> because so long as he built something good enough to spread by word of mouth, he'd have a hyperlinear growth curve.
Startups are not a meritocracy. The marketplace is too crowded, so any startup founder who has an edge will take it. How do you get word of mouth? By "growth hacking" and leveraging privileged personal connections, both of which I've seen happen time and time again from even YC companies.
> By "growth hacking" and leveraging privileged personal connections, both of which I've seen happen time and time again from even YC companies.
This isn't always that beneficial with the tech scene being largely an echo chamber. Compare Meerkat and Secret to Facebook and Snapchat. Meerkat and Secret got a lot of hype from the tech crowed and investors but neither achieved any real word of mouth growth. Facebook and Snapchat on the other hand both had significant traction before they were noticed by investors (Lightspeed, one of the first investors in Snapchat learned of the company through one of its partners' daughters).
> Compare Meerkat and Secret to Facebook and Snapchat.
Fair counterpoint, although it raises the question on what is considered "word of mouth." Both Meerkat and Secret had an absurd (and unwarranted) amount of coverage on Twitter and tech blogs.
In Silicon Valley, that's considered "success" for a startup.
> Fair counterpoint, although it raises the question on what is considered "word of mouth."
The question is whose mouth are the words coming out of and what are they actually saying. So much of the talk about Meerkat and Secret was "this is interesting" and not "I'm using this and you should too."
> The marketplace is too crowded, so any startup founder who has an edge will take it.
That also seems like a good reason to be nice. If you are nice to someone, it puts both you and that person ahead; in a crowded market, that adds up to being the leader of the pack. If you are nasty to someone, it puts both you and your target behind (there is an opportunity cost to being nasty; you're not spending that time being nice). You'll take your target down, but you'll also end up at a disadvantage relative to someone who just stayed out of it.
If you've ever played multiplayer strategy games like FFA Starcraft or Civ 5, you'll notice that the optimal strategy is usually to sit back, turtle up, and work on your infrastructure while everybody else kills each other off. Then when you have an overwhelming force, crush everyone who's left. Players who come out of the gate aggressive usually get taken out or weakened enough that one of the turtles can finish them off, even if they are very skilled.
> Players who come out of the gate aggressive usually get taken out or weakened enough that one of the turtles can finish them off, even if they are very skilled.
Unless they win against other aggressive players and manage to secure additional resources. Late game often turns into logistics game, and if while turtling up you didn't pay enough attention to expand, you'll get starved out of resources and killed.
But I agree with the other part of your post. Moreover, by being consistently nice to people you signal your willingness to cooperate (as in Prisoner's dilemma), which makes other more likely to cooperate with you, leading to better outcome for all parties involved (as long as you're good at avoiding defectors).
The iterated prisoner's dilemma's optimal solution is tit-for-tat, which is a "nice" strategy in that it never defects first. In game-theory tournaments where bots play off an iterated prisoner's dilemma against multiple opponents, the "naughty" strategies get crushed because they eventually encounter a provocable strategy and get caught in a defect loop, running themselves into the ground while the "nice" strategies dominated. This is the situation closest to the startup ecosystem. See eg. The Evolution of Cooperation:
"Privileged personal connections," perhaps minus some of the negative connotations, seems to be among the chief selling points of going into an incubator like YC. I remember seeing Sam Altman tweeting something a few weeks ago about the latest batch raising $220+ MILLION dollars. Those are some hefty connections.
Its ludicrous to say anything good enough to spread by word of mouth will have hyperlinear growth.
Take any group of startups with a product. Now objectively evaluate whether they have a 'good' product. Most people can't objectively evaluate anything, they have a status quo bias. But most people will be able to think of some products that they thought were good and mentioned to their friends and then amazingly didn't get 'hyper-growth'. Sometimes the most innovative products and services are ignored or even hated just because they go against existing belief systems.
> because so long as he built something good enough to spread by word of mouth, he'd have a hyperlinear growth curve.
Startups are not a meritocracy. The marketplace is too crowded, so any startup founder who has an edge will take it. How do you get word of mouth? By "growth hacking" and leveraging privileged personal connections, both of which I've seen happen time and time again from even YC companies.