Dalton & Michael: Why You Shouldn't Copy Your Tech Idols

Alright. This is Dalton plus Michael. And today, we're gonna talk about why it's so hard to copy your heroes. Cut this off for us, Dalton. Yeah. There's.

a common dynamic that that we see in our industry Yes. Where a prominent person will give advice that sounds reasonable. You know, like, they're just saying they're just giving people advice. Yep. But it is not at all what they did to become successful. It's the classic do as I say, not as I do. Or in this case, past tense, do as I say, not as I did. Yes.

And it always gets a little bit tricky for us when we when we witness this. Well, it's super weird because.

we're just getting old enough where for a lot of these people, we saw what they did. Yeah. We know their story. Yeah. We know their story. And so we're just like, that's weird.

You didn't do that. Yeah. That wasn't at all your path. Yeah. And so you're telling everyone to do something Yeah. That wasn't the thing you did. But what's weird is that if you're a 20,.

you don't know. You you only knew them as successes. And why even go do them? Why not take them at face value? Yep. So.

who are we talking about here? Yeah. I think there's three examples that we could think of that are folks that we that we some of them we know decently well. Yes. Yes. So, Sam Altman is one, our colleague of many years. Another one is Elon Musk. Yep.

I think people have heard of him. Pretty famous guy. Yes. And then of course, Peter Thiel. Yes. And so those are the examples that we're that we're gonna Super super super talk about today. And I think that, you know, as a note here, I'm not trying to say that everything that they say is not true. Like, they have lot of really good advice.

And they're also.

pretty damn good people to have as heroes considering what they've accomplished. But if you're actually looking for the how I get to where they got,.

there might be some Yeah. Some tricks. And so, I guess to start with, the example that folks have been asking us about a lot is is with Sam. Yes. And so again, we, you know, for everyone's context, Sam was our colleague for like seven years. Long time. We worked with him every day. So we know Yes.

We we know Sam very well. I think I first met him fifteen years ago. Yeah. You're right. I I met him o 07/08. Anyway, we've known him a long time. Yes. And he recently made some comments about, hey, I don't know about some of the advice I gave when I was working at YC, like, you know, maybe there's just a better way to do startups of, like, going really big and being ambitious.

And, you know, fair enough. A lot of folks a of money, hire a Yeah. Build a lab that takes years, you know. Super cool. I think it's worked well for him. Yes. And so a lot of people are asking about us, and, you know, I think he makes fair points, but story.

is important, which we'll get to in a minute. Yes. So maybe the next one is Elon, you know, some version of, oh, it's way more exciting to work in the world of of atoms or why aren't people building People aren't doing ambitious enough startups. Founders need to be fixing the world, saving the world, going to space. Which by the way, I don't disagree with that. That is cool.

I would like founders to do that. But that's not once again, that might not have been his history on the nose.

And we'll go into that. And the last one, of course. His teal, he's given a lot of advice about a lot of things, which is great. But the one that we are flagging here is the whole don't go to college, college is bullshit Yeah. Type of thing. Which again, alright, that's there's some fair points to make there. Yes. But not his path.

Yes. So.

let's actually go through the kinda the histories here. So, you know, if we start with Sam, Sam's first startup wasn't OpenAI. Nope. It was a company named Looped. He did it when he left Stanford.

Yeah. He was a college job out. He went to Stanford, and then he went to YC.

And then he was able to raise money for Looped, and Looped was like a mobile social product to see where your friends were in the city, released before on the iPhone. And, you know, raised a relatively small amount of money, had a relatively small team, iterated, and honestly, like, used the YC network and then the network he built on top of the YC network to build a successful career. Yeah.

Interestingly enough, like, that worked really well for him. Yeah. And people don't think about looped. We don't talk about looped. I don't even know. Probably people.

seen this video. You know, Google it. This is a real thing. There's lot Yeah. There's lots out But this was a really important part of how someone like this was created. How they how they got enough of a network to make change in the world was doing what was a pretty garden variety path similar to your and I's path and many of our colleagues' path. Yeah.

Just doing a pretty normal start up at a pretty normal age with a pretty normal.

outcome, like, pretty standard. Yeah. And it's weird. Right? Like, go to a good school, do y c, start a start up. That is what led to OpenAI.

You know? Right. And so we're just flagging this so people remember That's what happened. Is that the beginning states before OpenAI was was fairly standard stuff. And so if you actually wanted to emulate Sam, you would not immediately go try to start a lab and raise a hundred million dollars or whatever. Yeah. Because that's not at all what he did. And by the way,.

nor could you. I guess, like, a really important point for, like, literally 99. 9999 of founders, you couldn't copy Sam's play starting at OpenAI. Sam couldn't copy Sam's play starting at OpenAI. And and by the way and and I think this is an important point to make.

Like, I sometimes do meet people who who can do things better or have inherited advantages, And the advice I give them is very different. Yep. You know? And so, you know, hey, if you can do this, maybe you should consider Yeah.

But if you can't, why are we debating whether it's the right move or not? It just seems to that were most influenced by his advice of, like, maybe I should be raising a hundred million are people that are not gonna raise a hundred million. No. So why So it's kind of like a disservice to these people. Yeah. Right?

And so if you're one of the people out there that raised a hundred million dollars or do a startup because they're like, if I can't raise a hundred million, it's not Why even bother? Yeah. It's just like, that's not that's not real. Alright. So the next one is Elon. You you're familiar with this story. Yeah. So I actually heard the story from Elon verbatim.

I I met him before, and so I'll I'll tell you what he told me about his life story. And again, perhaps he is an unreliable narrator about his own life. Certainly possible based on my interactions with him. Mhmm. But what he told me is the reason he started, what was it called Zip2 and PayPal, was he wanted to make a lot of money. He said, what I wanted to do with my life is go to space.

And I knew to go to space, I needed a lot of money. The actual line he told me, and I swear this is a direct quote, is he said, my plan is to die on Mars, hopefully not on impact. And I can tell he uses that line a lot. It's a laugh line. I've I've I think he said this in other interviews. But that's the line he told me. Yes.

And he was like, look, when I came to The US, I came to Silicon Valley, it was a . com boom, and I just knew I needed money. And so I just was like, how can I get money fast? Yes. Again, is very honest the way he told this to me.

And that's why he did tech startups and like all the ideas that he came up with were just about trying to build the most successful company using, I don't know, the conventional stuff. Yeah. Like his ideas were pretty conventional. It wasn't hard tech. It wasn't deep tech. It was It was I need a hundred million dollars to start. It was Yeah. I mean, he did raise a lot of money for for x.

com. But but basically, it was pretty standard startup stuff. Yeah. And then he leveraged his success at these companies Yes. And the network that he got, and the money that he made to start SpaceX, which is super cool way to Yeah. And then became an investor in Tesla. Yep.

And many times, if you know the history of Tesla, he had to personally dip into his own checking account and bail the company out. Yeah. And if he were not an extremely wealthy person, there's no way Tesla could have existed. No. And so it's very hard for us to have this knowledge and for me to have this knowledge of of of talking to Elon and see people trying to emulate in state Elon. Yeah. Yeah.

But they're trying to live their life, As per Elon's words, when it's like, man, Elon.

didn't live his life to Elon's words. But I'll say this. I think what's interesting is it's impressive to have this two step plan and It's good plan. Do it. Right? Like, I might even argue that what Elon did was more impressive. I agree. Right?

Like, start two businesses, sell two businesses, be rich enough to, like, start self driving car company, Rocket League. Like,.

hell, if you got the balls to do that That's a great plan. Yeah. But, again, the key thing is to realize you have to do step one. Most most mere mortals out in the world need to do step one Yes. And can't skip to step two, even though step two sounds cooler. Yes. Mere mortals, including Elon. Including literally Elon himself was a mere mortal Was a mere mortal.

By this definition.

So number three is Peter Thiel, and probably one of the things that most young people know about him the most is his critique on on college and, like, do we need to go to college? And I think that, totally fair critique, totally valid critique Yes. But he went to college. And and not only, like, did he go to college, he went to college. He went to law school. He worked He did undergrad. Law firm.

And he got a law degree from Stanford. Yeah. He worked to the famous law firm and a famous bank. And, like, one might argue he's basically telling you to avoid all that stuff. That stuff brought him pain. But I think one of the things I've learned in advising startups is that if you don't let the startup experience any pain, it's a lot harder for them to learn. Yeah. And like maybe.

experiencing that pain is what broke them into this. Yeah. And we don't have an AB test. Again, maybe he you probably hate that we're saying this. But like Yeah. We had an AB test and he was exactly the person he was now by just omitting college completely, then fair enough. He wins the argument. Yeah.

But my sense is there was some aspect of those experiences that had a profound impact on on his later success. Well, even if we separate out cycle analyzing,.

you should know that he didn't walk that path. That's true. And then use those facts as you will. So why? Why do people give startups advice that they didn't take?

I think you should always assume positive intent in people. That's something I really try to do. And especially these three people. Yeah. These are great. Like, they're trying to make a lot people. Yes.

And so I think this is well meaning, and And I think what's going on is they're so used to their backstory, they almost become blind to it just like we can any human can become can forget their backstory. Yes. And what they're really focusing on is what they would do now based on the information they have now. Yes.

Well, I I I wanna say that more specifically. I almost think a lot of this advice is advice that they wish they could go back in time and tell themselves. Yep. Right? Like, I think Sam is one of the best fundraisers ever. I wonder if he had tried to raise more money sooner in his career to do a bigger thing, if there was a moment where he could have gotten that done before OpenAI. Probably.

Probably. Right? Ditto with Google. Working on nuclear energy stuff for a while in, like, 2013. And and he was at YC for a while. He didn't he probably could have left YC earlier. Right? Ditto for for Peter Thiel.

And by the way, like, I find myself doing this. Like, I find myself giving advice sometimes where I'm like, oh, well, I definitely went through that, and I wanna help people avoid what we did. Exactly. And so I think it's all good intent. But I think that what's tricky is that if you're not digging for the facts, you don't know what really happened. Yep.

So how do we avoid this at YC? Because, you know Yeah. We're all just startups. We have our own scars. Exactly. We are self aware, and we we actually try Someone can make a video about us about the same topic. Right? And and so one of the things that we try to do with companies in the batch, the beginning of the batch, we all tell our own stories about Yes.

Our whole backstory, what we did before we started our companies. Everything was screwed up. Everything was screwed up. I think the government had a panic who were ruining their Internet.

Justin says, I'm gonna strap a camera over my head and broadcast my life 20% on the Internet. And Paul Graham says, I will give you $50,000.

We're really honest. And I actually think it helps people get to know us to contextualize us as humans. Yeah. To know our whole story. Yeah. Think it really helps a how many mistakes you can make and still do something interesting. Yeah. And so I think it's good to actually hear before you cherry pick bits and pieces of people's advice.

It's good to kind of like a fuller Yeah. Yes. Perspective on their whole thing. Yes. Yeah. I think it's helpful. Yes. And even even us, like I think if people knew more about us, were watching these videos Yeah.

It probably would add some nuance to what we say in these in these videos. 100%. Right? 100%.

I think the second thing is you made this point. I think we think a lot about what would we tell people we are really close to? What would we tell our kids? What would we tell our friends' kids? Like, when it become like, when you can personalize it and make it real in your life, suddenly, you're a little bit more maybe conservative or you're a little bit more real. Yeah.

And you can be a little bit more experimental. You know? It's like, I'm thinking I'm gonna tell my kids to go to college. Yeah. Exactly. And like, I didn't really like college, and I actually wasn't terribly impressed with my school. I went to Yale. I wasn't terribly impressed.

But if you look at the facts, it's where I met my co founders. Without them, I wouldn't be here right now. So if that's the only thing Yale did for me Worth it. Changed your life. Yeah. Only thing it did for me was changing my life. Yeah. Well, you know What have you done for me lately, But,.

yeah, imagine we had an AB test where you didn't go to college. Hey, man. I don't think you'd be here. No. I would not be here. Absolutely.

not. Yeah. So I'm probably gonna tell them to go to college. Risk risk it. Yeah.

And, again, I feel I feel the same way. I got kids too, and I I actually really try to give them I try to give founders or the people in these videos I try to say the same stuff I would just say to my kids. Yes. Like, and not have a, oh, let's throw in a troll opinion here, Michael, just for for the hell of it. Like Well, it's funny because PG always said.

this too, which is just like it's just easier to tell the truth, like what you really think, than to think up the like Yeah. Because you gotta keep all the facts straight. Yeah. Really hard. Hard. Right? But like, if I tell this to my kids, probably it's good for you too.

And I think the last one, and this is one that is maybe hard for people to understand, is that, you know, when you're watching videos or reading our content, this is we can't personalize it for you. Right? Like, you're we're we're making this for Yeah. We're just talking to the void. We don't know who's actually watching this. But we do office hours with companies. Everything is personalized.

We read their application.

We interviewed them. We accepted them to YC. Yes. And so the advice we give is super personalized. Yes. And it's often the case that we will know something about someone's background Yes. That we can integrate into Yes. The advice that we give them.

And and I'll say that like more.

explicitly, we often contradict or or yeah. It looks like we're contradicting kind of standard YC advice given someone's specific situation. I would say, like, on average, we're probably telling them 80% of the same stuff. And and so an example, if someone.

was a multi time founder Yeah. Like, say, Sam, and someone was known to be a good investor, and we had the opinion that they were a good investor Yeah. Maybe following the playbook that he's following at OpenAI is exactly right. 100%.

And I completely think it's smart. He should do that. Well, and let's be clear. We've had those people do y c, and we've given them different advice. And we have said, hey. Maybe makes sense to raise more money and, like, dead end. And, yeah, if you can put millions of your own money into your own company Boom. Should totally do that.

Yeah. That doesn't apply to most people. Yes. And so I think this is what's important. I think one of the ways that we try to kinda control ourselves is figure out what the personal advantages are of every founder we work with and try to figure out how to help them exploit their advantages. I think it's really, really hard to do that in general. Yeah.

So shout out to, of course, Sam and Elon and Peter. They've made a huge impact.

And, you know, and are better fundraisers than us by.

a thousand Infinite. They're really good at funds. Absolutely. Kudos to them. But, if you want to be the next one of them, take some time to learn about them and and their histories. And and I think it'd be really helpful. Alright. Great smunch.

Thank you.