Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
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Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
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Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#2TL;DR -- Luke Iseman, YC's hardware focused Partner founded a hardware startup, which he's now taking through YC as a founder, after having set up a bunch of deals and processes to help hardware startups as a YC Partner.
Seems like pretty good evidence YC is now great at helping hardware startups that he's choosing to go through the program himself.
Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#3Is it just me or does that picture make him look like a zombie on TWD?
Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#4"Iseman says his departure was purely about his desire to get back into the founder's role and build something new. He's already been accepted into the winter 2017 YC cohort with his new housing startup."
Doesn't sound very acrimonious.
Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#5"Iseman says his departure was purely about his desire to get back into the founder's role and build something new. He's already been accepted into the winter 2017 YC cohort with his new housing startup." Doesn't sound very acrimonious.
Isn't that the definition of a conflict of interest? Or am I reading this wrong?
Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#6"Sam Altman, president and co-founder of Y Combinator."
Uhh, they clearly didn't do their homework if they thought Altman co-founded YC.
Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#7Is it just me or does that picture make him look like a zombie on TWD?
That's... not even him, that's not Luke, that's Sam. For a second they had me thinking Sam had stepped down from his position at yc. Sam wouldn't do that to us.
Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#8Still, hardware is, well, hard. Silicon Valley has produced a raft of world-changing software startups, from Airbnb (a YC veteran) to Facebook. But it's a whole lot easier to beta-test an app than to prototype and then manufacture a gadget with a bunch of moving parts. Then you have to market the thing to the masses, who are already enamored of their Apple and Samsung products. Exhibits A and B: Fitbit, the fitness tracking company, and GoPro, maker of rugged little cameras. This week, both cut their sales forecasts for the crucial holiday quarter and watched their shares plunge. (Neither started life at YC.)
Fitbit and GoPro's downturn is mostly fueled by mismanagement and poor decisions than hardware being intrinsically hard.
The hard part of hardware is building something that works well enough and is in demand. When you have your device on people's wrist or mounted on their helmet, you have overcome the "hardware is hard" part. (for the most part).
After that it's building on your original success, expanding your market and creating value for your customers; all of which are true for any other business, not strictly hardware. For fitbit and GoPro, the latter has proven more difficult.
Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#9"Iseman says his departure was purely about his desire to get back into the founder's role and build something new. He's already been accepted into the winter 2017 YC cohort with his new housing startup." Doesn't sound very acrimonious.
Isn't that the definition of a conflict of interest? Or am I reading this wrong?
[deleted]
Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#10Still, hardware is, well, hard. Silicon Valley has produced a raft of world-changing software startups, from Airbnb (a YC veteran) to Facebook. But it's a whole lot easier to beta-test an app than to prototype and then manufacture a gadget with a bunch of moving parts. Then you have to market the thing to the masses, who are already enamored of their Apple and Samsung products. Exhibits A and B: Fitbit, the fitness t…
But just to be clear, hardware IS hard.