The Cult of Conformity in Silicon Valley

What happens when the unconventional becomes conventional? Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell discuss how the startup world has changed from being dominated by outsiders and nonconformists to now attracting more mainstream conformists looking for status and money. They share stories of what the tech scene was like when they were in school - and how radically different it is today. Dalton and Michael offer advice about navigating a world that doesn't always reward nonconformists embarking on risky entrepreneurial journeys. Don't just think different, act different.
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Work at a Startup: yc.link/DandM-jobs
Chapters (Powered by bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
00:00 - Intro
00:29 - Mainstream Startups
01:30 - Ye Olde Startups
02:48 - School Mindset
04:29 - Waiting In Line
05:28 - Weirdos
06:47 - Investors
09:41 - Where Is Home?
10:37 - Positive Signals
11:43 - Learning & Growing
12:54 - Confidence
15:21 - Grand Takeaways

[@ycombinator]

What are signs of conformity or non-conformity you've noticed in tech and startups?

[@businesswithGodwin]

@@billprin Man this is deep!

[@newmankramer1903]

@@billprin Nailed it. Now all of sudden they pretending they've been conformists all along.

[@co563]

This is what kills me about YC and other investors or incubators. They want an endless stream of Stanford/MIT innovators willing to give up a bunch of equity for the $0.5M or whatever it is, but then they also want people who manage to be the best conformists (top school, top everything) and simultaneously excellent non-conformists (build unicorns at the same time)

[@dre9110]

Seeing the following on LinkedIn is a sign of conformity: (#1) Wanting to hire consultants or a startup studio (#2) Desperately wanting to raise money without a path to an MVP or profitability (#3) Big emphasis on a specific pedigree for founders or first hires (e.g., what school "Stanford", prior work experience, etc.) and usually these types are so status obsessed that they tend to conform (#4) Bloated salesforces' as a result of not combining the BDR/SDR/AE function into one role (there is no need for all of those roles)

[@dre9110]

@@billprin Very true. I support.

[@derek-yap]

Next home for non-conformists is to build companies without any investors.

[@htstffcmnthru]

💯

[@joecod298]

Doing it right now lol

[@praneet1377]

👍😂

[@eriklintsev]

+1

[@thirdreplicator]

I'm one of them. Let's meet!

[@zb2747]

The “where is home” section hit home for me (no pun intended). Anytime I speak with a fellow engineer working at company x or someone on Reddit they only got into this field for the money, and really have no desire to solve problems and create change. Idk maybe I haven’t put myself out there enough but that’s been my experience so far

[@davidshamiri1448]

You guys are the best at creating content we didn't know we needed.

[@hbdfg]

This is super interesting coming from an incubator that mostly funds ivy league graduates. As one of the commenters said below, YC has contributed greatly to a culture of conformity in the people they choose to fund.

[@CharlesWeill]

My favorite take is the satirical blog post about a conformist investment banker watching his non-conformist younger brother choose to read Paul Graham and start his own startup instead of following the *traditional path to riches* that is banking. The post is titled "The Book of Graham : The Leveraged Sell-Out".

[@wdai03]

I just read it, I can't tell if it's actually satiracal though, I mean aside from the whole kneeling and mantra reading thing. Objectively speaking Graham really is getting startup founders to take significant risk so he can do a 2 and 20 type thing with risk reduction through diversification.

[@BenjaminKing1]

This really sums up a lot of my feelings. As a PM now I finally feel like my 'title' matches what I love doing, and there are so many people who go after the title and don't actually like doing the work because it is popular... I think it boils down to the people who care about what others think (status/vanity metrics) vs going after what makes them happy (making/doing/learning)

[@jamesoloughlin]

Remember “You can’t be a non-conformist if you don’t drink coffee” -South Park

[@fabioramos7261]

Love you so much guys!! Thanks for everything ❤❤❤

[@chapterme]

Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Conformist vs Non-Conformist in Tech 00:29 - Mainstream Startups 01:30 - Dark Ages of Tech and Startups 02:48 - School Mindset 04:29 - Waiting In Line 05:28 - Weirdos 06:47 - Investors - Highest Status Job 09:41 - Non-Conformist - Where Is Home? 10:37 - Positive Signals 11:43 - Learning & Growing 12:54 - Confidence 15:21 - Grand Takeaways 17:35 - Outro

[@VibhavBobde]

Trying to get YC funding chapterme ?

[@0xmassive526]

@@VibhavBobde lol, leave em alone

[@VibhavBobde]

@@0xmassive526 I mean, it is a pretty good strategy tbh

[@0xmassive526]

@@VibhavBobde aint gonna argue with that 😅

[@chapterme]

@@VibhavBobde YC is one of our customers. Check out this video's description to see our chapters.

[@pabloklestorny5481]

So f*** true and honest, that sometimes this awesome sessions between Michael and Dalton, are not taken seriously into consideration by founders. Free launches usually doesn't exist, but this people are giving away huge value for free. Thanks!

[@iacchoiai39]

The irony is conformity now is to drop out of Standford and apply to YC to raise lot of M

[@thefocuschic3234]

The other thing with being a non-conformist is that is increasingly less risky than being a conformist. Maybe in the past it was the opposite, but the times have changed. Thank you for the video.

[@mrbinspire]

I agree. Why do you think it’s less risky and therefore more advantageous to b non-conformist today?

[@Sonu-nb8sh]

I fully support the point about having the confidence that you will be able to meet any challenge in the future. The best way to grow is to believe in yourself!

[@trouaconti7812]

I could see a new fad coming where everybody calls themselves non conformists, same way everybody in SV call themselves cool

[@aaronevans7713]

Welcome to the 1990s

[@quAdxify]

Well, it is not that easy to fake being an awkward nerd because it comes with so many downsides that it's really not worth faking. It is more a sort of if life gives you lemons you may as well make lemonade.

[@cory99998]

Loved this talk, definitely is fuel for the fire!

[@natarajanshanker5103]

Just love love love these talks!

[@rahulgoel6457]

A super interesting read - "Four Quadrants of Conformism" by Paul Graham

[@auntiecarol]

One might expect a LISPer to be non-conformist.

[@PhuongNguyen-bb9fw]

So brutally honest, true and deeply well-said.

[@RoadmapMBA]

Awesome video!

[@rajchaudhary2795]

Y combinator again as usual 😌💗💗💗

[@treistab]

Great discussion

[@pantarai_flow]

Very interesting video, thanks for sharing and thanks for acknowledging the issue, or let's call it the phenomenon. Yes, it has happened to tech and responsibilities can be shared by many (successful entrepreneurs hiring in a certain way, investors, YC etc). But I guess the reality is much simpler: wherever money goes, more and more people flow. And by definition, if we assume that the majority of humans tend to conform, money will attract a higher number of comformists. That's just the way it goes.

[@OntologyofValue]

Great point on the conformity in the Silicon Valley! I believe that to some extent, pop culture is responsible for this phenomenon. Ever since public figures such as Zuck or Elon have become worshipped superstars, the young fresh startupers try to copy their business strategy and behavior. Plus, there is this general belief in taking advantage of "the next big thing" as an early incomer. Everyone jumps on the blockchain, then web3, then chatbots - whenever is on the media at the moment. But interestingly, even in the Silicon Valley, brand new trends emerge. For instance, in the last 2-3 years - and especially since the recent massive layoffs in tech - the thinking about solopreneurship has changed and it is no longer stigmatized as it used to be in the past. Thousands of people go solo and start their own (online) ventures, not even planning for seeking investors anymore.

[@MrMajani]

Also now Big Tech employment has become a guaranteed path to riches. If you get employed at a billion dollar tech company, if you get poached a few times within that ecosystem, you're almost guaranteed to become a millionaire within 10-20 years of working

[@rudhisundar]

This is Michael Siebel with Dalton Caldwell , today we will laugh out louder and shame all of you founders!! Ha ha!! Ha ha Ha!!!

[@yafiwala]

Michael & Dalton ❣

[@co563]

Naturally people will want to have some kind of ROI from their hard work. If someone builds a startup, then they can’t get funding because investors don’t like it, the company will have a harder time scaling The secret of SV and the financial aspect is out and people who are smart and risk averse want a piece. Thankfully, they are very easy to identify: ex-consulting, ex-banking, MBA, big tech but without side projects. This class gets recruited heavily for VC, then those VCs favor the founders who reflect them It’s all circular. The next “secret” is something else that’s currently uncool

[@quentin2578]

Couldn’t have said it better.

[@Withlindaandrews]

Love this! I’ve always felt like a contrarian. Sometimes a curse. My sights are on revolutionizing gas stations.

[@Withlindaandrews]

I had a few sketchy experiences at gas stations.

[@freesk8]

@@Withlindaandrews Wow, interesting! Are you talking about making it possible to buy gas while staying in your locked car? What a great idea! I'm a big guy, and tend not to be afraid of pumping gas at night. But I'll bet this is a huge concern for over half of the people pumping gas! Interesting technical problem. In the State of Oregon, there is a longstanding tradition of having attendants there to pump gas.

[@aaronevans7713]

My favorite quote from them about nonconformists is I’m gonna try way harder… Noncormists are willing … They want to be above the peer group, not in the peer group Conformists want to be in the pack with everybody… In other words: A nonconformist wants to the be best sheep, the leader of the sheep, the pinnacle of conformism.

[@willmedrano98]

Hey... amazing content and all, but can we get someone to fix Dalton's mic at some point?

[@WikiPeoples]

2:38 ... That's the problem in tech. I can't seem to hire anyone that is actually INTERESTED in tech. Its all a bunch of boot campers who just want to make tech money. Some of them can hack it, but the majority are frankly terrible. I can't fault anyone for wanting to better their life, but its remarkable to me how many people are going into it just for the money and clearly cannot code to save their life.

[@toofy7253]

Preach on!

[@real1muzik]

This same thing happened in music. Back in the day musicians wanted to make music and did make music for the love of it. With the introduction of protools M-Box the home studio was born. Making music with new technology, hardware and software made it completely possible to self produce your own music from home or anywhere. Committing to booking studio time (with costs) was a financial commitment that filtered out probably 90% of the new existing at-home recording artists. Quality dropped because every person recording isn't and engineer, mixer, or producer, but access was the driving factor, not quality. Money is to be made in music so people jump in and take a try at it, similar to influencers and content creatures. People chase money, and technology gives access. Startups are less of a mystery now. Everybody has a general idea of how companies can make money now, it's more of a formula that I think brings in the Conformists this video is about.

[@vlogmoinc5597]

My bois coming late with the videos but they're coming

[@ergo4422]

so good

[@UlternixRecordsYoutube-ss4bd]

The world of non-conformists owes it to the early YC days where it less looked like an automated CI/CD pipeline for startups. An urgent reminder to YC and its people on the selection process: "Is your selection process able to pick non-conformists or not at all?"

[@theni3762]

I wish i could go back, now CS majors are filled with money seeking conformists.

[@johnstalkernet]

Confidence 👍 Arrogance 👎 - The difference is simply admitting you know some things and not all things.

[@joecod298]

Agree!

[@exerscreen2525]

Ha, not much has changed. There were about 4 of us in my first CS class who seemed to actually like computers. Everyone else had heard that CS would get you a high-paying job or something, not that there is anything wrong with that. This was 1982.

[@jrdougan]

Preach it brother/sister. How many people total were in your CS class? CS classes (at least around my area around 1985) were relatively small back than. 4 out of 8 isn't so bad. 4 out of 200 is very bad. I think about half my classes in the non-introductory courses were interested in computing. I think that the problem got noticeably worse in the mid-90s with the first Web boom. I generally use 1987, the last year there were the Joint Conferences, as the year it started getting big enough that no one knows anyone else.

[@exerscreen2525]

@@jrdougan I would say about 75-100, but there were also a fair number of math majors, physics, etc. And somewhat ironically, I guess, I was actually a business major at the time who happened to have the microcomputing disease. Thanks Apple! The class was mostly was Fortran-77. Checked that one off the list, and never looked back. I hope!

[@jrdougan]

@@exerscreen2525 Ahhh. Yeah, in an introductory course for non-CS majors I can see it being very low. Do you have any sense how it was in the CS majors?

[@exerscreen2525]

@@jrdougan Well, there was no actual CS degree at the time since the IEEE had only recently defined it. I ended up switching to it my junior year. But I will say that once you made it to Compiler II, pretty much everyone in the room liked computers. heh. I remember being very confused by classmates wanting to copy my code in that Fortran class. I couldn't understand why they wouldn't want to write it themselves. Bonus War Story: Also that instructor was completely scatterbrained and lost all of my homework. I only had enough storage on the mainframe to store one assignment at a time so I had to redo all of it finals week. I learned how to steal storage PDQ after that.

[@newmankramer1903]

It's hard to find online community for non-conformists. Let's start startup non-conformist and contrarian subreddit or discord server. Like and comment if interested.

[@dannystill5558]

Tech startups have crossed the chasm. ❤

[@grammar_shark]

I see what you did there.

[@MHTHINK]

I'm just at about half way. I suspect with all the fluff courses coding has become a way for people to prove they can think technically. Sadly they're not all going to build the world, but I think the trend of studying coding is a net positive. I favour most trends towards more people testing themselves and learning in domains with real-world feedback. No maybes with buggy code.

[@MHTHINK]

If of any value, I've come to observe as a clinical psychologist that the majority of people, aka the definition of neurotypical people, do not naturally display innovation and tend not to require or really seek avenues for creativity beyond practical necessity, status or other extrinsic alignments with mimicking creation (which will occasionally result in accidental discoveries). People with this nature look for their place in the world as it currently stands and hope they end up in a good one. It's a much more agreeable state than the type of person who is naturally inclined toward fixing, improving, building or otherwise creating something with the hope of bringing the world slightly nicer for themselves and others. Conformity is blending in and becoming one with your environment, but other people have to make it better in part for them. They will make do as best they can.

[@AnnatarTheMaia]

Unless it were my own startup, I'd rather drop dead than work at one not because I'm a conformist (I often get dinged because I'm unyielding), but because of their chaotic, non-structured, hacker mentality. I'm an engineer, not a hacker. I hate hacking things together with a burning passion of one trillion Suns. So you two gentlemen hadn't even considered that aspect; it didn't even occur to you, but it is there because it exists.

[@criptouni]

Honestly... the main difference with the new tech kids is just lack of true in-depth interest on things. "Almost" nobody wants to 'hack' stuff anymore like they used to back in the day.

[@waxcomb]

We used to call you guys computer geeks, now you're tech billionaires and I'm some guy on KZbin in the comments section

[@matthewmolinar220]

I think in a few more years it might become un-cool again, due to a number of factors like anti-trust/politics, bubble pops, and declining processing power

[@satvikmoj4887]

conformity is relative, I would not say joining an early stage startup is necessarily as "non-conformist" as it may have been for you guys. Maybe your definition of "non-conformist" is more conforming than you think!

[@allenleexyz]

Remember this founders: You are the hero, not the VCs

[@whitebat1996]

Goodluck to y'all founders, keep grinding hard, it'll all be worth it!

[@MrDeshaunWilkins]

YC has become high status To their credit not their fault Makes the non-conformists seek different

[@CroissantCreates]

Watch out S23 batch, I’m coming, and I’m bringing non-conformity back 😁

[@MrMajani]

It was inevitable with the mainstreaming of the phone and the internet. To be fair, back in the 2000s, we used to pray for times like these. The conformist invasion is just a small trade-off IMO

[@ryan-millsap]

If you are a non-conformist today you should join a land defense or ecodefense struggle

[@henlojseam]

Is applying to YC conformist or non-conformist?

[@alexanderschlechter4099]

Not when it helps your vision become reality.

[@tmaxon8]

It's 100% conformist. Joining YC is not weird anymore. It's the goal.

[@TochStyle]

very interesting... yes tech has gotten cooler lol

[@Danny-mt5os]

All conformists agree with all your points

[@davidshamiri1448]

Ye Old Startups lol

[@masterz1848]

Hi, I am from India, I try a lot, very hard to find a set of non-confirmists as you call it, who kind of relate with me, like a feeling of freedom to build anything.....but, that is not what I speak among these people are, its CAC, SAAS, PAAS, B2B, B2B2C, D2C, B2C and some or the other way....to kind of take away the freedom and make your sole purpose to convince an investor.....and I am also not able to explain my startup in the words they would like to....only this category called non-confirmists are the ones I feel comfortable talking to, can someone sitting somewhere create an enclosed, you know kind of a limited community for non-confirmists to feel home....to feel community....to feel freedom....instead of creating made up stories convincing investors..

[@testing-vj2ke]

There are no non conformists in India, that environment is toxic to creativity and illegibility. The qualities you seek manifest themselves in individuals, not in groups. If you wish to be creative, you must learn to be alone. The more creative, the more alone.

[@jpaulmeyer]

PLAY STUPID GAMES WIN STUPID PRIZES

[@InFocus_app]

Non-conformism is uncomfortable :)

[@great567]

Conformity is inevtable because of automation tools like AI.

[@pokegan52]

This video just made me realize how much of a non conformist I am lmao

[@alexanderschlechter4099]

Anybody watching this, is a conformist. ^^

[@MathiasEngineer]

conformist = NPC

[@NotRogan]

I thought these guys were like 24

[@webdeveloperninja9220]

saas is not cool now

[@davidshamiri1448]

Tech is the new Wall Street

[@resa574]

So what happened to finance in the 2000s will happen to tech as well

[@saucyrossy3698]

Waaaaaiiiit the hyper liberal echo chamber is super conformist??? What? Noooooo obviously not - calling a man a woman isnt conformity, its enlightenment.

[@CrucialFlowResearch]

These VC companies mainly employ diversity hires instead of real tech nerds. Non comformists think this diversity hiring thing is cringe and staying far away from that trainwreck