I can't wait to see this bubble bursting spectacularly.
YC offers early interviews for AI companies
11–20 of 86 posts
Re: YC offers early interviews for AI companies
#12Early? The sector is quite mature by now, they’re basically late to the game.
Early by YC schedule
>early interview slots for the YC W24 batch
The general deadline for W24 is September 11
But this early round for AI companies is available until July 17
Re: YC offers early interviews for AI companies
#13Big mistake imo to hop on trendy grifts. Please focus on the founders as before.
Re: YC offers early interviews for AI companies
#14I develop a few interesting features using OpenAI in an existing product. After a wow-effects of the first days, few users are still using it. If I talk to users they say features are awesome but they are not actually using it. Really funny. Do you have experience of OpenAI API-based product that has high retention ?
> Do you have experience of OpenAI API-based product that has high retention?
perplexity.ai comes to mind. I introduced it to my students at uni a few weeks ago and they now use it extensively over Bard/ChatGPT. There are others too, like copy-writing tools (jasper.ai, copy.ai) who seem to be doing well. Besides, from experience, GitHub Copilot is so good, I can barely program without it.
Re: YC offers early interviews for AI companies
#15I thought YC backed individual founders and ideas rather than general technologies or sectors.
YC has a long tradition of soliciting applications in particular areas—see the links below. Of course, founders with other ideas are entirely welcome to apply.
Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=250704 - July 2008 (380 comments)
A New Experiment: The RFS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=766703 - Aug 2009 (57 comments)
YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=766796 - Aug 2009 (56 comments)
YCRFS 2: New Paths Through Product Space - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=768425 - Aug 2009 (21 comments)
YCRFS 3: Things Built on Twitter - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=904193 - Oct 2009 (67 comments)
YCRFS 4: New Ways to Use Live Video - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=904195 - Oct 2009 (19 comments)
RFS 5: Development on Handhelds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=950781 - Nov 2009 (44 comments)
YCRFS 6: iPad Applications - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1160140 - March 2010 (106 comments)
YCRFS 7: Applications of Facebook Instant Personalization - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1638004 - Aug 2010 (29 comments)
Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491542 - Jan 2012 (664 comments)
New Requests for Startups - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8308666 - Sept 2014 (390 comments)
Requests for Startups Refreshed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12592619 - Sept 2016 (124 comments)
Request for Startups: Water - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13311257 - Jan 2017 (224 comments)
Re: YC offers early interviews for AI companies
#16I thought YC backed individual founders and ideas rather than general technologies or sectors.
YC has a long tradition of soliciting applications in particular areas—see the links below. Of course, founders with other ideas are entirely welcome to apply. Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=250704 - July 2008 (380 comments) A New Experiment: The RFS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=766703 - Aug 2009 (57 comments) YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism - https://news.ycombinat…
A lot of these links in the original submissions are broken. Would be nice if they could be fixed or archived.
I.e:
Re: YC offers early interviews for AI companies
#17The AI feeding frenzy in VC land is reminiscent of the early days of the public access internet aka the .com boom. That corrected itself sharply but eventually most of those .com boom dreams came out, just a bit later and lots of VCs lost lots of money because they got the timing wrong.
Every time there is a major shift in tech you see this pattern repeat but I don't recall seeing it on that scale again since ~2000, even though lots of stuff has happened since then (for instance: the mobile revolution).
Investing in AI for the sake of companies using AI because it increases their chances of funding is the hallmark of a bubble, and that will probably end the same way it did before. But if you manage to pick the winners early it will pay off in spades. The big question to me is whether or not those winners will be part of the first wave or the second, usually it takes a while before a new technology really comes into its strength.
Until then there is a pretty big risk that what looks to be an early winner will be displaced by a party from the second wave which is better positioned to take advantage of later, more mature versions of that technology, which by then may well be able to displace those 'early winners' by a couple of guys with an open source package.
Not an easy time to be an investor.
Re: YC offers early interviews for AI companies
#18Big mistake imo to hop on trendy grifts. Please focus on the founders as before.
They will still do that, but within the context of having an application that takes advantage of recent developments in AI. Whether that's smart or not is an open question, time will tell. But, given that YC is a seed level investor (with some follow on capacity) it makes sense because the 'downstream' VCs are handing out money like candy to start-ups that can plausibly claim to be AI startups. The idea is that some of these will go on to corner their respective markets and that by getting in early you guarantee yourself a place at the table later on.
Whether that is smart is also an open question.
Re: YC offers early interviews for AI companies
#19I thought YC backed individual founders and ideas rather than general technologies or sectors.
YC has a long tradition of soliciting applications in particular areas—see the links below. Of course, founders with other ideas are entirely welcome to apply. Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=250704 - July 2008 (380 comments) A New Experiment: The RFS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=766703 - Aug 2009 (57 comments) YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism - https://news.ycombinat…
Thanks for the links, some of product ideas in the 08-10 threads make for interesting reads.
Re: YC offers early interviews for AI companies
#20Early? The sector is quite mature by now, they’re basically late to the game.
YC.org literally backed OpenAI in 2015 , Cruise a year before that, and ScaleAI a year after that. Per YC's publicly available records, the earliest they funded a ML/AI business was in 2008. They aren't late, but this AI specific Early Decision may be in reaction to funds like AIGrant.org, SouthParkCommons, Neo et al. https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/?tags=AI&tags=Machine%...
Exactly, the chances of getting funding for AI companies are up considerably and if YC doesn't fund them someone else will. To get a seat at the table they need to move faster compared to their normal schedule.