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Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
51–60 of 317 posts
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#52Jessica is my hero. Paul is a guiding force. Every effort has some defect but it’s intention and effort which matters. World would be a very different place without YC. Thank you all !
>> but it’s intention and effort which matters. I think I understand what you're saying, but this is a very dangerous generality. I think the HOW matters more than the intent.
The idea here, AFAICT, is that the right intention matters even if the implementation is lacking and imperfect. If the intention is there, the implementation will improve.
The dangerous line of thinking would be that a good intention somehow justifies doing evil things, and not by mistake but knowingly, for an ulterior greater and noble goal. But then the intentions would include doing an evil thing as an intermediate step, and, as the comment says, the intention does matter.
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#53[flagged]
We're getting complaints from users that your comments are LLM-generated. Of course it's hard to say for sure, but if they are (in whole or part), please stop. Generated comments aren't allowed here; HN is for human conversation.
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#54[flagged]
What you have identified is nurturing tech development and this has become easier. But more complex tech development should now be the next focal point of incubators. And this means founders who have more speciality in the work they do.
There is still a gap that needs fulfilling. YC is one player who can fulfill it. Late-stage startup development is a business structuring problem and the biggest blank slate for new founders. From term sheets to understanding convertible debt to navigating VC maze.
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#55Jessica is my hero. Paul is a guiding force. Every effort has some defect but it’s intention and effort which matters. World would be a very different place without YC. Thank you all !
Did Stilgar write this
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#56It 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
Companies take time to become successful, so the verdict is still out on most of the companies that started in the last 10 years. Time will tell. Though there are already quite a few successrul YC companies from the last few years. Full list of top YC companies: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies (filter by "top companies")
Just looking at how most have done since going public , most VC backed companies including YC are just exiting and finding the “bigger fool”. YC has done phenomenal for itself. For the public that bought at IPO - not so much.
https://www.marketsentiment.co/p/the-yc-report
If you invested equally in all YC companies on their IPO day, you would now be down 49% compared to the +58% return of the S&P500! 14 of the 17 companies lost money for the investor, and 3 companies lost more than 99% of their IPO value. Only one company ended up beating the S&P 500 benchmark
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#57Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Neither are profitable.
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#59There's going to be a lot of "the big successes already happened" type comments about YC but I think they're wrong. Sure all big successes are unique in time, and entrepreneurship & web tech are mainstream now. But there's still lots of industries to disrupt. What gets harder is that the level of expertise needed to disrupt an industry is now much higher. You didn't need to work in hotels to create Airbnb, or a bank…
When YC started, people were saying literally the same thing; the dotcom bust had already happened, and the era of big internet companies was 'dead.'
As usual, the death of entrepreneurship and startups has been greatly overstated. :)
Re: Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator
#60I remember the initial PG announcement about the founder's summer program and wanting desperately to be a part of it. I wasn't at a place in my life where I ever could join YC but the tribe that's been built by everyone involved has added tremendous value to my life. I'll always be incredibly grateful that this place and YC exists.