HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

You need to read the interview the right way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4

How can you talk about Sam Reich in CollegeHumour videos in a hacker news thread and not choose "Startup guys" as an example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4

Looking at it now, this video seems to have been particularly relevant, considering that the company went bankrupt because they trusted a bunch of silicon valley frauds i.e. Facebook..

The did a great parody of many startup pitches that I've heard over the years. Hopefully they can save it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4

Yeap. Looks like a new Hooli venture, or something made by these two "Start-up Guys": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4

I always use the Startup Guys as a reference this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4

⬐ droidist2

LOL, brogrammers?

Oof, that video is cringe-worthy ("baller-sourced" please no..). Moreover, they're dressed and acting _exactly_ like CollegeHumor's The Startup Guys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4

Every time I see this, I imagine the guy being like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4

Required posting of Startup Guys vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4

⬐ ftwinnovations

Thank you for that. I had not seen!

Feeling was implied I just gave it a cynical twist, and I quote:

Ritik Malhotra (19, San Jose, CA) Ritik began programming at age 8; started a popular web forum at the age of 12 that grew to over 32,000 members; and ran a web hosting and software consultancy business at the age of 13, garnering over a 600x return on his initial investment.

  I wonder what he started with - $10?

Taylor Wilson (18, Texarkana, AR) became the youngest person in history to create nuclear fusion. Since then, he has produced the lowest-cost and lowest-dose active interrogation system for the detection of enriched uranium ever developed. As a Thiel Fellow, Taylor will focus on both counter-terrorism and the production of medical isotopes for use in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

  I ... no ... I can't even address this.

Omar Rizwan (18, East Hanover, NJ) wants to change the world through the control and analysis of information.

  Nothing big there. Just changing the world. Don't mind me.

Jimmy Koppel (20, St. Louis, MO) has a passion for software engineering – and a plan to make it much more efficient. Modifying software today often involves hundreds of thousands of small, similar adjustments that require a great deal of time and money. James will fix that problem by developing new tools to automate the process.

  It's almost like software engineering is real work.

But hey, this kid is going to "automate the process".

Yoonseo Kang (18, Mississauga, ON, Canada) recognizes that society’s potential for innovation and abundance can only be achieved if knowledge and the factors of production are accessible for everyone.

  Yeah, what's the deal with all these governments.

Who needs clean water, affordable food, stable electricity load, good laws, sewerage, and a safety net. People just need open hardware, and crowd sourced community blah blah blah - that'll solve all our problems. Right? RIGHT!

Noor Siddiqui (17, Clifton, VA) is inspired to galvanize people for the good of others. As a Thiel Fellow, she will work to give students across the globe access to upward mobility – and industries access to an untapped work force – with the goal of mobilizing one billion people in the next decade.

  That's like MBA speak meets HR meets a Dilbert comic.

  You can't make this stuff up. It's insane.

Clearly humble there. I mean, of course, no claims, apart from the MOBILISING ONE BILLION PEOPLE. But hey, that's just me little old me. What would I know?

revolutionize our country’s antiquated system using technology. As a Thiel Fellow, he will focus on Flashcards

  There's a Youtube hit in that sentence somewhere.

And here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4.

Ilya Vakhutinsky (20, Fair Lawn, NJ) wants to revolutionize the way the technology and health care communities work together.

Indeed, because a poor person's biggest problem with health care is how he will access his patient data. Money? What's that?

When a person's age is next to their name, preceding all actual data, you just know some real _A class bullshit_ is coming your way. And hey, it holds true!

Removed Einstein reference just to make you happy :D.

⬐ tensor

Most of this is just bold claims without any backing. Every kid thinks they are the next Einstein, Jobs, or Gates. For the more technically oriented people, university provides the best environment for access to scientific papers and domain experts around. Hell, Thiel's own startup Palantir hires people "preferably with phd's." It's not the degree that matters, but what you learn during it.

Thiel has some form of political agenda and this is just a stunt to try and further it. I do not claim to know what his agenda is, but if I had to guess, I'd say his aim is to promote his libertarianism ideals.

⬐ glenra

Thiel is convinced that college in its current form has become a waste of time and talent for the smartest students. He agrees with the "signaling" model of education whereby the primary "benefit" of having a degree is just that it proves you were the sort of person who could complete a degree; this project serves as a test of that model.

If these kids do well, eventually "skip college and do something useful instead" might become a socially viable alternative to the default expectation that the smarter you are, the more time you should waste in college before you go out and try to do anything.

⬐ GuiA

This is a startup blog. Their goal is to make everything feel amazing, so that more people become fascinated with "entrepreneurship", so that they can get more readers.

A few months ago, one of my colleague remarked that the main thing that tech blogs and new-gen incubators (ie ycombinator, thiel fellowship, etc.) did was make entrepreneurs out of people who wouldn't have created a company otherwise. I feel that there's some truth to that.

Offtopic: confluence, I'd like to get in touch with you, btw. Feel free to reach out through contact info in my profile :)

⬐ rdl

Respectfully, I met these people at their final event a month ago.

Taylor Wilson specifically is one of the most amazingly intelligent people I've met of any age. Yes, building a Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor is not amazing for a grad student or well resourced adult. Doing it successfully is still a great project for an individual, and his knowledge of nuclear engineering in general was at least at the same level as nuclear engineering grad students I've talked with.

Anyone can sound trivial in a 1 sentence mass market summary. "Invented a shopping cart, sold it to Yahoo, invests small amounts of money (less than a decent car) several in startups per year" "wrote bingo software for teachers, has a blog" "developed a website to share photos" "with a cofounder, developed a website to help people find things on the Internet".

⬐ rfrey

I agree with your points in the large, but don't fault the kids. Youthful hubris, especially on the scale you've highlighted here, is ridiculous, hopelessly naive, indescribably arrogant, and... breathtakingly wonderful. That ill-founded self confidence will fail every single time - except when it doesn't, in which case the results are magnificent.

My own optimism is nearly spent, which often leads me to hopelessness. That's held at bay by listening to these kinds of kids talk about their ambitions. Don't worry, they'll figure out it's hard, and in a few years some of them will laugh at their former innocence (or blush at their swagger). In the meantime they'll have swung a hammer a few times at the infinite brick wall. Please don't wish them away.

⬐ confluence

I don't want to crush dreams.

But these kids are being set up to fail. They cannot, and will not, live up to these expectations.

Honestly, it feels like putting kids in a zoo and seeing what happens. It's a spectacle, and I'm sure some enjoy it, but it looks somewhat exploitative (like some aspects of Hollywood :).

When you state that sometimes > the results are really magnificent < you mean that hedgehogs (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox) are usually wrong, but when they are right - they are really right (computers/transistors/radio/internet/space/AI).

I agree. But usually they are very, very wrong. I, like you, want to be proven wrong (I practice double think - I like being a hedgehog too!)

⬐ szany

Honestly, it feels like putting kids in a zoo and seeing what happens. It's a spectacle, and I'm sure some enjoy it, but it looks somewhat exploitative (like some aspects of Hollywood :).

Sadly I think you're right about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRk7uP5S9VQ

(I'm one from the previous class.)

Woefully inaccurate: it has vowels in the name. In fact, mostly vowels in the name.

Also, collegehumor did this better a year ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4

For that matter, so did Color.

⬐ sp332

Or this more tech-oriented one from 2006: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmo1ef7tVso

⬐ rokhayakebe

FWIW I believe the original promess of color, creating on-the-fly location based social networks, was a game-changing concept. It's bad they did not stick with it despite a failed launch.

⬐ kposehn

"For that matter, so did Color."

That is an epic burn.

⬐ sliverstorm

"epic" was played out the day it started getting used in radio ads.

Too true. Some guys over at college humor are on to this problem already... Anyone who has spent time in Silicon Valley will find this clip awesome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4

Enjoy!

⬐ Archio

Thought this was really funny. Makes fun of the buzzwords we like to use and the "trendy" startup atmosphere.

⬐ ByteMuse

There's a grain of truth in every joke...

⬐ khaliqgant

Enjoyed this. Poking fun at "our" culture is a healthy reminder to not take it too seriously and get caught up too much in the startup mode.

This is just for fun (not informational at all), but I love how it parodies the startup culture.

College Humor Start-up Guys:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4

At the very least the video will cheer you up :)

⬐ inkaudio

they were missing a few terms, like "collapsed user models" and "elastic network".

If you don't get this video watch this: http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/24/lumier-adds-a-new-coat-of-p...

⬐ blhack

"We'll take it to South By, and get some Grilled Cheese"

...ouch. There also should have been at least 100 more .ly domains in there.

⬐ ricefield

Maybe people like this exist, but I have never worked with anyone like this before. The ones actually building startups and raising VC money are better than this... I hope

⬐ bcrescimanno

That's the point of satire and caricature--taking the small realities that we see of this mentality every day and exploding into a parody of itself.

No, I've never seen people exactly like this--but I have seen tons of the people who motivated the video.

⬐ trbecker

Posers posing. I see that a lot in the corporate world.

⬐ rhygar

Welcome to 2012.

⬐ jmjerlecki

"So the company you started 20 minutes ago already failed."

"Yeah it crashed 8 minutes ago."

Also I thought the name Brushfire was hilarious.

⬐ kayoone

hilarious and has some truth to it ;)

⬐ bmull

I love this.

⬐ rhygar

Painfully accurate.