I think it's a mistake to conceive of Reddit as a place to "waste time." It's also the new platform for lots of important online communities to discuss and disseminate information.
It was tongue in cheek.
YC Annual Letter 2017
11–20 of 165 posts
Re: YC Annual Letter 2017
#12"Hacker News has 3.4 million users per month and 350,000 users per day, with 4 million pageviews a day. There are just under 1 million registered accounts, with several hundred added each day. Users post around 1,000 articles and 6,000 comments to the site per day." First time I have seen those numbers, very impressive. I thought there were a lot less users.
I am sure there are many more lurkers than active participants
[deleted]
Re: YC Annual Letter 2017
#13"The percentage of women who apply to YC is roughly the same as the percentage of women who get funded. The same is true for Black and Latino founders."
I'm guessing what he means to say here is that if x% of the applicant pool is woman/black/latino, then x% of the accepted pool is woman/black/latino, right? The way it's phrased it sounds like every woman/black/latino who applies is accepted
Re: YC Annual Letter 2017
#14Companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft have powerful advantages that are still not fully understood by most founders and investors....This trend is unlikely to reverse without antitrust action, and I suggest people carefully consider its implications for startups.
I think the "startup community" needs to have a serious conversation about this [2]. If we agree that machine learning is going to be a major underlying technology moving forward and that as a result, data is the new Oil [1], then the top 5 technology companies serve as the new Oil Barons.
It goes further than that actually in my mind, as these firms are disrupting themselves and innovating as fast if not faster in many areas than small startups can. They are in every industry and if they can't move as fast, then they buy the talent or the whole team. Granted, a small team will always move faster, but I think that these mega corps know enough now to know that they can pivot on trends if needed.
I do worry about the likelihood of a startup that could beat google, facebook, microsoft etc... with humble roots. Maybe if a "startup" came in with 100M+ in funding, but more than likely at this point those companies would be funding that startup, if only for the intelligence value.
So while "we've seen this before - someone always comes out of nowhere" which gave rise to the current crop of major companies, it would have to be pretty left field at this point for a company to compete with the major players without investment from an arm of theirs. Considering Snapchat is the biggest IPO in the coming year, I don't have a lot of hope that there will be something coming through.
[1]http://fortune.com/2016/07/11/data-oil-brainstorm-tech/
[2] https://medium.com/@andrewkemendo/the-ai-revolution-will-be-...
Re: YC Annual Letter 2017
#15"The percentage of women who apply to YC is roughly the same as the percentage of women who get funded. The same is true for Black and Latino founders." I'm guessing what he means to say here is that if x% of the applicant pool is woman/black/latino, then x% of the accepted pool is woman/black/latino, right? The way it's phrased it sounds like every woman/black/latino who applies is accepted
Not to me.
percentage of women who apply ~= percentage of women who get funded.
Re: YC Annual Letter 2017
#16Is there a reason why this is published on Sam's blog and not on YC's blog? Oh and a remark on the letter's typography: the double spaces after periods should be single spaces.
Lol. I once worked with a guy who, when asked for his input on critical emails, would meticulously comb through and delete second spaces after periods. "What did you think? Did you make any changes?" "I removed all of the double spaces after periods." :)
Re: YC Annual Letter 2017
#17"The percentage of women who apply to YC is roughly the same as the percentage of women who get funded. The same is true for Black and Latino founders." I'm guessing what he means to say here is that if x% of the applicant pool is woman/black/latino, then x% of the accepted pool is woman/black/latino, right? The way it's phrased it sounds like every woman/black/latino who applies is accepted
Not to me. percentage of women who apply ~= percentage of women who get funded.
you're right - after rereading I realize that it's totally equivalent
Re: YC Annual Letter 2017
#18Companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft have powerful advantages that are still not fully understood by most founders and investors....This trend is unlikely to reverse without antitrust action, and I suggest people carefully consider its implications for startups. I think the "startup community" needs to have a serious conversation about this [2]. If we agree that machine learning is going to b…
Reading between the lines, wasn't Sam complaining about a trend whereby many promising startups get acquired way too early ?
Re: YC Annual Letter 2017
#19"Hacker News has 3.4 million users per month and 350,000 users per day, with 4 million pageviews a day. There are just under 1 million registered accounts, with several hundred added each day. Users post around 1,000 articles and 6,000 comments to the site per day." First time I have seen those numbers, very impressive. I thought there were a lot less users.
I am sure there are many more lurkers than active participants
This is true of pretty much any Internet community, so not that surprising.
Re: YC Annual Letter 2017
#20Companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft have powerful advantages that are still not fully understood by most founders and investors....This trend is unlikely to reverse without antitrust action, and I suggest people carefully consider its implications for startups. I think the "startup community" needs to have a serious conversation about this [2]. If we agree that machine learning is going to b…
Oh and they also don't care about you anymore. I feel like there was a time when you could sorta build next to one of these companies and then if you did a decent job they would make sure they don't step on you. Maybe I misread the climate, or eng talent was less plentiful then, but these days it doesn't seem friendly in tech. When we founded the company I'm a part of today I was strongly advised against it by a group at google as if they encountered us we wouldn't be successful. Not that it stopped us, but it didn't feel very good when we had just gotten going.