“I looked through the list of companies that have an over a billion dollar valuation recently, and more than half, I think, were valued between like a billion and 1.5 billion, and something like a quarter were valued exactly at a billion. So people are clearly obsessed with getting to this mark, and they are willing to put all sorts of weird structure on their terms to get there. If you were looking at the financial data, you would say something is amiss. You’d say there is some fraud going on or something, if you were just looking at the numbers. Because they don’t fit the distribution you’d expect. There is this huge desire to get right to a billion or just over. I don’t care about it. I think it’s dumb, but that’s not going to make a company great or not.”
As a sidenote, Sam should probably stop antagonizing his interviewers by dismissing the business pontification featured on their shows :) I agree with him but it’s also a bit unnecessary.
Is there a real stats person around here? I bet that if you plugged in the numbers into the formulas in "Statistical Tests" in the link that you gave, it would pretty much show that Sam is right. When I punched in the numbers and ran the Chi-Square test, it seemed kind of off. :P
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FoSfPvRSLK04ySAfjEqE...
Perhaps your point would be better addressed during your next regularly scheduled Bloomberg interview?
Ahh yes, Dan Altman, a recent hire at SV clone "Y Contributor", talks about attention to detail, and working with the Samwer bros.
Edit: << pun intended.
Have they done anything particularly despicable?
I know their model is to copy any potential idea coming out of the US which I don't understand the issue with.
One thing they really did well was to have a structure that makes it easy for them to localize any company.
I hear the work environment is hard but so is it many other places.
Or maybe I am missing your joke?
While I'm not a big personal fan of them I think competition is good. US startups need to step up their game and not coast until getting acquired.
Except, they don't just copy the idea, they copy the entire products and companies wholesale (interface, API, UI, user interaction model). How is that not bad?
(1) How to Start a Startup (by Sam Altman et al): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxIJaCMEptJjxmmQgGFsnCg (2) CS183C: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnsTB8Q5VgnVzh1S-VMCX... (3) PreMoney conference: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOStnEM8wBOYdQ6FFXTnY...
And of course a lot of great podcasts.
http://blog.samaltman.com/unit-economics
At least for the first section of the interview.
With over 40% of women leaving tech, we (http://keepwomen.com/) have been doing research into this topic and talked to lots of women in tech. One of the things we found out was the importance of finding a company culture that’s right for you. Those women who persisted and changed jobs eventually found a company that was a good match for them. So we think one of the ways to "act on it", is to help women find a company culture that's right for them.
"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." dixit Niels Bohr.
Good interview from Sam though.
