How Y Combinator Started
ycombinator.com
How Y Combinator Started
1–10 of 105 posts
Re: How Y Combinator Started
#2That's such an encouraging read.
Re: How Y Combinator Started
#3Very happy read.
What this says me, and hopefully you is this: "that inconsequential thing you are staring today.. do not be so sure it is that inconsequential. Most of all just do it"
Re: How Y Combinator Started
#4I really enjoyed PGs post for the detailed description of the thought process behind the creation of YC and how they took those initial steps (including getting the funds together and deciding how to run it).
A lot of 'this is how I became successful' biographies seldom provide that level of detail. Whilst I still find them interesting, I found PGs writing to be more inspirational (to me anyway) because it's almost like a 'how-to' guide.
Re: How Y Combinator Started
#5I really enjoyed PGs post for the detailed description of the thought process behind the creation of YC and how they took those initial steps (including getting the funds together and deciding how to run it). A lot of 'this is how I became successful' biographies seldom provide that level of detail. Whilst I still find them interesting, I found PGs writing to be more inspirational (to me anyway) because it's almost l…
agreed. From that post, only missed some more insight on how he dealt with that first batch on the summer camp. Were most of the ideas already good? Did everyone even got there with ideas ready to go? etc
Re: How Y Combinator Started
#6Fantastic read. It's really interesting to hear about how Y Combinator started much like a startup itself. Today we take YC for granted, but 7 years ago that concept must have been extremely novel and easily dismissed. It's hard for me to imagine the modern tech world without YC, though.
Re: How Y Combinator Started
#7"Initially we didn't have what turned out to be the most important idea: funding startups synchronously, instead of asynchronously as it had always been done before. Or rather we had the idea, but we didn't realize its significance. We decided very early that the first thing we'd do would be to fund a bunch of startups over the coming summer."
I wonder what the best batch size is: each cohort seems to be larger than the last. When does it makes sense to do three, four, or six a year as smaller batches.
Re: How Y Combinator Started
#8Happy birthday YC & Co. Been a fan since it was publicly announced.
And not to take anything away from YC's effort but I find it rather amusing that first time some good hackers take their turn at improving the VC industry they transform it and become (arguably) the most successful investors in it.
I wish more people would try to improve the VC industry. There's at least a few YC-level waves that could occur. AngelList the best example.
Re: How Y Combinator Started
#9So doing the winter batch in California seemed like one of those rare cases where the self-indulgent choice and the ambitious one were the same.
There is nothing more heavenly, more sublime than that rare situation in life in which the self-indulgent choice and the ambitious choice align. There's a keen insight to be had there.
Unfortunately, those moments are very rare.
For instance, at least, in terms of my personal temperament and disposition, I have found that I most enjoy life, from a "human" perspective, in places that are terrible places to do business, and may, in fact, have very dysfunctional local economies, high amount of corruption, etc. I'm the kind of person that has the most fun in the colour of Greece, Italy, southern Spain, Portugal, Argentina, etc. I can appreciate the comparative orderliness and clockwork of Teutonic and Anglo-American civilisation, but it doesn't make me happy, and yet I need that whole universe in order to sustain my livelihood in any practical sense. But everything else about it doesn't make me very happy.
I wish there were some way to reconcile those two. I haven't found any place that has an optimal intersection of cowbell on the one hand, and practicality on the other. Maybe it exists, but I haven't found it. However, my natural sense is that there is a inherent, perennial tension between the two.
That's why that particular phrase really got me. I wish dearly for such a Shangri-la.
Re: How Y Combinator Started
#10One of the things that I noticed is how YC's opinion regarding patents has evolved since its founding.
>"If you're accepted, we'll deal with the paperwork for you. We'll incorporate you, get you a corporate bank account, supply simple, generic employment agreements for you to use, and so on. We can give some advice about patents, though you don't have to deal with that in the earliest stages; you have a year after making a discovery to file a US patent application for it." [http://ycombinator.com/old/sfp.html]
However, the best part of the story was the I'm-quitting-my-job smile.