This shows being YC founder is more fun than YC partner.
Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
51–60 of 123 posts
Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#52That's a brilliant photo.
Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#53"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.
The headline is clickbait, you say?
Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#54"Sam Altman, president and co-founder of Y Combinator." Uhh, they clearly didn't do their homework if they thought Altman co-founded YC.
As Kanye said once, "They rewrite history; I don't believe in yesterday."
I have seen some startups even use this technique themselves to "erase" past or exited co-founders. Once you edit the AngelList, Crunchbase, team page, etc, you really can erase the existence of co-founder or early team member(s) if desired because eventually no one will look hard enough to find the early material.
It's something that bothers me a lot actually. I'm working on a project now to track founders and early teams across startups to get a better understanding of how often it happens and if there are any discernible patterns.
Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#55"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.
I am more surprised that he wanted to go through YC. I can understand the appeal of YC for the inexperienced and unconnected, but this is like Sam or Jessica deciding to start a new startup and then joining a YC cohort.
Edit. Anyone want to explain why he would want to be part of YC? What can he possibly get out of YC for the equity expended?
Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#56Everything must be a controversy these days in the news world. Including all of the times they're really not. Like this time.
From the title to the tone of the article, I felt like they were going to drop a bombshell, something like "Luke was fired" or "Luke hates how YC is being run".
Very poor journalism, Bloomberg.
Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#57TL;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.
It's also a pretty good way to see how those deals and processes actually work from the founder perspective and give valuable feedback to the YC team.
Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having read basically every news article ever about the startup I was involved in, they get the most basic, easily checkable facts like: What year was it founded? What does the company do? Who is the CEO? wrong at least half of the time. And they get the more complicated facts wrong much more often, but that is because they generally directly printing either what the founder tells them or something they think that is…
Relevant Michael Crichton quote on "the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect": “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story…
Scared me so much the first time I thought about it that way. Believing so much news, although articles about my area of expertise obviously get so much wrong.
Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the conflict of interest? Being a partner at YC is certainly a unique qualifier that would basically guarantee acceptance. There is nothing wrong with that. It is awesome, in fact.
Well, it could also mean that someone else who isn't a YC partner was rejected to let him in. Of course, I don't know whether or not that is the case, but this is where a conflict of interest could potentially arise from.
We don't fund a fixed number of startups.
Re: Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having read basically every news article ever about the startup I was involved in, they get the most basic, easily checkable facts like: What year was it founded? What does the company do? Who is the CEO? wrong at least half of the time. And they get the more complicated facts wrong much more often, but that is because they generally directly printing either what the founder tells them or something they think that is…
I learned that when there was a natural gas explosion in the building I worked in in the 80s (nobody was hurt). I recorded several TV news broadcasts on it, and every one got the basic facts wrong in different ways. Things like one called the building a warehouse (it was an office building). There were no political issues nor agendas nor money at stake, the news reporters just didn't make any effort to be correct. I'…
I'm increasingly convinced that looking and thinking too deeply on people matters(news, history, organizations, relationships) is like staring at the sun. There's nothing much to see by focusing your gaze on it, it blocks out stuff more nearby, and you go blind in the process.
Which isn't to say that being a numb automaton is ideal, either, but there is a degree of balance and good taste required to avoid converting the information into dangerous thoughts, and it's simpler to restrict quantity of exposure.