241–250 of 436 posts
The idea that check sizes should be small so people should be forced into dire financial situations is a terrible one, and one that would absolutely hurt diversity. You're going to end up with a bunch of rich white dudes as founders (because very, very obviously the other way that people can afford to take smaller checks is if they have a lot of money in the bank). The smaller class size issue is probably fair, but r…
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Most of them will be white - basic statistics bear that out. Since my point was that it's incredibly detrimental to diversity, it's obviously relevant to it. If you want to make an argument for something, go nuts, but don't come tell me what defines my own argument. Also, stuff like this is problematic for diversity - you're pretending that race is somehow irrelevant in discussions of socioeconomic status, when in fa…
A wealthy black person can easily start their own business. They may have some advantages and disadvantages vs a wealthy white person but nothing can stop them doing it. They have money. A wealthy Black person is a “have” not a “have not.” A poor white person cannot use their whiteness to pay the bills. Ask millions of white people why they work shitty jobs if you think being white solves economic problems. They can’…
That's the problem - you're talking in theory (obviously there are rich black people and they have resources) while ignoring practical reality, which is that race and socioeconomic status are highly correlated to the point where you can't just magically ignore the latter and somehow equitably deal with the former.
What exactly does he mean by "tech climber"?
...and also fail to be white men from a middle-class background, as far as I can tell.
I also disagree that YC is not funding interesting ideas. Our batch had quite a few. Someone was making a rapid cargo ship. Someone else was making a fully distributed cell network.
The only real copycat ideas were the ones duplicating successful startups for international markets. In my opinion these were obviously good investments.
The social climber phenomenon was real. I think anything that becomes elite will attract them. I’d say, I was impressed that half the batch did not fit this profile.
My sense was that YC actually went out of its way to fund more interesting ideas. I’m sure my startup would not have gotten in, based on our traction and backgrounds, if our idea wasn’t out-of-the-box. (We are bottomless.com, a smart coffee subscription that uses a WiFi scale to ship at the perfect time).
I’d even venture to say that there appeared to be a negative correlation between interestingness and outcome in our batch. It’s possible YC should fund more boring companies, not fewer.
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It also doesn't make any sense from an investment perspective. Reddit would have been one of the most successful YC companies of all time, except for that they basically had to shut down because they couldn't raise money. This happened to lots of early YC companies that could have otherwise been successful. Had Reddit not sold for pennies on the dollar to Conde Nast, that alone would have probably paid for the extra…
Great point. People think a willingness to take extreme financial risks is somehow a useful personality trait when it comes to entrepreneurship because of selection bias. People who take that risk and make it tell that story. People who take that risk and don't make it aren't heard from. People who don't take that risk also aren't heard from. There are lots of people with great ideas and the ability to execute on the…
I speak with startups who have a product that is poorly differentiated, me-too like, that think they are going to take over the world. The reality, the vicious Darwinian reality, is that you and your team have to bust your collective rear-ends. And get lucky.
Really, I hate to deflate many many bubbles, but being at the right place at the right time is often the deciding factor for success or failure. IMO moreso than the product, the product market fit, etc. You have to be seen as the sole provider of something the people deem important. Even if this isn't really true. You need influencers to drive carefully staged hype, and then you need to be able to convert small victories into evidence the hype is real.
This is very ... very hard for bootstrapped companies, operating on shoestring budgets at best.
The greatest lie ever told to entrepreneurs like me is "build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." There is soooo much more than that. And the cost to you, financially, mentally, physically, will be huge. Not can be. Will be.
If you are lucky, you will have a reasonable exit. Most of the time that doesn't happen.
> You're going to end up with a bunch of rich white dudes as founders Why not just say "rich dudes" ? That is the qualifier. The race might be true too, but it's not what defines the argument.
I'm surprised you find the race unnecessary, but continue to include the gender. "Rich people" would be all that's required.
FWIW, the vast majority of YC founders I've met have told me "It was good when I did it, but I don't know if I'd do it today. The batches are so big!" I chalk it up to a pretty typical nostalgia. Everybody is biased towards thinking the experiences of their youth were perfect, and any change is detrimental.
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There's a difference between "sells waffles" and "constructions a house using waffles as the building material", and I'm reasonably sure the second one doesn't exist.
I feel like the point is "you never know when an apparently crazy idea will turn into something reasonable, so you should always stick with someone until the end of their pitch and/or point." Admittedly, I'm not sure that's universally true (we all have a limited amount of time, and it's reasonable to focus that time in places where it is going to give us the most benefit), but I'm pretty sure I see where the comment…
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>Is anyone else unimpressed with the ideas being funded? look at Work at a Startup and it is just new web frontends on existing industries. If there's money basically just lying all over the ground, why wouldn't you pick it up?
Sure but that's not addressing his point which is most of the ideas being funded are uninteresting and aren't really moving the ball forward. Instead they're doing some kind of rent seeking.
You can also just not do a shitty job of modernizing an old thing, and end up creating a product like Netflix that front-end devs fawn over, learn from, and emulate. It doesn't have to be uninteresting.
(throwaway as YC founder for obvious reasons) I've spoken to a half dozen YC founders this morning -- no one disagrees except the check size debt thing. Mostly "that is dumb" for that one. For those who worked at startups when they were small (5–20 people), the difference between then and when they grew to be 100 or 200 people is night and day. Very real difference. For those who haven't, think of class sizes. Do you…