Getting advice from an essay by PG is like reading a description of a stock market strategy - by the time you read and assimilate it, everyone else has too, and that particular inefficiency has been eliminated.
There will now be a lot more HN readers keeping diaries of all the things that they noticed were inefficient in their day, and they will come up with good, competing startup ideas. However, the founder that is likely to be the most successful was the one that started doing this long before this essay came out. Which is actually the point of a large part of the essay, the one that talks about being "the right type of person".
Stock market investing isn't a zero sum game anymore than VC investing or even Y Combinator.
Edit: OK, YC adds much more hands on value to businesses, but the investment aspect is exactly the same as it would be if you bought shares over the market.
The reason stock market is considered zero sum is not because it's literally zero sum. It's a well understood and highly competitive market, where most gains come from other players in the market.
Ehhh you get into meta when it comes to options and futures, but I would argue they still aren't zero sum. I mean, you could argue almost everything money wise can be looked at as zero sum.
If a VC buys a 10% stake in company ABC for $1 million the trade looks like:
VC: -$1,000,000, +10% equity (worth $1,000,000)
Net = $0
ABC: +$1,000,000, -10% equity (worth $1,000,000)
Net = $0
Now let's say ABC doubles their valuation. Now the trade looks like:
VC: -$1,000,000, +10% equity (worth $2,000,000)
Net = +$1,000,000
ABC: +$1,000,000, -10% equity (worth $2,000,000)
Net = -$1,000,000
Obviously the $1,000,000 helped ABC double their valuation, which means that the transaction was not zero sum. Same could be said about all investments and to a lesser extent, options and futures. You can't ignore the context of the trades such as using put options to hedge a long position, for example.
Relatedly, Blake Masters was publishing notes from Peter Thiel's startup class.
Though they were public, for anyone to see, we were able to read the notes, understand his philosophy, and raise money in an area he'd never invested before.
It's not necessarily a new idea. In fact, I posted a note to myself on Facebook in August that reads "Try hard to recognize problems; then come up with the solution." (Yeah, it's weird to post notes to yourself on FB but I actually see my notes on a daily basis and nobody else does since they're on 'only me').
The thing is, most people will read this essay and go "Yeah, yeah! That's great. I'm going to do that" and then forget about it by next Sunday. So I don't think you need to worry too much.
Reading and understanding are only one step. Actually assimilating and putting the advice to practical use is another step entirely.
This is why there are so many "obvious" articles that we do not apply. For instance, the blog posts and articles advocating exercise and a good night's sleep.
Except what you have here isn't analogous to a stock market strategy. When I think of a strategy I think of fairly specific things such as "use a portfolio optimizer each month and rebalance between stocks and bonds." PG's essays are more along the lines of Warren Buffet's: a framework for thinking about problems. But the value doesn't come from the essays per se, it comes from you taking them and integrating them into your own unique approach that is based upon their principles.
There will now be a lot more HN readers keeping diaries of all the things that they noticed were inefficient in their day, and they will come up with good, competing startup ideas. However, the founder that is likely to be the most successful was the one that started doing this long before this essay came out. Which is actually the point of a large part of the essay, the one that talks about being "the right type of person".