https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1 is always fun to look at, 18.5 years ago.
Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
11–20 of 317 posts
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do think YC has become chasers of the latest trend rather than creating the trend. That is why most of the successes are skewed early like Reddit and a bunch of other companies which defined the internet. Now they have gone from crypto grifting companies and AI hyped companies and it really seems that the a-level players are missing. Or maybe it's just a matter of smaller teams and focus and care. I think now I see…
Well it’s a function of those that apply and are accepted, and pitches are going to reflect the current hype. YC occasionally puts out a call for applications in areas they think are interesting but perhaps they haven’t seen many compelling pitches for. Have they recently put out a call for specific areas of interest?
Yeah I think they do it every batch or at least every year.
https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#13[deleted]
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#14[deleted]
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#15It seems the first few batches of YC were VERY successful. But, the number of successful YC companies I can think of from the last 10 years of batches is very minimal despite them investing in thousands of companies. Makes you wonder, does the funding landscape need a new YC level disruption because YC seems to have peeked, return wise (not hype wise). Maybe AI might be their saving grace if everything works out
It's because every market inefficiency eventually disappears as entrepreneurs capitalize on it. It's like there's an optimal architecture for the economy at a given technology level, and the job of the entrepreneur is to find that architecture and refactor the economy, piece by piece. And if they're successful, they get to take everything of value in the old, obsolete parts of the economy that get destroyed.
When YC was formed the Internet was young; it had just dramatically changed the equilibrium point for the economy, but people didn't know it yet. YC's investment thesis was that many more startups could be founded than were being founded, so they set about funding them. And they were right, and so their early investments found fertile new markets that were ripe for disruption.
Now founding a startup is mainstream, so wannabe entrepreneurs have picked clean most of the big profitable market niches. And that's why all the later YC startups tend to be smaller and less successful. The big successes already happened. I could see AI spawning a few more successful startups - it is a technological change, after all - but not to the scale of the Internet. (Honestly, I see solar and genetic engineering as spawning more. Freeman Dyson wrote a prophetic book in 1999 entitled "The sun, the genome, and the Internet" about the 3 technologies that would define the 21st century, and IMHO he was totally on point.)
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#16It seems the first few batches of YC were VERY successful. But, the number of successful YC companies I can think of from the last 10 years of batches is very minimal despite them investing in thousands of companies. Makes you wonder, does the funding landscape need a new YC level disruption because YC seems to have peeked, return wise (not hype wise). Maybe AI might be their saving grace if everything works out
There are many factors (YC needs to allocate more capital, not founder-led anymore, needs to fill more batches...) etc. But another one is that the first batch has had 20 years to grow and compound while the rest has had less time to become massive. I'm not saying YC is perfect now (though it's still great). But I think a simple factor could just be time for many portcos.
Or that most of the largest opportunities have been filled and newer companies are aiming at much smaller niches, or to be alternatives to well-established competitors.
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#17It seems the first few batches of YC were VERY successful. But, the number of successful YC companies I can think of from the last 10 years of batches is very minimal despite them investing in thousands of companies. Makes you wonder, does the funding landscape need a new YC level disruption because YC seems to have peeked, return wise (not hype wise). Maybe AI might be their saving grace if everything works out
There are many factors (YC needs to allocate more capital, not founder-led anymore, needs to fill more batches...) etc. But another one is that the first batch has had 20 years to grow and compound while the rest has had less time to become massive. I'm not saying YC is perfect now (though it's still great). But I think a simple factor could just be time for many portcos.
Agreed, to compare you would have to not just look at current magnitude but rather compare the historical trajectories of growth
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#18It seems the first few batches of YC were VERY successful. But, the number of successful YC companies I can think of from the last 10 years of batches is very minimal despite them investing in thousands of companies. Makes you wonder, does the funding landscape need a new YC level disruption because YC seems to have peeked, return wise (not hype wise). Maybe AI might be their saving grace if everything works out
A) Very true! B) peaked* :) C) Can you think of any tech companies from the last 10 years that were successful? The answer is ultimately "they exist, but the victory condition is to be bought by MANGA, so you don't remember them even if you heard about them in the first place." EDIT: to add more context, this is a great post: https://jaredheyman.medium.com/on-the-176-annual-return-of-a... The TL;DR is that Stripe & A…
> Can you think of any tech companies from the last 10 years that were successful?
OpenAI and Anthropic come to mind
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#19[flagged]
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well it’s a function of those that apply and are accepted, and pitches are going to reflect the current hype. YC occasionally puts out a call for applications in areas they think are interesting but perhaps they haven’t seen many compelling pitches for. Have they recently put out a call for specific areas of interest?
Yeah I think they do it every batch or at least every year. https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs
Thanks, I see that one is full of AI, but I notice they are guiding toward specific areas, probably so they don’t get a thousand vague AI pitches