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Blake Masters
Personal blog · blakemasters.comstartupsbusiness
Blake Masters's personal blog at blakemasters.com covers startups and business. Since 2013, 86 different Hacker News readers have linked it 99 times, most often “Blake Master’s notes on Peter Thiel’s lectures.”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 8 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Blake Masters' blog for his notes from Peter Thiel's Stanford CS183 startup class, which commenters cite for Thiel's ideas on power laws, secrets and indeterminacy.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Blake Masters personal website
Most-linked posts?
- Blake Master’s notes on Peter Thiel’s lectures.21 people · 21 mentions · first linked 2013-01-22
- /post/21437840885/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-5-notes-essay7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2013-01-23
- Last Mover Advantage (2012)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2013-02-17
- Peter Thiel’s CS183: Class 13 Notes – You Are Not A Lottery Ticket (2012)5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2013-02-07
- Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 11 Notes Essay5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2013-04-14
- /post/21869934240/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-7-notes-essay5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2013-09-18
- Peter Thiel’s CS183 Class Notes: If You Build It, Will They Come?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2013-02-21
- Peter Theil: Founder as Victim, Founder as God5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2015-07-20
- Peter Thiel CS183 Class Notes4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2014-12-21
- Founder as Victim, Founder as God3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-05-09
What Hacker News says?
It's not surprising. A lot of lawyers will tell you that passing the bar was one of the more grueling things they've had to do. Here's a blog post about a guy who did it with 100 hours of study. http://blakemasters.com/post/37113468298/pass-the-ca-bar-exa... The bar exam is three grueling days. 100 hours of study is two and a half weeks of full time work. If you interview at three tech companies, I don't think it's…
Comment linking /post/37113468298/pass-the-ca-bar-exam-in-100-hours
on “Who Y Combinator Companies Want”Submitted Peter Thiel’s CS183: Class 13 Notes – You Are Not A Lottery Ticket (2012) as a story · 82 points
HN discussionContext for those who don't get the reference: Blake Masters took notes for Peter Thiel's Startup course at Stanford. [1] The notes quickly become popular. He actually released a book on startups with Peter Thiel today. [2] 1: http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup 2: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804139296
Comment linking /peter-thiels-cs183-startup
on “How to Start a Startup: Fall 2014”Submitted Blake Masters is running for US Senate as a story · 9 points
HN discussionPeter Thiel (via Blake Masters) has a good discussion about this: http://blakemasters.com/post/21869934240/peter-thiels-cs183-... Excerpt: "To a first approximation, a VC portfolio will only make money if your best company investment ends up being worth more than your whole fund." This is the big hit, and VC's are trying to optimize their chances of getting one of these. That's different from trying to precisely cal…
Comment linking /post/21869934240/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-7-notes-essay
on “How to Raise Money”Submitted Keith Rabois' thoughts on second round investment in Judicata as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI think what Peter Thiel says about secrets[0] is much closer to the "truth" than "build something that seems like a bad idea but isn't". [0] http://blakemasters.com/post/22866240816/peter-thiels-cs183-...
Comment linking /post/22866240816/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-11-notes
on “Startup advice, briefly”Submitted Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 11 Notes Essay as a story · 4 points
HN discussion@pmarca has an interesting thread on this on Twitter [1]. In Peter Thiel’s terminology [2], PG’s view is optimistic nondeterminate, which might be fine for a VC but might not be the best choice for a founder. [1] https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/546533509922160640 [2] http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels-cs183-...
Comment linking /post/23435743973/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-13-notes
on “How to Be an Expert in a Changing World”Submitted Founder as Victim, Founder as God as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAccording to Peter Thiel (in CS183), this lack of long term plan is a symptom of people believing that the future is indeterminate[1]. 1. http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels-cs183-... (Section I. The End of Big Projects)
Comment linking /post/23435743973/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-13-notes
on “The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure”Submitted Peter Thiel on Pitching (2012) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionBlake Masters has a great overview from Peter Thiel's Stanford CS183 class about the future of Thorium and why it may be a very promising cleantech energy solution: http://blakemasters.com/post/23787022006/peter-thiels-cs183-...
Comment linking /post/23787022006/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-14-notes-essay
on “Thorium Reactors”Submitted Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup – Class 17 – Deep Thought as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI encourage people here on HN to take a look at your footnote [2] and consider it. We talk a lot about how programming has "low barriers to entry", but this is very misleading. It really just means that there are no legal barriers to entry. I recently interviewed at google, and while I can't talk specifically about questions, I would say that medium to difficult level questions from "Cracking the Coding Interview" a…
Comment linking /post/37113468298/pass-the-ca-bar-exam-in-100-hours
on “Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days”Submitted Blake Master’s notes on Peter Thiel’s lectures. as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> Oh, and culture fit? That's just discrimination - rebranded! What? You don't like what other upper-class white males like? Be gone heathen! Agreed. It bothers me to see hyper homogenous work cultures celebrated as some kind of ideal [1]. [1] http://blakemasters.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels-cs183-...
Comment linking /post/21437840885/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-5-notes-essay
on “LivingSocial: Employees' and Founders' Common Stock Now Worthless”Submitted Optimism and determinism as a story · 3 points
HN discussion"Listen, companies have their own cultures..." Peter Thiel once used "culture fit" to exclude people who liked playing basketball: "PayPal once rejected a candidate who aced all the engineering tests because for fun, the guy said that he liked to play hoops. That single sentence lost him the job. No PayPal people would ever have used the world “hoops.” Probably no one even knew how to play “hoops.” Basketball would…
Comment linking /post/21437840885/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-5-notes-essay
on “To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews”Submitted Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup – Class 5 Notes Essay as a story · 2 points
HN discussionMost corporations in the US are incorporated in Delaware. Whenever the question of incorporation arises, the answers is always in Delaware as a C-corp. PG's comment was a nod to that. http://blakemasters.com/post/21742864570/peter-thiels-cs183-... (Look at point #2 - "You Should Be a Delaware C-corp")
Comment linking /post/21742864570/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-6-notes-essay
on “Lecture 3: How to Start a Startup”Submitted Peter Thiel CS183 Class Notes as a story · 2 points
HN discussionPeter Thiel refused to hire someone who liked to play "hoops": "PayPal once rejected a candidate who aced all the engineering tests because for fun, the guy said that he liked to play hoops. That single sentence lost him the job. " http://blakemasters.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels-cs183-... You seem to assume everyone agrees that making hiring decisions on factors with zero relevance to doing the work doesn't ma…
Comment linking /post/21437840885/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-5-notes-essay
on “How to Hire”Submitted You Are Not a Lottery Ticket as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThank you for talking to Peter and sharing this. For those interested in more, Blake (the co-author from the book) took Peter Thiel's CS183 class in Stanford, and has class notes freely available on his blog (the notes generated the idea for the book, from my understanding): http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup I highly recommend the book.
Comment linking /peter-thiels-cs183-startup
on “Chapter Two of Peter Thiel's New Book”Submitted Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 13 Notes Essay as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThis is the same kind of person who would write software to find anti-Islamic comments had he been born in Iran, or to hunt down dissidents if born in China. The kind of person who reflexively genuflects towards the current state-sponsored ideology, whatever it is (quick test: is Obama on your side?), because he loves the rush of feeling holier-than-thou. As an example, the lint checks that "bro culture" is bad, but…
Comment linking /post/21437840885/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-5-notes-essay
on “Joblint: test tech jobs for sexism, culture, expectations, and recruiter fails”Submitted Notes Essays - Peter Thiel's CS183: Startup–Stanford, Spring 2012 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThere are some good notes for Peter Thiel's class here: http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup
Comment linking /peter-thiels-cs183-startup
on “Stanford's new course on building a startup”Submitted Peter Thiel’s CS183 Class Notes: If You Build It, Will They Come? as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
