[thetrumanshow]

I'm just an outsider, but I was lured to HN and the idea of YC by the cult of personality around PG long ago (we even applied for the first batch).

PG seemed like someone who didn't have all the answers, but was on a journey to find them and he was happy to take you with him.

By contrast, my first take on Sam was that he came across as more matter-of-fact and confident which was a slight turnoff for me. But, I think he was a fine choice to take the helm.

I do miss the cult-of-personality days :).

[ballooney]

This might seem cynical but I mean it quite honestly: I don't miss them.

I think the cultural winds have changed anyway, post Jobs, as the wider perception of SV has gone from tech utopia to bro dystopia etc, where there's less collective naiveté and appetite for cult-worship (though still enough for a steady stream of people to throw their best years at someone else's get-rich gamble). PG probably left at the right time when he sensed the winds changing. I don't think the trajectory would have continued if he had stayed. This might all the wrong, of course.

[omouse]

Same here, there's a huge difference between YC in the early days and now.

the Series A program, which coaches seed-stage alums on how to nab follow-on funding

Pushing startups further into the hands of VCs who'll get rich whenever they're acquired or IPO.

YC China, a standalone program that will be run out of Beijing once it gets up and going

Lots of ethical questions about this that are just never answered. Is it okay to funnel capital into another country that is vastly different from the US in terms of politics, market, etc.?

“We’ll fund a lot of people doing a lot of things that sound really dumb, and most of the time they will be. And some of the time, it will seem like a bad idea and be jaw-droppingly brilliant. The very best startup ideas are at the intersection of the Venn diagram of, ‘sounds like a bad idea,’ ‘is in fact a good idea.'”

This particular quote from Altman just reminds me of PG's essay on why smart people have bad ideas: http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html

It just makes me see OpenAI as suspect now because they just opened a for-profit branch? And they are keeping some of their research hidden? I mean, where's the openness in that?

[titanomachy]

I don't think I'd read this essay before. Interesting quote:

"We expected the most common proposal to be for multiplayer games. We were not far off: this was the second most common. The most common was some combination of a blog, a calendar, a dating site, and Friendster. Maybe there is some new killer app to be discovered here, but it seems perverse to go poking around in this fog when there are valuable, unsolved problems lying about in the open for anyone to see."

It sounds like a lot of people were trying to make Facebook in 2005.

[thetrumanshow]

Whatever fake internet points you are being awarded for this comment, its not nearly enough. :)

[bcyn]

> Lots of ethical questions about this that are just never answered. Is it okay to funnel capital into another country that is vastly different from the US in terms of politics, market, etc.?

Why would it not be? What are the ethical questions here?

The US is certainly not on some ethical highground such that considering funding companies in different countries is questionable.

[omouse]

I'm sure that China and the US are certainly not on some ethical high ground such that considering funding companies in different [insert authoritarian governments here] is questionable.

Why not YC North Korea then?

I cannot believe in 2019, with the mass surveillance systems being built, you cannot see that there is are ethical questions to be asked.