Sam Altman: ‘Too many’ Y Combinator companies raise money
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Sam Altman: ‘Too many’ Y Combinator companies raise money
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Re: Sam Altman: ‘Too many’ Y Combinator companies raise money
#2Is there any way for YC to build its prestige and the sense of value it delivers without being a positive signal?
Re: Sam Altman: ‘Too many’ Y Combinator companies raise money
#3He's probably right, didn't Airbnb struggle for about a year after graduation?
Re: Sam Altman: ‘Too many’ Y Combinator companies raise money
#4Is there any way for YC to build its prestige and the sense of value it delivers without being a positive signal?
Non disclosure agreements until certain funding milestones are reached.
Re: Sam Altman: ‘Too many’ Y Combinator companies raise money
#5He's probably right, didn't Airbnb struggle for about a year after graduation?
By any chance, do you have further readings on this? We're also a struggling marketplace and would take great motivation from this.
Re: Sam Altman: ‘Too many’ Y Combinator companies raise money
#6Re: Sam Altman: ‘Too many’ Y Combinator companies raise money
#7[deleted]
Re: Sam Altman: ‘Too many’ Y Combinator companies raise money
#8He's probably right, didn't Airbnb struggle for about a year after graduation?
By any chance, do you have further readings on this? We're also a struggling marketplace and would take great motivation from this.
Read The Upstarts by Brad Stone. It's a fascinating book about the rise of Airbnb and Uber. Also check out the podcasts with Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky on How I Built This and Masters of Scale respectively.
Re: Sam Altman: ‘Too many’ Y Combinator companies raise money
#9Is there any way for YC to build its prestige and the sense of value it delivers without being a positive signal?
I, in much ignorance, think having what it takes to create a credible startup might not be as close to a good idea as it doesn't even sound.
I have a lot of ideas. Most not as good as some by my expectations but the sub set that would look neat to investors early on barely overlaps.
Maybe YC should use the "void" to design the people they would like to see on this world. A product, after all, shapes the user.
-G
Re: Sam Altman: ‘Too many’ Y Combinator companies raise money
#10Was just thinking the other day, it'd be super interesting if YC ran some YC Equity/YC UBI experiments within its own network. Basically in joining YC, each YC member would be granted a percentage of YC's 7% stake in all of the YC companies which would reduce their need to fundraise. In theory, YC members should all be highly motivated achievers and use that percentage stake to move their diverse set of businesses forward.
Since there is such a high barrier to entry into YC, it might not prove shared equity/UBI would 100% work in the real world. However, coming at it from the other side, it could provide some early clues as to whether a shared equity/UBI could ever work at all. For example:
- Would YC companies cheer each other on with positive peer pressure/be more motivated to knowledge share or would low achieving YC companies de-motivate high achieving YC companies? Would YC companies who fold be allowed to retain their percentage of the YC stake?
- Would high achieving startups bypass YC or be attracted to YC?
- Would every set of new annual entrants into YC be seen as diluting the value of the existing YC equity or additive? Would existing YC companies want more say in the selection process? Would Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe receive the same percentage of YC stake as new entrants?
- How do you socialize the concept with existing stakeholders (i.e. existing YC partners) who would be diluted?
- Is it better to implement it as a single monolithic YC group or divide it by YC Class?
Assuming ~1500 YC companies with ~10 employees each, that'd be about 15,000 participants, which would be a pretty good dogfooding [0] experiment!