151–160 of 197 posts
How can you make a list of failed yc companies and not mention homejoy? $66m raised, bad operations, bas unit economics, lawsuits and an abrupt shutdown. All of that after being the calley darling for so long.
I've seen the $66m figure quoted a lot but not sure where it comes from.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The person who was accused of "stealing customer data" was the other co-founder - not Adora (CEO & now YC partner). If you actually look into the details of the matter, what happened was that the co-founder acquired the failed company as it was put through a bankruptcy process. People who weren't privy to the process thought it was stealing when it really wasn't different from any other acquisition.
My comment doesn't use the word CEO so I'm not sure what point you are making.
How can you make a list of failed yc companies and not mention homejoy? $66m raised, bad operations, bas unit economics, lawsuits and an abrupt shutdown. All of that after being the calley darling for so long.
Don't forget this legendary post from the CEO https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8794956
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After stealing HomeJoy's customer DB for another start-up, she is now a YC partner... Move fast and break things?
She railroaded our YC interview for having a similar model (albeit in a different vertical) simply because she failed, so naturally we would also fail. Aaron Harris, another failed entrepreneur turned YC partner, has routinely done the same I've heard. We're now 2 years later pushing $2M ARR profitably and about to raise our Series A. YC not taking 7% of our company was the best thing that ever happened to us. YCombi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
She railroaded our YC interview for having a similar model (albeit in a different vertical) simply because she failed, so naturally we would also fail. Aaron Harris, another failed entrepreneur turned YC partner, has routinely done the same I've heard. We're now 2 years later pushing $2M ARR profitably and about to raise our Series A. YC not taking 7% of our company was the best thing that ever happened to us. YCombi…
There's a phenomenon I've noticed in job interviews where the interviewer will in a sense torture the interviewee if it's a domain that the interviewer has expertise in, asking needlessly complex questions as if to grandstand and show off. It becomes theatrical and I can only attribute that to some level of sadism- or narcissism-like traits. I am not impugning Adora's motives here just commenting on my own experience…
I always felt really gross afterwards because I felt like the interviewee was wronged, but it just wasn't worth the potential conflict with my coworkers/friends if I did anything about it, either during or after. Walking on eggshells and all that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
After stealing HomeJoy's customer DB for another start-up, she is now a YC partner... Move fast and break things?
In the hedge fund world there is a mindset that if you're going to fail, you must fail BIG (without breaking the law). Then you get a sort of undeserved glamor associated with the failure that can actually lead to new opportunities. For example, the case of Brian Hunter, if he failed small he would've been long forgotten.
How's Y Combinator doing these days? Many smaller base hits, a few home runs, or striking out? I don't follow the VC world much.
Just this week: - Momentus: $1.2B IPO ( https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/07/momentus-the-latest-space-st... ) - Segment: acquired for $3.2B ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24735414 ) - MessageBird: reached a $3B valuation ( https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/08/messagebird-series-c/ ) More generally: - 15-20 YC companies are now worth $1B or more. - 100ish YC companies are now worth $100M - $1B. A good number of those…
Current title is misleading: Y Combinator Failed Startups. Why did it change? This is a discussion of the biggest failures out of thousands of startups, not that YC is horrible or something.
It's not YC "failed" startups, it's (a list of) YC "failed startups".
It's very unfortunate The Buttermilk Company closed down. I was looking for them recently and found the founder's posts about how stressful it was to run. Does anyone know any similar products out there?
I haven't tried them as I'm not from the states. I'm Indian though and found the buttermilk company products to be highly priced and didn't find anything novel when compared to Haldirams or MTR. At their price you could probably get food from a takeaway.
That's not why Meta failed. Meta failed because their product was garbage.
I was in the car w/ the founders on the way to Hacker Dojo when they got the news that they'd been accepted into YC. At this point much of their tech demo had been built by some kid they'd hooked up with at the Dojo. One time I remember one of the founders was on the phone with his mom trying to get more time out of him. I never saw the technology deliver on any promises but I was probably like 22 at the time and I was stoked to get to play with depth cameras and AR goggles at all. I helped them film some tech demos and build some jigs to take footage through the googles. It's through Meta that I met Steves Mann and Feiner. I had a few great conversations with them at the time, and later it also made me realize that brilliant people who you deeply respect can make some really dumb bets too.
The best way to describe Meta is "store brand Magic Leap". Huge gap between what they had and what they were selling, and never enough focus to put in the hard work to narrow it, or the humility to admit that they overpromised. They did eventually pay me, though I think some friends of mine were not so lucky. I would say it was mostly incompetence and not malice. I think the founders truly believed many of the lies they told and it was easy to get caught up in that energy. Working with them and hanging out in their general orbit at ChezJJ and the Hacker Dojo was probably the most HBO's Silicon Valley experience of my life and I'm deeply grateful for it.