Because it was an influencing factor in the initial media infatuation with Theranos.
If u goto their website a lot of the media and copy is very founder-specific. Almost like they are trying to build some cult of personality around her.
Lots of similar stories... Check out UBeam. It's basically Theranos-lite: outspoken female founder (also light on the technical credentials), revolutionary vision/product-promises (wireless charging), and tier one VCs (~$30mm raised from a16z, Marissa Mayer, Mark Cuban, etc).
Like Theranos, the story is coming apart at the seams... I haven't seen this discussed here but UBeam is quietly raising another round via some Israeli equity crowdfunding site. Crazy!!! This after raising Series A from a16z!
Will be interesting to see how many of these unicorn type startups are around this time next year.
I feel the point of PH is not to create a real business in the sense of earning money by selling you a product or service, but rather to establish personal brand equity and influencing power of the management team.
This can be useful for future projects (such as finding funding), to increase their standing in the SV community, and to establish themselves as marquee valley power brokers.
In this sense, it doesn't make much sense to add more transparency and voting control to ordinary users.
This is pure speculation and assumes the worst. So take this with a grain of salt.
This crosses the line into personal attack, which breaks the HN guidelines. You couldn't possibly know such things.
Fair critique is fair game. The OP, for example, made an effort to be fair. But comments like this one, that assume the worst about someone and try to paint them in an ugly light, say more about the commenter.
I've edited my post so that it appears less of a personal attack.
I think my critique is fair, though the delivery could use improvement (hence my edits).
PH is a for-profit company that helps users discover new products, yet controls and hides the process for how voting, submission, etc., work. It's a fair critique to question if the point of PH is to derive value for themselves from establishing themselves as gatekeepers rather than generating value in a more "normal" sense.
Meritocracy, transparency, and fairness are values that are particularly held in high esteem in the valley and here on HN. So I think those who run contrary to this, should be exposed to the harshest of scrutiny.
We need to keep each other honest. RH might construe this as "hating" but I think it's fair game.
I appreciate the edit and your polite response, but (if I may say so personally, as opposed to qua moderator) the thrust of what you're saying still feels uncharitable.
I've met Ryan, and my impression was that he's a true enthusiast—he just loves this stuff. And there's strong objective evidence for it too: someone who was primarily interested in building a rigged system for insider gain would never have been able to get a community going in the first place. Real online communities are rare. It takes a believer to start one.
As for PH now, I don't know any details, but from other experience I can guarantee you that the challenges in getting it right are (a) harder and (b) different than one would imagine. Reading a thread like this about one's baby (which it's possible Ryan may) is a hard experience, but at least if the criticisms are substantive, you can feed them into your efforts to improve. When someone just seems to be saying mean or generically cynical things, though, that sucks.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and view. I appreciate the feedback and your even-handed moderation.
I don't know Ryan, but I've been observing PH for some time now. My opinions and thoughts are from these observations and those of others in the community.
I'm sure Ryan is a good person, with good intentions. Those good intentions stands in stark contrast to how PH works today. There have been other PH critics and from what I've seen RH has not been super open to those criticisms, and in fact, even going so far as to dismiss any critics as "haters" (which I think is a bit of a mislabel since many of his critics are in fact fans that are just opposed to the lack of transparency).
So I think given, its fair to address these failings. Perhaps I can use nicer language, but I trust that Ryan is a mature adult and can take it.
I do see your point about people saying mean things and how that can hurt, but c'mon, life is not fair or kind or nice. And we're not delicate butterflies.
Putting ourselves out there (to be celebrated and vilified) is part of the very nature of entrepreneurship / creation. I see the problems of suicides and mental health in our community (and I've definitely experienced and am still experiencing it first hand), but being overly cautious in our words to not-offend is not a solution to this problem. Somewhat off-topic but related, South Park this season did a great job of making fun of this.
This is somewhat true. There are far more former founders in the VC ranks than 15-20-30 years ago when it was dominated by old-crust finance, old money types.
That said, the vast majority of the new incoming class of VCs (think associates, VPs, etc.) are mostly freshly minted MBAs with 2-3 years of post college experience, typically spent at a management consultancy, investment bank (or related prestigious front-office work at PEs, HFs, etc.), or in corporate strategy for a F500.
These people are definitely smart, with great pedigrees from the best schools. I'm just not sure they know a damn thing about the nitty gritty work of building a company. These are people who sat in boardrooms hunched over excel models and used to scheduling a million meetings to discuss strategy. Not rolling up their sleeves and executing.
I say all of this as someone with this background and with many peers who fit this mold.
Fred Wilson and especially PG have created a dangerous cult of personality around the narrative of the ethical hacker.
Young folks in their 20s and 30s have unfortunately fallen for this narrative hook, line, and sink.
It's very sad when you think of all the wasted man hours, much of it during one's prime, spent pursuing this startup game—inspired in large part by writings from VCs like PG and FW.
PG and Sama present this picture of YC and SV being a place of meritocracy, that aspires to be free of racial or gender bias, where everyone is working on ethical world/life-changing projects.
Old-timers know this is a lie. New-comers are starting to uncover the truth themselves. Those of you who live in SV... just ask yourself how important it is these days where you went to school, what places you worked at, who you know, etc. I was at a hip SF bar the other day. Reminded me totally of DC. Everyone you meet, the same questions:
So what do you do? Where do you goto school? Where do you work?
> PG and Sama present this picture of YC and SV being a place of meritocracy, that aspires to be free of racial or gender bias,
I think the bias here goes way beyond race and gender, it's more about your connections and living in SV, so basically people who have worked at big companies in SV and been in contact with VCs or people able to introduce them to VCs. For the rest of us, we're just left out of the game. SV is just the place to be if you want to get a better chance at the startup game, something I'm personally not willing to do. Moving to SV isn't needed though to be successful as a startup but it definitely helps, case in point here being producthunt. I totally agree though that producthunt (and others) should be more transparent, this really makes them look bad and frustrates the community.
>It's very sad when you think of all the wasted man hours, much of it during one's prime, spent pursuing this startup game—
Speaking from first hand experience: after a while you kind of realize that even if you succeed, you'd have ended up far more wealthy in any true sense of the word had you instead lived those years to their fullest rather than having followed the startup path.
I'm not saying that PG has built a cult of personality around himself, but rather around the narrative of the ethical, hard-working, pull your own bootstraps, outsider hacker hero.
The point is not whether PG actively set out to build a cult of personality. The point is that it exists today. I tend to agree with the GP comment about PG's gaseous emissions.
That's exactly the point I was making (that is, not agreeing with the "built a cult of personality" part someone said at the top of this thread but pointing out that it exists anyway and the consequences are the same either way)
PH Is the ultimate bubble startup. A literal circlejerk wrapped in some clean CSS and nice JS.
Get used to shit like this as increasingly more MBAs flock to the valley...
For those older in the community, the archetype of the honorable hacker - does it still exist?
Hard to find the Wozs of the world in the sea of douchetastic MBAs and former consultant/bankers. My personal favorite is the wave of MBA VC Associates every summer and fall.
Recently had dinner with a founder who kept on going about his "personal brand" and leveraging that to waste other peoples' money until he struck it big!
I spent a few years as a management consultant. Consultants are almost never hired to provide truly objective analysis. In most cases, they're hired to "back-up the viewpoint of a given executive". This is done by the executive to hedge the political risk required to go through with their action. They can point to McK when they defend their strategy to the board and then throw them under the bus if things don't pan out.
The rewards for the consultant are high fees and living a luxe lifestyle of staying at high end hotels, traveling first class, and dining at michelin starred restaurants (all of course on the client's dime). Plus of course guaranteed future work. Even if the project tanks and the executive is fired, they'll be sure to hire McK again at their next gig.
What most people don't realize is that consulting engagements are a careful collaboration between consultant and client. The findings are almost always driven by an iterative process where you go through review cycles with the buyer until you reach your "objective" conclusions, which by the very nature of how the work is performed, is totally subjective and biased. Doubly so for turnaround projects like this one. (not to mention that consultants are constantly trying to recycle previously performed analysis, regardless if it at all fits or applies in the target project).
Management consultant is the biggest circlejerk profession. Even moreso IMO than ibanking. Classic self-serving MBA type job. Management consultants are to entrepreneurs what food critics are to chefs.
Without being too cynical, there's a lot of truth in that. The one time I worked closely with management consultants, a few were sharp, one or two not so much. At the end, they came to similar conclusions that we had already come to anyway but they sold that analysis to the executives.
>Management consultants are to entrepreneurs what food critics are to chefs.
Eh. Good food critics cut through a lot of trendiness. Of course, a lot of food critics aren't good.
Yap pretty much. Remember reading an expose with some examples of how consulting firms would hire fresh grads from Ivy Leagues, and then send them to big companies, for top dollar, (or to other countries like Saudi Arabia) to basically do what you describe -- support the viewpoint of the executive who hired them. Of course all done officially with power point slides, excel spreadsheets and pie charts.
At the top tier firms, the creation of slides, charts, etc is usually outsourced to a back office dedicated to the job. I'm not sure if this is still the case at McK, but this office used to be stationed in the developing world...
Consultants would draw and describe what they wanted, goto bed, and awake to slides, charts in their inbox.
Same thing with models. Most firms have "rockstar excel jockeys" (usually analysts/associates/etc.) that are pimped out to project teams to serve this singular role (making models, building business cases, etc.).
Management consulting, such a surreal profession...
This is also a large part of why the "Ivy League" is perpetuated. Not because the graduates or the education is special, but because it provides a "stamp" that its alumni can give out to clients to give authority to client decisions and absorb heat from cover clients' mistakes.
I wonder why if this is the case that someone hasn’t tried to create a “discount” management consulting service which aims to give management cover, but without all the first class travel and high living. It can’t cost that much to put together a flashy powerpoint presentation.
The high cost is part of the service. "We spared no expense planning this failed initiative and hired the best consultants. What more could we have done?"
That is not part, it is ALL that you are paying for.
What is the difference between McK and Deloitte? One has Harvard grads the other has Cornell grads. The analysis is the same, but one is just wrapped up in a prettier package and more prestige.
Are there not managers looking for cover that don’t care about prestige? I can understand the need for cover when making controversial decisions, but not why it needs to be expensive.
You would think with 15K creators and their traffic they would be able to monetize better... having to cut down to only three employees suggests they aren't making much revenue at all...
That's the unicorn way. Tech companies are encouraged, practically forced, to overspend in an attempt to show "hockey stick growth". This strategy has two positive properties for the investor: it ensures that the entrepreneur will be back before the VC to grovel for more cash in the next 24-36 months, and it gives the VC a way to kill investments he doesn't believe in anymore, despite what is a conventionally respectable and sustainable growth rate, by refusing to provide that infusion. Since most founders are naive 20-somethings, this trick works.
If u goto their website a lot of the media and copy is very founder-specific. Almost like they are trying to build some cult of personality around her.