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Is Y Combinator worth the money?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#181

Post by JohnFen »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #129
hungryforcodes wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah it could be if you learn from it-- which it sounds like they did. They would have learned mire imagine than if they had never had to make those choices and live with the consequences.

Only if what you learned is better than what you would have learned without that advice.

"Better" can mean a bunch of different things, too. For example, if your business is headed for the rocks, mediocre advice that you get in time to enact it is much better than perfect advice that you get too late.

What advice isn't, and can never be, is ironclad rules that you can just accept without consideration and expect to provide value. The real value of almost all advice isn't the part where it's telling you what to do -- it's the part where it's providing you with a new way of thinking about the problem.

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#182

Post by rsp1984 »

dang wrote: post #144

It's true that YC will tell you over and over to (1) work on your product and (2) talk to users. Those are the "make" and "people" in "make something people want". If you want to focus on marketing tricks / media hype / "content" / that kind of thing, you're going to hear the above repeatedly, since those are neither (1) nor (2). For my part this reflects well on YC. In fact it's a little reassuring to hear that this…

Appreciate the chime-in and honesty.

> If building a valuable product, talking to users, and focusing on facts sounds good to you, you should consider applying to YC.

Also being perfectly honest, it does sound very appealing, but I'm afraid it unfortunately just isn't what makes startups successful in 2023. Speaking from personal experience and carrying the battle scars.

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#183

Post by JohnFen »

quest88 wrote: post #68
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Some of the advice I did not take and did the opposite and it was the right decision. // FWIW that does not mean the advice was wrong. Trivial example: "head East, there's a great bakery there", "I went West and found a place for a lovely lunch". Unless the parent elucidates (and maybe even then) you can't tell if the advice was right or wrong.

Then why do you need the VC

Honestly, maybe you don't.

But, as a serial entrepreneur for more decades than I like to think about, I can confidently say that there is one thing that you really do need: you need access to people experienced in business, preferable a similar sort of business to yours. You need their advice.

YC can provide that, and has paved the path for it. You can also get it through many other avenues. But whether through YC or not, your business will be more likely to succeed if you can learn from what other people have already done.

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#184

Post by dang »

rsp1984 wrote: post #182
dang wrote: post #144

It's true that YC will tell you over and over to (1) work on your product and (2) talk to users. Those are the "make" and "people" in "make something people want". If you want to focus on marketing tricks / media hype / "content" / that kind of thing, you're going to hear the above repeatedly, since those are neither (1) nor (2). For my part this reflects well on YC. In fact it's a little reassuring to hear that this…

Appreciate the chime-in and honesty. > If building a valuable product, talking to users, and focusing on facts sounds good to you, you should consider applying to YC. Also being perfectly honest, it does sound very appealing, but I'm afraid it unfortunately just isn't what makes startups successful in 2023. Speaking from personal experience and carrying the battle scars.

It's certainly not sufficient and experiencing that in practice is painful and sucks.

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#185

Post by pcthrowaway »

robocat wrote: post #145
pcthrowaway wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think YC would make sense for a company that doesn't intend to raise money beyond the YC investment? I have an idea for a b2c product I want to build that has a few paths to revenue (and a possible b2b offshoot), as well as acquisition by FAANG (or FAANG-adjacent). Is there something about taking investment from YC that prevents me from turning around and selling it for $2M after building it out a bit more? Al…

YC only invests in companies that aim big, and have a big opportunity. So you would have to lie to get them to invest, and they likely would catch you out lying. http://paulgraham.com/growth.html and http://paulgraham.com/mean.html gives you some idea (also see http://paulgraham.com/articles.html ). Giving 7%, but getting say 20% extra when you sell, could be financially sensible (depending on your other costs and be…

I have no intention of lying, I'd rather bootstrap or shop for other investors who don't have the same expectation of 'growth potential'.

The YC model is.. it's own thing.. seems like in the current economy, they need every company to be a potential unicorn, which works out for them because they're doing it at scale, and the ones that deliver, deliver outsized returns.

But possibly doesn't work out as well for the founders, because the 9/10 that don't deliver, are forced to run their company into the ground chasing a moonshot vs. a sustainable lifestyle business, and don't get to reap the rewards they might get from the latter business model

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#186

Post by hdivider »

rsp1984 wrote: post #90

Their logic can be understood: make a good product, and the rest will catch up. But in real life marketing and hype really matters, and when everyone does these things while you naively sit and code, they get an advantage in the market, and you get your cool product. I sometimes get the feeling, also by watching their public content on YT, that a lot of YC advice, especially w.r.t. what to prioritize, is from an era…

I think we are definitely in a new era.

My view: entrepreneurs should take on a little more technology risk. Not just market risk. License IP from federal labs and government agencies -- there is SO much advanced tech sitting on shelves. Do government contracting to fund R&D.

Go beyond just software, especially the SaaS kind, because ultimately, software can only make so much difference in society. Investors don't like government and anything sciencey, especially when there's a hardware component, so I don't believe most hotshot founders will go for it. But hopefully enough will take on more technology risk.

The biggest problems out there right now require a mix of traditional software, ML, hardware and research. All put together in the right way.

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#187

Post by dang »

samstave wrote: post #178
pclark wrote: post #11

This stood out to me: > In their picture of the world, you, the founders, should only build a product and talk to customers, everything else is superfluous and waste of time. Hiring is waste of time, paid advertising is waste of time, content is waste of time, talking to investors is waste of time, getting media coverage is waste of time. IMHO YC doesn’t want you to “build” a product they want you to “grow” a product…

@Dang, Why the F are we having this conversation on HN and it not a seminal discussion happening with, at and of YC? Why do we need "trench knowledge" as opposed to YC actually holding an open forum on such?

I'm not sure I understand the question but HN discusses what it wants and this post happened to show up and get upvoted. Considering that the author went through YC a year ago I'm not sure that the timing matters much.

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#188

Post by opportune »

rhtgrg wrote: post #46

YC used to be for people who investors wouldn’t normally take a chance on…and imo, it still is. If you have a FAANG attached to your name with multiple years of experience, you can probably find better deals elsewhere. YC has done a relatively good job of scaling themselves, but it has never been a “one size fits all” funding solution, and if you are a founder you’d be wise to consider your options carefully. That be…

I have FAANG attached to my name with multiple years of experience, where else would you recommend as a replacement or competitor to YC? I am aware of angel investors’ existence but looking for anything besides that

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#189

Post by JohnFen »

lazide wrote: post #163
itsoktocry wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some of the advice I did not take and did the opposite and it was the right decision. And some advice that I did not take was exactly right, but I only saw it in retrospect months later. Sometimes their advice is right, and sometimes it's wrong? That doesn't sound particularly valuable. > Fundraising - being a YC company definitely opens doors, and also helps protects you from bad actors who have to think twice bef…

I can’t speak for if it is better or not in YC land, but I can vouch for a truly amazing amount of scammers that salivate when they hear startup. It’s mind boggling. If someone makes a YC company legitimately happy, then using them with other YC companies would be both natural and a good way to filter out the scammers.

> I can vouch for a truly amazing amount of scammers that salivate when they hear startup.

It really is amazing, isn't it? Over the years, I've developed a few coping mechanisms. One of which is that I never tell people I'm an entrepreneur, and I never use the word "startup".

I work for a business, doing . Outside of potential investors, nobody needs to know that the company is a startup running on my sweat and blood.

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#190

Post by dang »

nico wrote: post #8

Heard similar opinions from other YC founders before. I think any educational system will run into similar issues. The problem is that the system takes over and becomes more important than the original goal of educating, coaching, helping. And instead it just becomes a conversions and return optimizer. At the end the individuals don’t matter as long as the aggregate produces good enough results.

The original goal was to make money by investing in early-stage startups, and that's still the goal.

It's true that the energy has changed from "let's hack the economy / see if this works" to "yup it works".

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