This reminds me of The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing[1], in a funny way (bear with me).
In pricing, if you have features in common with other vendors then those features are commodities and basically valueless. But the features you have that no one else has - those make you priceless.
For example, S3's uptime record makes it a different product than e.g., DreamObjects, even though they are API compatible.
Similarly, while VCs are all providing the ultimate commodity product (dumb money), its the features which no one else has that make investors like Ron Conway priceless. There's plenty of other VCs, but they are not substitute products for Ronco.
Finally, the way to find these unique, priceless features is to look for extremes:
- Cloud hosting with not just 99.99% uptime, but 100% uptime
- Email inboxes with not just a lot of storage, but *unlimited* storage
- Photos developed not just faster, but *instantly*
- A VC with not just a great track record of doing the right thing, but a *perfect* record
And as a consumer, these are the companies you want to do business with: the Rackspaces, the Ron Conways, and the Stripes of this world.
[1] If you read one business book this year, make it The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing. If you don't think a book on pricing can change your life, you haven't read this book. Protip: get an older edition and save a ton of dough.
For what it's worth, Seth Godin's book All Marketers Are Liars also covers the material in your specific example. It probably doesn't cover most of what's in the rest of The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing, though imho the idea of 'going to the extremes' is so important that it's really worth reading an entire book just on that idea.
It seems there are two books with the same title but different subtitles. Are you referring to "A Guide to Growing More Profitably" or " A Guide to Profitable Decision Making"?
A good person can still be "wrong" (for any given definition of it). Feinstein is wrong about AirBnB, and Conway is wrong about torture. I was a big fan of Christopher Hitchens' yet I think on balance he was wrong about the Iraq war.
For me, the main objection to torture is not that it often yields unreliable intel, or that innocents end up getting tortured to death, or that it produces more terrorists - all of which are true. I recognize torture sometimes saves lives, and I'm not unsympathetic to the emotion that it carries a somewhat satisfying vengeance component against an enemy who, in their own words, values death more than we value life. Yet my objection is about what effect torture has on us as a society. It's a plague on our house.
It is uncharitable and silly to believe that a good person could not have those positions in good faith. You may disagree with it, but "torture is sometimes permissible" is not an evil opinion held exclusively by evil people.
I am totally opposed to torture but I have no problem believing someone is "good" even if they think the CIA's actions were correct. Similarly, I try not to fall into the trap of thinking that people who disagree with me are either lying or stupid.
If you look closely enough at anyone, you will find something to dislike about them. Funny thing about people. Funnier thing: if you look closely enough at anyone you dislike, you can find something to like about them.
People are probably mostly the product of their environment and I doubt anyone here knows Ron Conway well enough to discuss his position on torture. Let his actions speak for him; you can be opposed to torture under pretty much any circumstances, as I am, and still regard someone with a different point of view as basically good.
I really wish your comment didn't get so much of the attention in this thread, it's a bit of a distraction from what should've been the main point of the article.
He said the CIA saved lives and that Feinstein should listen to her experience vs political staff. That's not a defense of torture. Even assuming you're opposed to any torture in all cases, you can still criticize the torture report and defend organizations involved.
Anyhow, I'd like to think that our goodness as people is not necessarily determined by our political tweets.
My experience so far( early 30's) has been exactly the opposite, most people/bosses I've meet that were successful in business were complete assholes, with several nice people working for them exclusively for the money.
That has in fact made part of my life very miserable because I really don't expect anything from anybody anymore. If been tricked/robbed/scammed so many times by people I trusted that my trust is mostly gone for now, and I only expect bad things from people when I depend on them for something. (If something good happens it's awesome, but I don't count on it)
Maybe I trust people more than I should have done, maybe it's the place I live... I don't know.
My albeit limited experience suggests to me that there's a U-shaped curve with super-rich / powerful / "effective" people. One end of the curve is "pathological sociopath," and the other is "extremely benevolent."
I don't have enough experience to tell you which side is higher than the other, though the fact that we do not live in some kind of absolute hellhole suggests that the curve is tipped toward the right (benevolence). Yet I do get the impression that it's one extreme or another.
The sociopaths do tend to burn themselves out eventually though. There seems to be some kind of what's effectively karma, which probably comes from peoples' lies eventually catching up with them. It's overall better to be benevolent.
If PG is right, then sociopath's will be fairly indistinguishable from nice people.
True sociopath's don't care about your feelings, either positively or negatively, they just care about advancing their own agenda.
If the best way to advance their own agenda is by being nice to people, then that's what they'll do. That's what vegabook got mercilessly downvoted for saying.
And as PG said, lies are really expensive, so smart sociopaths won't use them.
So maybe Ron Conway is a sociopath. But who cares why he's doing so much good? What matters are the results, not the inner reasons.
"My albeit limited experience suggests to me that there's a U-shaped curve with super-rich / powerful / "effective" people. One end of the curve is "pathological sociopath," and the other is "extremely benevolent.""
Time also changes people for better in many cases.
Want to add that something that I have noticed is that people may start out one way (assholes or very self centered) and then move toward "extremely benevolent" when money, fame or power is already "in the bag" and as they age. At that point they will become more generous and it's quite possible that people that they didn't treat nice are no longer around or visible to tell the story. Not taking a jab at Ronco here but do we really know what he was like in his 20's on the way up? (It's only a question for discussion so everyone keep calm..)
I can think of at least one person in the valley who is very well respected now and more or less a father figure that was viewed as quite the asshole back in the 90's when he actually was still working hard to make his mark on the world. (This isn't the only example actually the others were more or less meat and potatoes business people who wouldn't give anyone the time of day if there wasn't any benefit to them).
In the big picture, mutually beneficial cooperation works. That's what civilization is, and why we still have it. What we consider sociopathic is often highly cooperative, in an absolute sense. It's just that our standards have risen so high that that basic level of cooperativeness isn't enough.
Illustrative example: hooligans riding loud motorbikes stopping at red lights.
I think that's mostly true, although there's also the case of the pathological sociopath that after making their pile of money, decides to whitewash their legacy through philanthropy, in order to appear to jump over to the other side of the U.
I'm glad he did, I felt that his "Mean people fail" essay to be one of his weaker essays, and judging by the comments it got when it was released so did pretty much everyone else on hacker news:)
I tend to agree with him that good people get further along in life. In my industry, finance, I tend to see that the good people do much better than the assholes, contrary to what hollywood would have you believe:)
I think the reason for this is similar to what pg pointed out, finance is a very information and relationship driven business, the better caliber of friendship you cultivate the more people there are who will give you the first call, or preferential treatment on new issues.
My gut feeling is that personalities are not fixed, and there are feedback cycles in action here. For example, I find it believable that the more successful a person becomes, the less likely they are to feel a bunch of emotions that might cause them to behave unkindly (e.g. desperation, jealousy, and so on).
Disclaimer: I don't know enough about the personalities, politics, finances, or economics involved to have a substantive opinion on the matter under discussion.
This felt similar to me to the academic world. I'm a lowly graduate student, but one thing I've been consistency surprised by is the way the most senior people in the field are often the nicest. Sure—there are assholes everywhere. But when you hear horror stories of a professor mistreating their advisees or writing horrid reviews or submitting trash papers, they are often the junior folk. Partly because this behavior doesn't pass muster in the community, and so people who act this way don't get tenure; partly because senior professors have tenure and thus less to lose by acting nice; and partly because, just as I think in the startup world, being nice actually carries large benefits. In fact, I might argue that recognizing the benefits of niceness—valuing future rewards, trusting other persons—requires intelligence, so that maybe nicer people are in fact more intelligent as well.
But maybe that is Berkson's paradox: I'm more likely to hear about mean or successful researchers, so they appear anti-correlated even if they are in truth independent.
This is a general principle; the meanest people are, as pg once put it, "the nervous middle classes" on a status hierarchy:
"Another reason kids persecute nerds is to make themselves feel better. When you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down. Likewise, in any social hierarchy, people unsure of their own position will try to emphasize it by maltreating those they think rank below. I've read that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks."
"If I remember correctly, the most popular kids don't persecute nerds; they don't need to stoop to such things. Most of the persecution comes from kids lower down, the nervous middle classes."
It has to do with confidence. The nicest scientists are often very old, without anything to prove, and genuinely passionate about their subject.
Hotshots that are mid career have a bimodal distribution - there's some incredibly nice ones, and there are some sharks that enjoy pushing their students to the brink of exhaustion to crank out another paper so they can feel bigger than the person with the office next door.
The meanest people tend to be mean not out of malice or spite, but out of insecurity and a constant need to prove themselves.
Having dealt with a wide range of great to a-hole scientists, I think you're subtly onto something here.
Great scientists propagate through having a strong lineage. They effectively train, nurture, and then spin out more great scientists. The a-holes drive their progeny away from science. They effectively kill their own future. The great scientists end up promoting and extending their work through their academic children and grandchildren. I've seen both patterns up close and personally.
The big difference with investors is where academic progeny are closely related, usually in one field, investors are challenged by investing in closely aligned companies, given the many conflicts of interest. That's not to say an investor can't have a sector bias. But even companies close to one another are unlikely to benefit from each other.
Anyone interested in reading more on this topic should check out Adam Grant's Give and Take.
Incidentally, one of the interesting takeaways from the book is that if you look at plot of people mapped to career success, you'll find that benevolent givers dominate -both- ends of the distribution. The theory goes that those who are in the left tail got there by being too preoccupied with others' needs, to the exclusion of their own success. Conversely those in the right tail got to where they are both by helping others and by consistently asking others to help them. In the latter scenario these folks have harnessed benevolence as a strategy for career growth, and the collective goodwill "out there in the ether" nets out to measurable success over the long-run.
Excellent summary and thank-you for the book recommendation.
The first chapter is conveniently available as a free PDF from the book's site.
It seems like something for those people who are grinding away, doing good work at a great value for their investor/employer/client/customer, but remain underpaid and undervalued; a sort of self-defeating benevolence.
Let me just state that like people with autism I have a mental illness that affects the social part of my brain. It makes it hard to make friends as I lack people and social skills. It gave me an advantage to make me high functioning enough to learn programming at a young age and work with math and science better than average.
I am not a mean person, when people get to know me I am nice. But I have few friends because I lack social and people skills. I cannot seem to emotionally connect with people and what friends I have are also with a high IQ that I connect to intellectually.
When I worked, I worked with some mean people. They found high functioning coworkers of mine and pretended to be their friend and then stabbed them in the back and forced them to quit because they were competition. They took credit for their work and then decided to target me next. Calling me a nerd and geek, making fun of me, bullying and harassing me even with threats of violence trying to force me to quit. I ended up stressed out and developed a mental illness and was forced on disability.
Based on Linkedin those mean people who did all of that still have their jobs. They have social skills and people skills and use it to manipulate people, and then black-stab them and climb the corporate ladder of success. Until they make it to management where they can bully and harass people to do their jobs. All the while keeping their dark side hidden.
If you ever worked for Steve Jobs, you would say he was a jerk, he was abusive to his engineers to get things done just right. He had anger problems too. But he had the social skills and people skills to be well liked. There are a lot of people like Steve Jobs out there.
I'll most likely never work again due to my mental illness, but I am not a mean person, I don't treat people with disrespect, I don't bully and harass them. But due to lacking people and social skills, I'll never have enough friends to become a success.
I've heard YC has an internal VC review database (somewhat alluded to in the 2nd footnote). I'm curious, has any consideration been given to making it public or semi-public? Or at least to publish a list of "The X best-rated VCs/seed funds/angels" every once in a while to gamify better behavior?
"Good does not mean being a pushover. I would not want to face an angry Ronco. But if Ron's angry at you, it's because you did something wrong. Ron is so old school he's Old Testament. He will smite you in his just wrath, but there's no malice in it."
... like when smiting everyone who doesn't work in Tech or agree with him in SF by subverting democracy?
This is an example of where PG has a bias and we part ways.
Keep writing essays about software, and I promise I'll try to learn LISP, PG! ;)
It is no coincidence Ronco is the most coveted Angel in the Valley - he epitomizes integrity. This value is the most desired aspect an entrepreneur will strive for in finding early stage investors. We, especially in the early stages of building our company, need people who will do the right thing.
I wonder if pg's view of top investors as 'good' or, maybe more accurately, consistently moral has changed since he has gotten to know more of them personally? Not a charge of corruption or cronyism, but sometimes one has different standards for friends than for people one doesn't know.
So, I'm trying to see whether this applies to us in academia, whether the "nice-but-no-push-over" types are more successful than the sociopaths. Unfortunately, I can't think of one either in real life or from anecdotes shared with me.
I think it's different when the system isn't run on money, but pride.
EDIT: Actually, I am able to think of one. It is of worth to note that he is pretty clever and a natural born talent and was a child prodigy.
Terrifying thought: what if the causality goes the other way? What if all the bad are bad because "that's just the way the business works" and "hard choices"?
I think working hard also helps with luck. Here's a story. This goes back to the first ever tc discrpt Hackathon. I was a 19-year-old college student then. I used to go to this NYC resister hackerspace in brooklyn.
So we are doing our hack - a bunch of nyc resistor dudes - it's about 10pm. Here comes Ron Conway with Michael Arrington - checking out the hacks. They come to our desk. See the scrapy robot with wires coming out of it. And here Ron hands over a couple of business cards to our fellow hackers.
I was a total noob back then. I was just like these two guys are checking some stuff out. Without knowing who they were.
While other investors would be out enjoying their weekend, Ron was out on a Saturday night meeting hackers. Even after so many big wins he was out in the trenches to source the next big thing.
This article is dumb because it doesn't explain why Ron Conway is so good. Maybe this is written for a silicon valley insider audience that knows what he does that is so great. It feels like pg's writing was more interesting when he was the outsider taking on the status quo.
Part of it is that he has his fingers in every pie, and a contact list that contains pretty much "everyone" that matters in tech in SV, and he's not shy about using it to help connect people to make things happen.
Part of it is that he is very good at coming across as likeable, and charming. I would hope that is representative of how he is, but I've only met him once, briefly (as he had a tiny amount invested in a company I was involved with) so for me I'm going by first impressions and reputation.
Basically he's done favours for a massive amount of people in SV (by pulling strings and connecting people, and making a massive amount of small-ish investments) and been nice and charming enough that most of those people, and many more who know him by reputation, would drop whatever they're doing pretty much instantly if he called to ask for a favour partly because he comes across as a nice, likeable guy that you'd like to help out, and partly because they know by reputation that he's likely to return the favour if/when you need it, and the odds are it will be well worthwhile for you.
> If you can't tell who to be nice to, you have to be nice to everyone.
This (more or less) works the opposite way, too. Taking an example I know about, in Brazil, you can't often tell who is going to try to take advantage of you (in business) but enough people have tried in your past that you come to the conclusion that everyone will at least try in the future, and therefore you act accordingly.
It's really frustrating to have to treat people with your guard up when signing a contract or talking through specifics during a deal, but you learn to recognize advantage-takers and even to pretend you are one, too. In doing so, the other person will recognize they can't pull the wool over your eyes either, which puts you both on a 'level' playing field.
This isn't just something I've experienced but also something I've been told by many others in Brazil. There's even a 'law' about it, called Gérson's Law [1], which essentially states "if there's an opportunity to take advantage, go for it".
[+] [-] qeorge|11 years ago|reply
In pricing, if you have features in common with other vendors then those features are commodities and basically valueless. But the features you have that no one else has - those make you priceless.
For example, S3's uptime record makes it a different product than e.g., DreamObjects, even though they are API compatible.
Similarly, while VCs are all providing the ultimate commodity product (dumb money), its the features which no one else has that make investors like Ron Conway priceless. There's plenty of other VCs, but they are not substitute products for Ronco.
Finally, the way to find these unique, priceless features is to look for extremes:
And as a consumer, these are the companies you want to do business with: the Rackspaces, the Ron Conways, and the Stripes of this world.[1] If you read one business book this year, make it The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing. If you don't think a book on pricing can change your life, you haven't read this book. Protip: get an older edition and save a ton of dough.
[+] [-] brianbreslin|11 years ago|reply
http://smile.amazon.com/Principles-Pricing-Analytical-Rakesh...
[+] [-] Alex3917|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thomyorkie|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ComNik|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dudurocha|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] air|11 years ago|reply
So good he supports torture http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2014/12/09/ron-conway-bla...
[+] [-] Udo|11 years ago|reply
For me, the main objection to torture is not that it often yields unreliable intel, or that innocents end up getting tortured to death, or that it produces more terrorists - all of which are true. I recognize torture sometimes saves lives, and I'm not unsympathetic to the emotion that it carries a somewhat satisfying vengeance component against an enemy who, in their own words, values death more than we value life. Yet my objection is about what effect torture has on us as a society. It's a plague on our house.
[+] [-] simon_|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrxd|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aptwebapps|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] thaumaturgy|11 years ago|reply
People are probably mostly the product of their environment and I doubt anyone here knows Ron Conway well enough to discuss his position on torture. Let his actions speak for him; you can be opposed to torture under pretty much any circumstances, as I am, and still regard someone with a different point of view as basically good.
I really wish your comment didn't get so much of the attention in this thread, it's a bit of a distraction from what should've been the main point of the article.
[+] [-] logn|11 years ago|reply
Anyhow, I'd like to think that our goodness as people is not necessarily determined by our political tweets.
[+] [-] wmeredith|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cfontes|11 years ago|reply
My experience so far( early 30's) has been exactly the opposite, most people/bosses I've meet that were successful in business were complete assholes, with several nice people working for them exclusively for the money.
That has in fact made part of my life very miserable because I really don't expect anything from anybody anymore. If been tricked/robbed/scammed so many times by people I trusted that my trust is mostly gone for now, and I only expect bad things from people when I depend on them for something. (If something good happens it's awesome, but I don't count on it)
Maybe I trust people more than I should have done, maybe it's the place I live... I don't know.
[+] [-] api|11 years ago|reply
I don't have enough experience to tell you which side is higher than the other, though the fact that we do not live in some kind of absolute hellhole suggests that the curve is tipped toward the right (benevolence). Yet I do get the impression that it's one extreme or another.
The sociopaths do tend to burn themselves out eventually though. There seems to be some kind of what's effectively karma, which probably comes from peoples' lies eventually catching up with them. It's overall better to be benevolent.
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|11 years ago|reply
True sociopath's don't care about your feelings, either positively or negatively, they just care about advancing their own agenda.
If the best way to advance their own agenda is by being nice to people, then that's what they'll do. That's what vegabook got mercilessly downvoted for saying.
And as PG said, lies are really expensive, so smart sociopaths won't use them.
So maybe Ron Conway is a sociopath. But who cares why he's doing so much good? What matters are the results, not the inner reasons.
[+] [-] larrys|11 years ago|reply
Time also changes people for better in many cases.
Want to add that something that I have noticed is that people may start out one way (assholes or very self centered) and then move toward "extremely benevolent" when money, fame or power is already "in the bag" and as they age. At that point they will become more generous and it's quite possible that people that they didn't treat nice are no longer around or visible to tell the story. Not taking a jab at Ronco here but do we really know what he was like in his 20's on the way up? (It's only a question for discussion so everyone keep calm..)
I can think of at least one person in the valley who is very well respected now and more or less a father figure that was viewed as quite the asshole back in the 90's when he actually was still working hard to make his mark on the world. (This isn't the only example actually the others were more or less meat and potatoes business people who wouldn't give anyone the time of day if there wasn't any benefit to them).
[+] [-] hyp0|11 years ago|reply
Illustrative example: hooligans riding loud motorbikes stopping at red lights.
[+] [-] mfringel|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dinkumthinkum|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chollida1|11 years ago|reply
I'm glad he did, I felt that his "Mean people fail" essay to be one of his weaker essays, and judging by the comments it got when it was released so did pretty much everyone else on hacker news:)
I tend to agree with him that good people get further along in life. In my industry, finance, I tend to see that the good people do much better than the assholes, contrary to what hollywood would have you believe:)
I think the reason for this is similar to what pg pointed out, finance is a very information and relationship driven business, the better caliber of friendship you cultivate the more people there are who will give you the first call, or preferential treatment on new issues.
[+] [-] abstractbill|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gcv|11 years ago|reply
An example of Ron Conway being angry at someone (video at the bottom of the article): http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/09/eruption-over-sf-housing-an...
Disclaimer: I don't know enough about the personalities, politics, finances, or economics involved to have a substantive opinion on the matter under discussion.
[+] [-] pavpanchekha|11 years ago|reply
But maybe that is Berkson's paradox: I'm more likely to hear about mean or successful researchers, so they appear anti-correlated even if they are in truth independent.
[+] [-] calcsam|11 years ago|reply
"Another reason kids persecute nerds is to make themselves feel better. When you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down. Likewise, in any social hierarchy, people unsure of their own position will try to emphasize it by maltreating those they think rank below. I've read that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks."
"If I remember correctly, the most popular kids don't persecute nerds; they don't need to stoop to such things. Most of the persecution comes from kids lower down, the nervous middle classes."
http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
[+] [-] Fede_V|11 years ago|reply
Hotshots that are mid career have a bimodal distribution - there's some incredibly nice ones, and there are some sharks that enjoy pushing their students to the brink of exhaustion to crank out another paper so they can feel bigger than the person with the office next door.
The meanest people tend to be mean not out of malice or spite, but out of insecurity and a constant need to prove themselves.
[+] [-] robg|11 years ago|reply
Great scientists propagate through having a strong lineage. They effectively train, nurture, and then spin out more great scientists. The a-holes drive their progeny away from science. They effectively kill their own future. The great scientists end up promoting and extending their work through their academic children and grandchildren. I've seen both patterns up close and personally.
The big difference with investors is where academic progeny are closely related, usually in one field, investors are challenged by investing in closely aligned companies, given the many conflicts of interest. That's not to say an investor can't have a sector bias. But even companies close to one another are unlikely to benefit from each other.
[+] [-] brianlash|11 years ago|reply
Incidentally, one of the interesting takeaways from the book is that if you look at plot of people mapped to career success, you'll find that benevolent givers dominate -both- ends of the distribution. The theory goes that those who are in the left tail got there by being too preoccupied with others' needs, to the exclusion of their own success. Conversely those in the right tail got to where they are both by helping others and by consistently asking others to help them. In the latter scenario these folks have harnessed benevolence as a strategy for career growth, and the collective goodwill "out there in the ether" nets out to measurable success over the long-run.
[+] [-] mrschwabe|11 years ago|reply
The first chapter is conveniently available as a free PDF from the book's site.
It seems like something for those people who are grinding away, doing good work at a great value for their investor/employer/client/customer, but remain underpaid and undervalued; a sort of self-defeating benevolence.
[+] [-] orionblastar|11 years ago|reply
I am not a mean person, when people get to know me I am nice. But I have few friends because I lack social and people skills. I cannot seem to emotionally connect with people and what friends I have are also with a high IQ that I connect to intellectually.
When I worked, I worked with some mean people. They found high functioning coworkers of mine and pretended to be their friend and then stabbed them in the back and forced them to quit because they were competition. They took credit for their work and then decided to target me next. Calling me a nerd and geek, making fun of me, bullying and harassing me even with threats of violence trying to force me to quit. I ended up stressed out and developed a mental illness and was forced on disability.
Based on Linkedin those mean people who did all of that still have their jobs. They have social skills and people skills and use it to manipulate people, and then black-stab them and climb the corporate ladder of success. Until they make it to management where they can bully and harass people to do their jobs. All the while keeping their dark side hidden.
If you ever worked for Steve Jobs, you would say he was a jerk, he was abusive to his engineers to get things done just right. He had anger problems too. But he had the social skills and people skills to be well liked. There are a lot of people like Steve Jobs out there.
I'll most likely never work again due to my mental illness, but I am not a mean person, I don't treat people with disrespect, I don't bully and harass them. But due to lacking people and social skills, I'll never have enough friends to become a success.
[+] [-] puredemo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lpolovets|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nsxwolf|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevesearer|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justizin|11 years ago|reply
... like when smiting everyone who doesn't work in Tech or agree with him in SF by subverting democracy?
This is an example of where PG has a bias and we part ways.
Keep writing essays about software, and I promise I'll try to learn LISP, PG! ;)
[+] [-] nocman|11 years ago|reply
Cue the obligatory Weird Al reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BX56syrmWQ
"It slices.."
"It dices..."
"LOOK AT THAT TOMATO!"
"You could even cut a tin can with it, but you wouldn't want to!"
Ah, good childhood memories.
For those who might care but don't know, Lisa Popeil (Ron's half sister) sang backup vocals on that song. Pretty funny.
With apologies to anyone too young to know about Ronco TV commercials ("Now how much would you pay????")
:-D
[+] [-] dinkumthinkum|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jahmed|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] claypoolb|11 years ago|reply
I remember one example of Ranco's unyielding integrity: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/09/24/angelgate-ron-conway-...
[+] [-] russnewcomer|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noobermin|11 years ago|reply
I think it's different when the system isn't run on money, but pride.
EDIT: Actually, I am able to think of one. It is of worth to note that he is pretty clever and a natural born talent and was a child prodigy.
[+] [-] dropit_sphere|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeeshanm|11 years ago|reply
So we are doing our hack - a bunch of nyc resistor dudes - it's about 10pm. Here comes Ron Conway with Michael Arrington - checking out the hacks. They come to our desk. See the scrapy robot with wires coming out of it. And here Ron hands over a couple of business cards to our fellow hackers.
I was a total noob back then. I was just like these two guys are checking some stuff out. Without knowing who they were.
While other investors would be out enjoying their weekend, Ron was out on a Saturday night meeting hackers. Even after so many big wins he was out in the trenches to source the next big thing.
[+] [-] guelo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vidarh|11 years ago|reply
Part of it is that he is very good at coming across as likeable, and charming. I would hope that is representative of how he is, but I've only met him once, briefly (as he had a tiny amount invested in a company I was involved with) so for me I'm going by first impressions and reputation.
Basically he's done favours for a massive amount of people in SV (by pulling strings and connecting people, and making a massive amount of small-ish investments) and been nice and charming enough that most of those people, and many more who know him by reputation, would drop whatever they're doing pretty much instantly if he called to ask for a favour partly because he comes across as a nice, likeable guy that you'd like to help out, and partly because they know by reputation that he's likely to return the favour if/when you need it, and the odds are it will be well worthwhile for you.
[+] [-] personlurking|11 years ago|reply
This (more or less) works the opposite way, too. Taking an example I know about, in Brazil, you can't often tell who is going to try to take advantage of you (in business) but enough people have tried in your past that you come to the conclusion that everyone will at least try in the future, and therefore you act accordingly.
It's really frustrating to have to treat people with your guard up when signing a contract or talking through specifics during a deal, but you learn to recognize advantage-takers and even to pretend you are one, too. In doing so, the other person will recognize they can't pull the wool over your eyes either, which puts you both on a 'level' playing field.
This isn't just something I've experienced but also something I've been told by many others in Brazil. There's even a 'law' about it, called Gérson's Law [1], which essentially states "if there's an opportunity to take advantage, go for it".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9rson%27s_law