[georgewfraser]

> The start-up world projects a meritocratic image, but in reality, it is a small, tightknit club where success typically hinges on whom you know.

This is...so not true. My co-founder and I had hardly any network in SV. We applied to YC through the website, raised seed money after demo day. We ran on seed + revenue up to about 60 employees and we recently did a series A.

If you don’t have a network, don’t be dissuaded. Silicon Valley is the least credentialist, most open community I’ve ever been a part of.

[csallen]

People like to traffic in hyperbole, because nuance burns calories and doesn't attract as many eyeballs.

Some describe tech as a perfect meritocracy, which of course it is not. The overreaction to that is to claim startup success merely comes down to who you know. Of course that's not true either. As far as industries go -- especially industries capable of producing millionaires, billionaires, and world-changing phenomena -- tech is absurdly high on the meritocratic scale.

[Alex3917]

> tech is absurdly high on the meritocratic scale.

While I generally agree with this, I think the reason is that success is mainly determined by how much customers like something. It's certainly not due to a lack of folks waiting around to try to take advantage of founders at every conceivable opportunity.

And with respect to VC firms, most don't even list their email addresses on their websites, and of the ones who do a lot of them openly brag about deleting every single email that doesn't come with an introduction. Many won't even tell you what industries or stage they focus on.

If venture capitalists are tired of getting shit on in the media in a way that dentists or accountants or whatever aren't, then maybe they should exhibit the same baseline professionalism as is expected in every other industry.

[awongh]

> tech is absurdly high on the meritocratic scale.

Actually I would make the distinction that tech is ridiculously far ahead of most other industries- but still very low on the scale. (if by scale we mean zero to perfect meritocracy)

Networks matter a huge amount and are dominated by a certain class and racial demographic.

At least we've begun the conversation and I believe truly meritocratic success is very possible, but those on the inside are definitely more likely to be successful that those outside. (really specifically raising a certain kind of seed or early venture funding, where some normal business metrics may be missing- (investing in the founders) )

[DeonPenny]

It absolutely is a network. You just got lucky enough to join one. Without that connection is pretty hard to get started without going to Stanford or knowing someone.

[jondubois]

Having being on the other side of this, it is infuriating to see how people take luck for granted. Even against impossible odds.

I can list every luck/event in my career over the past 10 years but I would trade them all for the luck of receiving single seed round of funding to work on my own project. It's not for lack of trying.

[speedplane]

> I can list every luck/event in my career over the past 10 years but I would trade them all for the luck of receiving single seed round of funding to work on my own project.

Luck plays an important part in making a successful business, but I wouldn't say it's all that important at the seed round.

[TAForObvReasons]

According to crunchbase the parent attended Carnegie-Mellon University, which definitely would have helped getting into the SV fold.

[yaacov]

New York Times has had a consistently anti-tech slant the last few years. I don’t know the reason for it, but I find it very annoying

[csallen]

The media has a lot to lose in a tech-dominated world.

They used to have a monopoly on reach. Readers came to directly to them. Today that role belongs largely to tech companies. Media companies are heavily dependent on the algorithms and whims of the likes of Google, Twitter, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. And it's not just distribution: it's their business models, too. Apple taking a cut of NYC subscription revenue, Amazon doing similar things through its Kindle devices, Facebook and Google ads, etc.

This would be an existentially terrifying position for any business to be in. And as much as the media likes to portray itself as putting truth-seeking and objectivity first, it's still very much a collection of self-interested profit-seeking businesses.

When you're the media and you're faced with this situation, what do you do? What weapon do you have? Your content of course.

It doesn't need to amount to full-scale propaganda or anything obvious. You simply hire writers and editors who are themselves anti-tech, and results will follow. Even if you don't hire that way as a media organization, your employees' incentives are aligned such that they should naturally lean anti-tech, given the realities of the business situation and its effect on their jobs.

[mr_toad]

> The media has a lot to lose in a tech-dominated world.

True, but the NYT was actually one of the first to try and move past their print origins and try a new business model.

https://mashable.com/2014/05/16/full-new-york-times-innovati...

They also employed Mike Bostocks (author of d3.js) for a while, and they had a highly regarded interactive section.

https://bost.ocks.org/mike/

Tech has been a public boogeyman for a long time. Tech causes everything from global warming to cancer.

[DrScump]

"the NYT was actually one of the first to try and move past their print origins and try a new business model..."

One of the first?

Actually, the San Jose Mercury News had its Mercury Center up and running in 1992[0]. For a time, only the Mercury and WSJ were serious players.

[0] https://archives.cjr.org/feature/the_newspaper_that_almost_s...

[yaacov]

Maybe... but I’ve noticed this far more at NYT than other newspapers

[Scoundreller]

Which doubly counters csallen's claims because the NYT is doing just fine (they're publicly traded).

If anything, the majors (NYT, Guardian, The Economist, WSJ) have a lot to gain when local journalism dies because of technology.

[csallen]

The fact that Google was doing just fine didn't stop it from pouring everything it had into Google+ when Facebook looked unstoppable. Which is to say, the health of the current stock price doesn't preclude a business from being paranoid about the future.

[jacques_chester]

Most newspapers have a clear division between the editorial and money-making parts.

Journalists look down on the advertising and classifieds departments. The consider it beneath their worthiness. If you think they're hiring because they give a shit about the lowlies who pay to keep the lights on, you haven't worked in the trade.

[michaelt]

True, you don't need to go out hiring journalists who have an anti-tech stance.

But does anyone think print journalists haven't noticed their industry is fucked and loads of people are getting laid off? No need to break the firewall between editorial and ad sales to know that Gannett cut 400 jobs in January, McClatchy cut 450 jobs in February, BuzzFeed cut 200 jobs in January, and so on.

[jacques_chester]

> True, you don't need to go out hiring journalists who have an anti-tech stance.

Reporting on shitty behaviour by tech companies isn't an anti-tech stance. It's reporting. If what you want is PR puff pieces and sloppy butt-kissing, Wired has the pro-tech angle well covered.

I mean do you actually think it's an interview question at the Times? "Tell me how much you hate Google, in words of three syllables or less". This is a literal conspiracy theory, and it's embarrassing.

Everyone hates journalists, who aren't used to dealing with them. Everyone feels victimised when it's their turn. I've seen it more than once. Hell, I've been on the receiving end of shitty coverage. But it wasn't an agenda any more complex than "does this make a good story?"

[michaelt]

I'm confused how you quoted my post saying you don't need to hire journalists with an anti-tech stance; and that lead you to ask if I think hating Google is an interview question at the Times?

I merely find it plausible that a critical view on the tech giants is more popular among people whose jobs are threatened by tech than among the likes of us, whose jobs are created by tech. No conspiracy required for what I'm saying.

[csallen]

The idea that a for-profit business "doesn't give a shit" about the money-making parts of its business is… interesting. It smells to me just as reasonable as taking Google's "Do no evil" at face value.

First, journalists don't run the organization and aren't in control of business decisions. If their disdain of the advertising arm of the business amounted to anything, there wouldn't be an advertising arm of the business. There are ads injected into the middle of their articles because higher powers than the journalists are making business decisions.

Second, journalists don't need to like the media's business model to become subservient to it. Both ad and subscription revenue are fueled by pageviews. To align incentives, you simply reward journalists who write popular articles, and reward editors for doing what they can to make articles more popular. It's not some mysterious coincidence that media tends to produce sensationalist articles and headlines. (And as I mentioned initially, it's quite effective to simply bend toward hiring journalists who already care about this.)

Who is controlling what articles end up on the front page? Are the programmers at Google and Facebook who don't like ads the ones in control of either of these two companies' business models? This just isn't how businesses work.

Businesses are incentive chains crafted by top-down decision-makers who aim to get sales-and-programmers, ads-and-journalists, and other business units who don't like each other to nonetheless work together to achieve a singular goal.

---

The front-page story on Vox right now is a take-down of tech in light of the NZ shootings: https://imgur.com/a/Li9zcAC

[gatherhunterer]

I think that they are trying to ride a wave of sentiment. You can see a similar strategy in their political coverage that causes them to do some weird things, like dismissing the accusations against Justin Fairfax. They have good writers on staff but I have found that more incisively factual coverage of major stories can always be found in The Washington Post.

[BurningFrog]

Tech is - inadvertently, as a side effect, but still - murdering the traditional media world that NYT rules/ruled.

When your whole world is being destroyed around you, it's not that strange if you develop a hostile attitude to the people doing the destroying, even if your job description is to be an "objective journalist".

[Scoundreller]

But, corporately, NYT wants the journalism world around it destroyed. They're the best situated to benefit from it. Their stock price shows that there's no concern for their future.

[SamReidHughes]

While the NYT might, their employees don’t.

[manfredo]

I've come to the conclusion that traditional media has a fundamental conflict of interest when it comes to reporting on tech. Established media players see tech as a fundamental competitor to people's attention. Tech is also eroding these media outlets' ability to steer public opinion. When readers can find primary sources easily, then there's a lot less room for editorializing.

I regularly read NYT's technology section. It seems like most things have a negative slant towards them, especially when it pertains to Google, Facebook, YouTube, or other social media sites. Most of the positive pieces they run about tech serve to emphasize how different the subject is compared to the big bad tech giants.

[jondubois]

It's anti-centralization and pro-meritocracy. If anything, it's pro-tech. There are a lot of people right now who have built great tech and real innovation which is being ignored completely because some financially successful firms with massive network effects are attracting all the talent and focusing it towards their lesser technical goals, slow processes and inferior tech.

For example, AirBnB has thousands of employees and yet barely anything changed in their service in the past few years. The engineers who work there are not productive. Their main skill is in creating highly complex solutions whilst taking minimal risks; that's not what engineering is about. The same goes for almost all major software companies. Each engineer does very little work and contributes very little towards real innovation. These big network effects are holding tech back. They are draining cash away from pure tech and focusing it on social networks.

[jacques_chester]

> New York Times has had a consistently anti-tech slant the last few years.

Let's be real. Tech has had a consistently anti-tech slant the last few years.

[Rafuino]

YC is not typical. It provides you a pre-built network, so if you're not going this route, who you know already makes a huge difference.

[Judgmentality]

But anyone can apply to YC, and I believe the application process is almost entirely meritocratic.

[brogrammernot]

Can you elaborate?

Most companies I’ve seen go through YC do not have any sort of revenue stream, nor a business plan or any other baselines metrics you could evaluate on a merit basis.

The only factors I can see them evaluating on are subjective in nature, not objective merit based items.

Nothing wrong with that, YC has produced some fantastic companies but just doesn’t seem to be a meritocratic process.

[BurningFrog]

I'm surprised to hear people think there is some conflict between being subjective and being meritocratic.

By that standard there is no meritocratic way choose the best musician, actor, chef.

And maybe that's how some people use the word. But to me it just means that you choose people based on their work, not on who they are or who they know.

Whether you evaluate the work subjectively or objectively is a whole separate matter to me.

[Judgmentality]

I have to digress a bit initially to answer this...

I think one of the most frustrating things for inexperienced founders is not understanding why investors say no, because founders believe so strongly in their vision it is hard for them to understand why someone might not be persuaded by their pitch and investors just want to make more money, right?

But ultimately the decision to invest, at least at the seed stage, is largely emotional. It's a question of feeling good about the team, the idea, and believing it will gain traction. Nobody has product-market fit at this point, so you have to use incredibly limited information to make a decision.

YC excels at this stage. They only have 10 minutes of face time to make a decision, so they're using that time to try to evaluate you and your company as quickly as possible. There is no magic rubrik for this decision, they just try to assess the founders and their idea and whether or not they think it will work.

When I say they're meritocratic, I don't mean there is some single metric you can use to compare all companies to make a perfectly rational decision. What I mean is they evaluate everyone based on that 10 minute conversation, not on their pedigree.

FWIW, I applied to YC and was accepted without knowing anybody. Maybe I just like to believe the process is meritocratic and I'm special.

[kerng]

Isn't YC the perfect example of that network and that it comes down to connections? That's why there is high demand for people applying as it opens the gates to that network.

[viscanti]

> it is a small, tightknit club where success typically hinges on whom you know.

This is such a weird point to make given it seems like almost none of the Uber and Airbnb Alumni seem to have been in any kind of tight knit club before. This wasn't something like PayPal mafia members starting yet another company, they seem to have been started by relative outsiders and most of the employees seem to be as well.

Maybe there's an argument to be made that some of the people who strike it rich as early employees of tech unicorns end up investing in other companies or founding other companies. But these companies seem to be proof that you don't need to have come from a tight knit club to become a successful startup.

[EGreg]

If it’s “so not true” that it’s “who you know” then you have to use a better anecdotal example.

You literally just said YC took you in and gave you a demo day where they invited everyone. You didn’t do that, YC did. YC takes very few people out of those who apply. So instead of being a counterexample, you just provided a great example. They are a well regarded network and gave you an in to the rest of the networks! Could someone who DIDN’T get into YC achieve the same thing just as easily, getting all those employees and Series A, or would they limp along on angel funding?

[deepnotderp]

Second this comment, similar experience.

OTOH, it is true that outside YC there are subclusters that are a lot less meritocratic and more network based.

[hyperpallium]

You know YC. Would you have done as well without that network? How well do non-YC startups fare?

OTOH, YC entry is meritocratic.

[jondubois]

This is a fluke anomaly and so it doesn't count. Most people/projects keep getting rejected from YC. Getting any kind of funding without social connections is nearly impossible.

[goobynight]

Cool anecdote. You busted in. Congrats.

[beatpanda]

Getting into YC is itself a credential

[SquishyPanda23]

The sentence you quote says "typically hinges", but your evidence is a single anecdote.

You would need more data before concluding it is not true.