OH on PH
Quotes that stood out while digging through the Product Hunt live chat archives…cause who has time to keep up with them during the workday ;)
There’s been so many great chats that I decided to split the posts into multiple parts:
- Part 1 (you are here) focuses on VCs, including @naval @johnolilly @rsarver @bhorowitz @jamescurrier @joshmedia.
- Part 2 covers Founders and Part 3 is about Product — lot of overlap here obviously, so just read both to not miss anything. Features: @joshelman @kayvz @dens @levelsio @charliehoehn
- Part 4 is the Thinkers (in progress, but will include Kevin Kelly, Tyler Cowen, etc...)
Other suggestions? Hit me up @kaz.
1. Live Chat with Naval Ravikant
Naval’s the CEO and co-founder of AngelList. He’s an influential figure in the valley and recently made waves on a recent podcast with Tim Ferriss. Naval’s chat was full of brutal honesty and uncommon insights. Favorite quote:
“On a long enough timescale, you will attract what you project. But don’t measure, your patience will run out if you are counting.” @naval
Fundamentally, there are no adults. Everyone is making it up as they go along. You have to find your own path, picking, choosing, taking and discarding as you see fit.
Figure out what you’re good at and start helping other people with it, give it away. (Determine what you’re good at by asking your friends or parents to be brutally honest about what you do well and poorly. Look at what you actually do in your spare time, not what you would like to do or think that you do.) Then pay it forward. Karma sort of works because people are very consistent. On a long enough timescale, you will attract what you project. But don’t measure, your patience will run out if you are counting.
What you’ve done (your projects, products, blog, etc) matter far more than where you got your education or what certificate you have.
Q: Would love to hear about one low point as an entrepreneur.
A: Every other day is a low point. They’re everywhere. Comes with the territory.
After reading Sapiens, I look at humans more as cooperating, story-telling monkeys that conquered the earth, and I realize more how much of society is just stories that we tell each other.
It takes months to pick up a good habit. If I pick up one every six months, that’s a victory.
Anything centralized on the web today (identities on Facebook / Twitter, Domain Names via ICANN, App Stores, even AngelList etc) strike me as short-term aberrations. Long term, identity, payments, databases, CPU, marketplaces, etc should be as decentralized as possible. Blockchains show the way.
I invested in over a hundred companies and thought they were all going to be Unicorns. Imagine my disappointment…
2. Live Chat with John Lilly
John’s a general partner at Greylock and before that he ran Mozilla for a few years. John shared some great observations from his time as a VC as well as things he’d do differently at Mozilla. Favorite quote:
“VCs are incredibly, incredibly bad at thinking about what needs doing.” @johnolilly
All of these overnight successes are, generally, experiencing that in about the thousandth day or more of existence. Everything interesting takes time.
For folks trying to break into VC, the short answer is do whatever it takes to be around & involved with as many interesting companies as you can.
If you want to be a VC, figure out how to be helpful to interesting companies. That’s it.
Advice I got when I was actually 25, and it’s been consistent: (1) Find your tribe — the people you want to build your life and career with — and treat them *incredibly* well. (2) Do things that make your soul sing — find the things that give you real joy because that will push you through the harder times. (3) Make more things — making is a very very special gift & privilege. Do it as long as you can.
VCs are incredibly, incredibly bad at thinking about what needs doing.
I think the edge we look for now is an obsession with distribution — figuring out how to get increasingly busy and distracted people all around the world to care enough to get and use your product. It’s a little bit different than traditional product design — designing products that can spread naturally in the world. That’s the edge that I think is most interesting right now.
It’s been hard to blog as a VC — for the first few years, you feel like all the ideas in your head belong to other people!
Market share is a lagging indicator, not a leading one. So you have to be absolutely paranoid even though you see more and more people using your product every day.
Q: What are the challenges facing Silicon Valley from your POV?
A: Right now, I think the environment is a mix of amazing and awful. Too many people coming here to make money instead of make great things. Too little true talent spread across too many companies. We’re all trying to go as quickly as we can, so we sometimes optimize for short term, not long term. I think there’s a lack of fear, and even recognition that business cycles happen. So we’re all spread too thin, right when technology is letting us reinvent more of the world than ever before. So we make mistakes on a global stage more often.
Q: If you could go back to the very beginning running Mozilla what is one thing you would have done differently?
A: I would have killed our extension system in 2006, in favor of something more like GreaseMonkey (which led to Chrome Extensions). Extensions killed us because of the memory footprint & performance implications.
I think Mozilla probably needs to figure out how to reinvent browsing, in a way that has human (identity) fundamentally baked in. And then they need to figure out how to get people to care.
3. Live Chat with Ryan Sarver
Ryan is a partner at Redpoint Ventures, and previously was an early Twitter employee, where he ran the Platform group. Ryan talked about the challenges of early stage startups. Favorite quote:
“Early on engagement and retention rates are way more important to me than overall growth” @rsarver
I’ve seen how incredibly difficult being a founder is. It’s glamorized a bunch through these hero stories the press tells, but the press doesn’t cover as well how hard it is on people and their relationships. So I hope people don’t go into it just to prove something. It should be something you only do because there is an idea that compels you so much that are willing to risk everything for it.
Early on I would rather see a smaller audience, deeply engaged. Engagement and retention rates are way more important to me than overall growth at the early stage. It indicates you’re delivering value for an audience and now you just need to grow the number of people that are aware of your product.
The best entrepreneurs are amazing story tellers, have a deep passion for their space, and have an incredibly strong command of their business. I’ve also learned that there is no single prototype of a “great entrepreneur” — it’s more about is this a great founder for this specific idea.
Figuring how to keep a high growth (or any) company well coordinated and pulling towards the same goal is hard. Keeping “mission-driven” teams as long as possible were a key takeaway.
4. Live Chat with Ben Horowitz
The Z in A16Z. No intro needed. In addition to his VC work, he also wrote The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Favorite quote:
Nobody who ever built a great company wasn’t ridiculed along the way. If you are driven by social signals, you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur.
Q: What are your thoughts on bitcoin/blockchain and where do you think the opportunities lie?
A: It may be the most important computer science breakthrough since packet switching. We are in the very early days though. TCP/IP was invented in 1973 (I think) and it took 20 years to get to the beginning of what we consider the Internet today. Bitcoin is still a baby by that measure.
Q: what is the most important quality for a young student who wants to succeed in the tech startup scene?
A: Have the courage to think for yourself!
Q: If you had to start your career all over again? Where would you start today?
A: I think that I would be a bio hacker. Computational biology is the most exciting thing that I’ve ever seen. I’d love to work in that field.
Q: Do you think entrepreneurs are born or made?
A: To be an entrepreneur, you have to be willing to be completely vulnerable and think entirely for yourself. I imagine those can be learned, but I am not sure.
5. Live Chat with James Currier
James runs NFX Guild with Stan Chudnovsky and Gigi Levy Weiss. NFX Guild is a 3 month program that helps companies with Network Effects grow.
Favorite quote:
At the base of nearly all great companies are insights about human psychology. @JamesCurrier
We believe there will be many giant market networks built in the next 36 months. I want to see someone compete with Uber. From a fresh start, a fresh approach. The network effect they have is not absolute. It’s asymptoting. So there is an opportunity forever for someone to enter. More like airlines than a telephone system. Especially if Uber is trying to get 25% margin!
We think the idea matters. We think that small differences in the initial state of your idea, and how your articulate it, can make huge differences in the outcome.
There are many things we look for in founders, but three stand out: 1) they need to be product obsessionals. They must love product and it’s interaction with their user. Second they should have a never say die ability. Third flexibility. You have to stay determined about the outcome while being flexible about the path, the means, the tactics.
Q: What cultural attributes do you think are super important to engrain at an early stage?
A: Emphasize the team vs. catering to individual rock stars. Sounds easy but hard to do especially if you are the CEO. Emphasize results vs long hours.
I would choose a great team with a mediocre idea over a mediocre team with a great idea every day.
Q: What is one of the craziest stories you’ve heard in a pitch meeting?
A: I got pitched laser-shooting robots as a replacement for DJs in nightclubs. It was an awesome mixed media pitch and the founders couldn't have loved what they were doing more.
Kinda related, an old feature request for “OH on PH”
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