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Y Combinator When No One Cared

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Re: Y Combinator When No One Cared

#91

Post by Maken »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #67
edw519 wrote: post #18

I cared. Still do. Been here over 10 years. I'd wager for every person helped by YC, another 1000 were helped by HN. There are lots of us programmers in the diaspora whose closest encounter to Silicon Valley is virtual, in places just like this. Yea, yea, I know. There are lots of founders, investors, and celebrities in SV, but please don't forget about the rest of us, who just keep building and posting...for years.

Been here for almost 10. I think HN is terribly underutilized. It could be used in more practical ways to help the community at large. Currently the most direct way is to do a ASK HN or the monthly Ask Who's Hiring, however I would love for YC to push the same tools they built for their program (to help founders and companies) to HN and its userbase.

I think being underfeatured is part of the reason why HN works.

Re: Y Combinator When No One Cared

#92

Post by omarchowdhury »

sjtgraham wrote: post #36
colmvp wrote: post #2

On the topic of small beginnings, does anyone know if PG still reads HN? I recall when I first joined the site which, wow, was a long time ago, it seemed like he was a lot more active on it.

PG had anonymous alt accounts even before he split. I'd say he still dips in from time to time. You could probably find his current alts by doing stylometric analysis on the corpus of HN comments.

Let's do it.

Re: Y Combinator When No One Cared

#93

Post by cyberferret »

Nice. But I wonder if the focus is still on "young startups" these days, as it seemed to be back then.

I don't want to start an ageism war in this thread, but it would be nice if the vetting process concentrates more on ideas and business viability, and now includes experience as well as youth and energy.

Re: Y Combinator When No One Cared

#94

Post by hliyan »

Maken wrote: post #91
rokhayakebe wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been here for almost 10. I think HN is terribly underutilized. It could be used in more practical ways to help the community at large. Currently the most direct way is to do a ASK HN or the monthly Ask Who's Hiring, however I would love for YC to push the same tools they built for their program (to help founders and companies) to HN and its userbase.

I think being underfeatured is part of the reason why HN works.

Couldn't agree more. It's a good example of finding a simple, elegant and winning formula and letting it mature rather than constantly messing with it (i.e. trying to "improve" it)

Re: Y Combinator When No One Cared

#95

Post by hyperpallium »

vonnik wrote: post #58

It's useful to think about Jessica's comment under the original message, that YC is "mass production of startups." What it really means, I think, is that YC is comfortable with more failure than other investors. They are spreading their bets wide by making many small investments, and as they have said many times, only a small percentage of those bets need to be right. That's quite different from how most VCs invest a…

Yes, though I'd express it as YC funding startups earlier, before they're proven, when they need less funding.

YC experimented with pushing it back even earlier in the gestation process, to pre-idea (pre-conception, if you will), and just backing team-quality. But that didn't work out well.

Perhaps not being able to come up with an idea is a crucual indicator of team-quality? A start-up isn't just one idea, but requires thousands of ideas along the way, like a movie. Or maybe passion for a specific idea rallies people round.

Re: Y Combinator When No One Cared

#96

Post by ravibala1 »

zeckalpha wrote: post #89
vonnik wrote: post #58

It's useful to think about Jessica's comment under the original message, that YC is "mass production of startups." What it really means, I think, is that YC is comfortable with more failure than other investors. They are spreading their bets wide by making many small investments, and as they have said many times, only a small percentage of those bets need to be right. That's quite different from how most VCs invest a…

Investing in stocks : Vanguard :: Investing in companies : YC

Apart from the volume characteristic this doesn't seem to hold. Vanguard creates ETFs on diversified baskets of stocks picked(rules based) by other people eg: S&P, Nasdaq etc. YC actually has to review each and every application and independently determine whether to accept them.

At a push, I'd go with - Investing in stocks:Vanguard :: Investing in companies : Random funds that will only invest if you have a brand-name lead investor

Re: Y Combinator When No One Cared

#97

Post by meric »

vonnik wrote: post #58

It's useful to think about Jessica's comment under the original message, that YC is "mass production of startups." What it really means, I think, is that YC is comfortable with more failure than other investors. They are spreading their bets wide by making many small investments, and as they have said many times, only a small percentage of those bets need to be right. That's quite different from how most VCs invest a…

Jesse Livermore's strategy.

Re: Y Combinator When No One Cared

#98

Post by theparanoid »

Alex3917 wrote: post #41
bmccormack wrote: post #31

Back in 2005, Fog Creek produced a documentary called "Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks", about their internship program. There are lots of great interviews in there, including Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston from the early days of Y Combinator (as well as interviews with Aaron Schwartz, Alexis Ohanian, and Steve Huffman). https://youtu.be/0NRL7YsXjSg?t=2946

This is amazing. Even as someone who has been vaguely around for a while (e.g. attended the first couple Startup School events), it's easy to forget that this is how it was. It really puts a lot of things in context.

This was around the nadir of tech in general. The dotcom crash was only a few years earlier.

Re: Y Combinator When No One Cared

#99

Post by swampthinker »

bmccormack wrote: post #31

Back in 2005, Fog Creek produced a documentary called "Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks", about their internship program. There are lots of great interviews in there, including Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston from the early days of Y Combinator (as well as interviews with Aaron Schwartz, Alexis Ohanian, and Steve Huffman). https://youtu.be/0NRL7YsXjSg?t=2946

Holy crap I recognize PG's old house, I used to live a block away! That's crazy!

Me and my dad would always talk shit about it though, horrible for insulation purposes. Looks great though.

Re: Y Combinator When No One Cared

#100

Post by nostrademons »

freehunter wrote: post #83
nickpsecurity wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see a listing of all the billion dollar IPO's or acquisitions in past decade with location on it. Both where it started and where it spent most of its time. That mighy help settle the question.

I think it might suffer from confirmation bias. Say Dropbox started in Milwaukee, WI, but was convinced they needed to move to San Fransisco to be successful. Maybe they would have been successful in Milwaukee, too, but now we'll never know. So now they're contributing to the startup successes that come from SV, but that doesn't necessarily mean that SF was what made them successful. Maybe the reason the parent think…

DropBox is an ironic example because it actually started in Boston. Drew had grown up knowing VCs in the Boston area; some had even told him "If you ever start a company, we'll fund you." DropBox did the YC Summer Founders program, which at the time was located in Boston, but all the Boston groups also did a demo-days out on the west coast because Silicon Valley VCs were better. Sequoia gave them a term sheet within a week; all those Boston VCs that Drew had known forever dragged their feet and were like "Is there any money in sharing files? There are literally dozens of competitors, and none of them are making serious money", and that is why DropBox is in San Francisco.

I grew up in the Boston area as well, thought I would stay there my whole life, and a lunch conversation with Drew was actually instrumental in changing my mind about moving to Silicon Valley. The reason is precisely that: the Boston business climate is so conservative that you really can't get resources unless you're working on something that has made money for other people. I actually don't think I'd start a company in the Bay Area now if I didn't already live here and have a wife with family here - there's usually a long period of learning your market before you have anything fundable, and it's better to spend that in a region where rent won't cost you a fortune. But the Bay Area remains the best place, bar none, to scale a business, and it's quite likely that if your nascent business has any serious growth potential, it'll be fodder for a Silicon Valley competitor with $100M in funding.

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