Useful here-say from some investors at the last few demo days: not all of the companies that are "copiers" apply + are accepted with the "copying" idea. Many founding teams end up pivoting during the batch and scramble to get proof points on the board before demo day. They're most likely to end up pivoting to well-known problems, therefore the clustering around a few common themes. It doesn't explain all of the data, but it's a big part of it. When you have to come up with a fundable new idea in a week and prove it out in a month this can happen...
Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows
41–50 of 214 posts
Re: Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows
#42This isn't anything new. Heck, the first season of Silicon Valley called this out with Peter Gregory backing a number of compression startups. Interestingly for the OP, that same season featured Tech Crunch Disrupt. It's a bit ironic to see TC publishing this concept now as though it is a new revelation.
It makes sense to scatter a bunch of seeds on fertile ground, and then pick the strongest plant that shows the most growth. There are many kinds of smart, ambitious people; some will form teams that succeed, others will fall prey to unforeseen impediments, and not.
Re: Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows
#43If 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…
Yes, this can happen. How often and under what conditions I’m not sure.
I’ll give some other lenses:
1. From the point of view of an individual person, growth in the overall market is often an advantage. If one company doesn’t survive, there will be probably be others. Your skills and connections can help in a similar organization with a slightly different angle on the problem.
2. From the point of view of memetics, good business ideas are likely to appear and survive and take many forms in many niches. If you find yourself with competition, this can suggest that the underlying ideas are suited to the current environment. (Warning: this tendency can be distorted by irrational herd behavior and intentional gaming.)
Re: Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows
#44I think there's something missing from this analysis - YC companies might duplicate one another's products but that doesn't say anything at all about their target markets, route to market, product focus, etc. As an example, my first startup was a requirements management app that, on paper at least, was a copy of IBM DOORS. Except DOORS is a massive enterprise app targeted at companies who are building a new airplane…
That's not the case for most dev tools YC startup, they are targeting the same HN users/ other YC startups (trying to sell shovels)
The great suspicion with YC is what proportion of YC companies have all their customers being a mix of other YC companies and those with shared investors?
There is a real danger with current era Bay Area tech that it is just a game of musical chairs played with money, with remarkably little external value being generated.
Re: Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows
#45> YC commonly accepts startups that are building similar or nearly identical products to previous YC grads. Some of them are direct competitors; others differ slightly by targeting a new geography (Asia or Latin America), or are a subset of a larger market (point-of-sale software for bars versus coffee shops).
If you're going "by the book" with Crossing The Chasm, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm), all startups need to conquer a niche before they can own an entire market.
It seems like a wise strategy to, if an investment does well (or otherwise proves a market) in one niche, to invest in another niche. It certainly increases the odds that you've invested in whoever will become the dominant player.
Re: Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yes, political corruption is a drag/loss on everyone except the corrupt ones. Worse, it can shift a system out of its viable operating zone. Corrupt individuals in a market can destroy the market.
But what is the connection to the parent comment? No matter how corrupt one part of government or a market becomes, it doesn’t excuse further corruption. If anything, more corruption makes additional corruption more likely to break the whole system.
Re: Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows
#47This is reads as if that is negative an unusual. One might think supporting copycats is bad but obviously a company cannot simply be copied and is more than just its product. While a product might be, you can still outclass your competitors with better engineering, or sourcing of materials or marketing.
You wonder if this is a telling story about YC or just one about the startup space in general.
Possible outcomes include:
1. There is little unique ideas going around. YC is truely and knowingly funding blatant copycats.
2. There is little unique ideas going around. Due to the large amount of duplicates, all accelerators invariably invest in mostly copycats.
3. There is unique ideas going around, they are just not popular with YC. This could have various reasons. I wonder what they might be
Re: Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows
#48And Garry apologized for being wrong shortly after, but that’s not mentioned?
Re: Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows
#49> YC startups don’t have to be unique. Far from it.
Slow news day. YC has made it clear over the years it's almost all about the founders not the idea. It's almost impossible to know if an idea is good at the early stages, and ideas change, startups pivot, often the timing is wrong, and the market unproven etc. More often than not most of what startups do is not unique, otherwise there's no market for it. A new take on an old idea has a much higher chance of success than something totally new that ends up being too early.
Re: Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not the case for most dev tools YC startup, they are targeting the same HN users/ other YC startups (trying to sell shovels)
The great suspicion with YC is what proportion of YC companies have all their customers being a mix of other YC companies and those with shared investors? There is a real danger with current era Bay Area tech that it is just a game of musical chairs played with money, with remarkably little external value being generated.
> There is a real danger with current era Bay Area tech that it is just a game of musical chairs played with money, with remarkably little external value being generated.
So, you don’t think that is already the case?