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

#261

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

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #254

sinker wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thi…

I didn't state it strongly enough. Startups are for the rich and privileged, by the very nature of their mechanism of success. Lottery tickets, playing blackjack, rolling dice, are things which should only be done with what you have in excess. I don't think it's YC's responsibility to even societal odds. They are downstream from that position and simply consume and profit off those who have more than they need.

YC is a business entity not a non-profit organization dedicated to wealth distribution. You're asking it to do a job outside its core responsibility (profit, survival). If you want to make the argument that YC should up it's funding, that argument has to establish itself as being strongly in the interest of YC, otherwise it doesn't make much sense.

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

#262

Post by jmwilson » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:27 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…

The author didn't say anything about "interesting" vs. "boring" companies or ideas. He said YC should curtail funding of dev tools/SaaS startups, because the traction they appear to have is misleading. They're selling to each other, revenue moving in a circle, without demonstrating value creation outside of the sphere of similarly-situated startups. Not explicitly stated, but he's also implying it's a portfolio risk for YC.

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

#263

Post by forbiddenvoid » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:27 PM UTC

pyb wrote: post #85

forbiddenvoid wrote: post #66

I'm curious if the author has data that the 'free sabbatical' folks are less successful as founders than others. If YC is selecting the wrong types of people/companies for their batches, I think they'll figure it out pretty quick when those companies fail to pan out and their fund suffers as a result. Is the author's YC company's success somehow contingent on YC not having these types of founders?. If so, I have grav…

It does, in so far as you are more likely to be successful if your batchmates are a source of inspiration and motivation.

I think the impact size of that effect is likely to be very, very small. The whole thread reeks of gatekeeping around (as someone in another comment put it) what it means to be "Real Founder."

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

#264

Post by anotherfounder » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

The SAAS thing is real. In my own broader network, I've seen so many interesting new consumer companies not even get an interview but SAAS companies of all stripes not have a problem getting an interview. It also heavily correlates with FAANG/Stanford phenomena which then leads to a mostly white male batch.

There are so many reasons why all this is, including the fact, these applications heavily bias towards 'solving a big problem that the interviewer CAN grep', and so many of those readers and interviewers are themselves from SAAS backgrounds.

Anecdotally, within female founders, it is quite understood that if you are a female founder with a consumer startup, good luck getting an interview whereas if you are FANG employee with event hint of an idea, you get an interview!

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

#265

Post by mercer » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #235

evan_ wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can't really do that if your parents share an 800 square foot public housing apartment with your sister and her kids. or if they're in prison, or dead, or abusive, or they threw you out for not conforming to their religious choices, or disowned you for not being cisgender and heterosexual, or or or

Of course not, and that might be the case for 10-20% of the population. But you don't have to be some privileged trust fund kid for your parents to give you a place to stay in the event of financial hardship. That's not rare and let's hope that never becomes rare because I'd shudder a world where parents by and large would not do this for their kids.

How is 10%-20% not a problem? Not to mention tens of percentages above that where staying with one's parents is incredibly difficult and/or uncomfortable.

This is the right time to shudder, much as I'm happy that you're in a situation where it seems hard to imagine (or empathize with).

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

#266

Post by vikramkr » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

richajak wrote: post #123

Several years ago I used to read pg old articles (also Joel S, pgreenspun) without realizing who he was or know what YC was. It clicked with my nerds mindset. I had an impression that he was a champion for the underdog, nerds like me who is smart enough (but not genius), willing to work hard and live frugal. I also had the understanding that ambition to be a unicorn not necessary, it is much more important to be rame…

Ramen profitable does not mean the company isn't worth a billion dollars. People aren't suggesting that your endgoal is to be ramen profitable - the mindset is to get ramen profitable as fast as possible so you have a foundation to build a billion dollar business. Venture capital does not have use for companies that make $5k a month. That doesn't mean it's a bad company, but I suggest taking another look at the PG essay about black swan farming to understand what they are looking for as venture capitalists. For $5k a month MRR, I think that's really only able to be funded via bootstrapping and friends/family if you're privileged enough to have access to the latter.

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

#267

Post by blub » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

haney wrote: post #210

chrisco255 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, most parents would take their kids back in the event of financial disaster. That's not even rare. Many folks live with their parents until late 20s / early 30s these days.

This does make the assumption that the parents are doing well enough to be able to support their adult children. There are some situations where the parents need the support of adult children, instead of the other way around.

That assumption holds for most of the population in European countries, even the poorest ones. In fact it's common for young people to live with their parents a long time.

One has to be either dirt poor or very unlucky not to he able to move back with relatives. This sound like an excuse.

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

#268

Post by fourstar » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #95

> 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.

Because he's virtue signaling.

From this guy's blog:

> Those of you who know me know that I’m a self-described brunch enthusiast. This more or less means that I go to bottomless brunch at a new place in SF every weekend.

> As a tech bro in San Francisco (San Franciscbro?), it was only a matter of time until I had the obvious thought – “How can I monetize brunch?” I’ve been meaning to dabble in SEO at some point, both because I generally enjoy dabbling and because it seems like a useful thing to at least be partially acquainted with, so this seemed like a good option.

Lmao. Keep the downvotes coming noobs (been here longer than most of you).

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

#269

Post by hpcjoe » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

sebiw wrote: post #258

hpcjoe wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 you…

There is a saying in karate. Fall down 7 times. Get up 8.

But also, definitely, make sure you are not going to be financially destroyed by your actions. Take time to be with your family. Remain focused upon your life, and life goals.

Do I regret my time building some of the insanest things in market (at the time)? No.

It was an itch, I had to scratch.

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

#270

Post by vikramkr » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

IAmEveryone wrote: post #238

I'm not usually one to think in these terms, but this somehow still strikes me as a caricature of white middle-class privilege: "Having to take considerable financial risk definitely sucked, but it was also was a great filtering function. If you didnt have conviction in yourself or your product theres no way you would have been there. For those who made the leap, it made success the only option."

Based on the responses in this thread, you're not alone. It's not often that a series of arguments is so thoroughly undermined by just one spectacularly bad one, but that's really the comment that's been driving all the discussion. His point about batch sizes is maybe something worth actually discussing, but there's nearly no discussion on that (and maybe a couple comments on how YC should stop funding everything but consumer companies which is also IMO ridiculous).