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YC Annual Letter 2017

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#41

Post by Keverw »

> In future years, we also hope to explore how something like ‘financial aid’ might work for people that need a small amount of capital to help get their startup going.

Sounds interesting. I always kinda hated how people fresh out of high school with zero credit can have so much money handed to them for going to school. While if they wanted to get a business loan or buy a house they would be much more scrutinized.

I wonder with that money instead and right mentorship if they could come out ahead of their peers who used that money for college instead.

I know some people who just go to college because they feel like they have to, and get degrees they don't even use. Imagine one spending 4 years going into debt, the other coming out a head with a real world profitable startup. One thing I always hate about school work is I feel like I'm just doing stuff for the sake of being graded or being busy. I rather spend my time creating stuff that's more real instead, learn as I go. There's a bunch of free and even paid training on-demand on the internet to fill in your skill gap.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#42

Post by burkaman »

notatoad wrote: post #39

>I expect that people will talk about software as one of our secret weapons. can you give a broad overview of what software YC creates? What does it do? is it internal tracking and stats, or exclusive libraries that YC-funded companies get to use to build their products?

Bookface is one thing I know of: https://bookface.ycombinator.com/

I think they developed it in-house.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#43

Post by tradersam »

icpmacdo wrote: post #4

"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.

Pretty impressive that HN has mostly maintained the level of quality it set out to, especially with 350,000 users per day. I'm always relieved that there is a place on the Internet I can go where 90% of the comments on the page aren't "me too thanks".

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#44

Post by fabrice_d »

kevinmannix wrote: post #9
icpmacdo wrote: post #4

"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

For sure, with 6,000 comments and 350,000 daily users.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#45

Post by nickpsecurity »

icpmacdo wrote: post #4

"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.

Now I can see where the Hacker News Hug of Death comes from. That's enough people that even a subset might kill a small server. More than I thought, too.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#46

Post by snowmaker »

notatoad wrote: post #39

>I expect that people will talk about software as one of our secret weapons. can you give a broad overview of what software YC creates? What does it do? is it internal tracking and stats, or exclusive libraries that YC-funded companies get to use to build their products?

All of the above.

YC's software lets us evaluate thousands of applications per year and use the data we generate to continually get better at that. We also run bookface, a private site just for YC founders.

Sometimes overlooked is the importance of the software that we make accessible to everyone: Hacker News, of course, and our soon-to-launch MOOC Startup School.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#47

Post by sverige »

ForrestN wrote: post #22
ridruejo wrote: post #2

"Our mission is to enable the most innovation of any company in the world in order to make the future great for everyone." I know many people will read that and roll their eyes back and believe it is just a marketing gimmick for the gullible and like most investors YC just cares about the money. The thing is that they do deeply care about founders and making things better in the world, as naive as that may sound to o…

It's funny you say this—the first thing I did, even before reading the article, was search for "Thiel." It's going to be hard for me to take this sort of thing seriously, this telegraphing of benevolence which is so central to YC's branding, until they address the fact that one of their "partners" is such an obviously destructive force within society. They don't even have to do anything but say goodbye, and they won'…

Actually, the fact that they have not bowed to the pressure to "disavow" Peter Thiel merely for his political views in one of the things that makes me think highly of YC.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#49

Post by mljoe »

Keverw wrote: post #41

> In future years, we also hope to explore how something like ‘financial aid’ might work for people that need a small amount of capital to help get their startup going. Sounds interesting. I always kinda hated how people fresh out of high school with zero credit can have so much money handed to them for going to school. While if they wanted to get a business loan or buy a house they would be much more scrutinized. I…

Thiel's Fellowship is somewhat based on that idea, a scholarship for NOT going to college.

I still think college has value, but the costs have been increasing much faster then inflation, while the value has been declining due to the systemic efficiencies of acquiring knowledge in the information age. Together these are making the value proposition worse and worse. I can't judge anyone for wanting to skip college.

There is a lot more we can be doing as a society to encourage entrepreneurship. It would be nice if in the future we could let our children use 429 college savings plans for angel/seed funding instead of educational expenses. Especially if tuition becomes free in the next 10-20 years anyway.

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