411–420 of 458 posts
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We do try to talk about this but should talk about it more. It turns out that most people (and certainly most journalists) want to talk about/write about the success cases. I'll think about how to best do this.
A homejoy post mortem would be a good place to start given it was used a positive case study in a bunch of talks etc
I watched your startup course that was done at Stanford. Have you ever considered writing a startup book?
I know that's not what you're looking for, but at least it gets us close!
Hi Sam, in interview with Elon Musk, you asked him 'Do you think people that want to be useful today should get PhDs?' Elon: Mostly not. Here are my questions: 1. Do you think people need to get a PhD degree to become useful research scientist in AI industry? 2. Do you think people need to get a PhD degree to become Member of Technical Staff (Machine Learning) in Open AI? Thank you.
I personally think these same skills can be found outside of PhDs.
I've been running an east-coast-but-middle-of-nowhere startup, primarily implemented by myself, and self-funded, with the occasional with help of random one-off contractors in the hospitality/IoT space for two years now. Basically during off-hours from a (pretty successful) day job in a non-tech company I started years ago. My choke point has always been finding another technical-minded parter that gets the industry.…
Don't do that. They are not final arbiters of either talent or success.
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http://www.paulgraham.com/hubs.html
That's the article I had in the back of my head. I think it might be a good time to reassess some of the ideas from the article (it is 5 years old after all). """being in a place where startups are the cool thing to do, and chance meetings with people who can help you""" I think "the cool thing to do" isn't as relevant as it was 5 years ago due to some well publicized success stories and things like the shark tank et…
Based on empirical history of how successful startups have turned into $1 billion companies, it looks like the density & quantity of the hiring pool and investors are higher priorities than location of customers. In SV, you get a pipeline of fresh Stanford grads and also the ex-employees from Apple/Google/Facebook/etc. For investors, you have a bunch of them clustered on Sand Hill Rd. For B2C consumer facing internet businesses, there are no geographically concentrated customers to move to.
The prioritization of proximity close to the customers may make more sense for a lifestyle business[1]. E.g. you're developing a SaaS cloud service for surfing shops to manage their inventory of surfboard gear. In that case, it might make more sense to locate the headquarters in San Diego and it's a calculated tradeoff to rely on the smaller pool of programmers in that area. The startup CEO physically visits each surfing shop to see how the software is used and gets real feedback for new features. Investors would also be less of an issue because a lot of lifestyle businesses are bootstrapped to profitability. That said, YC and VCs don't invest in lifestyle businesses so their bias towards SV wouldn't apply.
Sam, thanks for taking the time to talk with us. I hope it's ok, but I've got a few questions about something not directly related to YC applications. As a middle-aged developer, I've seen a lot in my lifetime, but I believe that right now, even though in some ways I'm much more hopeful for the future than I've ever been, I feel like there are many huge time-bombs out there in the world that make focusing on a startu…
You raise very good points. The future will either be great or terrible--I think an intermediate outcome is unlikely. I think it's a super exciting time to be alive, but I feel the shared sense of responsibility most others do to do everything I can to get safely through the other side. I understand the desire to save enough for a scary world ahead, and I think it's prudent to do that. Beyond, that, if you're nervous…
It seems half these questions are from Single Founders. Considering YC's interest in experimenting with who and what they fund... Has YC ever considered a class of only single founders and trying to solve the problems YC anticipates with single founder startups (i.e. emotional support, etc...) It seems to me that the demand is there, and the potential for single founders to succeed is certainly possible... why not ex…
What we've thought about the most is creating a better way for potential cofounders to meet each other.
Could you outline the exact reasoning why YC still believes SV is the place to be for a startup. I've never heard any explanation that went deeper than "well investors are there and network duh" It seems very broken that IT specifically should be bound to a physical place. Are there any plans to innovate in this regard or any research YC is doing?
This is discussed in the book "The Industries of the Future" by Alec Ross. He asks a question: Why can not other countries replicate SV? The short version is accumulation of know-how in that geographic region. For years, most of the brilliant minds in the tech domain from all over the world have gone to SV to collaborate together. So even if another country creates a replication of SV in terms of infrastructure (or e…
I've lived all over the country and all over the world and between countries I'd say it is 100% cultural.
In "europe" employee protection laws make it difficult to quickly hire and fire employees, making it difficult to scale.
In Chile failure was shameful. A stable bureaucratic government job was the most coveted job.
In Japan you are a social outcast if you aren't a company man.
I found quite a bit of entrepreneurial effort in west Africa, however I think that area lacks the required infrastructure to support large scale innovation.
I don't buy the concentration argument within the US borders. The bay area has a population of 7M, the greater NYC area has a population of 20M. Purely based on population numbers it is difficult to believe the bay area has a higher concentration of educated people.
Could you outline the exact reasoning why YC still believes SV is the place to be for a startup. I've never heard any explanation that went deeper than "well investors are there and network duh" It seems very broken that IT specifically should be bound to a physical place. Are there any plans to innovate in this regard or any research YC is doing?
They used to be in both Cambridge and California, when they moved to CA only PG wrote this: http://old.ycombinator.com/ycca.html