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Why YC went to DC

ycombinator.com

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Re: Why YC went to DC

#221

Post by ethbr1 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #201
ethbr1 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's backwards reasoning though. If limited liability is a concern... we can just create that for individuals . I'm not convinced that Meta also needs the right to do whatever it wants, for the sake of aspiring indie filmmakers.

what if two people want to make a movie together?

Then we create some kind of liability for that situation. And then we figure out at what assemblage scale multiple people stop being a collection of individuals and start being something fundamentally different.

LLC et al. liability didn't just exist in a tablet given to humanity from god.

It was designed for a purpose, and we could design the same thing for people if we wanted, instead of granting legal corporations individuals' rights.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#222

Post by elicash »

mrb wrote: post #14

"This year, we’ll fund more than 500 companies out of 50,000 applications, and almost all of them are related to AI in some way." So, what this means: that in 2024, if you want to get VC capital, your startup must be related to AI.

Or throw in a random AI feature to satisfy investors.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#223

Post by ethbr1 »

bumby wrote: post #143
ethbr1 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USAF would certainly agree with you! ;) On the whole, I think it's still a net positive. The drag of unmotivated, apathetic, and/or inflexible employees is incredibly high, and then there's the additional efficiency drag of the systems that must put in place to ensure they meet minimum performance (i.e. filling out make-work forms to track performance). Better to simply create a system by which they're weeded out…

> Better to simply create a system by which they're weeded out. I agree with this. It's really just another way to say there should be mechanisms to hold people accountable. > Which I guess dovetails with the military "up or out" process. I don't think the military does a great job of this. From what I could see, it only forces out the absolute absymal performers (e.g., those who can't pass a PFT or have multiple DUI…

I've less familiarity with it on the enlisted side, but there's also much stronger gating of promotions by competency tests there, right?

On the officer side, especially in certain specialties, it's very much musical chairs... with an ever-decreasing number of chairs.

(Which admittedly creates a lot of its own issues by setting up zero-sum, don't-help-your-competition scenarios and politics at the higher ranks)

Re: Why YC went to DC

#224

Post by no_wizard »

lolinder wrote: post #58
no_wizard wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes, these open models could stand to be more open and I hope that we'll see that in the future The most operative word here is hope . Which means we may not see more get open sourced over time. Especially, if there is no pressure for companies to do so. >If we constantly downplay and disparage the real efforts that companies make to release IP to the world because they don't go as far as we'd like, we're setting ou…

> companies aren't releasing this stuff because it makes everyone feel good. Its a tactic. It's a tactic, but one of the primary reasons to expect it to be effective is building goodwill in the community. If the goodwill dries up then most of the reason to open anything up is gone.

Goodwill doesn't equal transparency or auditability, which are the core concerns that have been repeated around AI models and training of said models

Re: Why YC went to DC

#225

Post by ec109685 »

guyfromfargo wrote: post #150
jandrewrogers wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of these, the Section 174 debacle (software R&D amortization) is arguably the problem that needs to be addressed most urgently.

Completely agree. I am a bootstrapped SaaS owner and we cleared about $1M in revenue, $1,200 in profit, and $90k in taxes. Bootstrapping a tech company in a post Section 174 world doesn’t even seem feasible. I can’t believe this issue isn’t being taken more seriously.

Given you’ll eventually get that full software deduction tax break back, just spread across several years, I am surprised there aren’t companies that will finance that to have the money upfront (with a fee of course :( )

Re: Why YC went to DC

#226

Post by fendy3002 »

waprin wrote: post #70
mrb wrote: post #14

"This year, we’ll fund more than 500 companies out of 50,000 applications, and almost all of them are related to AI in some way." So, what this means: that in 2024, if you want to get VC capital, your startup must be related to AI.

What’s ironic is that Michael Seibel has discussed many times on the YC podcast that you should avoid building whatever’s hot for VCs because their attention tends to change every year but you’ll be stuck building for a decade. 2020 was remote work, 2021 was web3, now we have the big LLM boom. Honestly it seems there’s a lot of advantages to “riding a wave” and a lot of advantages to being contrarian. But if raising…

Tbf I feel remote work really improved significantly in the past years, though I don't know if the contribution from those startups matters or not. Web3 and blockchain is a moot, there's little to no practical reason to have them.

AI though, will be very useful, at least a good one. Theoretically, AI can swim in a good ocean of company documentations and save time searching. They can help doctors diagnose a ct scan faster (if not already).

Re: Why YC went to DC

#227

Post by infobot »

waprin wrote: post #70
mrb wrote: post #14

"This year, we’ll fund more than 500 companies out of 50,000 applications, and almost all of them are related to AI in some way." So, what this means: that in 2024, if you want to get VC capital, your startup must be related to AI.

What’s ironic is that Michael Seibel has discussed many times on the YC podcast that you should avoid building whatever’s hot for VCs because their attention tends to change every year but you’ll be stuck building for a decade. 2020 was remote work, 2021 was web3, now we have the big LLM boom. Honestly it seems there’s a lot of advantages to “riding a wave” and a lot of advantages to being contrarian. But if raising…

true but you have to participate at all costs in whatever's hot for engineers and consumers, and that is definitely AI

Re: Why YC went to DC

#228

Post by ryandrake »

bumby wrote: post #206
luma wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3) Medicare for all, starting today. Stroke of a pen I just fixed everything. > existing hospital infrastructure Hospitals already deal with medicare. > insurance companies Oh no the vultures in the system will go hungry whatever shall we do > citizens who don't want a single-payer system Buy premium insurance above and beyond the public option, same as every other modern industrialized country. If you don't like the…

Ignoring that a “stroke of the pen” is a dictatorial solution almost by definition… Considering Medicare/Medicaid are currently approaching $1T annually to serve less than 20% of the population how dues your stroke of the pen plan pay for the increase when everyone is enrolled? Hospitals are forced to accept Medicare, but in many cases this is at a loss, subsidized by private charges elsewhere. So you’ll need to find…

Come on--obviously OP meant a "stroke of the pen, held by duly elected representatives". Nothing dictatorial about that.

We currently can almost get enough of those representatives in office to do it (and a president to sign it), if it weren't for things like the electoral college, gerrymandering, and grossly unequal representation in the Senate, things that currently give disproportionate power to the "team" that happens to oppose single-payer.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#229

Post by FactKnower69 »

tptacek wrote: post #23
eganist wrote: post #16

I was hopeful YC coming to DC would've meant YC would've been tapping into DC's startup scene. Wishful thinking. Linked is the more common reason (lobbying), but I'm looking forward to more institutions recognizing the talent we have in the DC region.

There's talent in every region, and I think it should be a priority to figure out ways to unlock it without re-siting companies in SFBA and NYC, but it's worth noting here that YC's SFBA-centricity is not an outcome of their belief that there's no talent outside SFBA. It's the opposite: they assume they're importing that talent to the area. The YC SFBA thing is about network effects from companies working in close pr…

woah, locking your investments into a single geographic area, how innovative and forward thinking! especially for a tech company! I really hope nothing bad happens that reduces the value of in-person networking or shared commercial office space, or God forbid someone invents a gadget that lets people work from places other than where they live

Re: Why YC went to DC

#230

Post by tptacek »

FactKnower69 wrote: post #229
tptacek wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's talent in every region, and I think it should be a priority to figure out ways to unlock it without re-siting companies in SFBA and NYC, but it's worth noting here that YC's SFBA-centricity is not an outcome of their belief that there's no talent outside SFBA. It's the opposite: they assume they're importing that talent to the area. The YC SFBA thing is about network effects from companies working in close pr…

woah, locking your investments into a single geographic area, how innovative and forward thinking! especially for a tech company! I really hope nothing bad happens that reduces the value of in-person networking or shared commercial office space, or God forbid someone invents a gadget that lets people work from places other than where they live

You don't have to like it, and it doesn't have to rationalize with whatever your conception of how innovation works is. I don't like San Francisco either. My point is that you have to at least engage with the SFBA argument that YC is making.

I work for a large-ish all-remote YC company in which none of the founders live in the Bay Area (or in the same city, for that matter). People have some odd ideas of how YC actually works.

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