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Is Y Combinator worth the money?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#241

Post by dustingetz »

mritchie712 wrote: post #234
rsp1984 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

building a valuable product doesn't make you successful in 2023? Please, elaborate.

* markets measure sentiment

* capital flows through trust networks

* the important thing is not how things are but how they seem to be (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiio%27s_laws)

* Curse of Development: the depth of any transaction is limited by the depth of the shallower party (https://www.dustingetz.com/#/page/the%20curse%20of%20develop...)

* You Can't Tell People Anything (https://www.dustingetz.com/#/page/you%20can't%20tell%20peopl...)

* Much Madness is Divinest Sense (https://www.dustingetz.com/#/page/much%20madness%20is%20divi...)

* Sufficiently Powerful Optimization Of Any Known Target Destroys All Value (https://www.dustingetz.com/#/page/sufficiently%20powerful%20...)

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#242

Post by satvikpendem »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #218
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be curious what does make them successful.

Making the "right" product, and talking to the "right" customers.

That's encompassed by "valuable" in "valuable product." If it's not the right product for the right customer, it won't have value.

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#243

Post by satvikpendem »

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'm not sure where anyone said marketing doesn't matter, even YC will say that "build it and they will come" is false. But, talking to customers face to face or in person is much more valuable that marketing, because you experience first hand what the customer wants in a way that is not very doable with just marketing.

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#244

Post by satvikpendem »

baxtr wrote: post #122
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…

Super interesting. Do you have an example in mind where a startup excels through marketing in a crowded niche with the mentioned 10-15 startups?

Laravel, Vercel, come to mind.

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#245

Post by hdivider »

testmasterflex wrote: post #225
hdivider wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 li…

Can you give any example of such “advanced technology”?

Consider all these:

https://technology.nasa.gov/patents

And the NSF's equivalent, the many national labs, defense labs, and research-intensive universities (eg UC Irvine is keen to for entrepreneurs to pick up IP; as are lots of others). There's so much out there, and it's just waiting for entrepreneurs to commercialize it. Many things won't have direct commercial application, but much of it does. Typically the entity doing the licensing doesn't just give you the IP, but a full teaching program and network to help you get further.

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#246

Post by danenania »

ngiyabonga wrote: post #26

I find these two concepts [1, 2] at odds with each other. Not a critique on the author - on the contrary, empathy: I felt the same when applying to YC (did not make a batch). On one hand, the general impression you get when preparing for your application (via FAQs, Startup School, YC videos, etc) is very much in line with [1] - YC is looking for _very_ early stage. But once you go through the actual application you f…

My impression from YC and investors in general is that without a product and traction, the investment decision becomes mostly about you as a person. Do you have an impressive résumé? Are you an MIT/Stanford grad? Do you come across as especially intelligent and ambitious in conversations?

When you have a product and traction, a lot of that goes out the window. All the things I listed above are basically proxies for “might have the ability to make something people want”. If you’ve already shown you can do that, other things become less important. On the extreme end, where you are growing like crazy, most investors will overlook just about any flaw or lack of credentials.

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#247

Post by archgoon »

itsoktocry wrote: post #36
hassy wrote: post #25

Did YC S21 which was an all remote batch. my 2c. YC is 100% what you make of it. It's not a lean back experience. I did not meet most of the companies in my batch but I've gotten to know many founders through YC that I would not have otherwise. Founders that have been source of advice and support. Network of clients - yep don't go into YC expecting to sell to other YC cos. It is easier to get warm intros through the…

> 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…

Advice does not need to be correct to be valuable. Simply getting a perspective on a problem, and a proposed strategy, can improve your ability to reason about your problem domain. If advice is wrong, and you choose not to follow it, then you know that people will ask about it later and you will be prepared to explain why you thought it was wrong; which is a better situation then saying to potential investors "Gee, never thought about that option."

That is to say that advice, right or wrong, gives you information about the problem space and perspectives on it; which can be valuable if you evaluate said advice critically.

As an example "You should always unit test your code" may not be applicable, but being able to say something like "This code is almost 100% dealing with External systems so a pure unit test would not be the appropriate way to test this code" is a better answer than "What's unit testing?" (Yes, I'm sure someone is going to quibble with this example :) )

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#248

Post by anurag_baddam »

_sentient wrote: post #34

I wonder how much of this is a function of the W22 batch being remote. We all know the benefits: The fundraising pop is great, the brand patina helps you hire better talent than you would otherwise, the advice can be useful, especially for first-time founders, you can sell into the YC network, etc. All of this pales, IMO, to the value of the personal connections you make in the program. It sounds like OP, by virtue o…

This reminds of my college experience. My friends and I were always stressed trying to finish the next CS project or study for the next exam but we came out of it extremely close to one another. Nothing builds friendships like shared pain I guess.

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#249

Post by satvikpendem »

digging wrote: post #233
dang wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we low-quality people out in the regular world I understand how easily this feeling can arise. It may not be obvious but we spend a lot of energy on HN trying to mitigate it. I don't want a high-status-insider vs. low-status-outsider dynamic on HN. One thing I'd like to tell you is that as someone who came from little class privilege and a geographically provincial place, and had zero connection to the "Silicon Val…

maybe my brain is sleed-deprived but this doesn't feel great to me either. can we not be high quality people without those connections, regardless of how those connections might be made easier for the rare individuals who participate in YC?

Who is saying you/we are not high quality people? No one is saying that high quality people don't exist outside YC, just that YC accepts high quality people. You are committing the logical fallacy known as the fallacy of composition [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition

Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?

#250

Post by jongjong »

Oh my, $150K for 7% equity sounds really good. I would offer 30% equity for that amount.

I've been trying to raise $20K for the last 10 years and never managed though one time someone took pity on me and gave me $20K in cryptocurrency as a gift. I managed to stake that on a crypto project in such a way that it was soon generating me around $35K to $70K per year and I used the money to fund myself to work on a Decentralized Exchange for 3 full years which is now operational.

Still nobody will invest in me.

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