History tends to get rewritten by big successes, so that in retrospect it seems obvious they were going to make it big. For that reason one of my most valuable memories is how lame Facebook sounded to me when I first heard about it.
As a thought experiment, I would love to hear what pg and team would have thought about the following companies, had they applied to YC before they grew in popularity (assuming YC existed when they were starting out):
PayPal, Twitter, Pandora, SalesForce, Instagram, FourSquare, and Pinterest. And perhaps a few others as well.
I feel pretty sure we'd have been impressed enough by Max and Peter to fund them regardless of the idea (which initially had almost nothing in common with Paypal).
I knew Ev before Twitter so I'm sure we would have funded that.
Pandora I know nothing about, so I can't guess there.
SalesForce I'm pretty sure we would have funded because Benioff radiates "winner" in much the same overwhelming way that Zuckerberg does.
Instagram is the one we'd most likely have missed. It all depends when we'd talked to them. They were a kind of overnight success in traffic. If we'd talked to them even a day after they launched we would certainly have said yes. But before that it might have seemed too speculative.
I don't know about FourSquare. I've never met the founders and don't understand the business.
Pinterest we definitely would have funded, because Ben is a two time YC alum (with different companies alas). We knew he was good because the first time he was part of a startup that as an experiment we didn't make move to California. As Demo Day approached, they were in terrible shape. But Ben swooped in at the last moment and gave one of the most convincing Demo Day presentations.
This seems to suggest the decision to fund has less to do with the idea and more to do with the founders. We already knew that.
Does this also mean that the "big winners" will not come merely from a pool of what appear to be bad ideas, but from a subset of that pool: bad ideas put forth by founders the VC thinks are impressive? That too, seems somewhat obvious.
Taking it one step further, can you separate the "idea" from the "founder" in assessing the project's chances of being a "big winner"?
Maybe that was the goal of requesting that people should apply to YC even if they had no "idea".
After all, the supply of "bad ideas" is potentially limitless.
Yes -- this is why, for example, we (at A16Z) have such a strong bias towards technical founders with strong personalities, typically with a background of accomplishment of some reasonably strong form (even if very young). You have to screen at the founder level since there are too many bad ideas from less qualified founders otherwise.
Have you ever experimented with an opposing strategy? (Funding "non-technical" founders with "weak" personalities.)
Probably not, lest you would risk your reputation. Hence, you might not have evidence to show that this approach would not yield suffcient numbers of "big winners" to justify the investments. For example, if someone sugested the hypothesis that from a set of a given size of non-technical founders with weak personalities, some "big winners" will emerge, could you disprove that? If you wanted to be scientific, you would have to test it, repeatedly.
From my intepretation, I think one of the points in the pg essay is that human "intuition" will only take you so far toward the "big rewards". By its very nature it steers us away from the counterintuitive and protects us from taking what others would perceive as unreasonable risks. It will stop you from adopting a strategy that no one else is using that might get you labelled as foolish (but, as history shows us time and again, might actually yield an enormous reward).
In hindsight we'll continue to see that some of the biggest winners would have been viewed as unreasonable risks by many VC. Foresight won't allow us that vision. So-called intuition will stop you from investing in a "big winner". Hard to accept, but true.
I don't recall arguing that our criteria are the only criteria one could use. I would love for someone to start the venture firm that focuses on non-technical founders with weak personalities! It would either be highly profitable or highly entertaining to watch...
Some internet VC, I can't remember who, was answering some interview questions from a journalist recently and made a comment to the effect that, with respect to financing startups, capital is too concentrated. (Sort of like the returns from startups are so concentrated in only a few.) 100 million in one project instead of 10 million in 10 projects, something like that. If it were somehow possible to achieve, maybe the process of spreading out venture capital that he alluded to would involve some of it going to "unlikely recipients". Black swans. Non-technical founders with weak personalities. Or something even more unusual.
It might not yield any "big winners" (then again it might) but it would in either case produce evidence that we could use to try to disprove certain theories.
"highly profitable or highly entertaning to watch..."
We've seen a quadrant close to this space thoroughly explored: Non-technical founders with strong personalities. MBAs were the most heavily funded during the first bubble in the 90s, far more so than technical people.
I have once met Benioff (never have met MZ), and what really struck me as odd about him was how unfazed he was by occurrences that would really shake a regular person up and throw them in a spiral of self-doubt.
He seemed to never lose an ounce of morale from anyone telling him "no", he seemed to be doing this pretty naturally by never faulting or doubting himself but rather placing the blame on the nay-sayer. The take-away for me was someone whose morale cannot be broken is an unstoppable train. I have to be honest, it seemed full-fledged delusional to see someone never question them self based on other people (and some very important/influential people's) judgement. But that seemed to be him.
It strikes me as smacking of old-school fatalistic "some are born winners" type thinking which is fundamentally contrary to everything we are led to believe about startups (namely; success is a function of smarts, hustle and luck).
I have not met either of them. And while I have met a few individuals who have achieved success I can honestly say I have never met anyone who I thought radiated success or was otherwise predisposed to success.
You are, perhaps, reading too much into the word "winner" to mean "automatically succeeds" rather than "is unstoppable and bowls over obstacles that would stop most people".
Have you never met anyone with an unusually high mix of intelligence, determination, focus, and charisma (to randomly pick a few traits)? If you have, are you more likely to bet for or against them in their chosen field?
If you haven't, that is entirely possible. Such people are, by definition, rare.
This is exactly how many VC work. They will only fund projects that involve people they know. Those people are almost always ones who have a history of past success. It's simply a way to manage risk with minimised effort.
Deal with people you already know.
If the project turns out to be a dud, the past history of success of the people involved negates any arguments that it was not the right decision to fund it. No one is going to question that the people involved were not "winners". They had proven that already; that's why the project received funding: because those particular people were involved with it.
To use an oft regurgitated title: "No one ever got fired for funding a project that involved [insert so-called born winner name here]"
Just for fun: How about Andrew Mason, the guy behind Groupon. How far do you think he would have gotten by taking the YC route? Is he a "born winner"? Groupon made some investors very happy.
One might wonder why no one can tell us who the "born winners" are until after they've had some "victories".
No matter how much you might wish it, a purely meritocratic system is not possible, not when there are people involved. There will always be subjectivity and biases. SV is more meritocratic than most other industries, and I do believe that most people in SV honestly try to be impartial, but that doesn't actually pan out a lot of the time.
What do you think he actually means by 'radiate "winner"'? What if he'd said they radiate 'smarts and hustle'? That's two out the three qualities you name. (If he said they radiate luck, I would understand being put off).
"I have not met either of them. And while I have met a few individuals who have achieved success I can honestly say I have never met anyone who I thought radiated success or was otherwise predisposed to success."
Where in the above two statements do you contradict the idea that Benioff and Zuckerberg do give this impression in person? Notice that pg doesn't say that about everyone who is successful.
Consider 'winner' as being shorthand for: "someone who, given the right environment, timing, and support, can take over the world. Given two of the three, they will manifest the third."
It's just something you are. A bottom of the org chart stinky sysadmin doesn't just wake up one day and have the personality and determination of a world class CEO.
In a more grim outlook, it's genetic. The disconnect is when people want to be 'winners' but are, at heart, bottom of the org chart stinky sysadmins. You can work your way up to lifestyle business, but the next step of multi-billion pants in the air growth company is probably out of reach.
"Cowan’s college friend rented her garage to Sergey and Larry for their first year. In 1999 and 2000 she tried to introduce Cowan to “these two really smart Stanford students writing a search engine”. Students? A new search engine? In the most important moment ever for Bessemer’s anti-portfolio, Cowan asked her, “How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage?”"
As a thought experiment, I would love to hear what pg and team would have thought about the following companies, had they applied to YC before they grew in popularity (assuming YC existed when they were starting out):
PayPal, Twitter, Pandora, SalesForce, Instagram, FourSquare, and Pinterest. And perhaps a few others as well.