Danielle Fong notes past hard tech success reflects selection bias.
I was talking to a YC partner about how well all the hard tech startups are doing. He said investors are hot to fund them because they're afraid AI will eat all software. I'm glad hardware startups are getting funded, but this is a mistake. Good founders are what wins.
Many users praised Paul Graham's take that AI hardware funding fears are overblown because they agree with betting on obsessed founders solving tangible problems, while a few worried VCs will still back the wrong hardware efforts.
On the other hand, I will say that the hard tech founders are generally more committed. Building nuclear reactors is not the sort of thing you do on a whim. And commitment does have predictive value.
there is such a selection effect because of extremely strong selection on past cohorts of hard tech founders, that there's a strong covariate, but you really have to have a cycle or so of grifters exploiting the commons before you can factor out some of the mistakes
it matters what standard of proof things are being held to, but things are wildly different across
i try to hew to what can be readily demonstrated as much as i can, for this reason. if i couldn't demonstrate publicly i think @lightcellenergy would have been deeply discounted.
gives me empathy for like, edison, tesla, and the gentle scientists demonstrating before the royal society, physical principles such as chemiluminescence, and electricity and xrays and radiation.
in many ways my chosen profession is like inventor scientist throwback to the 19th century, belle epoque, industrial and scientific revolution and frankly, i'll take it. incredible vibes
I was talking to a YC partner about how well all the hard tech startups are doing. He said investors are hot to fund them because they're afraid AI will eat all software. I'm glad hardware startups are getting funded, but this is a mistake. Good founders are what wins.
@paulg Good founders can open a restaurant and be successful. That's what Buffett said about Bill Gates back in the day and I agree it's true for all good founders.
@rajatsuri @paulg Buffett most famously said the opposite!
“When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.”
But he does a very different kind of investing.
@rajatsuri I was amusing myself trying to imagine what the Collisons' restaurant would be like, and then I remembered they have one and I've eaten at it.
@paulg @patrickc can we get a restaurant in the Bay Area too plz thx
@pitdesi @paulg "If Bill had started a hot dog stand, he would have become the hot dog king of the world." @grok fact check me
@paulg This is also true for filmmaking and the reason why the us had such great filmmakers like Hal Ashby in the 70s. I’m not combining my career in film With ai and having the most fun In years. People should bet on people over elevator pitch.
@paulg betting on sectors is easy. betting on great founders is what generates outsized returns.
@paulg chill, allow us we're finally getting SaaS like treatment
@paulg Correct. There are still plenty of hard software problems left to solve. AI's been eating software problems a lot slower than I myself anticipated. There's a need for good founders on the soft side, too.
@paulg What do you think of solving problems with AI to the legacy industries right now like construction?
@paulg Believe in the person first and foremost. That's most important.
@paulg this is also a mistake because AI will "eat" all hardware too
however this was true for the internet as well and rest assured there will be ample business opportunity for everyone, as one can surely surmise from history!
-sent from inside the Dot Com digestive tract
@paulg unfortunately for the good founder, they never had to compete with 1 million machines humming in the night one shotting software
dario for president.
@paulg What are the ways that founders may get noticed other than YC? Sometimes it seems traction on a product, or the constructuon of a founder's reputation, requires a dose of engineered luck. (# please help with this as I could do with a smidgen).
@paulg Hardware startups should be as common as software startups. VCs should be spoilt for choice
@paulg So deep and hard tech startups are really on a boom. What do you think about the future of software startups? Will funding dry in software domain?
@paulg especially since for humanoid robot hardware startups the software is the bottleneck and not the hardware. the better the software, the easier the hardware is. hardware is no moat here, the software dictates the final result. quite ironic.
@paulg Hardware has the same risk as always, same for software, which means imo software is still way less risky but due to common (bad) conventions they've inherited a lot of "new types of risk" which feels less risky for hardware because the risk model is broken.