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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

#121

Post by tptacek »

And? As the article says, they've funded thousands of companies. Of course there's overlap. It would be weirder, much weirder, if they kept a conflict list like a law firm and avoided funding things that intersected their portfolio.

It's hard to emphasize enough how little YC knows about the companies they fund, and how little influence they have over the companies once they've funded them. Often, there's barely a company at all, just a small team that YC takes a shine to. Even if YC wanted to keep a conflict list, they couldn't: companies joint the program with one idea and launch with another.

To have a problem with that is to have a problem with the entire concept of YC; this is the process they invented, that they're notorious for.

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

#122

Post by fsckboy »

tptacek wrote: post #121

And? As the article says, they've funded thousands of companies. Of course there's overlap. It would be weirder, much weirder, if they kept a conflict list like a law firm and avoided funding things that intersected their portfolio. It's hard to emphasize enough how little YC knows about the companies they fund, and how little influence they have over the companies once they've funded them. Often, there's barely a co…

>It would be weirder, much weirder, if they kept a conflict list like a law firm

modern portfolio theory (MPT) is the only acceptable measure of investment performance, and calculating co-variance is the salient feature of MPT, so no, it would not be weird to track overlap.

to sum it up in a single sentence, is OpenAI a good investment for you at $50 a share? Without even knowing anything else about the company, if the rest of your portfolio is already 100% shares of OpenAI, or even AI companies, no, for you, probably this would not be a good investment: the market does not reward diversifiable risk.

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

#123

Post by fsckboy »

ActionHank wrote: post #83
light_triad wrote: post #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…

Steve Jobs or maybe just Apple used to pit teams against each other to develop a solution to a problem and then pick the strongest of the two. It also offers a convenient way to pull investment out early if the doppelganger startup isn't meeting targets. Just get the original startup to buy them out. It's not something that is a negative for YC, but it could be for the startups they back.

>Steve Jobs or maybe just Apple used to pit teams against each other to develop a solution to a problem and then pick the strongest of the two.

probably that's Apple. Steve Jobs is more famous for jumping from the failing project (Lisa) onto the winning team (Macintosh)

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

#124

Post by itsoktocry »

light_triad wrote: post #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…

>It's almost impossible to know if an idea is good at the early stages

But identifying the "right" people is easy?

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

#125

Post by Suppafly »

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.

>This creates an extremely obvious conflict of interest.

That's not necessarily bad though. People like to throw out these terms that sometimes have negative connotation as if they are inherently negative. If you think the conflict of interest is a bad thing, you need to elaborate on why you feel it's bad, not just pretend it's prima facia bad.

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

#126

Post by itsoktocry »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #117
light_triad wrote: post #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…

The CEO of YC gave a talk about how you should first assemble a founding team and THEN come up with an idea. The idea seems way less important than identifying founders they want to back.

>The idea seems way less important than identifying founders they want to back.

Especially when you can take an idea you like from a team you don't, and give it to a team you do!

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

#127

Post by thatguy0900 »

itsoktocry wrote: post #124
light_triad wrote: post #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…

> It's almost impossible to know if an idea is good at the early stages But identifying the "right" people is easy?

It's not, but that's ycs entire business model

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

#128

Post by tptacek »

fsckboy wrote: post #122
tptacek wrote: post #121

And? As the article says, they've funded thousands of companies. Of course there's overlap. It would be weirder, much weirder, if they kept a conflict list like a law firm and avoided funding things that intersected their portfolio. It's hard to emphasize enough how little YC knows about the companies they fund, and how little influence they have over the companies once they've funded them. Often, there's barely a co…

> It would be weirder, much weirder, if they kept a conflict list like a law firm modern portfolio theory (MPT) is the only acceptable measure of investment performance, and calculating co-variance is the salient feature of MPT, so no, it would not be weird to track overlap. to sum it up in a single sentence, is OpenAI a good investment for you at $50 a share? Without even knowing anything else about the company, if…

At 5000 companies this is a little like saying that investors should avoid the S&P 500 because it includes both Coke and Pepsi.

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

#129

Post by throwaway314155 »

itsoktocry wrote: post #124
light_triad wrote: post #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…

> It's almost impossible to know if an idea is good at the early stages But identifying the "right" people is easy?

Spoiler alert: it's "easy" when you narrow down to applications who come from wealth and/or went to a prestigious university.

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

#130

Post by xpe »

svnt wrote: post #74
xpe wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The connection is that the conflict of interest being discussed was only ever a social/ethical contract. That social contract is in the bin right now, so the question is moot.

Individuals who voted for Trump don’t necessarily want to throw away a social contract. Many of them do support societal norms, albeit different ones. And some don’t even think in these terms; they are more motivated by other factors.

Along with many, I think their collective actions point in a direction that (a) undermines democratic rule and (b) enables Trump’s corruption, but they seem to be relatively unaware or disagree with such effects.

Many of them think Trump will combat one some types of corruption (the “deep state”).

Overall, I’m more inclined to think many/most Trump supporters have reasonable core values, especially at the individual and family levels, but due to their information sources and mental processing, their overall choices don’t bode well for us, together. The biggest breakdown I think has to do with epistemic values: how does one find truth.

I don’t think most people, of any party, have the individual ability and discipline to make sense of a modern world in a rational, scientific manner. This isn’t something easily achieved, after all.

About me: I strive to not “blame” individuals in the traditional sense, because I reject free will as a meaningful concept. (Roll back the clock and a person will the behave the same in a deterministic universe. And if the universe has intrinsic randomness, we can’t ascribe free will to that randomness.)

So instead of blaming individuals, I focus on systems and their statistical effects.

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