Since it’s not 100% obvious - the poster “eries” is a popular author and popularized the idea of lean startups, which currently has (4,636) reviews on Amazon and a 4.5 star rating:
Eric is under appreciated in the same way Steve Blank is under appreciated. They were very early advocates of lean methodologies and customer development (now called finding “product market fit” by the cool kids and VCs who wanted to create their own term).
An odd way to summarize a career, especially because amazon reviews are notoriously low quality and almost everything has 4-4.5 stars. It definitely under-sells his achievements.
Produced this emergency podcast in short order with my friends at Breaker and LTSE. Happy to answer any questions or hear any feedback. Will have more episodes up soon
If you don't already plan to do so, you should interview bob Nelson at ARCH venture partners. They are a top biotech VC and one of the few VCs that has been active in antivirals the last few years (confounded Vir Biotech which is working on covid among other things)
Bob has been on top of the crisis from the very beginning and has a lot of interesting insight
And without knowing anything about the guests - what is say, Sam Altman, doing right now that is qualifies him in your view? In other words, why should someone listen to him?
I only meant we rushed it out as fast as we could in light of the emergency. It's not very produced or "professional" sounding or anything like that.
Sam has invested in a metric ton of COVID relief efforts and startups. I think we'd all be better off if more people followed his example in this respect.
Is there a list of these investments, say, in case someone wanted to perform a rough conversion of "metric ton" into USD, which is easier for some of us to conceptualize.
This comment broke the site guidelines both by snarking and by assuming bad faith instead of good faith. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
Is there some reason to think Cuban has some useful thoughts here?
He has done well for himself but he seems more than willing to make quips well outside of his knowledge base. Specifically I'm thinking of some off the cuff tweets regarding personal healthcare that seemed to be pretty far off base.
Maybe that was a one off thing but I recall some others even regarding personal finance that seemed questionable.
This is an example of him arguing with a MD. Cuban takes an issue with the doctor stating that consumer driven health care from non medical professionals is responsible for overuse of antibiotics. Cuban gets heated and dismisses the doctor as a quack when the doctor makes a completely legitimate point.
Mark Cuban, like all successful people in life, is great at providing a loud opinion on everything and especially with areas that aren't his expertise.
That doctor was selling a supplement. Supplement sales are largely scams, even the ones that are "developed by doctors".
Also, its name is almost certainly designed to confuse consumers by sounding similar to "Z-Pak", aka azithromycin, which is an antibiotic.
I'm not sure why we should expect doctors to be experts on the market forces behind antibiotic use, and there's plenty of reason to be skeptical of that specific doctor's motives.
Forget Cuban in here.Just a few hours ago I was talking with my sister about starting something similar. The product is cheap to manufacture, almost no regulations, no guarantees that it will work and the best part is that you can charge arbitrary amounts for it.
The doctor's 'story' is a bit random.Not quite sure how things are done in the US, however in most parts of the world no self respecting doctor would prescribe antibiotics for viral infections. Here,in Britain,every GP practice is wallpapered with posters explaining this as well.
I'm not an expert here but I believe the argument is that because it's consumer driven if a patient wants antibiotics then they can just shop around doctors until they find one willing to prescribe. Plus of course, drug manufacturers aggressively pitching their product to doctors.
Is there some reason to think that Altman has any useful insight here? Really.
And people are calling out Cuban as being a one hit wonder. Altman doesn't even have that, Path was an abject failure. He's just been appointed to his roost by the SV overlords.
He's been almost as publicly known for 20 years and certainly winning the title in 2011 gave him more prestige.
He'd make a decent candidate though. He's a Democrat (I guess he could run as a Republican, too) from the South with a bigger built-in fanbase than anyone else mentioned in this comment thread. He's run his organization for a long time with advanced stats, so he's no dinosaur. He's Jewish (if that matters, but it's nice having more diversity). Seemingly very healthy and relatively young, and no existing political career so he can cast himself as a ... maverick.
He's made a number of missteps, but he's also pretty good at turning those to his advantage. He's a minor god here in Dallas. If we're in an era where popularity/money is what wins elections, I feel like you could do much worse than him, and I'd trust him way way more than Trump and feel like he'd have the potential for lots more interesting change than Biden.
Howard Schultz and Mike Bloomberg fell for this trap too, and it didn't turn out well for them.
It must be difficult to get honest advice as a billionaire, because these guys seem to be quite uninformed about how unpopular they actually turn out to be in the political arena.
I'm certain it is hard to get that advice, because it's pretty hard to get out of your own way, success certainly ain't going to make it easier.
You're completely correct about both of those guys, but Bloomberg showed an incredibly lack of charisma in his run and Schultz is known, but I really think yall are underrating how popular Cuban is for common people.
The ESPN demographic is a lot bigger than the HN techie demographic.
> Is there some reason to think Cuban has some useful thoughts here?
It seems to me that the most effective trait in a politician is strategic decision-making, capability of applying abstract thinking to different situations (which comes particularly handy during crises), and figuring out how to get the right people together and get them to cooperate.
All of these also strike me as traits in executives and effective managers, which is likely why we tend to organically gravitate towards them in politics.
Whether Cuban can be regarded as an effective executive is debatable, I have no opinion on that.
The problem is that it is hard to differentiate between lucky idiots who failed upwards, and actually capable executives, who know when to defer to expertise.
Executives are judged on results - which are heavily influenced by circumstances that can be entirely outside the executive's control.
I've been reading his posts on LinkedIn. He seems to be advocating for businesses to treat their employees loyally now or fear the social backlash (reputation hit) when we come out of crisis.
I have no idea about his previous tweets and I'm not sure I care.
The list consists of CEOs of many companies from different states and senators. Since each state is impacted differently and some are in better/worse situation than others, every company's opinion matters. There are also CEOs/business people from different venues like restaurants, NBA, NFL, UFC, Disney and other parks, bars etc. I think 200 might be too low. 200 divided by 50 states is around 4 per state.
Thiel and Musk have a track record of success though. Yes, they're lucky, but they also seem to be smart and capable.
Cuban is a one-hit-wonder that sold a domain (and a dream) to Yahoo at the height of the dot com bubble.
They don't seem particularly comparable.
Edit: to respond to the comments below, no I'm not saying he's not successful, or that he's not smart. I'm only saying in tech and startup circles, he's no Thiel or Musk.
> Thiel and Musk have a track record of success though. Yes, they're lucky, but they also seem to be smart and capable.
Thinking someone has expertise in X therefore they are good source for analysis on Y is the logical fallacy I linked to above.
Contrary to what silicon valley believes, there is no such thing as being "smart" in a general sense. You can be capable in certain things, maybe you are faster to learn in others.
That doesn't mean any founder with a billion $ exit should be asked about public policy.
Both of those guys have a track record of plowing more money into money, with their own failures.
It's just sports, but winning a title isn't nothing, and if you've followed his sports career, he was big into advanced stats decently early and the Mavs are as good as anyone at finding diamonds in the rough.
There's obviously Dirk and Doncic, but they were also really close on getting Giannis. That shows some kind of insight. Not to mention, small ball dominates the league today, but the Don Nelson Mavs were doing that in 2003.
I know it is just sports, but sports are some of the most competitive domains in the world, with the ability to innovate, which he has done. I don't think HN's preference for tech should just ignore what he's accomplished.
Don't forget, PG and YC are only what they are because Viaweb was purchased in the same wave as Broadcast. Neither of those companies matter today.
On what basis is he a one-hit-wonder? Just because his endeavors didn’t progress to building rockets or big data ML for the gov, and instead to building a winning NBA team and one of most successful ongoing reality “startup” tv shows, he is somehow less-than?
Let's just be clear that the reason SpaceX builds great rockets is... not exactly rooted in Musk. He was too busy sleeping on the Tesla production floor.
If you want to look for the leaders there, Gwynne Shotwell & Tom Mueller is who should be on your radar.
Ai sure, but I personally put as much stock into either of their opinions as I do Cubans, which is, about as much stock I'd give to the opinion of any other reasonably smart person. Nothing special, because it's out of their domain of expertise. Nobody is an expert on "politics" in general. Some people are experts in running campaigns. Some people are experts in Keynesian economic theory. Some people are experts in healthcare. Some are experts in getting legislation passed and in understanding the machinations of power in Congress. Some are good executives able to hold together a broad set of options and make good calls. Nobody is an expert in all aspects of "politics"
I generally have a positive opinion of Cuban, but it's not via that approach. Generally speaking, I've just liked most of what I've seen of him, and disliked very little. Plus, he seems willing to challenge the status quo, which I weight fairly heavily.
The presence of Cuban helps me to feel more at ease with the state of the world.. if celebrities I recognize seem to be okay with what is happening what do I have to fear?
> Is there some reason to think Cuban has some useful thoughts here?
Sure. He has invested into hundreds of businesses of every size spanning two decades. He has intimate experience with the operations of small and large size businesses of most every type, along with their operating requirements in all regards.
A huge part of the recovery is getting small, medium, large businesses all back to functioning properly. From his perch, he sees a lot of what's going on at multiple levels. He is one of the couple hundred prominent business persons selected for Trump's recovery advisory council.
He knows his stuff and he keeps close tabs on all of his investments (and the broader economic environment), which is remarkable given the expanded scope of his activities. I've done business with Mark in the past and can vouch for all of this personally. People often have wide-ranging responses to him based on his outsized personality, however he is very sharp, he's a smart guy and understands business at a high level of competency. People that dig on him by saying he's just a lucky dotcom billionaire, don't actually know him.
edit: so let's hear your retort, downvote brigade.
I'm probably one of the only people in this thread qualified to speak to the actual question the parent posed, as I have years of experience being in business with Cuban. I know how he operates and how he deals with businesses. Everybody else here is talking out of their ass.
He was an executive producer for the movie 'The Road' (a 2009 American post-apocalyptic survival film) so he at least has a passing interest in the topic.
Yes, please! I often read podcast transcripts. Conversations with Tyler, 80,000 hours, and Steve Hsu's Manifold all have great transcripts and because of that, they are the only podcasts I keep up with.
"The first conversation is with investor and philanthropist Sam Altman. He has been one of the leading Silicon Valley figures helping the entire biotech industry make a complete pivot to working on solutions: vaccines, therapies, and eventually a cure."
Let's be a bit careful here. That quote doesn't imply that anyone has heard of SA, only that he has been helping. Sometimes people help behind the scenes. Similarly, the claim about the industry is simply that it has pivoted. I have zero idea if either claim is true, but let's at least not replace them with claims that no one made.
This is in the HN guidelines btw: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I totally agree with you, and I'll add that the quote also implies that the entire industry is "pivoting" to work on this effort when, no it isn't. People who have built the ability to work on viruses or with technology that is applicable are all pitching in to do their part. And they're doing it on their own prerogative, not by the "leadership" of some silicon valley tech types. Altman and all is doing good work by funding some covid responses etc, as is YC and are other tech VCs, and talk about that to whatever extent you want. But dont take credit for what the industry is doing.
Sorry to be a stickler, especially since Eric changed his wording, but your post wasn't within that guideline. You picked a weak interpretation of the quote you were objecting to. There was no inconsistency between "My wife works in biotech in SV and has never heard of him" and what it actually said. If you wanted to refute the quote, something like "My wife works in biotech in SV and that industry has definitely not pivoted to working on covid" would (if true) have fit the bill.
You're right that the GP comment was also bad and that I could have replied there also.
I appreciate your excellent work in maintaining the discourse, but there just isn't any serious interpretation of that quote which could have been more charitable. You'd really have to stretch to get away from the clear implication that SA's work has been essential to the COVID-19 response.
I also appreciate Eric's polite clarification in this thread, but as of now the original text remains on his site. It's a legitimate point of discussion for reasons that others in this thread have explained.
I appreciate this comment and the child comments below. Thinking about it, this was poor phrasing on my part. I smashed together three points:
1. Sam is a leader in SV
2. Sam has done a lot to invest/donate in biotech and nonprofits working on COVID
3. Many biotech companies have pivoted to COVID
The error was mine, not his. Thanks for the feedback.
That makes a lot of sense, and as I tried to say in my comments, no disrespect to altman, he is genuinely doing a lot and it was just the way it was phrased seemed to be off. Thanks for acknowledging it and the thoughtful response.
By the way, I love your book! It's what made me think maybe making a little side business selling computers wasn't so impossible when I was in high school.
Yeah, he's cool and his efforts admirable, but you can talk about people's accomplishments without essentially downplaying the role of others. Yes hes helping with covid, but he didn't go single handedly convince J&J to develop their vaccine platform that they developed years ago. He didn't convince gilead to develop remdesivir, something they developed years ago for hep c. He didn't convince moderna to work on rna vaccines. He didn't convince the fda to fast track diagnostics.
And I love how in the list of things, a cure is treated as the ultimate goal, which vaccines and therapies are on the path to. Therapies are essentially cures if they work (since currently you either cure yourself or you die, this is not a chronic infection). And a vaccine is the real end goal since that stops the disease from spreading in the first place and normalizes society again by creating herd immunity etc. Prevention > treatment
Yeah. Take credit for the work you do (and altman isn't doing nothing, he's helping in the effort). But don't take credit for leading the entire industry. Dont take credit for things you didn't earn the credit for. And to another commenters point, attempting to qualify it with the word "helped" doesn't make it better if you're saying he "helped" with leading an entire industry pivot. He didn't. There was no silicon valley led biotech pivot. Biotech did its job and is foing its job. He's helping with covid, but not with leading the biotech industry. And hes not leading those amazing homegrown efforts like the one in smartereveryday's latest video detailing his effort to 3d print PPE in huntsville.
Leading the tech industry to pivot to work on covid though? Maybe - I could buy that. If hes been working with tech companies to join the effort.
https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous...