in their middle-aged/older years, ageism, ableism and classism runs as rampant (if not more so) than sexism and racism in the tech industry. Older job applicants, especially women and the disabled, who are heavily discriminated against for tech jobs despite tech’s phony “diversity and inclusion” initiatives, don’t get hired in these high-paying software developer jobs after having struggled to learn basic programming skills because tech is and always has been a young rich kids’ field where older people are not wanted.

Women, older workers, the disabled, displaced homemakers/caregivers, and other traditionally marginalized people never got hired after re-training in their middle-aged years, many using up what was left of their entire life savings to pay anywhere from $13K - $30K for dev bootcamp tuition, because the overwhelmingly young affluent tech employers deemed them as “not a good culture fit” - which is really nothing more than backdoor discrimination that the tech industry has not shown any proven commitment to eliminating. Just look at the biased algorithms driving AI, which is used in everything from targeted job ads on social media sites to companies’ human resource hiring decisions to product and services sales - all of which selectively discriminate against women, the disabled, older people, long-term unemployed/chronically poor people, and non-whites for access to jobs, goods and services. This issue has not even begun to be addressed by the tech industry, despite many people raising awareness about it over the past several years.

“Learn to code”/ “anyone can learn to code” is malicious, social Darwinist, and privilege-blind

You have to have a certain degree of cognitive ability and natural-born intellectual capacity to be able to learn how to code. The average IQ among Americans in the US is 98[1]. To be able to learn how to code, it’s been estimated that you need to have a minimum IQ of 125 - which is well above average (mine is 126, but I’m also dyslexic so I really struggled with learning to code as a much older lady and never was able to get a job). Someone with a low to average IQ who struggles with basic math is not going to be successful at learning to code. And there’s not a damn thing they, or anyone else, can do about it.

Saying that “anyone can learn to code - even pre-schoolers are doing it” is not only false, it’s victim-blamey. It’s dismissive of those who can’t, and never will be able to, learn to code and who can’t be realistically expected to compete against intellectually gifted, non-learning-disabled MIT and Stanford computer science graduates for coding jobs - especially since the more technically advanced and difficult coding jobs are in AI and neuro-learning networks and those are starting to outnumber the more basic and “easier” software developer jobs.

People for whom college was never an option who struggled with learning difficulties since birth, suffered a lot of trauma during their K-12 school years as children. They were punished, riciduled, mocked and bullied by teachers, classmates, and (sadly) even family members because they couldn’t succeed in school as children - no matter how many times they sacrificed recess to get extra help with their homework from the teacher and no matter how hard they tried, only to fail again and again. They’re certainly not going to be able to succeed at learning to code and break into tech jobs as older adults. It’s too difficult and traumatizing for them, and you can’t just “positive-think” your way out of a learning disability or a low-average IQ. That’s not how reality works.

You can’t punish people out of having learning disabilities or intellectual disabilities. It’s dangerous fairy dust thinking to insist that the very real limitations posed by learning disabilities and low-average IQs will magically disappear if the learning-disabled person would just have the “right attitude” instead of “using their learning disability as a crutch”, or if they “stop making excuses” for being “lazy” and “not trying hard enough” to learn to code when they know they can’t do it. If they were really able to do it, they wouldn’t have been held back twice in elemtary school and thrown into special ed for “slow learners” the minute they couldn’t grasp algebra in 7th grade.

Telling middle-aged displaced homemakers and blue-collar workers who struggled to make it to high school - many whom were deeply traumatized in the process and dropped out - that they should just “learn to code”, and then pick up and relocate (on no money and no car) to some expensive big city on the coast where all these fantastic jobs are, is like telling someone who spent their entire life from being raised as a feral child in the hinterlands of some remote forest to “just” become a nuclear physicist so they can get a job at NASA.

Remember whom this “learn to code” meme and its variants (i.e. “just go to college”, etc.) were being aimed at. They are verbal grenades that have been lobbed by upper-middle class professionals at discarded blue-collar workers and the very poor, in real life and on online forums, starting in the 1990s. We’re talking about a much older population who had been the primary targets of these cruel elitist attacks for decades - NOT the 20-somethings that IT companies and other tech startups seek.

IT skills and coding are hard enough to learn as an older person with a STEM degree and an above-average IQ and mathematical abilities if they didn’t grow up with this technology and have any opportunities to learn it while still young enough to be desired as an employee - like the Millenials and the younger generations coming up after them.

For people of ANY age who don’t have a solid grasp on math and symbolic logic, and the mechanical ability to visualize a running machine in their head, learning to code and succeeding in tech is impossible. People like this do NOT intuitively grasp how to “see” things like this on their own - it’s too abstract. They have to be shown. And the current standard fare of coding education materials does not demonstrate to such people how to “see it.” That makes learning to code impossible for large segments of the population.

But these people vote and they vote angry. And there’s only two candidates running for president in the 2020 election who called it right: Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang. Of those two, only one has thoroughly analyzed the problem and presented a solution (a guaranteed basic income) that can be implemented immediately to relieve deep poverty and suffering in post-Welfare Reform America: Andrew Yang.

As much as I distrust Yang because he’s a Libertarian-leaning technocrat, and dislike his Neoliberal version of a UBI plan - because $1,000/mo is not enough for a permanently unemployable poor older/disabled unmarried person to live on, and because of how Yang wants to finance his version of the UBI instead of going with a more progressive UBI plan - I cannot disagree with any part of his analysis of the problem that got us here in the first place, or the spirit of a UBI.

Over a decade ago I wrote and self-published a book titled Classism For Dimwits (“Dummies” is a registered trademark, so couldn’t use it). It’s still available as print-on-demand and offered in paperback and hardcopy version from Barnes & Noble, and as an e-book on Kindle through Amazon. In that book, I extensively discussed the hidden injuries of class, the War on the Poor, and how utterly shitty and classist it was for well-off upper-middle class people to tell all the poor single mothers being thrown off of welfare with Clinton’s Welfare Reform Act without the guarantee of a living wage job and health benefits, and all the poor displaced blue-collar workers who’ve been surplussed, losing everything in their middle-aged years at an increasing pace since the 1990’s, that if they weren’t “smart enough” to “just go to college” and become whatever they deserved to suffer in poverty and should “stop whining” and “stop blaming society for their failures.”

Nobody cared when any of these shitbombs were hurled at America’s poorest and most vulnerable women and at poor discarded blue-collar workers whom the privileged middle and upper-middle classes never had a shred of sympathy for. Only now that it’s being aimed at bright, well-educated middle class journalists is it starting to matter.

[menchupicarzo]

Decía Harvey S. Firestone (en su genial libro Men and Rubber) que “Un negocio se funda en el pensamiento. El optimismo y el entusiasmo son valiosos para mantener la moral de una organización—son lubricantes que ayudan a superar la fricción—pero no pueden ser la fuerza motriz, ni pueden sustituir unos principios empresariales bien pensados.”

“Pensar no es hacer benchmark; el benchmarking hay que hacerlo después de pensar, no antes. 𝗦𝗲 𝗽𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗮 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝗼, 𝘀𝗲 𝗿𝗮𝘇𝗼𝗻𝗮 𝗲𝗻 𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗽𝗼. Las reuniones son buenas si se ha pensado antes, no son un lugar eficiente para pensar, lo son para contrastar, pero no para pensar." ¿Y cómo se piensa mejor? 𝗘𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗼. Marcet continúa: "Si no escribimos, no sabemos lo que pensamos. Elaborar síntesis de calidad nos aleja de la mediocridad del pensamiento. Aunque algunos insistan en ello, es muy difícil liderar sin pensar. Es muy difícil la autenticidad sin pensar. Es imposible huir de la mediocridad sin pensar.” Ya lo decía el inversor Paul Graham (Y Combinator), cuando hace unos años nos recordaba que 𝗹𝗮 𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗮 𝗲𝘀 𝘂𝗻𝗮 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗼: "Una participada nos preguntó por qué era tan difícil contratar a un buen escritor. Les dije que escribir bien es una ilusión. Lo que la gente llama escribir bien, es en realidad, pensar bien. Y por supuesto, los buenos pensadores no abundan."

[monterplant]

Paul Graham likened Palantir's ICE work to "infrastructure of the police state"; a Palantir exec said Paul's view is like Google's when it killed Project Maven (Anthony Ha/TechCrunch)

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: Paul Graham likened Palantir’s ICE work to “infrastructure of the police state”; a Palantir exec said Paul’s view is like Google’s when it killed Project Maven  —  One of the founders of startup accelerator Y Combinator offered unsparing criticism this weekend … Continue reading Paul Graham likened Palantir’s ICE work to “infrastructure of the police state”; a Palantir…

[konradolssonjournal]

Söndag 7 April 2024

Så kom hon hem, v��r kära lilla dotter, som ett yrväder i April, med ett nytt gosedjur i form av en säl vid namn Sally under armen, både liten och stor på samma gång, lämnade planet utan problem, rullandes sin kabinväska. Hoppade in i Range Rovern, älskade den enligt henne själv, sköna säten, man ser bra, ”som en bil i en katastroffilm, en bil man tar när man flyr från jordens undergång eller monster”. Bra recension tycker jag.

Fortsatt lyssna på Mastery, tog en stund i sängen igår och strök under relevanta partier i boken, rätt bra sätt att inta en bok faktiskt. Lyssna stora delar, sedan stryka under och läsa viktigare delar. Man tvingas vagga sig in i berättelsen när man lyssnar, jag blir lätt distraherad när jag läser, vill stryka under, skriva själv, googla saker, svävar iväg.

Ett parti handlade om Paul Graham, grundaren av Y Combinator, som gick på Cornell-universitetet, det fick mig att tänka på H som fyllde år för en vecka sedan, ringde och grattade honom, han satt på ett plan på väg från Florida till New York. 

J ringde, vi tjabblade om Robert Mitchums stil, hans Roman Polanski-biografi, att han låtit Chat GPT skriva om en av sina dagböcker ”in the style of Joan Didion”. Jag kände återigen och direkt att vi måste återuppta Olsson Brothers-podden, föreslog det igen. En kortpodd, 10-15 minuter varje söndag. Style, fashion, Hollywood, Palm Springs, mid-century modern interiors, poetry. Old Hollywood of course. And 70s rock.

[gerdfeed]

Over the last few years, there has been a radical shift in the politics of many (not all) Silicon Valley funders and CEOs. They have identified two enemies: their own employees, whose politics often differ greatly from their own, and East Coast politicians and regulators. Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, laid out the standard shtick a couple of days ago:

DOGE is ripping out the guts of government

[secretstalks]

Overcoming the Gender Gap in ‘Founder Mode’: Insights from Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on Women Founders’ Challenges

The tech world has been abuzz with discussions about “founder mode” this week, a management approach that emphasizes direct involvement from founders rather than relying heavily on delegation. This concept has sparked varied reactions, particularly among different groups of founders.

Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, recently highlighted this discussion, prompting Paul Graham, co-founder of the startup accelerator Y Combinator, to write an essay on the topic. Graham described founder mode as a hands-on approach to managing a company, contrasting it with “manager mode,” which typically involves delegating responsibilities and allowing team members more autonomy.

Chesky's remarks on founder mode sparked significant conversation, especially on social media. He noted that women founders have reached out to him, expressing that they feel excluded from adopting founder mode in the same way men might. Chesky emphasized that this disparity needs to be addressed.

In response to a query about what he meant by “permission,” Chesky shared a screenshot of a 2020 Business Insider article titled, “The Fall of the Girl Boss is Actually a Good Thing.” The article discussed several female founders who resigned due to claims of hostile work environments, highlighting broader issues of workplace culture and gender.

Chesky also retweeted stories from female entrepreneurs who claimed they faced negative repercussions for embracing founder mode, underscoring the challenges women face in adopting this approach.

In his essay, Graham contrasted founder mode with manager mode, which he described as a strategy where companies hire capable individuals and trust them to perform their roles independently. However, he criticized manager mode for sometimes leading to ineffective leadership and company mismanagement.

Chesky, who co-founded Airbnb in 2008, mentioned that his interest in founder mode was influenced by figures like Jony Ive and Hiroki Asai, both formerly of Apple, and cited notable founders such as Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, and Elon Musk as exemplars of this management style.

READ MORE

[jkdanu]

David Sacks ignites Silicon Valley social media flame war http://dlvr.it/TBH9X5 http://dlvr.it/TBH9X9 http://dlvr.it/TBH9XC http://dlvr.it/TBH9XF

[art-of-manliness]

Odds & Ends: January 12, 2024

Cool Hand Luke. I re-watched Cool Hand Luke this past week, and boy, did I enjoy it. At first glance, this film seems like just another slacker anti-establishment movie, and maybe it is, but what makes this movie great are the layers of existential interpretation that can be applied to it. Luke (Paul Newman) is sent to a prison camp for vandalizing parking meters and defiantly resists whatever authority is thrown at him. Though he gains the admiration of his peers with his non-conformist attitude and escape attempts, the prison officials brutally punish him to break his spirit. Eventually, they succeed, and Luke is abandoned by his admirers. One last escape attempt leads Luke to a final confrontation. To me, Cool Hand Luke speaks to the rebel in all of us and how to smile like Sisyphus when faced with the absurd in life.  Todd’s High-Protein Overnight Power Oats. Todd McGuire, owner of Todd’s Power Oats, recently sent me a sample of his high-protein overnight oats. When I’ve seen other companies advertise their oatmeal as “high protein,” they usually mean the oatmeal has 10 to 15 grams of protein. But Todd’s not messing around with his power oats. Most of them have 30 grams of protein. His Peanut Butter Monster overnight oats have a whopping 37 grams of protein. As my son Gus would say, “He means business.” The high protein comes from mixing whey protein in with the oats. I really enjoyed these and will be picking up some more. Add some milk at night, put ’em in the fridge, and boom, you’ve got a high-protein, high-fiber breakfast waiting for you in the morning. If you don’t see a flavor that suits you, we’ve got an article about how to create your own overnight oats; just add a scoop of protein to your proprietary mix.  Hear Homer’s Iliad Read in the Original Ancient Greek. You’ve likely read the Iliad or the Odyssey before. But have you ever heard what these epic poems sound like in their original ancient Greek? University of Kansas classicist Stanley Lombardo gives us a taste of what the Iliad would have sounded like to Greek men sitting around a campfire while a bard recited its lines. It’s thumos-inspiring. Make sure to listen to Lombardo’s recitation of his English translation of the Iliad. It’s also stirring.  Having Kids. Because of the vampire problem, you can’t know what it’s like to have kids until you’ve gone and had kids. And from the outside, what you imagine it’s going to be like often turns out to be quite a lot different from what it’s actually like. In this gem of an essay from Y Combinator founder Paul Graham (who maintains a refreshingly old-school website for being a tech guru), he shares how his view of having kids before he had them — that parenting would be a burdensome, productivity-sapping, fun-smothering buzzkill — didn’t end up matching the far more wonderful reality of being a dad. I particularly like the last section of the piece. Quote of the Week If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you. If you really make them think, they’ll hate you. —Don Marquis The post Odds & Ends: January 12, 2024 appeared first on The Art of Manliness. http://dlvr.it/T1JcQl

[hackernewsrobot]

Sam Altman's been fired before. The polarizing past of OpenAI's reinstated CEO

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/22/sam-altman-fired-y-combinator-paul-graham/

[wardsutton]

2/5 in a series of illustrations about the humble beginnings of big companies for Inc. magazine: Reddit was started by two college students, Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman who were in the first class of Y Combinator - a "Start-up Accelerator" - in 2005. Entrepreneur Paul Graham shot down their initial order-food-by-SMS concept and gave them another idea. The two moved into a run-down apartment in Medford, Mass, and began working on Dell computers. 16 months later their project was bought by Conde Nast for $20 million. Today Reddit is one of the country's top-10 visited sites, valued at $3 Billion.