Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective • Hacker News Board

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#251

Post by bananaface » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

czbond wrote: post #26

dbbk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I noped out of this as soon as I saw it. The guy is suggesting investing in startup founders but not giving them enough to live while they get that company off the ground. What is the point of that? Completely self-defeating.

It is not YC’s job to support the company. That is the founders job. I’d suggest money supporting the company at seed diverts from a focus on monetary fit asap. $25k is enough to scrap by for enough months which should be the initial goal

It's not about "who's job it is", it's about supply and demand.

The founder could probably get a 300k salary at Google or a six-figure stipend with another investor. If Y-Combinator wants to compete they have to provide something that outweighs that.

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#252

Post by hpcjoe » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #211

awillen wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And often, getting credit card debt is not a material risk, but a minor embarrassment when they ask their family to bail them out and/or move in the guest house for a few months, rent-free. When poorer folk take the "same" risk, they can be ruined for decades.

Here here. When you empty your 401k to build your business, and don't contribute to it for 15 years while you are building, as you simply don't have the cash, and cannot afford it ...

Yeah. The implicit assumptions of the "live in poverty" of the OP, are wrong.

I'm 54, and I was financially wiped out at 51. I will not ever recover from this. No family wealth to fall back on. I do not believe I will ever be able to retire. And noting that there is a bit of ageism in this space, makes the threat of potential long term unemployment even worse for folks like me.

Sort of an inverse Ozymandias. Gaze upon my flaming cratered company, and beware. Here be demons. That you cannot control.

I had skin in the game. And I lost it.

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#253

Post by ironchief » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

reedwolf wrote: post #88

An article [0] that takes a critical stance on Paul Graham/Y Combinator, specifically Graham's advice that you should stop focussing on passing tests, despite Y Combinator being entirely built around passing tests. [0] http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/approval-extraction-advertise...

I recommend reading this blog post and drawing your own conclusion.

My conclusion is PG's "I can lay out what I know to be the right thing to do, and still not do it."

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#254

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

sinker wrote: post #228

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many people (the vast majority of people, in fact) who could not deal with risk for reasons entirely unrelated to having kids. A person's risk profile (particularly if they are young) has much more to with their family background than choices they made (or didn't make). I'd rather not have new ideas for businesses filtered through "can afford zero income for N months".

This all makes sense, but at some point you have to consider that startups are a privilege, not a right. Those that tailor their lives to be able to consume risk make tradeoffs like moving to a remote location, living single, minimizing expenses, forgoing healthcare, choosing to spend less time with friends, not getting that dog you always wanted, not having children, not getting married, not buying a house, etc. Nar…

This is not (for me) about having kids+family vs startup.

It's about number of people who can take risk of having zero income for N months. That is such a small group of people, and this narrows the pool of people who might found a startup that could change the world (or part of it). It means that all the ideas for startups are coming from people who have (at least) one thing in common. Maybe it's not the optimal thing to have in common?

ps. I did the startup thing with a wife and a daughter. These days you know it as Amazon.

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#255

Post by breck » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

My suspicious is that this is satire, but I'll pretend it's not and if so I like your gusto for publicly criticizing YC, even if I disagree with nearly all your points. I personally think YC has gotten way better over the years, but fun to contrarian read opinions.

Point #3 doesn't seem to be talked about in this thread yet, so let me bring it up:

> Free SaaS and Dev tools...IMO YC should ban them

YC's #1 investment of all time (https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/) is a SaaS/dev tools company (Stripe), and nearly 50% of their top 20 fit this category. Also, ViaWeb fits that category as well. Are you suggesting they should stop investing in their most successful category, the category they know best?

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#256

Post by paulgb » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

seizethecheese wrote: post #244

Recent YC founder here. I disagree with the premise that boring ideas are inherently bad. Stripe is a B2B company that adds an API on top of existing infrastructure. Airbnb is a basic CRUD app. 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 du…

> We are bottomless.com

My Bottomless scale has been an essential part of my transition to WFH, cheers!

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#257

Post by vikramkr » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

s_dev wrote: post #83

solumos wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be willing to bet that a clear majority of the most successful startups from the past 20 years were founded by people who were otherwise independently financially stable. It's very hard to focus on building a successful business when the cost of failure is potentially life-ruining.

Then don't start one if you can't consume the risk. I'm not sure what your point is -- that people who have kids should be given special exemption where they make more money from sales and inventment oportunties to compensate for choices they made?

This is about YC as an investor. If you've got a profitable startup in you, they want you to start it. Lowering the risk gets them more founders and makes them more money.

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#258

Post by sebiw » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

hpcjoe wrote: post #245

awillen wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As one who bootstrapped, took that risk, and lost ... everything ... I've been talking passively about this for a while. 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 bub…

I understand what you say and I assume you have more experience than me in this field.

But even if you fail, that's experience too. If you have a dream, I strongly encourage you to pursue it. It is usually more painful to look back in hindsight and one day wake up to a reality where you never even tried.

To whoever is reading this: Try. Then try again. Then try another. And don't forget to look after yourself and your loved ones.

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#259

Post by AdenRyan2323 » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

"this was the sam altman effect.

pg kept the entire system small and personal on purpose.

but sam wants trillion dollar funds. sam approaches everything from "how can sam altman own the entire galaxy?"

now YC is an endless low effort 90s-era "groupware for groupware nerds" fund" --- https://twitter.com/mattsta/status/1285988679958138881 this retweet is also true

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#260

Post by vikramkr » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:25 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #50

I am somewhat sympathetic to the check size argument simply because I have seen a lot of people drift from accelerator to accelerator to accelerator and mostly focus on getting to their next one. They become really good at the pitch and grant collecting, but have websites that barely work or rarely go and meet customers. There is a perverse incentive in the accelerator spot in itself being a reward. I suppose it depe…

That's the second third and fourth accelerators fault. If this is their third accelerator app and they haven't done anything useful with the money they were given initially, then YC should reject them. They shouldn't make it harder for everyone else so they can accommodate investments into zombie companies on their third round through the accelerator circuit.