I think it’s a sign of the times: the pandemic, the “everything is remote”… and of course the weak European ecosystem compared to the Americans’.
Really happy for all the European founders that made it.
Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
11–20 of 242 posts
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#12This is basically failure in European startup ecosystem that companies needs to go SF, but good for Y Combinator and SF that they can attract best talent.
It's not "European startup ecosystem", it's basically "European societies". Imagine how well would SV work if being involved in a bankrupt company (co-founder, major investor, C-suite) made banks refuse to talk to you again for 10-20 years. I believe that was the case in France. You wouldn't even be able to open a checking account, never mention any credit again.
> You wouldn't even be able to open a checking account, never mention any credit again.
Is this just hearsay? It seems extreme, even for French levels of bureaucracy.
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#13This is basically failure in European startup ecosystem that companies needs to go SF, but good for Y Combinator and SF that they can attract best talent.
No. European "companies" look to the US and see that you can lose billions of unlimited investor money for years with no repercussions and no negative consequences for the founders. Now "successful" European startups want in on the money. YC's "most successful startups" routinely lose hundreds of millions of dollars every year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27485360
Heh, "business" dumping: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#14Payflow: https://www.payflow.es/ (surprisingly, no english version) This is a fantastic innovation if it takes off and if the charges aren't prohibitive; it has the potential to obliterate predatory payday lending. In a world of free instant automatic electronic payments, there's no good reason to delay salary payments until the end of the month.
> it has the potential to obliterate predatory payday lending
Say you earn about $200 over expenses in a given month. Your car suffers a problem that requires $1000 to repair. This is 5 months of income, but you probably want to repair the car at the beginning of the 5 month period rather than the end.
How much of a difference will it make if your paycheck arrives daily rather than semimonthly?
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#15Payflow: https://www.payflow.es/ (surprisingly, no english version) This is a fantastic innovation if it takes off and if the charges aren't prohibitive; it has the potential to obliterate predatory payday lending. In a world of free instant automatic electronic payments, there's no good reason to delay salary payments until the end of the month.
I don’t quite understand the benefit. Surely, if you have to take loans to get over the month, this won’t change anything as your overall income is still the same. I guess for unexpected expenses, you can bridge the gap one-time by borrowing from future-you.
What am I missing?
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#16This is basically failure in European startup ecosystem that companies needs to go SF, but good for Y Combinator and SF that they can attract best talent.
It's not "European startup ecosystem", it's basically "European societies". Imagine how well would SV work if being involved in a bankrupt company (co-founder, major investor, C-suite) made banks refuse to talk to you again for 10-20 years. I believe that was the case in France. You wouldn't even be able to open a checking account, never mention any credit again.
Exactly. If you live in a safe and secured society why would you want to do something risky like creating a startup. One of the biggest success for the EU startup scene was just copying what is done in California, avoiding the risk of trying out new ideas.
On the top of that, regulation in the EU is much worse than in the US. This does not help either.
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#17Do they mostly move to the United States then?
I wouldn't be surprised. Daniel Dines started UiPath in Romania but for it to become truly global, he had to move to NY and even incorporate the company there.
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#18Payflow: https://www.payflow.es/ (surprisingly, no english version) This is a fantastic innovation if it takes off and if the charges aren't prohibitive; it has the potential to obliterate predatory payday lending. In a world of free instant automatic electronic payments, there's no good reason to delay salary payments until the end of the month.
> it has the potential to obliterate predatory payday lending Say you earn about $200 over expenses in a given month. Your car suffers a problem that requires $1000 to repair. This is 5 months of income, but you probably want to repair the car at the beginning of the 5 month period rather than the end. How much of a difference will it make if your paycheck arrives daily rather than semimonthly?
Payday lending is usually considered to be for amounts that are less than one month's income.
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#19It's definitely good to see a strong increase in entrepreneurship in Europe, though I do wonder whether the Y Combinator program can keep up its quality and value-add as they themselves scale up. It's one thing to have weekly sessions with experienced leaders like PG and others, and a small enough cohort whereby you can swap stories and learn as you progress through the program. On an industrial scale though, you los…
The weekly video sessions that StartupSchool offers are great. I participated in them during the first batch when they were led by YC alumns (I think now they're just self-organized), they basically just consist of people taking turns telling the group what they did last week and what they plan to do this week. In retrospect it was really great thing and helped me enormously to focus and make progress. Especially as a solo founder it's hard to keep focused as there's no one to "yell" at you if you're getting distracted, so having a group of peers that are in the same situation and that provide a bit of social pressure and encouragement was really great. Also, people would sometimes share stuff they struggle with, which also helped a lot to put things in perspective as startup life can get pretty grim, so it helps to laugh about failures with other people.
Really sad they
Re: Y Combinator’s European founder intake continues to grow
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not "European startup ecosystem", it's basically "European societies". Imagine how well would SV work if being involved in a bankrupt company (co-founder, major investor, C-suite) made banks refuse to talk to you again for 10-20 years. I believe that was the case in France. You wouldn't even be able to open a checking account, never mention any credit again.
Exactly. If you live in a safe and secured society why would you want to do something risky like creating a startup. One of the biggest success for the EU startup scene was just copying what is done in California, avoiding the risk of trying out new ideas. On the top of that, regulation in the EU is much worse than in the US. This does not help either.
"If you live in a safe and secured society why would you want to do something risky like creating a startup."
Isn't that just another way of saying "quality of life"?