I wouldn't want to elevate PG as a demigod. Yet upon rejection this was, in many ways, how I felt. This essay comes from an analysis of these feelings. The understanding I came to later represents how I now see things. I'm proud to say we are moving on. But I'd hoped to share my experience, for others currently going through rejection, and for future, aspiring entrepreneurs.

I have been an entrepreneur for the last fifteen years and in retrospect, the two things that are hardest to learn are the following ...

1) How to embrace rejection ... not just accept it but embrace it. Most smart engineers prefer to avoid rejection by spending more time on developing technology or products and they want to get it as perfect as possible before presenting it to a potential user or customer for critique. This is wrong. Get over rejection. Embrace it. Do it early. Any chance you can, get in front of people who are not your family or your friends and get real feedback. You don't learn anything from positive feedback. Your learn a whole lot more from negative feedback.

2) How to develop a sensitivity to other people's inconvenience. For everything that is new, there will always be early adopters. It is easy to let initial success gets to your head. But to going beyond the initial veneer, your product or services have to simplify people's life, not just the smart or motivated people, but the normal and lazy people.

As my base jumping friend told me once, after about 500 jumps, you will start to realize how cold it is up there. This is just the beginning. Suck it up.

> Your learn a whole lot more from negative feedback.

Negative feedback can be more honest. In every criticism (especially if it's someone who you don't have an existing relationship with), there is usually a nugget of truth.

"If you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig"

I agree. In startups, there is no worse experience than putting lipstick on a pig. Not only is it a big waste of effort, but it annoys the crap out of the pig.

In high school, I got rejected by McDonalds, Taco Bell, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. I really wanted a job at one of those places for money for recording equipment for my band. They all rejected me.

I finally got a job at Roy Rogers after a year of searching, and the rest is history. I got over the rejections, and you can too. Of course it's pretty funny looking back, but only given the proper perspective. You have to look at things for what they are.

I thought pg was god-like for quite a while. And then I came out for the first Silicon Valley Startup School and met him the day before. He was wearing a necklace with a diamond-encrusted "PG" pendant. At that moment, I knew he was merely human.

> He was wearing a necklace with a diamond-encrusted "PG" pendant. At that moment, I knew he was merely human.

Because he has a sense of irony?

Umm...I guess? But now I'm doubting my own humanity, or yours, because one of us clearly lacks humor.

"Worry is the misuse of imagination". Keep moving forward, individuals like you are moving me towards the tipping point of venturing and executing ideas of my own

"This essay makes PG out to be the second coming of Christ."

Despite the hyperbole, I'd argue that a lot of HN users and YC alums express similar sentiments.

FWIW, I've met a lot of people who are similarly worshiped, and PG handles it better than most.

PG is like a tuning fork for the latent change-the-world/entrepreneur/hacker/idealist/realist wavelengths in us

yeah, one of things I find discomfiting is the occasional bouts of fanboyism that I see on the part of some folks here. Respect and occasional admiration are all well and good, but this is article is an excellent over the top example.

YC != 42?

Obviously, YC == 5943

If you want an upvote, you'll have to show your work... ;)

man ascii ;)

Still haven't shown your work... did you remember to assign the numerical values of the string "YC" to the integer variable YC?

And did you remember to test against 0x5943, rather than 5943?

And did you take Endianness into account? ;-)

I guess I could do all that (truth be told, my C's a bit rusty for a prompt answer).

How 'bout:

  $echo -n "YC" > foo
  $hd foo
  00000000  59 43                                             |YC|
  00000002

Yeah, I know, perhaps 4359 might be better.

(UPDATE: fixed code spacing)

:-D

    printf("%hx", *(unsigned short *)"YC");

...works on big endian machines. this works everywhere:

    printf("%hx", htons(*(unsigned short *)"YC"));