Garry Tan

The goal is noble, but Urbit is destined to become a case study in the dangers of isolation and obstinacy.

This project has gone so deep into its own inner sanctum that they've lost tabs on wider reality. While the result may have glimmers of technical excellence for brave souls to excavate some day, the impact of the juxtaposition between latent expertise and overwhelming derangement is enough to scare away (literally scare away) basically everyone.

This style of issuing a large corpus of dicta that comprise "the One True Way" never works, not even in actual bona fide religion. Systems and protocols that last are built iteratively by collaborators across institutions, each piece finding immediate utility as it's integrated and deployed.

The big question around Urbit is not whether it will succeed -- rather, it's whether Yarvin will appreciate that he's rapidly disproved the nascent brand of proto-monarchist philosophy Urbit was meant to realize. [0]

See also: Pontormo at San Lorenzo [1], Xanadu [2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

[1] https://blog.garrytan.com/always-be-shipping-a-lesson-from-jacopo-da-po

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu

Respect is at the center of this issue. If you feel you have been disrespected (knowingly or unknowingly), you need to bring that up. At the same time, if you have lost respect, you need to communicate that to the other co-founders. I wrote a post about communication that talks about this in detail - read here: http://www.pranavpiyush.com/communication-for-startup-co-founders/

Either way, communicate! Put it all out there. If, even then, things don't seem like working out (i.e. the other 2 don't see a problem that needs solving), then leave.

As for what you do next, don't start a business for the sake of starting a business. Do it if you have a vision for what the world should look like. If you believe in the vision strongly enough, nothing can get in the way of you building the product/company to fulfill it. If not, don't fret. Working for a corporation is not the end of the world.

Find a place where you will learn something. There's a nice post by Garry Tan about learning vs. earning. Read it. http://blog.garrytan.com/lessons-from-2-5-that-i-wish-i-knew-at-2-4

That's true!
However, another quote that I thought was relevant to this same way of thinking: (this was just posted today on HN, and I thought, exactly!)

“Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning. But fear is your best friend. Fear is like fire. If you learn to control it, you let it work for you. If you don’t learn to control it, it’ll destroy you and everything around you.

“You think you know the difference between a hero and a coward, Mike? Well, there is no difference between a hero and a coward in what they feel. It’s what they do that makes them different. The hero and the coward feel exactly the same, but you have to have the discipline to do what a hero does and to keep yourself from doing what the coward does.”

~ http://blog.garrytan.com/

When I read this, it exactly encapsulated what I was trying to say. You are allowed to fear everything, but if you let fear control you or decide what you will or will not do you will not become great. You may even regret bitterly not taking the jump off the cliff.

My understanding is that whoever built bitcoin was pretty darn good at what they were doing.
I question whether the best of the best in cryptography would choose to work for a government over earn enough money to spend time building something awesome, like bitcoin. This is coming off watching the video Gary Tan posted recently [1].

To me, the only question left is about leaking. What's a greater incentive against leaking: coercion by a bureaucratic, nontechnical employer (ie; a government), or the bonds of secrecy between close friends in a common cause?
Call me an idealist, but I think the latter has a pretty good shot. The number of leaks coming from Apple vs the number of leaks from Google (higher from Apple, IIRC) seems to support this viewpoint.

[1] http://sub.garrytan.com/hackers-can-be-business-guys-and-other-lessons-from-an-interview-with-paul-graham-during-the-first-yc-batch-in-2005, around 12:30 iirc.

EDIT: sentence structure.

I was working on an app as a side project similar to this. Basically each traveler would fill out a form saying I live in X and I have access to car/train/etc. transportation. The idea was to match people and then find a central location for remote teams to meet up. For example, 2 people live in Chicago, 3 in NYC, and one in SF. Where is the best city to meet up; however, I was optimizing on cost.

It turns out several people on HN had similar ideas (Villagers app was one but it seems to be offline now https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33344734). I stopped working on it after reading this HN thread where several people linked to various articles like https://blog.garrytan.com/travel-planning-software-the-most-common-bad.

I previously blogged here about the general application process. You should definitely apply. YC is basically one of the few places where anyone in the world can apply and have a real fair shake at having their application be read and voted upon by smart YC alums and partners. Just as the SAT helped normalize access to higher education, the YC app process is as valuable and rare and serves a similar purpose to help great teams and startups rise.

Here was my article from before:

http://blog.garrytan.com/last-minute-advice-for-yc-applicants-updated-for-2014