It's not just that he has to sort winners from the losers. It's that he has to be the first most important seeming VC in their minds. And he accomplishes that with these blog posts. That, and by using these posts to posit that people like him really are the best, he has a big hand in getting people to self-sort into venture-seeking types in the first place.
If you think of his posts as self-serving, that's true. But they're also propaganda meant to influence what we think of as being a worthy pursuit, and meant to define who should pursue such things. The more people believe his worldview – one where smarts dominate and make one powerful – then the more status he has, and the more easily he can do his job. People come to him whereas before he would've had to go to them!
I think he really believes what he writes. And I think it is true that smarts as defined by him are helpful to the kinds of entrepreneurs who see themselves in pg - like, the people he describes really are a type of person, and they should lean on their strengths. But I think it's not at all clear that pg-measured smarts matter more than other qualities for entrepreneurship, or that people like him are remotely close to the best sort of startup founder.
Maybe he's just found a way to seem high status to a subset of a population, and his success flows from that: he gets his pick of that subset, even though it is a tiny chunk of the world. Sure, he gets notoriety and status in a big chunk in status-seeking coders! But that needn't mean that he's actually cracked the code on entrepreneurialism. He has ABSOLUTELY cracked the code on how to speak to young men who feel like they can use what they're good at to achieve power and status.
Here's a scary thought: it's possible that by so completely dominating the conversation about what a startup founder should be, and by making the ideal startup founder seem like a reflection of his image, he's caused far greater numbers of more capable entrepreneurs to self-select out of entrepreneurial pursuits, because they aren't pg-like enough. Not saying that's true, or provable (though I have many many anecdotes that lead me to feel something's going on there). Just that it's important to consider that in making a hagiographic ideal the epitome of a startup founder, that you're necessarily excluding so so many other people for reasons that boil down to... pg got there first.
HN likes to point out just-so stories, and I think the stories he tells us are that. When we read posts like this and they seem to speak spookily clearly to something in us, it's probably because he's doing fanservice to people who serve to give him a tremendous amount of influence and power by believing him when he says we're special.
If you think of his posts as self-serving, that's true. But they're also propaganda meant to influence what we think of as being a worthy pursuit, and meant to define who should pursue such things. The more people believe his worldview – one where smarts dominate and make one powerful – then the more status he has, and the more easily he can do his job. People come to him whereas before he would've had to go to them!
I think he really believes what he writes. And I think it is true that smarts as defined by him are helpful to the kinds of entrepreneurs who see themselves in pg - like, the people he describes really are a type of person, and they should lean on their strengths. But I think it's not at all clear that pg-measured smarts matter more than other qualities for entrepreneurship, or that people like him are remotely close to the best sort of startup founder.
Maybe he's just found a way to seem high status to a subset of a population, and his success flows from that: he gets his pick of that subset, even though it is a tiny chunk of the world. Sure, he gets notoriety and status in a big chunk in status-seeking coders! But that needn't mean that he's actually cracked the code on entrepreneurialism. He has ABSOLUTELY cracked the code on how to speak to young men who feel like they can use what they're good at to achieve power and status.
Here's a scary thought: it's possible that by so completely dominating the conversation about what a startup founder should be, and by making the ideal startup founder seem like a reflection of his image, he's caused far greater numbers of more capable entrepreneurs to self-select out of entrepreneurial pursuits, because they aren't pg-like enough. Not saying that's true, or provable (though I have many many anecdotes that lead me to feel something's going on there). Just that it's important to consider that in making a hagiographic ideal the epitome of a startup founder, that you're necessarily excluding so so many other people for reasons that boil down to... pg got there first.
HN likes to point out just-so stories, and I think the stories he tells us are that. When we read posts like this and they seem to speak spookily clearly to something in us, it's probably because he's doing fanservice to people who serve to give him a tremendous amount of influence and power by believing him when he says we're special.