[mrleiter]

First of, thanks for being part of YC and making it such a great place. I've never been there, but the whole spirit is healthy and that I very much appreciate.

>I looked at qualities of the applicants my cofounders couldn't see. Did they seem earnest? Were they determined? Were they flexible-minded? And most importantly, what was the relationship between the cofounders like?

I second this. People who say soft skills are dead or unnecessary are wrong in my opinion. Of course, software is software and hardware is hardware. But how does it get there? And where does it go from there? People help people and being nice to each other is not only more beautiful, but also leads to higher productivity in my experience. Having more empathy for your co-founders, employees and investors goes a long way.

[jasode]

>People who say soft skills are dead

Are you sure people actually say that? This struck me as odd because it seems to be the total opposite of what people say. It seems virtually everyone stresses "soft skills" repeatedly.

But I have no proof of this so I just did a quick search of Google's 130 trillion pages to try and get a sense if people out there are really saying that soft skills are useless:

"soft skills are dead": 3 results (and 2 of them happen to be from you in this thread): https://www.google.com/search?q="soft+skills+are+dead"

"soft skills are useless": 7 results : https://www.google.com/search?q="soft+skills+are+useless"

"soft skills are worthless": 4 results : https://www.google.com/search?q="soft+skills+are+worthless"

"soft skills are in demand": 43000 results : https://www.google.com/search?q="soft+skills+are+in+demand"

"soft skills in demand": 94000 results : https://www.google.com/search?q="soft+skills+in+demand"

Also, on HN... In the top 3 threads with "soft skills" in the title, the comments all emphasize the importance of soft skills: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=soft%20skills&sort=byPopularit...

[elvinyung]

Feels like a pretty typical strawman for socially awkward nerds in the tech industry.

On that note -- has soft skills ever actually been called useless, ever? Even in the earlier decades of Silicon Valley, when (it seemed like) more of the valley was more hacker than entrepreneur?

[backpropaganda]

"soft skills are dead" is not expressed that way. It's expressed as "the cofounders should be tech", and other such advice which emphasizes the technical capabilities of the cofounders and early hires, and to not trust "suits". Not taking a side here, but just saying that the valley does tend to emphasize a lot on tech over other aspects of running a business.

[strken]

It gets a bit complicated when the soft skill in question is dealing with technical people and making sure they're as productive as possible, because this has historically been an area where non-technical managers struggle.

[thecrazyone]

This seems like a false dichotomy.

"Founders need to be tech" is said often, but you're assuming "Founders need to be tech OR Founders need to have soft skills", which is an unnecessary assumption.

For example, "Founders should be determined" is also expressed often, doesn't mean they're expecting it to be an either-or with the quality of "being tech"

[thecrazyone]

I really liked your approach of going about proving your point with Google Search hits. Really well done sir. I'm going to borrow this approach :D

[extralego]

Soft skills != being nice

Soft skills most essentially involve communication. “Being nice” is a much wider umbrella which includes reciprocation of many things not limited to: dignity, consideration, morality, mutual respect, agency and comradery. When we treat the former as the whole of the latter, the structure breaks down. It may not be obvious, and the damage might be displaced out of sight, but the point I’m trying to make is there’s nothing “nice” about making that mistake.

(While the success of soft skills will usually depend on other types of skills, “soft skills” nonetheless is essentially limited to interpersonal communication skills.)