Paul Graham: Ronco Principles

None of the venture capitalists or business angels have invested more in top startups than Ron Conway . He knows about each transaction in the Valley, especially the half of them he made himself.



He is a great guy. In fact, “excellent” is not even the word. Ron is the best. I do not know a single case where he would have behaved badly. This is hard to even imagine.



When I first arrived in Silicon Valley, I thought: “What a blessing that there is someone so influential as magnanimous.” But gradually I realized that this was not a mere coincidence. Only by being generous, could Ron become so influential. All projects invested by him came to him on the recommendation of other people. In the long list of such companies are Google, Facebook and Twitter. The reason that so many people prefer to have common things with him is that he has shown himself to be a worthy guy.



But do not think that he is weak. I would not want to run into Ron in anger. He can only be angry with you if you have done something wrong. Ron Conway - the old school, the same as the Old Testament. Without malice, he will strike you in his righteous anger.

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Almost every field has its own benefits to seem worthy. This practice makes people trust you, but actually being worthy is too expensive a way to just seem so. For an immoral person it may seem too costly.



In some industries - maybe, but, undoubtedly, not in the world of startups. There are a lot of scum among investors, but there is a clear trend: the most successful investors are always worthy people.

Sorting investors by goodwill is not equivalent to sorting by profit, but if the investor is postponed along the X axis and the profit axis along the Y axis, then you can see a clear upward trend.

But it was not always so. Not sure twenty years ago I could talk about investors the same.



What changed? The world of startups has become much more transparent and unpredictable. To seem a worthy person is much more difficult without being such.



It is clear why transparency has such an effect. Today, when an investor treats disgustingly with entrepreneurs, it immediately becomes public knowledge. Maybe not everyone gets into the press, but other entrepreneurs still find out about it, and this leads to the fact that the investor begins to lose deals.

Y Combinator, in particular, combines the data of many startups and has a fairly complete picture of the behavior of investors.

The effect of unpredictability is more refined, increasing the incompatibility of approaches. Hypocrisy becomes an extremely difficult thing, you should always know when to be kind, and when an unpleasant type. In the world of startups, everything changes very quickly. A random student with whom you are talking today may be the CEO of the hottest startup in the Valley in a couple of years. If you don’t know when to be helpful, you should be like this all the time. Probably only sincerely good people are capable of it.



In a fully connected and unpredictable world, you cannot just seem like a decent person.



As is often the case, Ron learned how to be a good investor by accidental coincidence. He did not foresee the future of a startup investing. Just behaved in such a way that it was not a shame. He felt unnatural if he had to behave differently. He already lives in the future.



Fortunately, the future is not limited to the world of startups. It is simply more transparent and unpredictable than most, but almost everywhere the trend is the same.