pg had too much success too quickly for it to be chance (IMHO).
Leaving Viaweb aside (Yahoo was buying all kinds of stuff back then so it’s hard to know how cool-headed finance would have valued it) he clearly saw and exploited a massive opportunity around technology investment. And it’s worth bearing in mind that he drove several of the first few monster batches through an overall market meltdown that had a lot of VCs saying it was the end of the world.
There was a definite luck factor called the iPhone: someone was going to build an army of businesses on the back of a platform revolution like that, but he got there first and executed.
Now the public good component is a more complicated story, I honestly don’t know if replacing one club of secret-handshaking insiders who routinely fail up with a different one is a net win, and I certainly don’t buy the argument that you can measure it by market cap, but at least the new club doesn’t care who your parents are I guess? I think it’s probably a win vs. an admittedly abysmal bar.
I’ve thought about this comment a lot since you wrote it. I’m reminded of Bill Gross, “the bond king,” who founded PIMCO. Skilled, wanting to win at all costs, but who built a strategy primarily for a declining interest rate macro (“structural alpha”) that slowly became less effective near the end of his career, requiring creative maneuvers to successfully compete against competitors.
I’m not ignoring the varying degrees of skill, education, and intelligence. I’m emphasizing the luck required for all that to be effective.
Great comment, appreciate the history lesson and teachable moment.
I’m flattered that you got value from my comment, I think it’s just stuff people my age ended up watching: I think I joined HN in like 2007/2008 and that’s when pg’s essays were still considered radical and no YC company had IPO’d for zillions yet.
Leaving Viaweb aside (Yahoo was buying all kinds of stuff back then so it’s hard to know how cool-headed finance would have valued it) he clearly saw and exploited a massive opportunity around technology investment. And it’s worth bearing in mind that he drove several of the first few monster batches through an overall market meltdown that had a lot of VCs saying it was the end of the world.
There was a definite luck factor called the iPhone: someone was going to build an army of businesses on the back of a platform revolution like that, but he got there first and executed.
Now the public good component is a more complicated story, I honestly don’t know if replacing one club of secret-handshaking insiders who routinely fail up with a different one is a net win, and I certainly don’t buy the argument that you can measure it by market cap, but at least the new club doesn’t care who your parents are I guess? I think it’s probably a win vs. an admittedly abysmal bar.