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Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#201

Post by lettergram »

lowglow wrote: post #188
kevin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You look for grit. What evidence can you find that shows they don't just give up when things get hard? Thing is we don't find out usually until after we invest what the real problems are...so we optimize for people we want to spend a lot of time with and work on these problems/issues whatever they may be. Most founders feel imposter syndrome after they're accepted. The great thing about being part of a batch is you r…

I'm living out of a van right now in Palo Alto, after having sold everything I own to build projects that work. My worldly possessions can fit inside a single backpack. My co-founder and I are generating revenue and grinding on making sure the community loves what we're building. My burn rate is close to 300-400/mo, less if I eat less per day. #grit Beyond that what else is there?

You know a bowl of rice is less than $1 and the return on investment is probably higher... because you know, you can think clearer.

Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#202

Post by dang »

elliotec wrote: post #162

This seems like a silly idea to me, frankly. What makes you think any of us are qualified to decide what the best company to fund would be? See this for precedence: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/world/europe/boaty-mcboatf...

I doubt that "qualified" is a helpful lens to view this through. The only thing that really qualifies you to pick startups, I suppose, is a track record of being good at it. By that standard the HN community certainly isn't qualified, but there still might be a chance of something interesting.

There's a lot of knowledge about technology and startups among HN members, and when good discussions happen here they can be very good. That seemed like enough reason to give it a try. If it turns out to have been a silly idea, we're fine with that; the best way to have more good ideas is to have more bad ones.

Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#203

Post by dang »

andychase wrote: post #167

This is such an interesting concept that I'm excited to see it happen. This also perfectly answers the call for yc to release applications of rejected applications. Can a group or an individual submit more then one application?

By analogy with how HN treats reposts, I think it's ok as long as you don't do it a lot. i.e. two is ok, three maybe, four is probably bad. Obviously that assumes they're for distinct ideas and that each of them is a serious proposal.

Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#205

Post by dang »

n72 wrote: post #127

Given any consideration to giving some percentage of the profit YC makes to charity or something? After all, YC is benefiting from the wisdom of the crowd and the crowd gets nothing.

We're a long way from seeing whether there's any profit in this. The odds are surely against it, because they usually are. If something dramatic comes of this I'm sure YC will think seriously about how to structure it, but we can wait until we have that good problem.

In the meantime the community gets the same thing we do, which is the satisfaction of giving it a try and seeing what happens. That's much in keeping with the values of this site, i.e. gratifying curiosity.

Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#208

Post by jdp23 »

kevin wrote: post #80
jdp23 wrote: post #70

Interesting idea, and kudos to you for kicking off the discussions to refine the approach - and for the "be nice" rule, which I think is very important here. A question: What are the situations where you think it will benefit people more to go the open route than applying directly? One way of thinking about it is advantages of "Apply HN": getting significant calibration and feedback on an idea that improves it whethe…

Honestly, we don't really know. We have very few hypotheses around this idea. We're just insanely curious to see what will happen. As far as the disadvantage you mention, that happens when you launch. That happens when you start getting press. That happens when you announce a large funding round. That happens when you're doing well. In our experience, startups are far more likely to die by suicide than by homicide. I…

Thanks for the responses. True, that's what happens in all of those situations, but in the YC Fellowship you call out that they're for people "very early in the process". So the tradeoffs may be different.

Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#210

Post by Schwolop »

dang wrote: post #73
raldi wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hey, this looks really cool, but I notice you guys don't support TLS (i.e., if I change the 'http' to 'https', I can't connect). I know you have a million things on your todo list, but this one is extraordinarily important; your target users will simply close their browser windows once they see 'http'. Also, fixing this is easy! Just check out this tutorial [link] .. or let me know if you have any questions and I'll…

That's fine, and for those who don't feel so gushy, there's a different thing you can do: simply re-read your comments and edit out anything that isn't nice. You can always set 'delay' in your profile to between 1 and 10 minutes to give yourself some editing time. Mine is 3.

FYI - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html does not have any reference to the 'delay' variable. I still have no great idea what it does.
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