[shtopointo]

I like David's posts on Twitter generally, but this piece is poorly written.

Big opener, controversial take, put a thing down, just to build your own product up by comparison, lack of nuance... from the get-go you can tell it's a marketing piece.

The premise imo is wrong.

> Silicon Valley is a non-ergodic industry

How do you define this? Obviously Daniel's take is on the founders that failed, that were stressed out by investors etc. but he doesn't talk about the thousands of people with the highest paying, most comfortable job they've ever had. People that switched from manual labor to customer support or programming. Or the thousands of minted (multi-)millionaires that got there by just working a comfortable 9-5 for 5-10 years? (in fact, he may be one of the beneficiaries of a SV style system, through his AWS career that sounded like it landed him enough money to start on his entrepreneurial journey – not so non-ergodic now...)

And of course, he loses credibility because he is selling his course. The whole point of the blog post is to sour YC and siphon off a few readers to his course. Kudos to him too, I mean, that's marketing, and it seems like that course is great too! But, imo, he is not taking the high road here.

YC has a great track record at helping people succeed. And if they didn't succeed, it opened doors. YC foots the bill for you to explore an idea. Sure, you can be smart enough to get into YC, but still naive enough to believe a religion-version of YC, about changing the world and something-something vision; then again, maybe you are smart enough to know what you're getting yourself into. Or you should.

Because on the other hand, there are plenty of people peddling get-rich-quick schemes out there, and how you can make it on your own, "just do this thing". Life's tough out there, and going solo is a difficult journey (something not mentioned often). You work for a company, or you work with investors, you are protected / sheltered. Choose your own path, for sure, but also recognize the pros and cons and how nuanced this situation is.