[gordon_freeman]

Okay so I don't agree with "don't actually commit to turning it into a company until it's working" part.

Airbnb example comes to mind where all the founders exhausted all their credit cards to fund user acquisitions and when that did not work kept trying other innovative means to keep the company afloat. If they would have followed this advice, there would not have been an AirBnB.

I agree with the part that says " entrepreneurs should do is pick something they care about" and keep pursuing it with perseverance. Because then companies like AirBnB are built. Just saying.

[noblethrasher]

During an interview[1] (with one of the AirBnB founders no less), pg offered the general advice that startups should search for success using a hill climbing algorithm, and not worry about dangerous local maximums; only to be immediately confronted with the counter example of AirBnB (the cereal episode).

That company just seems to be an outlier in multiple categories.

[1] http://youtu.be/nrWavoJsEks at about 7:00

[jacquesm]

Which is amusing if you realize that VC depends on outliers in order to make it to the next cycle.

In other words: the only worthwhile companies for VCs are the ones that do not follow the set patterns and to which the rules do not apply.

[tim333]

I'm not sure the AirBnB guys with hindsight would have followed that policy again. They may have been better tweaking the model till it seemed to work rather than maxing the credit cards on a non working model perhaps. They were kind of failing and losing money till joining YC so the pre YC strategy may not have been great.