> If I believed that I would be wasting my time with YC.
Not at all. YC gives you incredible leverage to diversify your portfolio, making it that much more likely that you would have a piece of the next Google.
> obviously the sentence about Google, as phrased, is a joke
It's clearly hyperbole, but there's a difference between hyperbole and a joke. You've said many times you believe the outcome of early stage investing is bimodal. In your Startup School talk you even made a point of saying you "did the math" that led you to this conclusion. You said you didn't even start to question this conclusion until you started writing the talk for the last startup school. And this seems to be as close as you get to retreating from that conclusion:
"So I think at least some super-angels are looking for companies that will get bought. That's the only rational explanation for focusing on getting the right valuations, instead of the right companies. And if so they'll be different to deal with than VCs. They'll be tougher on valuations, but more accomodating if you want to sell early."
This is the passage I referred to as "grudging acknowledgement." A non-grudging acknowledgement would have gone something like this: "Because angels do not operate under the same constraints that VC's do, it opens the door to exit strategies that VC's are not able to undertake because of the constraints they operate under. This has the potential to change everything, including the current bi-modal distribution of outcomes, which is caused at least in part by the fact that VC's have to hew to a schedule and can't reinvest proceeds from early exits. So you as founders might be able to provide very nice ROI's for your investors without really dramatic wins, as long as you can add value quickly and reliably." Or something like that.
> Whether programs process strings and whether they're visible in your source code are separate questions.
Of course surface syntax and internal representations are separate issues. I challenge the claim that "it's lame to clutter up the semantics of the language with hacks to make programs run faster." The semantics of the language determine, for example, whether strings are mutable, whether it's possible to take the CDR of a string, whether taking the Nth element of a string is an O(1) operation or an O(n) operation. "Cluttering up the semantics with hacks to make program run faster" could save you a lot of money, and is therefore not "lame." The chances that it will save you a lot of money is proportional to how successful you are.
> There is definitely a subset of opportunistic investors whose motives and character deserve to be impugned.
OK, but maybe you should draw the distinction a little more specifically, particularly when your audience is a bunch of aspiring first-time founders. It is very easy to interpret what you said as, "Anyone who gives you this line is [very likely to be? almost certain to be?] a jerk."
Not at all. YC gives you incredible leverage to diversify your portfolio, making it that much more likely that you would have a piece of the next Google.
> obviously the sentence about Google, as phrased, is a joke
It's clearly hyperbole, but there's a difference between hyperbole and a joke. You've said many times you believe the outcome of early stage investing is bimodal. In your Startup School talk you even made a point of saying you "did the math" that led you to this conclusion. You said you didn't even start to question this conclusion until you started writing the talk for the last startup school. And this seems to be as close as you get to retreating from that conclusion:
"So I think at least some super-angels are looking for companies that will get bought. That's the only rational explanation for focusing on getting the right valuations, instead of the right companies. And if so they'll be different to deal with than VCs. They'll be tougher on valuations, but more accomodating if you want to sell early."
This is the passage I referred to as "grudging acknowledgement." A non-grudging acknowledgement would have gone something like this: "Because angels do not operate under the same constraints that VC's do, it opens the door to exit strategies that VC's are not able to undertake because of the constraints they operate under. This has the potential to change everything, including the current bi-modal distribution of outcomes, which is caused at least in part by the fact that VC's have to hew to a schedule and can't reinvest proceeds from early exits. So you as founders might be able to provide very nice ROI's for your investors without really dramatic wins, as long as you can add value quickly and reliably." Or something like that.
> Whether programs process strings and whether they're visible in your source code are separate questions.
Of course surface syntax and internal representations are separate issues. I challenge the claim that "it's lame to clutter up the semantics of the language with hacks to make programs run faster." The semantics of the language determine, for example, whether strings are mutable, whether it's possible to take the CDR of a string, whether taking the Nth element of a string is an O(1) operation or an O(n) operation. "Cluttering up the semantics with hacks to make program run faster" could save you a lot of money, and is therefore not "lame." The chances that it will save you a lot of money is proportional to how successful you are.
> There is definitely a subset of opportunistic investors whose motives and character deserve to be impugned.
OK, but maybe you should draw the distinction a little more specifically, particularly when your audience is a bunch of aspiring first-time founders. It is very easy to interpret what you said as, "Anyone who gives you this line is [very likely to be? almost certain to be?] a jerk."