I remember living in Wood Green, a vaguely rough area of London, where people put the sofas they no longer wanted out in the front garden in case someone else did.
Anyway, we were getting rid of an Ikea box-case-thing, and stuck it outside, and a kid of say 11 asked if he could have it, and took it off on a toy truck.
He came back and pushed a card through the door saying thank you (it would be "just right to keep all my toys in"). I am pretty sure his mum made him write it, (long story) but we kept that card in the back of various drawers through maybe two house moves because it was an unexpected example of politeness and parental guidance.
One of the crazy things that social media might sort out one day is that i would strongly consider recommending that kid for a job, or university, simply on the strength of that one act. No idea who or where he is of course but there we go.
One more point regarding the bonus question. I don't believe that Wall Street properly accounts for the amount of risk traders take. Should that trader receive 10% of the money he made for the bank that year? No, absolutely not. Because he or she could lose just as much or more the next year. The time horizons are skewed and people on Wall Street are compensated based on short time horizons when the risk in fact is spread over many years. Unfortunately, when things go sour, the general public pays disproportionately.
Yes, exactly. This nails the fundamental problem with the street in my view: unlimited upside, limited downside. You risk everything and have a great year you are rolling in cash. You aim high and fail miserably you probably get fired and maybe even picked up at another bank. This doesn't even get started on the lack of criminal enforcement for fraud, etc. Right on.
Oh, I didn't mean to imply that there is fraud in the vast majority of cases. Just that there is some subset of that behavior that produces fraudulent activity.
Appreciate this perspective. Not hard to imagine why working with friends would be fun. I have many friends who still work on Wall Street or in the financial industry. I don't disrespect them for it, although I do wish more young smart people were focused on making things rather than transacting. I tried to write this post specifically about MY experience and stay away from generalizations as much as possible.
> I don't disrespect them for it, although I do wish more young smart people were focused on making things rather than transacting.
It's six of one, half a dozen of another. You either peddle exotic financial instruments on Wall Street, or peddle advertising in Silicon Valley (or work on something like Glass or self-driving cars that's completely subsidized by advertising profits). I don't think there is anything more noble about finding new ways to convince people to buy cheap Chinese crap they don't need.
> I do wish more young smart people were focused on making things
Yep, I'm with you! Thanks for writing the article, I enjoyed reading it. We may have even walked by each other on the third floor at 745 7th ave at some point. Ha.
I'd agree with this. YC is a wonderful program for both startups and entrepreneurs, PG is a godsend for these groups, especially in past years when seed funding was harder to come by. However, a lot of the hype now around YC often pushes entrepreneurs to raise way larger seed rounds than they need or know what to do with. This is of course not always the case, and I can think of several YC companies off the top of my head that did not go this route (even when there was investor demand for it), but on balance, YC seems to encourage founders to raise way more capital than these companies need in the early stages. Again, I think entrepreneurs are now waking up to some of the negative consequences that can result.
Yes, the point is that in most cases, at some point these companies will raise institutional VC. But whereas in the past couple years, I've seen founders blindly take seed capital (in some cases very large amounts) because the market offered it, I see founders now thinking more thoughtfully on sizing and whether to take it at all until they can show real growth. Once they can show that, they can make a better and more educated decision to hop on the VC treadmill or not. Mainly the point is that I'm seeing more mature founders question the funding environment and realize some of the negative implications of overfunding at the seed stage...
Indeed, I'm defining seed investor largely in the context of a "seed round"...which these days seems to be anywhere btwn 500k - 1.2M. There are some 2013 startups that take a bit of friends and family money to pay for rent / food, and this largely comes down to the founder's personal / financial situation. Also yes, many of the cases I'm thinking of here are consumer focused companies.
