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Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows

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Re: Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows

#31

Post by smt88 »

Gormo wrote: post #22
phyzome wrote: post #20

It's interesting how many of the commenters are starting from the assumption that this is both intentional and desirable (or in some other way smart on the part of YC) and then reasoning only on that basis. (Or maybe it's not interesting, since this is on YC's own site... :-P)

Concluding that it's not intentional depends on the premise that they don't know they're doing it, which seems unlikely.

There's an enormous amount of evidence that almost no VC knows what they're doing (almost none beat index funds in the long run).

YC seems to have a spray-and-pray approach, and it used to be run by Sam Altman who has repeatedly failed upward, so I think it's very reasonable to assume this is either not a conscious strategy or it's just a bad strategy.

Either way, the VC's value is to be able to predict whether Dropbox or Zumodrive deserves their bet, and they clearly couldn't.

Re: Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows

#34

Post by billy-ilograph »

ethagknight wrote: post #29
bingemaker wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YC also says that they don't believe in the idea, but the founders ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Seems reasonable to pick two horses in a race you believe is worth running

This creates an extremely obvious conflict of interest.

Re: Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows

#35

Post by mst »

If nothing else, having competition helps validate the market.

Which is often an advantage to all companies involved - a lot of the time, you're only notionally competing with each other, your main enemy is "people not using a product in that space at all."

e.g. for a lot of business SaaS the only enemy worth caring about is Excel.

(I've more than once been involved with companies where the "competitors" were all on friendly terms because convincing people that using *some* product in that space was a good idea expanded everybody's addressable market)

Re: Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows

#36

Post by pavlov »

billy-ilograph wrote: post #34
ethagknight wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems reasonable to pick two horses in a race you believe is worth running

This creates an extremely obvious conflict of interest.

The conflict of interest is simply dead and forgotten in an era where the president-elect has his own cryptocoin, his own social media company, and appoints his billionaire supporters to improve efficiency in the parts of government that directly oversee those billionaires’ own businesses.

Re: Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows

#37

Post by MrMcCall »

authorfly wrote: post #28
Ballas wrote: post #18

It makes sense. If you are an investor and have a strong belief that a specific product or idea is a good one - you might want to decouple your odds of success from the people/team/company executing that idea.

What's interesting is that the people who are able to predict and come up with the idea (e.g. a researcher using AI in 2021) are often not the best ones to execute on it (typically, lack of experience or capacity to handle the pain of growth while marketing). What's most interesting is that most people aren't just "one type". In your life you go through multiple roles. Just like how most people, regardless of their i…

Human beings are the only creatures capable of self-evolution, using our minds to analyse the world around us and the world we have nurtured within us. Over time, we can stagnate into ossified animalistic patterns of selfishness, or we can expand our curiosity, consciousness, and, hopefully, our realization that compassion for others is the source of our own happiness. We can either find ways to better integrate ourselves into a better future for those around us, or wall ourselves off from the world around us. We would do well to remember that carpenters don't make hammers, nor computer scientists their own food, soil, packaging, tractors, or trains.

The use of the vast sums available to successful tech investors gives them a greater point of leverage than the rest of us not so endowed. And the more power is given, the responsibility is required, though few acknowledge or heed such wisdom.

At the end of the day, no matter how confident many folks are, who really has the humility and intelligence to know if a person is a genius? Very few, I guess. Very, very few, indeed.

Re: Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows

#38

Post by bwestergard »

authorfly wrote: post #28
Ballas wrote: post #18

It makes sense. If you are an investor and have a strong belief that a specific product or idea is a good one - you might want to decouple your odds of success from the people/team/company executing that idea.

What's interesting is that the people who are able to predict and come up with the idea (e.g. a researcher using AI in 2021) are often not the best ones to execute on it (typically, lack of experience or capacity to handle the pain of growth while marketing). What's most interesting is that most people aren't just "one type". In your life you go through multiple roles. Just like how most people, regardless of their i…

"Just like how most people, regardless of their income at age 20 will be earning top 35% income by age 35"

Could you say more about this, or perhaps provide a link where we can read more?

Re: Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows

#40

Post by ninth_ant »

Of course YC backs multiple companies in the same spaces, they have for quite some time if not from the start.

The controversy with pearai was not because it competed the market space of another YC company, but that it had the appearance of being a direct clone of the exact product of another YC company.

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