That's the essence of a startup: having brilliant people do work that's beneath them. Big companies try to hire the right person for the job. Startups win because they don't-- because they take people so smart that they would in a big company be doing "research," and set them to work instead on problems of the most immediate and mundane sort. Think Einstein designing refrigerators.
I wonder if that was deliberate. I also wonder if references to YC lore raise or lower your odds of getting in.
Hopefully this doesn't sound snarky--PG's essays have lots of allusions that I end up referencing without remembering the source. I'd expect to do that much more in a startup-related context.
I think pg was just creating a vivid image, so its factual truth is irrelevant.
I'm nonplussed at how often pg sums up my own views. One cause is that the books I read about startups are based on SV stories - while pg talks to the people who actually did them, batches of startups who are currently doing them, and he's in the story himself. Also, I've likely read some of what he's read (e.g. The Innovator's Dilemma).
So, I find YC lore very helpful, because of the truths it contains. But citing it purely as lore (without understanding it) would probably count as a severe negative. I'm not sure about the case of providing an alternative expression of the same idea, especially if pg's is more succinct/appropriate - but it's always helpful to speak the same dialect as your audience, if only for communication.
http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html
I wonder if that was deliberate. I also wonder if references to YC lore raise or lower your odds of getting in.
Hopefully this doesn't sound snarky--PG's essays have lots of allusions that I end up referencing without remembering the source. I'd expect to do that much more in a startup-related context.