<story><title>The cult of conformity in Silicon Valley [video]</title><url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia7IKW0yuG0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>the-grump</author><text>Plus making money is the whole point of creating a company.&lt;p&gt;There are many weirdos (I mean that as a positive thing) building things like popcorn time and its successors, creating models for vrChat, modding games, building rockets, automating their homes with ESP Home&amp;#x2F;Tasmota, using esoteric languages to solve solved problems, playing with ML models, etc.&lt;p&gt;They don&amp;#x27;t need to come to YC.&lt;p&gt;Like it or not, status follows money, and YC has proven itself to be an effective step to a successful exit. Seekers of money and status (what the discussion refers to as conformists) will find you if you&amp;#x27;re at YC. Weirdos are weirded out by you.</text></item><item><author>throwaway13337</author><text>The answer to the question of &amp;#x27;where the non-conformist tech nerds hang out&amp;#x27; is almost too obvious.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s where the money isn&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a lot of cool stuff that isn&amp;#x27;t obviously a path to money. The blender community is full of it, for instance.&lt;p&gt;YC isn&amp;#x27;t a part of that because YC is primarily concerned with making money.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t a very satisfying answer because it does not lead to investment and money but that&amp;#x27;s kinda the point.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hinkley</author><text>&amp;gt; Plus making money is the whole point of creating a company.&lt;p&gt;It really isn’t. There’s lots of other reasons to make a company, and making money is the means, not the ends.&lt;p&gt;Money isn’t even the point of money. You have a whole life of misery ahead of you if you don’t figure that out and figure it out soon.</text></comment>
<story><title>The cult of conformity in Silicon Valley [video]</title><url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia7IKW0yuG0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>the-grump</author><text>Plus making money is the whole point of creating a company.&lt;p&gt;There are many weirdos (I mean that as a positive thing) building things like popcorn time and its successors, creating models for vrChat, modding games, building rockets, automating their homes with ESP Home&amp;#x2F;Tasmota, using esoteric languages to solve solved problems, playing with ML models, etc.&lt;p&gt;They don&amp;#x27;t need to come to YC.&lt;p&gt;Like it or not, status follows money, and YC has proven itself to be an effective step to a successful exit. Seekers of money and status (what the discussion refers to as conformists) will find you if you&amp;#x27;re at YC. Weirdos are weirded out by you.</text></item><item><author>throwaway13337</author><text>The answer to the question of &amp;#x27;where the non-conformist tech nerds hang out&amp;#x27; is almost too obvious.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s where the money isn&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a lot of cool stuff that isn&amp;#x27;t obviously a path to money. The blender community is full of it, for instance.&lt;p&gt;YC isn&amp;#x27;t a part of that because YC is primarily concerned with making money.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t a very satisfying answer because it does not lead to investment and money but that&amp;#x27;s kinda the point.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwaway13337</author><text>I agree.&lt;p&gt;The tech nerds were a great investment recently and so people are trying to spot the real ones in a sea of fakes now. The investors think that spotting the real ones will lead to more of the same.&lt;p&gt;Maybe that was a moment in time.&lt;p&gt;Another way to to look at it is through value capture. The things you listed often create a lot of value for the community they&amp;#x27;re a part of or for humanity as a whole. But these things do not generate as much value to the creators. The creators are unable to capture the value they created but do it anyway.&lt;p&gt;The last decade can be seen through the lens of tech companies (mostly big ones) capturing the overall value of the tech created at the expense of the communities it once subsidized.&lt;p&gt;Value capture isn&amp;#x27;t bad in itself but the immense focus on it kills a lot of the utility of the thing created. More loose forms of value capture created the tech revolution that were then monetized often by a separate group.&lt;p&gt;The cynically monetized tech will hopefully be outcompeted by the looser forms due to increased utility inherent in its looseness as happened previously.</text></comment>