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Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

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Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#161

Post by riku_iki »

klooney wrote: post #114
worksonmymach wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to know who "wins" in a scaled YC vs. the oceanic tide that is the SP500 and it's capital sucking and brain sucking ways. A Google can stop 10000 potential startups simply with RSUs and cap another 10000 by buying them out (which is kinda good for YC but not really... they'd rather own a chunk of a Google).

> A Google can stop 10000 potential startups simply with RSUs The real killer here is the Bay Area housing market. You need those RSUs to pay for a place to stay.

You don't have to live in Bay Area to run startup?..

Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#163

Post by cj »

glaugh wrote: post #144
cj wrote: post #6

If you’re wondering what to take away from this article: the simple take away is that YC has the power to get what it wants, for the companies it wants. If you happen to be in YC’s good graces, they will reward you in ways described in the article. If you’re not, they won’t take the time. I was in YC in 2012 (2 yrs after the founder writing this article, and one of the last years PG was directly involved). By that ti…

I was in the S12 batch. A couple years later we were demonstrably failing. I emailed the general YC advice line or something similar with a question, and pg responded with a thoughtful comment that was genuinely useful I don’t think there’s any chance he saw any economic value in us, he took that time because he cared about startups and well-meaning failures like us It’s a small thing, yes, but I’ve always thought it…

Agreed. In a similar vein, when our YC company was failing I had a great call with Jessica Livingston, and looking back it was purely moral support and not anything economically motivated.

Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#164

Post by uoaei »

fsckboy wrote: post #149
uoaei wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying the "Peter principle" extends beyond tech employee performance and to tech company funding.

no, it's not the Peter Principle. The Peter Principle is pointing out that if you keep getting promoted by doing an exceptional job, and you stop getting promoted when you stop, that you have ended up leaving a job you were exceptional at, and landing in a job you are not good at. In a certain sense it's saying "you should be demoted back to your last job that you were exceptional at"; it's not suggesting that, it's…

I think you'd be hard-pressed to make a case that VC-motivated business scaling does not consistently overinflate the businesses which are artificially propped up by investor cash. There are a bunch of companies, existing and dead, that show the folly of growth-at-high-cost.

Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#165

Post by tomhoward »

adastra22 wrote: post #95
tomhoward wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YC will fund anyone who is building a company that looks like it could be highly successful. There's one case I'm thinking of now where someone was as critical of YC (both the org and individual leaders) as anyone could possibly be, in a highly public and sustained way, and their startup later got funded by YC.

Well that is contrary to what is stated in the article/book.

What in the article (sentence or paragraph) contradicts what I wrote?

The article is about how YC defended one of its funded companies against a legal attack. It doesn’t say anything about YC refusing to fund someone who criticized it.

Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#166

Post by adastra22 »

tomhoward wrote: post #165
adastra22 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that is contrary to what is stated in the article/book.

What in the article (sentence or paragraph) contradicts what I wrote? The article is about how YC defended one of its funded companies against a legal attack. It doesn’t say anything about YC refusing to fund someone who criticized it.

> Y Combinator was the sort of unforgiving power player that remembered the names of investors who had crossed portfolio companies in the past, *or who had disseminated unflattering portraits of YC*, and blacklisted them from any YC dealings, or from the minds of YC founders

If you said something unflattering about YC once and got uninvited from demo day, that's on you. But being black listed from ever investing in any YC-backed startup even if you reach out to founders directly is taking things too far. And potentially an antitrust issue. Cabals are illegal, after all.

Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#167

Post by fakedang »

tim333 wrote: post #109
worksonmymach wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to know who "wins" in a scaled YC vs. the oceanic tide that is the SP500 and it's capital sucking and brain sucking ways. A Google can stop 10000 potential startups simply with RSUs and cap another 10000 by buying them out (which is kinda good for YC but not really... they'd rather own a chunk of a Google).

I think they are both winning. Googling gives "The 2024 Y Combinator (YC) top companies have a combined valuation of $458 billion. In 2023, these companies generated a total revenue of $57.2 billion." Which is not bad starting from basically nothing 20 years ago. I don't think the S&P is doing badly either.

Plot a graph of the companies against their revenue and profit numbers and you'll end up with 2 massively skewed incline curves. Plot a graph of their companies which are public, and they're mostly trading below their debut.

YC did do the right thing (investing in super early stage startups) at the right time (ZIRP environment), but now with the proliferation of too many startups and applicants, I'm not so certain on how much of a future it has with getting the next best thing. Already seeing quite a few startups that either bootstrapped or raised without YC, while a number of YC companies are stuck in pivot loops.

Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#168

Post by propoganda »

neilv wrote: post #5

> > Y Combinator was the sort of unforgiving power player that remembered the names of investors who had crossed portfolio companies in the past, or who had disseminated unflattering portraits of YC, and blacklisted them from any YC dealings, or from the minds of YC founders. Do we have to be careful what we say on HN?

[dead]

Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#169

Post by worksonmymach »

foobarian wrote: post #119
klooney wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A Google can stop 10000 potential startups simply with RSUs The real killer here is the Bay Area housing market. You need those RSUs to pay for a place to stay.

If the engineers are just middlemen for plumbing that money to property owners, seems like owning property in the Bay Area might be a good idea.

Sure I'd rather have $1m in FAANG shares than SF real estate over 10 years but maybe I am wrong.

Especially as SF real estate relies on NIMBYism that might change whereas FAANG relies on an enormous brain trust, branding and monopolies.

Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#170

Post by worksonmymach »

riku_iki wrote: post #161
klooney wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A Google can stop 10000 potential startups simply with RSUs The real killer here is the Bay Area housing market. You need those RSUs to pay for a place to stay.

You don't have to live in Bay Area to run startup?..

I think it massive improves your odds of a unicorn. But a regular old business aiming for a humble $10m valuation based on profits, of course not.
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