I’m changing jobs. It’s not really anything wrong with the company, but they’re changing the technical direction and it’s not one that interests me, so I’ve decided not to stay. So I’ve been on the job hunt (yay?). At one recent interview, I was asked about having been banned from Quora and Hacker News. If this is going to be something that I have to deal with– if this is a real reputation issue, which it should not be, because it’s just a petty tech feud that I didn’t even start, but I don’t always make the rules around here– then I better come out and dance with this fuckin’ thing, am I right?
There’s not much value in talking about Hacker News or Quora, because that stuff’s already been hashed out, I won every dispute, and it’s over. I don’t care anymore about those platforms or those people. It is amusing to me that both events (and, probably, a few more adverse events in my career that, unlike website bans, actually matter) draw back to the same cause: Paul Graham dislikes me, and has for at least three years. Did I ever do anything to him, personally? No. I’ve met him once (in 2007) and, at the time, I was a nobody and I’m sure that I didn’t make a memorable impression. Have I ever harmed him in business? I seriously doubt it. Did I say something that left him feeling insulted? I can’t be sure, but I’d like to doubt it, because I didn’t say anything negative about him personally until after I was attacked by his mooks, Dan Gackle and Paul Buchheit.
So, what’s it about then? Why would Paul Graham send out two attack dogs against some guy in Chicago that he’s only once met, and then only briefly? I think that I finally have the answer. One of the theories about this that has been discussed on Quora is:
The short answer is that Paul Graham can’t stand to share the limelight with a younger, smarter person doing what he did: using polished essays and contrarian thinking to establish notoriety.
That’s flattering but, no, I don’t think that it’s quite that. Close, perhaps. Am I smarter than Paul Graham? I don’t know. I don’t like him, and he’s surrounded himself with some really belligerent people, but he’s clearly a smart guy. “Younger” is even less likely to be a factor; he is not actually old (he’s only 51) and, even though there is the pervasive stereotype of older people envying and hating young people, there’s really not a lot of truth in that one.
Instead, it seems that Paul Graham’s dislike for me is an artifact of a perceived similarity of methods. He’s a computer programmer and a writer capable of insight into a wide array of topics. I’m a computer programmer and a writer, likewise capable. I don’t think he perceives me as being better at these things than he is, and I strongly doubt that he envies me. He dislikes me because he knows what I am doing, because he built his current reputation and business by doing something similar. As my economic and social interests are different from his, and often in opposition, conflict seems inevitable.
How Paul Graham became famous
What did Paul Graham do? Why is he important? I have to give him credit for a few things. In 2004, when the consensus in the economic mainstream was that technology startups were failed experiments of the 1990s, Paul Graham took a contrarian position. It’s tough to do that, and very hard to do so in public, because it’s embarrassing to be wrong, especially on the sort of topic where people make million-dollar bets. After 2001, Paul Graham pointed out (as seems obvious today) that not everything that the startups and technology companies were doing was stupid. He stood up for Silicon Valley when it seemed like all the talent and attention and money was going back to Wall Street and the corporate mainstream.
He was right, then. Not everything “startup” was stupid. In fact, many of the best companies were built during that dark era (2002-04) when faith in startups was at a nadir. What was he right about? For one thing, small companies actually can outperform organizations at 10-50 times their size. That’s not just (always) arrogant puffery; I’ve seen it happen. For another, talented individuals really are underrated by the corporate mainstream, and Graham was unapologetic in pointing that out. The recovery of the startup ecosystem proved Graham right that it could happen, the 2008 meltdown left Wall Street with egg on its face, and Graham himself proved to be a strong writer. He developed a following and a reputation, in a time when everything but startups was reeling from the financial catastrophe. Then he monetized that reputation with Y Combinator, and here we are today.
Elemental talent
Something that I’ve learned is that in addition to specific talents, there’s also something that I call elemental talent. Elemental talent is this other weird, rare thing difficult to put in words (but I’ll try, because if anyone can do it, I can).
Sometimes, a person is “a natural” at a specific skill in some measurable way. There’s almost certainly no such thing as “the basketball gene” or “the programming gene”, but some people seem to have rare natural capacities that, in the upper tiers of competition where a work ethic and favorable circumstances are a given, can yield a decisive advantage. On the whole, that isn’t what I’m interested in talking about, because I think that it’s actually somewhat rare that a natural, genetic quirk makes that kind of difference. Work ethic, circumstances, acquired skill through deliberate practice, and just plain luck seem to have more of a role than innate ability. Nor, when I use the word “talent”, do I care whether the capability is natural or acquired. “Nature vs. nurture” debates can be quite interesting, but they’re irrelevant here. In fact, I’d guess that more than half of what I’m calling talent, in this particular essay, is actually acquired skill.
So what is elemental talent? One aspect of people who have it is that they’re good at becoming good at things. This doesn’t require only intelligence and creativity, but also requires a certain self-knowledge, a work ethic, and an understanding of where to invest and where not.
For example, there are things that I’ll never be good at, and things that I can develop quickly, and I’ve learned to sense the difference before I invest too much of myself. I’ve written comedy and I have (when very young and slightly drunk) performed stand-up, and while I’m quite good at the former, I doubt that I’ll ever be noteworthy in the latter: delivering jokes (a completely different skill from writing them) is hard and, while I could become good at it with significant effort, I doubt that I’ll ever be exceptional. The minor aspect of elemental talent is: “Good at many things” and various correlates like “Becomes good at things quickly” and “Knows her strengths and weaknesses.” People with elemental talent generally have an aura of intellect and competence that surrounds them, and what tends to distinguish them is their ability to move from one field to another and to work on interdisciplinary projects. That’s nice, but it’s not necessarily all that rare.
The major aspect of elemental talent is much rarer, and arguably more powerful: it’s the ability to spot (and develop) talent in others and, even more important than that, an understanding of what talented people want, both from the emotional and the growth perspective. Most people don’t know how we in the creative or cognitive “1 percent” operate. Most of us don’t know how we operate, individually or as a group. What drives us? What unique challenges do we face? Why are so many of us prone to social awkwardness? Which circumstances unlock our capabilities, and which ones waste us? In my case, it’s not just my having a high-talent mind that’s rare, because that alone is not very rare; it’s knowing the high-talent mind and all of its bizarre permutations and quirks.
I’ve seen and experienced and done a lot, so I’m well aware of my limitations. Not only are there many things that I can’t do, but there are plenty of things that one person can’t do. Some projects demand collective efforts. Some projects only need one talented person and many grunts, but the hardest and most interesting endeavors require multiple people at high levels of talent. Ultimately, what makes me superior to most of the people actually running society isn’t just that I’m a “0.xyz percenter”. They can already find such people– people as good or better than me– if they pay enough. (It will be very expensive, and they’ll probably need to hire someone like me to sort everything out at scale, but it can be done.) Rather, it’s that I know how “0.xyz percenters” think, even when we’re talking about talents that I don’t have. [1] I understand not just high talent of its various forms (some natural, most acquired) but how it is formed and protected, and how to lead high-talent people. (For an example: although I didn’t invent the concept, I coined the term “open allocation” to describe the most important insight, in the 21st century thus-far, into high-talent management.) I’m far from the smartest person out there, but I understand enough about how the smartest people think that I can lead teams and projects that most people can’t.
[1] For one example, there’s a stereotype that high-talent people are “prima donnas” who believe we’re “too good” to participate in the sort of “team player” shared suffering that organizations demand from their people, even (and sometimes especially) their best. It isn’t so. We all harbor anxiety; if we stop pushing ourselves to top form, we’ll be overtaken by peers who are not that far behind us. Most of us have a sense that with talent comes a responsibility to do something meaningful with it, and “team player” nonsense (that is, participating in shared suffering, usually at the expense of growth and creative performance) matters a lot from a parochial people-pleasing standpoint, but offers nothing lasting or meaningful to the world.
Motivation and charisma
Elemental talent can, in some cases, evolve into a kind of intellectual charisma. It’s not like the general charisma of the politician or the CEO, but it can be powerfully influential. Let’s look at stand-up comedy. Louis CK doesn’t have general (or lay) charisma at all– part of his schtick comes from his being an overweight nebbish–but he’s smart and understands his medium very well; he’s a “comic’s comic”. That said, there aren’t many positions for people like Louis CK trading on high-end charisma. Jon Stewart was a fantastic Daily Show host but a mediocre stand-up comedian. George Carlin was also a great comic’s comic, but his notoriety came not from his intellect but from the perceived vulgarity of the (tame, by today’s standard) “Seven Dirty Words” routine. Comic’s comics can become famous and pack houses, but the odds are probably a lot better for the more traditional alpha comic.
The high-end charisma that tends to come from elemental talent isn’t going to make someone an elite politician or business executive, because both of those jobs require lay charisma instead (and people who have both, like Barack Obama, are astronomically rare). It can, however, make a person a trend-setter and an influencer. It makes more heroes than rich people. It’s slower to act, but can be more steady over the years. Lay charisma allows a person to win the affections of the fickle, while high-end charisma can earn respect from those who know what’s actually going on, a crowd whose opinions are more stable, and that can compound over decades into substantial influence. (At least, that’s what I tell myself.)
One might ask: “Should high-end charisma really matter?” If people are receptive to charisma and need to be led, are they really “high-end” talent at all? Don’t the best people want to march to their own drums? Well, there are a few things in play here. First, the best people in any given field are not necessarily elemental talents. Elemental talent isn’t “better”, and often the specialists are superior in the field. If one asks, “Who is the best at X?”, the name that comes up will often be that of a specialist. On the other hand, the “big picture” question of “What should we do with X talent?” is sometimes (and I say sometimes, not always) better answered by an elemental talent.
People of talent (specific or elemental or both) struggle with motivation. Let’s talk about this, because it’s fascinating. Fiction writing is one discipline that really forces the writer to think about what makes people tick. (Many of my projects, when younger, were unsuccessful simply because I didn’t understand people well enough to write plausible characters.) What’s driving these characters? Inerrant heroes and cosmic villains are boring. It’s much more challenging, and it leads to better writing (constraint breeds creativity) if you force yourself to give every main character (even the ugly ones) a genuine motivation. Not just “he’s evil” or “she wants to save the world” but tangible things that they value, and plausible reasons why they would value them.
On this topic, I’ve started writing fiction again, hammering out a concept that’s been simmering in the back of my mind for a few years. At first, it was a fantasy novel set in a world with a few twists (which I won’t spoil, and which have been pushed to the back burner as I’ve developed a character as interesting as the world she lives in). I’d get started and then I would sputter out, because I’d always start on a boring, conventional vector: the story would open on something like a 16-year-old boy who just killed his first orc, and now he wants to hop into dungeons to slay dragons and collect magic items. I’d get to about 60 pages, realize that either the story or my development “wasn’t there yet”, and put it aside.
Three years or so ago, I came up with a much better main character: a female magic user, with an unusual back story, who’s mostly a pacifist Even if it was an orc or a dragon, it’d be very painful for her to kill anything. Now, the traditional “white mage” stereotype is a bit ridiculous: I’m talking about the cleric carries a hammer because his/her piety won’t allow drawing of blood (but internal bleeding is OK with the gods). So that “white mage” thing fell away, too. As Farisa’s character developed in my mind, I realized that the last thing she’d let herself be is a third fiddle in some “adventurer party”, casting heal spells so a bunch of sociopaths can slay dragons and collect trinkets, and probably the main hero’s love interest. No, she’ll want to be more than that.
The world evolved, too, the longer it lived in my mind. I realized that I don’t care that much about the medieval era, but there’s no rule that fantasy has to occur between 600 and 1500 AD. So I decided to bump the technology level to the early 1800s. (In fact, many fantasy writers use a 19th-century culture and society anyway, attributed to magic or elves or other fancies, because genuine manorial life was incredibly dull.) Over time, the story and world and characters became more complex. This, in my view, is how most good art works. The primary ingredients are rarely original– in fact, modern art be damned, I would say that they have to “come from somewhere” that is emotionally or aesthetically meaningful to the creator– and the part that’s original emerges in the immense amount of work that it takes to make them come together well.
At some point, a writer lets his characters drive the story. For all the prestige that accrues to successful writers, what’s really going on when you write is that you’re letting your imaginary friends talk to and kill and fuck (sometimes, all three at the same time) each other and spilling it on to the page. I don’t know why this is, but when the characters “come alive” in a state of writing flow, there’s a sense of them being apart from the author, like “I’m not writing this story; they are”. That’s true of the heroes like Farisa La’ewind (that name might not mean much, right now, to the reader) and of the villains like Hampus Bell (that name means even less to the reader). This can be scary when it comes to evil characters, because after writing a murder (or worse) scene, there’s a horrifying feeling of, “So was that sick cunt living in my head, this whole time?” (Yeah, he was.)
Whatever story I might want to tell as a writer has to become tertiary to what the characters want. Farisa doesn’t necessarily care about epic adventures. She obviously doesn’t perceive of herself as being in a book, or of her world as a “fantasy”, because it’s the real world for her. Her talents are extraordinary, and so are her vulnerabilities. (In this world, magical capability usually comes with a severe, poorly-understood illness called “the Sickness” that is roughly a mix of bipolar, panic disorder, and epilepsy, but can also cause infertility and fatigue.) She’s 19 when the story begins, and she’s spent most of her life wanting to be a normal girl, and is just beginning to realize that it will be impossible. Perhaps slightly despite herself, she’s pulled into the magic-using community, and others want to put her talents all sorts of things. They want her to find a cure for the Sickness, or advance the state of magic, or become the theatrical sort of battle mage. Farisa, I realized, wants to continue her mother’s work, which is to eradicate “girl cutting” (FGM). In the context of her talents, she decides to search for a spell that can reverse it. At the time, her interests seem unrelated to the world of magic. Why is this cause (reversing FGM) important to her? Well, that would be a major spoiler, so I’m not going to answer that. It’s what makes sense for Farisa, even if it delays me (as writer) in getting to the more traditional fantasy stuff.
Other magic users’ objections to Farisa’s pursuits actually mirror those that I had, fighting against myself as I came up with the story. When I started with this concept, I wanted to explore the world: the dragons and elves and arcane spells and ancient civilizations. When I dropped into Farisa’s character, though, I found completely different motivations, more human and less fantastical. Adventures and battles and conflicts will come, but they’re not what she’s looking for. Epic battles, in the real world as well as fantasy, rarely happen because any character wants them to occur. No character wants conflict, although the writer needs it– and when one realizes this, one can write better stories.
Understanding human motivation is a key skill. I won’t claim to be an expert in it, because there’s a lot that I’ve got left to learn. What I am finding out is that people of talent often struggle at figuring out what to do with their gifts. It seems to be a recurring theme. Hell, I’ve been battling that for years. High-talent people have their own anxieties and motivational conflicts, and people who can give them a sense of clarity can often lead them to achieve great things.
Why elemental talent is relevant to Paul Graham, and his beef with me
I don’t much like Paul Graham, and I like his mooks even less, but I will give him this: he is an elemental talent. He even managed to turn it into intellectual charisma. There was a time, only a few years ago, when a large percentage of elite young programmers would have jumped at the chance to work with him. This allowed him to invest at lower valuations than traditional investors would be able to get, and that’s been making him a boatload of money ever since then.
Paul Graham wouldn’t be able to lead a team of average people (and, to be fair, neither would I) but he managed to resurrect the image of a beleaguered industry in front of those who mattered most, at the time, to its survival and health: elite programmers. Having refined his artistic sense by studying painting, he recognized the importance of programming language aesthetics in a time when the workable-but-hideous mainstays, C++ and Java, ruled (see: “Python Paradox”). When most companies were run by people who thought programming language choice was a meaningless detail and that everyone should default to the standards, he pointed out that one could get substantially better programmers if one had the courage to use more uncommon languages (or, better yet, to let the programmers themselves choose their tools). He was right, to a large degree. Paul Graham had enough winning insights to make a name for himself, circa 2010, as a leading expert on top software talent and what it wants. He’s fallen out of touch on that topic, not because he isn’t capable, but because of defects in the company that he keeps, now that he’s a rich venture capitalist.
In addition to having elemental talent, Graham also understands how it works and what can make it powerful. He’s become aware of the charisma that accompanies being good at many things, especially in contrast to a hyperspecialized professional world where most people remain good at only one thing and visibly lose their general creativity by age 35. [2] While Silicon Valley’s “money front” was won due to macroeconomic conditions too powerful to be influenced by one essayist, Paul Graham gave it a chance for life on the “talent front” at a time when so many people, having seen their stock options evaporate, had lost faith in the startup world. I doubt that he convinced the screwed-over programmers of the last bubble (birth years 1962 to 1978) to make an about-face, but he gave a sense of hope to the following generation (1979 to 1994).
[2] Please don’t take this as an ageist statement (I’m 32) because it is not inevitable. This is common due to the psychological monoculture that is corporate work, but it’s not natural or due to a loss of “fluid intelligence”. People who safeguard their general creative capability and elemental talent will typically retain and strengthen it well into, and in some cases beyond, middle age.
Now, we get to the core of why Paul Graham dislikes me. He is an elemental talent, and so am I, and I know for a fact that he knows exactly who I am (he’s blocked me on Twitter, we have mutual colleagues, his mooks attacked me within weeks of each other) and that both of us know this. Elemental talent itself isn’t formidable (it makes you a great generalist, but it doesn’t confer a specific skill) until it takes a certain form, a specter that can rise up and give vision to talent more generally, because it can take on the right to speak for talent as a force. (This is the elemental aspect of it.) I don’t think that Paul Graham (despite what is said on Quora) thinks of me as a “better” elemental talent. I’m not even sure that the comparison makes sense, when you’re talking about separate generations and radically different cultural and social circumstances. It is clear (and has been, since “an investor in Quora” demanded that the site ban me) that he finds me to be a threatening elemental talent. I have something powerful on my side: the truth.
Living in truth… or at least, toward it.
Paul Graham, of course, has his truth. Startups worked for him. He made millions of dollars selling a company to Yahoo in 1998. No one can invalidate his experience, because it objectively happened. Moreover, the 2001-04 negativity that was directed at startups was, in retrospect, obviously an overcorrection. Startups weren’t dead and technology was still a massively important piece of the economy, even at the nadir of Silicon Valley. Paul Graham recognized that a large number of people were wrong about something and he stepped in, was right, and established the reputation that allowed him to semi-retire as a venture capitalist, monetizing said reputation. All I can say on that is: good for him. Isn’t that what most of us would like to do: get something so right, or be right so visibly, that one can live off the profits indefinitely? I’ve got no problem with his doing this.
Fast forward to 2012, when Paul Graham’s economic interests mandated that he continue putting forward a thesis (that VC-funded startups present the best deal, or even a good one, for high-talent people) that had ceased to be true. By this point, VC-funded startups (“Silicon Valley”) were no longer the underdog; Wall Street (its reputation in tatters after 2008’s financial collapse) and Real America were. Plenty of pundits commented that the financial meltdown would have the desirable effect of driving talent to “do something real” in the Valley. The Googles and Amazons of the world, and the VC-funded app companies, had been delivered a certain moral high ground, because the perception was that these companies were doing “real stuff” (e.g. R&D) as opposed to financial “shenanigans”.
In July 2012, an obscure blogger (meaning me) dished out a dose of reality about the Valley, to the tune of about 135,000 hits. That put me on the radar. At least, it gave me 15,000 minutes of fame in a corner of the economy called “Silicon Valley”. It wasn’t news to anyone that many startups fail, but I blew apart the myth surrounding the career. Even in 2011, most Silicon Valley programmers acknowledged that their own current startups might not make them rich, but held a faith in the general career trend: no matter what, your founders and backers and investors will “pay it forward” and set you up to try again with better odds… and, eventually, you’ll have a hit. I blew this lie to smithereens. Whatever was true about Silicon Valley when it was populated by decent actors who’d help each other out (paying it forward) had ceased to be accurate in the new startup culture.
It’s three and a half years later, and I’ve been proven right, even more decisively than I expected. People in the know absolutely hate “unicorns”. “Techie” is a slur. The press is coming out with stories every week about startup shenanigans wiping out employee equity, and about sexual harassment in the VC-funded culture, and some people in the press with whom I work have told me that there’s a lot more coming. I’m also a lot stronger, personally. I know more, I’ve seen more, and I’m a much better writer than I was then. In 2012, I was an angry guy beating the sky with a stick, but I was contrarian and right and even Paul Graham himself knows how powerful that can be. In 2016, it’s become obvious that I’m more than that. I’m actually such a credible threat that a millionaire investor (probably not Graham, but one of his goons) had to call up Quora and demand that my account be banned, lest I continue to threaten his economic and cultural interests with the truth.
Did I hurt Silicon Valley on the money front? No, I’m pretty sure that I had absolutely no effect there. Institutional investors don’t make decisions based on my blog; macroeconomic factors, such as interest rates and taxes and economic growth, have a much stronger effect. Did I hurt it on the public front (i.e. the opinions of the people at large)? Not significantly, I don’t think, because Silicon Valley’s public reputation still has a long way to fall (like, to the bottom) before it converges to its reality, and by the time it happens, I doubt I’ll have been one of the most significant 100 people involved in exposing it. However, I absolutely murdered its momentum on the talent front. Some people still believe in Silicon Valley meritocracy, but the strongest and smartest people do not, and I had a lot to do with that. Even if their loss of faith was private and existed long before I gave a voice to it, I played a role in making it socially acceptable to point out the militant anti-meritocracy of the VC-funded ecosystem. Top talent has turned its back on Sand Hill Road, and the mainstream press is going the same way.
Was I the only one involved, in the above? Far from it, but circumstances and timing have tagged me as the one who broke the momentum. I have to deal with the negative, career-altering consequences of having been “the one”, out of many, who got tagged as the wave-breaker. I might as well enjoy the positive aspects of it. (♪ I motherfuckin’ called it, I called it, I called it. ♪ Okay, I’m done. That was surprisingly obnoxious.) My contribution to this change is overstated a hundredfold by my reputation– if I hadn’t broken the momentum, I should at least hope that someone else would have– but if I’m going to deal with the bad, then I’ll take the good.
Economically, the talent front is the least important of the three, for Silicon Valley. If it fails on the money front, there’s no capital and it dies. If it fails on the public front, it faces more regulation and becomes a bit more “boring” in the sense of traditional business, so it starts getting more traditional returns. If it fails on the talent front, it’ll just hire a lower calibre of people and do less ambitious projects, but it will still make a lot of money. We already see this happening, and the vast majority of it had nothing to do with me, but is just the nature of business expansion and talent dilution amid growth. In fact, many of the workplace “innovations” (Scrum, open-plan-office fetishism) coming out of Silicon Valley actually have more to do with making the most out of a low talent level than with hiring and managing top talent. The perverse irony is that the rubes who look to Silicon Valley for inspiration are adopting these Scrum-like methodologies as “What the techies do”, interpreting them as high-talent management practices, when in fact they’re actually what is used in technology when the talent level drops.
If my sin was to break Silicon Valley’s momentum on the least important of its three fronts, then why would someone like Paul Graham dislike me? I’ve been studying these guys for a long time, and their primary motivation is wanting to be loved. It’s not about money or fame for them. In fact, they don’t really care to be “popular” in the sense of a mainstream business personality or a politician. They want to be admired and loved by the best people. There’s a gigantic question mark around what they consider (and what I might consider) “the best people”, and that’s a topic that deserves its own essay. For now, let me just say this. It’s why the talent front is important to them, even if winning on the talent front is not a necessary condition for making lots of money. Paul Graham could get rich(er) in other ways. He could open a hotel chain, or put his wealth into a highly-profitable single-strategy hedge fund that only needs to hire five people, or just buy a bunch of real estate and collect rent checks. Instead, he’s a venture capitalist, probably making less money (and, certainly, with less risk) than in less “sexy” businesses where the personnel talent level can be lower (and should be, because overhiring for a mundane project is counterproductive). Why? He wants to work with the best people and fund the most exciting ideas in business. I don’t blame him for this. It makes sense. It’s a fine motivation. It is, also, why talent-front victories are so important to these people… and why people are still pissed off about things I said about certain large companies (whose stocks have performed well, indicating that I did no economic harm) in 2011-13. What I say has almost no economic importance on the grand scale, but it matters to the people they care about attracting, and that makes my elemental talent, to them, such an emotional threat.
Are the best people starting Y Combinator companies? I tend to doubt it (and it has little to do with me). The terms of investment aren’t great and the culture is cultish, so I’m guessing that the best tech people don’t need the help. Moreover, the best people in business aren’t in Silicon Valley at all, and the best minds in our generation are probably nowhere near private-sector tech. Paul Graham gets a certain upper-mid-grade tier that happens to be strong enough for him to make money. I’m sure that he’s reasonably content with this. But does he want better? Of course he does. In fact, as much as it’ll disgust him to confront this truth, his dream is to work with people like me (but without the attitude that comes with the talent).
I oppose Paul Graham’s economic, social, and cultural interests. I regard the 2003-18(?) Silicon Valley economy as a failed one. It didn’t fail in every way, and there are things to learn from it, but these “unicorns” are not building a future that I want to be part of. Also, it’s becoming clear that they do not have the charisma to attract and unlock elemental talent except by compensating at prohibitively high levels. I don’t know exactly what is next, because I don’t know exactly what will work– and I don’t think that anyone can predict that– but I think it’s time to walk away from what hasn’t worked.
Paul Graham can spot an elemental talent on his horizon. He’s not stupid. Do I think that he envies me? No, not at all. His net worth is estimated over $200 million; when I was 28, Google (not recognizing what I was, and would become) famously treated me like a loser– and I’m still dealing with the fallout. Let’s be realistic; there is a zero percent chance that he envies me. This isn’t emotional for him. He has a rational understanding of the threat that I pose. Am I a brighter elemental talent? It’s possible, but not that relevant either way. What is obvious is that I cast a purer light. I am winning my game by bringing light to the truth. He is winning his game, but his economic and social interests require him to put his light through a filter, and that dulls it considerably. He’s checkmated himself, because he has to cheerlead for an economic movement that made sense in 2004, but is now a center of toxicity. He wants to be a philosopher and a statesman, but he’s tied his name to a movement (the “unicorn” culture) that had modest economic success (in a time of slowing corporate innovation and cultural decline) but that was a cultural disaster.
Like anyone would, Paul Graham wants more time. Can I blame him? Of course not. He’s painted himself into a corner, and now he wants to convince us that the paint will dry if we just give him and his unicorns another chance. He’s rich, he’s very famous in technology, but he isn’t loved and especially not by the people whose admiration he truly wants. He still wants to believe that his unicorn world will pan out, despite mounting evidence that he’s only fostered a more virulent form of the aggressive narcissism that made the last generation of corporate and financial leaders, in the end, so despised. He’s well aware of the defects in what he has built, but he thinks that he can fix them if he’s just allowed more time.
How much time does Paul Graham have, to achieve his cultural objectives? How many more chances will he get until the world at large loses faith in his vision and in these so-called “unicorns”? It’s unclear. Probably not much, because I think that this tech bubble has no more than two or three good years left in it. Even that estimate could be generous. Paul Graham himself might be ethically clean, but the company he keeps is going to take some major hits when the unicorns start “going Enron” and dirty secrets start spilling out, and he’ll probably have to re-brand Y Combinator, if not dismantle it and start something new. At this point, Graham is banking on a lack of cultural competition. His getting another chance requires shooting down elemental talents that he sees as emerging threats. He’s afraid of losing “his turn” and never getting it back. That’s a legitimate concern for him because, while he was right about startups in 2004, he was so wrong about the unicorns: they’ve made the world a worse place, not better. Paul Graham believes he can do a better job in the future than he has in the past, and he’s probably right insofar as I’m sure that he’s learned from past mistakes, but I doubt that he can pull himself out of the “unicorn” culture, which I consider a dead end.
Since I’m clearly not the only visible elemental talent out there, I doubt that I’m the only one whom Y Combinator has taken pot shots at. There’ve got to be more. I can only speak about my own experience, but I doubt I’m unique on this account.
What should Paul Graham do? If he wants to make the world a better place, he has plenty of time left with which to do that. Unfortunately, he’ll have to not only abandon the world that he’s created thus far, but turn against it and get rid of it. Not only that, but he’ll have to get way better at controlling his attack dogs (if he chooses to retain them at all). That’s not easy, but the alternative for him is a losing competition with time. It’s extremely unlikely that I’m the only elemental talent out there that presents a direct threat to him and, even if I were, that would not be true forever.
So all of that, above, is the real reason why I was banned from Hacker News and Quora.
