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Y Combinator's Demo Day loses luster

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Re: Y Combinator's Demo Day loses luster

#41

Post by corin_ »

tptacek wrote: post #34
matsemann wrote: post #29

I used to read the articles about the YC batches and the launch threads here, hoping for many of them to succeed and be interested in the various ideas. But later years I've stopped. First reason is because it's so damn many. If all of them had a launch thread here on HN it would probably be more than one a day. Secondly because so many of them now feels like "X for Y". Or just X in a new geography.

What I learned from several years of operating a consulting business building security teams for startups is that you probably have no intuition for which startups are going to be viable and which aren't. Certainly, the idea that you can evaluate their prospects from how exciting a single-sentence description is turns out to be totally false.

I think you're missing the point of parent comment (or at least the point I'd be making) - it's not that those descriptions make it seem like the business will fail, it's that those descriptions make me not care whether or not they fail. I suspect the person you replied to, like me, isn't disappointed because they want to cheer on a possible unicorn but because they want to cheer on startups that are doing interesting things.

Re: Y Combinator's Demo Day loses luster

#42

Post by tptacek »

carfacts wrote: post #38

I’m a founder that went through Techstars, not YC so maybe not exactly similar but accelerators want you to wait to Demo Day to have any investor talks while VCs want to get in early. Much like experienced used goods resellers will attempt to pick through yard sales early - no competition leads to investor friendlier terms. So an investor telling YC candidates not to wait to have these conversations isn’t exactly new…

It's not binary. My impression is that most YC companies aren't raising priced rounds at/around Demo Day; these are syndicated seed rounds. They mostly don't have "lead investors". They can happen incrementally over the course of a month.

I'm sure there are companies that have all their round capacity snapped up by single firms, but I don't think that's the norm; I think a bunch of random angels is much closer to the norm.

Which suggests that the "yard sale" phenomenon you're talking about here is mostly not a real thing.

Re: Y Combinator's Demo Day loses luster

#43

Post by tptacek »

corin_ wrote: post #41
tptacek wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I learned from several years of operating a consulting business building security teams for startups is that you probably have no intuition for which startups are going to be viable and which aren't. Certainly, the idea that you can evaluate their prospects from how exciting a single-sentence description is turns out to be totally false.

I think you're missing the point of parent comment (or at least the point I'd be making) - it's not that those descriptions make it seem like the business will fail, it's that those descriptions make me not care whether or not they fail. I suspect the person you replied to, like me, isn't disappointed because they want to cheer on a possible unicorn but because they want to cheer on startups that are doing interestin…

Why does it matter whether any of us care whether they fail? That's not the point of YC.

Re: Y Combinator's Demo Day loses luster

#44

Post by corin_ »

tptacek wrote: post #43
corin_ wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point of parent comment (or at least the point I'd be making) - it's not that those descriptions make it seem like the business will fail, it's that those descriptions make me not care whether or not they fail. I suspect the person you replied to, like me, isn't disappointed because they want to cheer on a possible unicorn but because they want to cheer on startups that are doing interestin…

Why does it matter whether any of us care whether they fail? That's not the point of YC.

They were commenting about their personal feelings, as am I. Neither of us have stated we think YC will do badly because of it.

On the other hand, while I don't think it's bad enough for YC to suffer massively, they have presumably been helped in the past by having a strong following of techy people who just like YC and who assume that a startup funded by them is likely to be interesting. Will they lose that reputation, and if so will it matter to how successful they are? I've no idea, but it's not impossible.

Re: Y Combinator's Demo Day loses luster

#45

Post by k__ »

tptacek wrote: post #43
corin_ wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point of parent comment (or at least the point I'd be making) - it's not that those descriptions make it seem like the business will fail, it's that those descriptions make me not care whether or not they fail. I suspect the person you replied to, like me, isn't disappointed because they want to cheer on a possible unicorn but because they want to cheer on startups that are doing interestin…

Why does it matter whether any of us care whether they fail? That's not the point of YC.

Because it implies interest in what these startups do.

The OP only said it seems that YC companies became less interesting over the years.

Re: Y Combinator's Demo Day loses luster

#46

Post by sgillen »

coldcode wrote: post #23

Is being in Y Combinator in the long run make any difference to the median startup, or just really affect the companies that succeed big time, measured once they attain that big time? Is it really fair to measure valuations early on and call it a success, or does it make more sense to wait X years? Is raising money early on any indicator of later success inside YC (as opposed to doing it outside of YC)?

Well raising money early is likely appealing to the founders of the companies, which may help YC attract better talent, creating a virtuous cycle.

Re: Y Combinator's Demo Day loses luster

#47

Post by arielm »

matsemann wrote: post #33
matsemann wrote: post #29

I used to read the articles about the YC batches and the launch threads here, hoping for many of them to succeed and be interested in the various ideas. But later years I've stopped. First reason is because it's so damn many. If all of them had a launch thread here on HN it would probably be more than one a day. Secondly because so many of them now feels like "X for Y". Or just X in a new geography.

From a TC article I googled from this week: > MadEats is an online ghost kitchen food delivery service in the Philippines That to me is nothing new, just a way to kill my local restaurants. > An online store builder that claims to have a setup process 10x faster than Shopify. Might be a cash cow and useful, but nothing exciting, eessentially Shopify in a different wrapping. > Tinai aims to help modernize this with a…

One consistent theme I see here is possible stability for investors.

Bookkeeping works and is that crowded of a space, so maybe with enough cash they can get some ROI. Same for food delivery.

I’m not saying this is good, and I could be wrong here. This is just an observation.

But… if you look at what happened to music in the last 20ish years you see basically the same shift away from creativity and variety and a focus on repeating what works.

I think starting a company these days has become much easier without funding though, so real hungry entrepreneurs _can_ bring excitement and creativity to this game.

Re: Y Combinator's Demo Day loses luster

#48

Post by [deleted] »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #5

Seems like pretty lackadaisical coverage with no actual data backing it up other than a line about "many investors told Axios..." which might be interesting if we understood how many they talked to, quality of the firm, etc. Generally, I'm actually inclined to agree with the article, but what is essentially an opinion piece presenting itself as real coverage annoys me.

[deleted]

Re: Y Combinator's Demo Day loses luster

#49

Post by gunapologist99 »

Axios Loses Luster

What they're saying: a lot of Axios has evolved into that sort of editorializing masquerading as journalism.

Between the lines: it's pretty obvious that Axios has a format that seems to be working for them, but is it really?

Yes, but: some people actually prefer it when people stop pretending that they're objective and cop to their biases, which might explain why Axios is still pretty popular.

The bottom line: It remains to be seen if Axios can work through these editorial retreads and come up with something fresh and new.

Re: Y Combinator's Demo Day loses luster

#50

Post by tlb »

coldcode wrote: post #23

Is being in Y Combinator in the long run make any difference to the median startup, or just really affect the companies that succeed big time, measured once they attain that big time? Is it really fair to measure valuations early on and call it a success, or does it make more sense to wait X years? Is raising money early on any indicator of later success inside YC (as opposed to doing it outside of YC)?

Raising money at demo day is somewhat correlated with success, but many companies that had trouble raising seed funding go on to become huge, and many companies that were hot at demo day fizzle out.

Early-stage fundraising success is a function of how many investors think the company is promising. Investors work hard on learning to judge accurately, but they can't see the future and they are often wrong. They can be wrong both by adding random noise to each judgement, and by being systematically wrong in their investment thesis.

If you could figure out with high accuracy which startups would succeed, you could:

- make $100B in 10 years

- increase the world's rate of technological progress

- reduce the vast waste of creative manpower at doomed startups

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